Let's discuss novelty desk calendars. See, I think they have the perfect racket going, because most people don't retain all sorts of information for very long. That means they could, presumably, reissue the exact same calendar every year with the dates and days corrected and just have the same Dilbert strips looping forever. In f-
Wait a minute.
According to mine, it says today's Valentine's Day.
OH MAN, I TOTALLY FORGOT VALENTINE'S WEEK!
Man, now I have to cram five days worth of Valentine's related topics into one post! Okay, okay, I can do this. Here we go!
Showing posts with label Valentine's Week. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Valentine's Week. Show all posts
Friday, February 14, 2014
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Valentine's Week: Aftermath
All this week, Erik spent his time trying to keep what he thought was the real spirit of Valentine's Day alive, by devoting his attentions to reasons why such a saccharine, hollow holiday should exist, just to have it crushed by the movie Barb Wire. It has now been revealed to him the truth, that even the greatest romances can fail, that no love truly lasts forever, and the sooner the holiday ceases to exist, the better off we all are.
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You know, the funny thing is, originally I hadn't planned on doing a movie review to end the week. I was just suddenly so inspired to end with something big that I pushed aside my original idea and got myself dragged down. But, my eyes have finally been opened, and I understand why so many other people I know dismiss Valentine's Day for the commercialized festival of triteness it has become.
Originally, I wanted to talk about Amelia Rules.
I was first turned on to this book when I picked up a copy of a free issue at "Free Comic Book Day" some years ago. I was amused by the story of a young girl who moves out to the suburbs from New York City after her parents get divorced (proving once again that no love is forever), and her adventures joining a group of kids in a "superhero club" and dealing with school, family, and the pressures of growing up.
The author/artist, Jimmy Gownley, created an extremely interesting book, both in storytelling and in art approach. Stories told dealing with flashbacks to when adults were younger are done in the art styles of "classic" comics, whether it's in the style of Peanuts when they're small children to the classic "Archie" style of cartooning for their teenage years. It shows a remarkable ability to adapt his style, and for that I really can't commend Mr. Gownley enough.
I think, though, that what this book does best is handle topics that adults are never comfortable discussing with children and approach the matter in an intelligent, responsible way. Early on the stories are mostly madcap hijinks, with Amelia joining her friends' top secret "superhero club," their battle with a "ninja club" a few blocks away, and even the hijacking of a mall Santa to find out if Santa Claus is really real.
But suddenly you realize the book is dealing with very real problems for children. Early issues deal with bullies, divorce, teasing and cliques. In the Christmas issue, Amelia realizes that while she's playing up her parents' divorce for extra presents from both sides, one of her best friends' families is so poor they can't afford any presents. Another issue involves a good friend of hers getting real sick due to a ventricular septal defect, and what it means to someone young to know somebody who's "fragile." One storyline involves a "truth or dare" incident that leads to Amelia being rushed to the hospital.
But the key "adult" storyline is what happens to a child when their parent is called to war.
A storyline that begins with Amelia being asked to her first dance pivots quickly as she and the other children have to deal with one of their best friends' fathers being called to duty in Iraq for a year. It breaks down just how long that year could be for a child, where every clock tick without a parent around feels like it stretches out forever.
So, what would any of this have to do with Valentine's Day? There are multiple young, blossoming relationships in the book, some of which pan out (for now), and others of which crash and burn pretty quickly. There's a continuous crush held by Rhonda, one of her friends, for Reggie, the leader of their "club." There's a story where Amelia's mother goes on a date for the first time after her divorce. There's even a few allusions to her aunt Tanner's previous relationship with a man that ended "terribly" and pretty much ended her music career for a while.
...y'know, maybe I'll go get myself some half-price nougats. Or a cake pop. Things seem to be looking up.
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You know, the funny thing is, originally I hadn't planned on doing a movie review to end the week. I was just suddenly so inspired to end with something big that I pushed aside my original idea and got myself dragged down. But, my eyes have finally been opened, and I understand why so many other people I know dismiss Valentine's Day for the commercialized festival of triteness it has become.
Originally, I wanted to talk about Amelia Rules.
The author/artist, Jimmy Gownley, created an extremely interesting book, both in storytelling and in art approach. Stories told dealing with flashbacks to when adults were younger are done in the art styles of "classic" comics, whether it's in the style of Peanuts when they're small children to the classic "Archie" style of cartooning for their teenage years. It shows a remarkable ability to adapt his style, and for that I really can't commend Mr. Gownley enough.
I think, though, that what this book does best is handle topics that adults are never comfortable discussing with children and approach the matter in an intelligent, responsible way. Early on the stories are mostly madcap hijinks, with Amelia joining her friends' top secret "superhero club," their battle with a "ninja club" a few blocks away, and even the hijacking of a mall Santa to find out if Santa Claus is really real.
But the key "adult" storyline is what happens to a child when their parent is called to war.
A storyline that begins with Amelia being asked to her first dance pivots quickly as she and the other children have to deal with one of their best friends' fathers being called to duty in Iraq for a year. It breaks down just how long that year could be for a child, where every clock tick without a parent around feels like it stretches out forever.
So, what would any of this have to do with Valentine's Day? There are multiple young, blossoming relationships in the book, some of which pan out (for now), and others of which crash and burn pretty quickly. There's a continuous crush held by Rhonda, one of her friends, for Reggie, the leader of their "club." There's a story where Amelia's mother goes on a date for the first time after her divorce. There's even a few allusions to her aunt Tanner's previous relationship with a man that ended "terribly" and pretty much ended her music career for a while.
For me, though, the best "Valentine's Day" moment comes early in one of the trades, when the characters are trying to figure out how to write a basic card for someone they know. Amelia and Rhonda are both attempting to write a card for Reggie (Amelia trying to figure out how to say something nice while hiding it behind "when I'm with you, I don't want to barf as often as I might've, while Rhonda keeps having to push her frustrations about a one-sided relationship down), while Reggie is trying to find ways to rhyme "major smoochies" to Tanner.
The story ends, once all three give up in frustration, with the fourth of their quartet, a boy who only goes by the name "Pajamaman" delivering simple, homemade cards that read "On Valentine's Day and all year through, it's really nice being friends with you."
Okay, that is pretty sweet.
And, you know, for all of the drama that happens, the book never takes a jaded view towards anything. It reminds us constantly about how important it is to have friends and how important it is for friends to be there for each other. It keeps an optimistic look on crushes and how even if the first one doesn't pan out, you can't let it keep you from keeping your eyes open and being willing to take chances and risk being hurt again.
It even manages to do well convincing a child that just because her parents weren't able to work things out, it doesn't mean they've stopped caring about her or each other, and that just because something ends doesn't mean it has to end poorly.
So, maybe there is something to a holiday that celebrates relationships. After all, when you're young, you don't just write cards to the person you want to sneak a kiss to in elementary school, it's a day where you nurture and try to connect to everyone. You write a card to your teacher, your parents, your grandparents, a babysitter, a neighbor, anybody who you have a connection to that you value.
Perhaps, in this world where fame is more important than anything else and people are constantly debating what it means to be a "family" or be "in love," it's important to remember these lessons people are trying to teach us when we're young, and important to hold onto these lessons, not just for ourselves, but so we can pass them on and make sure others learn them as well.
There's a quote I love towards the end of one of the books: "Our story is destined to be a grand one! Hidden right in plain sight! But it's going to be quite risky. After all, everything good in life usually is! It's not just about the adventure, though, it's about all the choices you make, how they affect other people. Some of whom aren't even born yet! And who may never know just how lucky they are that we came before them."
...y'know, maybe I'll go get myself some half-price nougats. Or a cake pop. Things seem to be looking up.
Friday, February 15, 2013
Valentine's Week! Day Five
Here at Erik At The Gates, we think that Valentine's Day is more than just a means for chocolatiers and greeting card companies to rake in extra money, and it isn't, as Jon Stewart once put it, "A manufactured day that doesn't actually mean anything." So read on as Erik tries to continue to keep the spirit of Valentine's Day burning, even the day after it's over and chocolate is half-off at any convenience store.
Because what says love like discount nougat?
Because today is the last day of the work week, I wanted to go out on something big. I wanted to take a classic love story and turn my reviewing eye to it. I was going to deconstruct, reconstruct, analyze, and critique the film down to its smallest scenes until I was able to extract what made the movie work, not just as a masterpiece, but as a superb love story.
So my first step was to settle on which love story is the best. Now, I could go somewhat modern and break down Pretty Woman, When Harry Met Sally, or even Titanic. I was tempted to go with a movie that isn't as familiar to modern audiences, like The Apartment or Top Hat or even something insane like Bringing Up Baby, where most of the madcap romance swirls around a hunt for Katherine Hepburn's jaguar (the cat, not the car).
But no. If I'm going to do this right, I'm going to have to go with the most timeless love story of all time.
I'm going to have to go with the film that the American Film Institute said was the #1 romance ever made.
I'm going to have to sit down and turn my critical eye to one of my favorite movies....Casablanca.
Now, I'll admit I should've gone out sooner to make sure I could get a copy. Unfortunately, my local video store was sold out.
So now I'm in a fix.
Okay, don't panic. It's a classic tale of love and separation, of a person embittered by a broken heart but learning to live again, not just by the discovery of their loved one showing up on their doorstep, but of the friends they've built around them. It has the ever-present threat of a far-reaching evil sitting at its doorstep, waiting for the slightest weakness to be able to completely overpower it.
So with the help of one of the employees, I was able to settle on a movie that follows a similar story, but has created its own unique identity as a movie. As I was getting frustrated, the employee put the following into my hands:
...so what I'm saying is I need someone to help me make sure that employee's body is never found and help me clean my car this weekend.
...well, no use putting it off, let's take a look at Barb Wire.
The movie begins by setting our location, time period, and plot. We're in Steel Harbor in the year 2017 in the midst of the second American Civil War. The old government was overthrown by the "Congressional Directorate," every city in the US is now under martial law...save Steel Harbor, the last "free city" and you'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villai- ...sorry, my brain was trying to transport me to a good movie.
I'd also like to point out that this information that's being spoken to us in both verbal and written form is happening over what appears to be the landscape of Mars, so right off the bat I have no idea where this movie is actually going to take place.
Man, why did the idea of this movie excite sixteen year old me?
Oh, right.
So the casting credits roll as we watch the star of our movie, Pamela Anderson (and I'm so happy that there aren't very many opportunities to say that sentence) getting sprayed with water while she dances around in dress that covers her legs but leaves her chest open to the viewing public. Oh, and because there's no more erotic song written, the whole thing is done to Gun's harder rock version of the song Word Up. The crowd hoots and hollers, and I have the sneaking suspicion that the target audience in the theater would've been doing the same.
Now, I'm not a strip club owner, and my experience in such clubs is essentially non-existant, but I somehow doubt it's good business, when one of the guys you're dancing in front of calls you "babe," to attempt to murder him with your shoe.
Now, it turns out that Barb Wire (that's actually her name) was only performing at this club in order to rescue a young woman dressed like a schoolgirl who apparently was being sold as a sex slave. Now, I've also only watched maybe two episodes of Baywatch, and I somehow missed VIP, but I really must say that I'm surprised at the depth and nuance to Pamela Anderson's acting here. It is so rare to find a talent that's able to speak with such heartfelt emotion, whatever scene is presented on screen, that it makes Shaquille O'Neal look like Ben Kingsley.
So Barb and the girl manage to get to a window on an upper story, and after using what appears to be an extremely complex grapple and harness system (along with the line "Ever see Batman?" which makes me wonder just how many times the franchise has been rebooted by 2017), Barb manages to deliver three moments of cursing with all the intensity of Brian Posehn reading road signs.
We learn Barb was hired by the girl's parents to get her back, but it turns out there's a problem. They were only able to get half the money for her fee, to which Barb replies, through clenched teeth, "Half the money? Fine, I'll take half your daughter." ...I really have no idea how that's supposed to work, but Barb's the one here with the obvious master's degree in economics, so I won't ask any questions.
Barb manages to take the family's car and cash as payment, and we get a few shots of the environment as Barb starts narrating the movie herself, telling us...everything we already learned before the opening credits. ...I'm only ten minutes into this movie and I need a drink.
Okay, I'm back! So, apparently I missed some talk between a bad guy and a woman he's interrogating done up to look like a prostitute had sex with a car engine, and it's taking place in a capitol building that fell out of Fallout 3.
The bad guys have a machine that reads thoughts, though why it has to be attached to this girl's breasts, I have no idea. Oh, wait, it turns out this device not only reads thoughts, it also electrocutes the wearer, showing that in the future they stopped the uncivilized technique of water boarding its citizens.
Colonel Pryzer, our villain, kills the girl after learning that a doctor (scientist or medical, I don't know) and her freedom fighter boyfriend are going to Steel Harbor to acquire some special contact lenses that will allow her to sneak into Canada, and she's also had plastic surgery so nobody will recognize her. He then gets debriefed by a guy who looks disturbingly like Michael Shanks, We learn through the joy of exposition that the doctor's DNA contains the "antidote to their greatest biochemical weapon" as well as knowing a whole bunch of secrets.
Remember in Casablanca when the person being hunted by the Nazis was just a charismatic resistance leader? And when Rick wasn't murdering people in strip clubs to rescue underage girls from sex traffickers? Good times. Good ti- sorry, my brain's doing it again. Back to the story!
We cut back to Steel Harbor, where we get an extremely pointless scene showing the doctor and freedom fighter getting a ride with two guys and climbing into a car. We cut to a bar named "Hammer Head" filled with strippers, dancers, a late 90s goth band, and clientele that are an eclectic blend of bikers and guys wearing suits who wandered onto the set after trying out for LA Confidential. This is Barb's bar, where people make offers to have her rescue/kill other people, and her blind brother Charlie says the worst pick-up lines ever uttered in film ("I thought, this must be a woman of superior breeding. Then I wondered if maybe she'd like to do some. Breeding, that is.")
Oh, and the guy running the floor is a bald German named Curly and the "Sam" character is now a black DJ named "no name given yet."
Meanwhile, back in the car, our hunted twosome get into a scrape when their car gets surrounded by "customs police" which flat-out murder the two guys that picked them up and then open up on the car to kill the rest of the inhabitants. So despite the fact that none of the officers who have surrounded the car see a car door open, we're expected to believe that the two managed to sneak out of the car right before the guns shot it up. Our twosome is lose in the city, taking us back to where they were before they got into the car, meaning the whole thing was absolutely pointless.
Curly confronts Barb about the fact they're low on funds, Barb decides to "go out" for a while (packing some firearms as she does so), Barb sneaks out the back, Curly expresses concern for her, Barb expresses concern for Charlie...in the sense that his getting drunk and lying under tables is embarrassing...and oh hey, look, my drink's empty!
So, what'd I miss? Oh, it appears the cops are on the hunt for the resistance fighter nobody knows anything about and the woman who's unrecognizable after plastic surgery, meaning this is the worst manhunt ever, and we watch the resistance fighter beat the crap out of a female cop and then straight-up murder her partner by snapping his neck. Our heroes, everybody!
Well, at least we can hope Barb's doing something heroi- oh look, she's whoring herself. Literally.
So, yeah, it turns out Barb was simply seducing one specific guy so he'd take her to his room, because her target happens to be in the room right next door (god, this movie makes my head hurt) we get a scene that I'm going to have to drink out of my memory involving a very fat man in a tight bondage costume taunting Barb that he didn't wash his hands because "he was bad."
Barb blows up a hole in a wall and fights two dudes before she flips out when one of them calls her "babe" (see, that's her whole personality gimmick, she's a buxom blond who hates being called "babe"), and drags off a bail jumper...who, surprise, surprise, was the same guy that the doctor and freedom fighter were supposed to meet for the contact lenses! WHAT A COINCIDENCE!
Barb drops off Krebs with some guy, man, I don't know who he is, and gets paid her money and goes back to her bar, and...and we actually get a rather sweet scene where Barb dances with a soldier about to go out to the front line. It's a rather interesting twist that this hardened character who seems to care nothing for anybody but her employees and brother (sort of) might feel for a young man who's probably off to die and is miles away from home, and it- oh, whoops, it's ruined by the arrival of the bad guys. Or, rather, the cops.
We meet Willis, Steel Harbor's chief of police in another narration by Barb (god I wish this movie would be consistent), and we get a long, boring scene of him making like he cares that some of his offers are dead (initially I thought it was the two guys Barb killed, then I thought it was the ones the fighter killed, then I realized I really didn't care), and there's a throwaway line about Barb having previously been known as Barbara Kowpetski or Kelly Kapowski or whatever, I don't care and based on her acting performance neither does Pamela Anderson. Let's skip ahead to something that matters.
Okay, a scene of a drunk guy causing problems at the bar and getting bit in the crotch by a dog, Colonel Pryzer shows up doing his best M. Bison impression...
...yeah, there's a talk between Pryzer, Willis, and Barb where Barb also points out it's difficult to do a manhunt for someone who surgically altered their appearance, the two fugitives show up, I doze off for a moment, we learn that the freedom fighter used to fight with Barb and Charlie, he and Barb have a spat, Charlie helps the two contact the resistance, the bad guys shoot some people...
Oh, here we go. We get the big flashback scene like in Casablanca. Remember how the movie detailed the love affair between Ilsa and Rick, about how they were determined to go off together, how they spent every moment together...just to have Ilsa suddenly not show up?
Yeah, condense that scene into about thirty seconds showing Pamela Anderson in army fatigues and you get a high school production of a war drama. It's actually kind of hilarious.
So the guy who hired Barb to get Krebs shows up trying to sell her the contact lenses saying he needs her to buy the one thing that lets you get past any security checkpoint to leave the country...in return for helping him flee the country. No, I don't get the logic, it makes no damn sense, let's just get through this. He stashes the contact lenses in Barb's kitchen (?),
We learn that the mind reading device the bad guys have works on dead people (?!), they see when Barb sold them Krebs, and ...oh, right, the other reason I was interested in this movie at age sixteen. Pamela Anderson climbing out of a bubble bath.
...sorry, I zoned out for a moment. The freedom fighter (that's it, I'm looking up the character's name in IMDB because I wasn't paying attention earlier...Axel. Got it) Axel shows up, he and Barb snipe at each other then start making out in her private elevator...which of course takes them right to Axel's new girlfriend, the doctor whose name I can't be bothered to look up.
Now, if you're someone on the run and when an elevator door arrives and the first thing you see is your guy making out with a naked-but-for-a-towel Pamela Anderson, is your reaction...
a) "Okay, he knows how desperate we are, and she's obviously a total slut, so he's just using a strategy of looking for contact lenses by sticking his tongue down his throat."
b) "WHAT THE HELL. You meet up with your old flame for five minutes and she's already naked? Priorities, man, priorities!"
c) "That is NOT how you make out with Pamela Anderson. Step aside, I'll show you how it's done."
d) "...you know what, screw it, time for a murder/murder/suicide."
e) "Someone remind me to call my agent. They're fired."
If you answered "c" or "d," then I like the way you think. Sadly, it's not either of those choices. It's also not really "a" or "b" either. ...I can't make any promises about "e." Instead she just acts like she caught them discussing their characters in Dungeons and Dragons and gives them the world's most "I'm bored" expression.
So the doctor waits about five seconds after watching them make out to point out she's nearby, Axel introduces Barb to his wife (...) before saying, "Look, I know this is awkward for all of us."
This movie makes me hurt. Time to top off my glass.
Okay, so, Axel and the scientist try to appeal to Barb by saying that the reason why she's being hunted is she was the head researcher on a project called "Red Ribbon" which was a weaponization of the HIV virus that kills in twelve hours a-
WHAT THE HELL, MOVIE.
WEAPONIZED THE HIV VIRUS?!!!!
...wouldya look at that, my drink's empty. Excuse me a moment, I need to take out some anger on the body of a store clerk.
...okay, so apparently I missed the bad guys suddenly showing up, Barb flashes her breast at the other good guys as if to say "you can trust me, would these breasts lie?" The bad guys round everybody up, Barb plays off the good guys as her choice for a menage (I'll just point out that it really is pointless to do a manhunt when you have the person you're looking for right in front of you and you still don't know). They try to retina scan the doctor, only Charlie (the blind guy) knows directly where to point a tiny device that makes the scanner malfunction, and rather than hold two possible suspects when you KNOW BARB IS HELPING THE RESISTANCE, the Colonel lets them go because obviously it's a waste of his time.
...god this movie hurts.
The bad guys trash Barb's bar searching for the contact lenses, including hitting tables with sledgehammers, shooting down glass hanging displays, and generally being giant d- ...er, jerks. I mean, I get you're trying to make a point, but shooting the entire alcohol supply up with a machine gun just seems...excessive.
Curly is watching from the elevator, with an expression that I can't tell is distraught that he's just lost his job, or if he's really enjoying muscular men in uniform breaking things with bats and shooting powerful guns.
So Barb explains to her blind brother that the military were looking for contact lenses, and lo and behold, Charlie holds up a glass tube whose contents he cannot see and asks if she means "those." Screw you and your logic, movie. Charlie points out they could hand them to Axel, but Barb says "pfft! We're going to Europe!"
...and then another Barb monologues more stuff we already knew before she heads off to a junkyard and I get to hear a conversation that I swear made my brain spasm.
Thug: "What's the code?"
Barb: "He's expecting me."
Other Thug: "Let her through!"
...seriously?
Okay, almost done. Barb meets up with "Big Fatso," a man so big he needs an actual bulldozer to move him around.
So Barb starts to broker a deal, Charlie tries to meet up with the resistance just to get caught by the bad guys...and I have to admit, I laughed at a scene I shouldn't have here. The bad guys have killed the leader of the resistance and hung her from a noose. When Charlie demands to see her, they say "coming right down" and slowly lower their body towards him. They lower a dead person's body in a dramatic fashion...to a blind guy standing there with sunglasses and a cane. I guess they went to so much effort to arrange it, it would just be wasteful not to do it.
Charlie gets captured, Barb arranges the deal, and Charlie's tortured to death to find out where the lenses are. I did also laugh at one scene here where Charlie really poorly bluffs the bad guys that the person holding the lenses is Santa Claus. It's so stupid, but in this movie I don't expect much for intelligence.
Barb finds Charlie's body, the other good guys show up, and Barb seems determined to make the bad guys pay...which I guess means Barb Wire's now dead and Barbara Kowpetski is going to kick some ass!
Barbara Kowpetski takes the good guys to meet Big Fatso...and I swear to god, I'm not making this up, Big Fatso tries to pay Barbara with a gold debit card carried in a suitcase. This movie is stupidity to new levels. So the good guys figure out that Barbara's selling the lenses they need, and Big Fatso reveals that he sold out Barbara and the others to the bad guys. Big Fatso even says the line, "Don't you just love it when a plan comes together," before he chomps down on a cigar, making me realize that the movie is also ragging on the A-Team.
Fortunately, this is when Willis decides it's better to die an idiot than be a lackey to a villain, and slips Barb a grenade behind her back while "cuffing" her with two guards standing directly behind her.
My guess is these are the same two guys who stood behind a car and couldn't see the doors opening so two people could escape a closed off alley.
Barbara pulls the pin and throws, winding up killing Big Fatso, and we get a lengthy car chase scene, then Barbara prepares for the final face off against Pryzer...and he tries to kill her with a forklift while laughing like Mark Hamill playing the Joker.
Axel fights a guy on top of a crane, having abandoned his wife to go back for Barbara (great guy, that Axel)...and this is gonna take a while. I just need to top off this drink.
...okay, sorry, that took a few minutes and...the fights are still happening? Seriously? Okay, um, I guess nothing changed, Axel knocks his guy off the top of the crane, and then uses it to pick up the forklift and swing it around because sure, why not. Barbara climbs up to the rope after a struggle, and he comments that it's just like his favorite song, I Got You, Babe.
...okay, four things. One, that song is no body's favorite song. Two, how does a midair battle against a bar owner/prostitute/stripper on a forklift remind you of that song that played every morning in Groundhog Day? Three, why didn't I watch Groundhog Day instead? That movie's awesome! Four...so, killing her brother didn't really make her mad, trying to arrest her didn't make her mad, punching her in the face a few times in a midair battle didn't make her mad...but referencing a song makes her so mad she says "Don't call me "babe."" and pulls the hook release?
You know what, movie, I don't care anymore. Go ahead and finish. The bad guy dies in a fiery explosion (because that's what forklifts do, right?), we get our airport scene where Barbara reveals she was wearing the contact lenses the whole time, the lenses change the doc's eye color to blue and somehow a retinal scanner accepts that cause it doesn't care and I don't care, but at least we'll get our ending speech. I mean, even this movie would at least try to have something that would rate up there with that "hill of beans" speech.
Axel: "So I thought Barb Wire doesn't take sides."
Barbara: "Keep it to yourself."
..................................................... AUGH.
Doc and Axel get on the plane, we get a stupid comment in place of the "beautiful friendship" line, and then...apparently someone on the set went nuts because they just now realized how stupid this was and shot everybody up because it ends with rapid gunshots before going black.
The Good:
Well, I found stuff I wasn't supposed to find funny funny...and if you're between the ages of thirteen and sixteen you know precisely why you're watching it and it isn't for Pamela Anderson's acting talent.
Curly was also good. He was the only person who seemed to realize just how much acting effort his role required and made sure to have actual fun with it. Big Fatso was...offensive, but his goofy expressions made me smile because it was about the time he showed up that the movie went absolutely insane and stopped making any sense whatsoever. I laughed a lot in the last half of the movie, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't supposed to. I kept alternating from pure rage to helpless guffaws.
The Bad:
EVERYTHING ELSE.
I'm not kidding when I say this is probably the worst movie I've ever seen, and I've watched movies done by Mystery Science Theater without the MST part. The storyline makes no sense, there are HUGE shifts in tone (I swear, it goes from something like Blade Runner to a Looney Tunes cartoon right after the bar gets smashed), there are huge, gaping plot holes all over the place (if they think the contact lenses are destroyed, why do they go to the airport?), and I couldn't even enjoy the nudity because Pamela Anderson was trying to act while in various states of undress! Pamela Anderson's acting made me feel dirtier than seeing her strut around naked!
And it's trying to be Casablanca! It's trying to be one of the best movies ever made! How do you take a classic story about escaping Nazis and rediscovering your desire to help people and replace it with electric torture, forklift duels, and Pamela Anderson rolling johns on city streets to "supplement her income?" Who thought any of this was a good idea? You weaponized HIV, people! THINK!
Overall:
It hurt less when I rewatched Judge Dredd with Stallone, because at least they knew you weren't supposed to take that movie seriously. I watched this movie for 100 minutes, and I feel like I just lost a weekend.
Screw this movie, and screw Valentine's Day! I'm done!
...now if you'll excuse me, I need to get a shovel and get rid of this body.
Because what says love like discount nougat?
Because today is the last day of the work week, I wanted to go out on something big. I wanted to take a classic love story and turn my reviewing eye to it. I was going to deconstruct, reconstruct, analyze, and critique the film down to its smallest scenes until I was able to extract what made the movie work, not just as a masterpiece, but as a superb love story.
So my first step was to settle on which love story is the best. Now, I could go somewhat modern and break down Pretty Woman, When Harry Met Sally, or even Titanic. I was tempted to go with a movie that isn't as familiar to modern audiences, like The Apartment or Top Hat or even something insane like Bringing Up Baby, where most of the madcap romance swirls around a hunt for Katherine Hepburn's jaguar (the cat, not the car).
But no. If I'm going to do this right, I'm going to have to go with the most timeless love story of all time.
I'm going to have to go with the film that the American Film Institute said was the #1 romance ever made.
I'm going to have to sit down and turn my critical eye to one of my favorite movies....Casablanca.
Now, I'll admit I should've gone out sooner to make sure I could get a copy. Unfortunately, my local video store was sold out.
So now I'm in a fix.
Okay, don't panic. It's a classic tale of love and separation, of a person embittered by a broken heart but learning to live again, not just by the discovery of their loved one showing up on their doorstep, but of the friends they've built around them. It has the ever-present threat of a far-reaching evil sitting at its doorstep, waiting for the slightest weakness to be able to completely overpower it.
So with the help of one of the employees, I was able to settle on a movie that follows a similar story, but has created its own unique identity as a movie. As I was getting frustrated, the employee put the following into my hands:
...so what I'm saying is I need someone to help me make sure that employee's body is never found and help me clean my car this weekend.
...well, no use putting it off, let's take a look at Barb Wire.
The movie begins by setting our location, time period, and plot. We're in Steel Harbor in the year 2017 in the midst of the second American Civil War. The old government was overthrown by the "Congressional Directorate," every city in the US is now under martial law...save Steel Harbor, the last "free city" and you'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villai- ...sorry, my brain was trying to transport me to a good movie.
I'd also like to point out that this information that's being spoken to us in both verbal and written form is happening over what appears to be the landscape of Mars, so right off the bat I have no idea where this movie is actually going to take place.
Man, why did the idea of this movie excite sixteen year old me?
Oh, right.
So the casting credits roll as we watch the star of our movie, Pamela Anderson (and I'm so happy that there aren't very many opportunities to say that sentence) getting sprayed with water while she dances around in dress that covers her legs but leaves her chest open to the viewing public. Oh, and because there's no more erotic song written, the whole thing is done to Gun's harder rock version of the song Word Up. The crowd hoots and hollers, and I have the sneaking suspicion that the target audience in the theater would've been doing the same.
Now, I'm not a strip club owner, and my experience in such clubs is essentially non-existant, but I somehow doubt it's good business, when one of the guys you're dancing in front of calls you "babe," to attempt to murder him with your shoe.
Now, it turns out that Barb Wire (that's actually her name) was only performing at this club in order to rescue a young woman dressed like a schoolgirl who apparently was being sold as a sex slave. Now, I've also only watched maybe two episodes of Baywatch, and I somehow missed VIP, but I really must say that I'm surprised at the depth and nuance to Pamela Anderson's acting here. It is so rare to find a talent that's able to speak with such heartfelt emotion, whatever scene is presented on screen, that it makes Shaquille O'Neal look like Ben Kingsley.
So Barb and the girl manage to get to a window on an upper story, and after using what appears to be an extremely complex grapple and harness system (along with the line "Ever see Batman?" which makes me wonder just how many times the franchise has been rebooted by 2017), Barb manages to deliver three moments of cursing with all the intensity of Brian Posehn reading road signs.
We learn Barb was hired by the girl's parents to get her back, but it turns out there's a problem. They were only able to get half the money for her fee, to which Barb replies, through clenched teeth, "Half the money? Fine, I'll take half your daughter." ...I really have no idea how that's supposed to work, but Barb's the one here with the obvious master's degree in economics, so I won't ask any questions.
Barb manages to take the family's car and cash as payment, and we get a few shots of the environment as Barb starts narrating the movie herself, telling us...everything we already learned before the opening credits. ...I'm only ten minutes into this movie and I need a drink.
Okay, I'm back! So, apparently I missed some talk between a bad guy and a woman he's interrogating done up to look like a prostitute had sex with a car engine, and it's taking place in a capitol building that fell out of Fallout 3.
The bad guys have a machine that reads thoughts, though why it has to be attached to this girl's breasts, I have no idea. Oh, wait, it turns out this device not only reads thoughts, it also electrocutes the wearer, showing that in the future they stopped the uncivilized technique of water boarding its citizens.
Colonel Pryzer, our villain, kills the girl after learning that a doctor (scientist or medical, I don't know) and her freedom fighter boyfriend are going to Steel Harbor to acquire some special contact lenses that will allow her to sneak into Canada, and she's also had plastic surgery so nobody will recognize her. He then gets debriefed by a guy who looks disturbingly like Michael Shanks, We learn through the joy of exposition that the doctor's DNA contains the "antidote to their greatest biochemical weapon" as well as knowing a whole bunch of secrets.
Remember in Casablanca when the person being hunted by the Nazis was just a charismatic resistance leader? And when Rick wasn't murdering people in strip clubs to rescue underage girls from sex traffickers? Good times. Good ti- sorry, my brain's doing it again. Back to the story!
We cut back to Steel Harbor, where we get an extremely pointless scene showing the doctor and freedom fighter getting a ride with two guys and climbing into a car. We cut to a bar named "Hammer Head" filled with strippers, dancers, a late 90s goth band, and clientele that are an eclectic blend of bikers and guys wearing suits who wandered onto the set after trying out for LA Confidential. This is Barb's bar, where people make offers to have her rescue/kill other people, and her blind brother Charlie says the worst pick-up lines ever uttered in film ("I thought, this must be a woman of superior breeding. Then I wondered if maybe she'd like to do some. Breeding, that is.")
Oh, and the guy running the floor is a bald German named Curly and the "Sam" character is now a black DJ named "no name given yet."
Meanwhile, back in the car, our hunted twosome get into a scrape when their car gets surrounded by "customs police" which flat-out murder the two guys that picked them up and then open up on the car to kill the rest of the inhabitants. So despite the fact that none of the officers who have surrounded the car see a car door open, we're expected to believe that the two managed to sneak out of the car right before the guns shot it up. Our twosome is lose in the city, taking us back to where they were before they got into the car, meaning the whole thing was absolutely pointless.
Curly confronts Barb about the fact they're low on funds, Barb decides to "go out" for a while (packing some firearms as she does so), Barb sneaks out the back, Curly expresses concern for her, Barb expresses concern for Charlie...in the sense that his getting drunk and lying under tables is embarrassing...and oh hey, look, my drink's empty!
So, what'd I miss? Oh, it appears the cops are on the hunt for the resistance fighter nobody knows anything about and the woman who's unrecognizable after plastic surgery, meaning this is the worst manhunt ever, and we watch the resistance fighter beat the crap out of a female cop and then straight-up murder her partner by snapping his neck. Our heroes, everybody!
Well, at least we can hope Barb's doing something heroi- oh look, she's whoring herself. Literally.
So, yeah, it turns out Barb was simply seducing one specific guy so he'd take her to his room, because her target happens to be in the room right next door (god, this movie makes my head hurt) we get a scene that I'm going to have to drink out of my memory involving a very fat man in a tight bondage costume taunting Barb that he didn't wash his hands because "he was bad."
Barb blows up a hole in a wall and fights two dudes before she flips out when one of them calls her "babe" (see, that's her whole personality gimmick, she's a buxom blond who hates being called "babe"), and drags off a bail jumper...who, surprise, surprise, was the same guy that the doctor and freedom fighter were supposed to meet for the contact lenses! WHAT A COINCIDENCE!
Barb drops off Krebs with some guy, man, I don't know who he is, and gets paid her money and goes back to her bar, and...and we actually get a rather sweet scene where Barb dances with a soldier about to go out to the front line. It's a rather interesting twist that this hardened character who seems to care nothing for anybody but her employees and brother (sort of) might feel for a young man who's probably off to die and is miles away from home, and it- oh, whoops, it's ruined by the arrival of the bad guys. Or, rather, the cops.
We meet Willis, Steel Harbor's chief of police in another narration by Barb (god I wish this movie would be consistent), and we get a long, boring scene of him making like he cares that some of his offers are dead (initially I thought it was the two guys Barb killed, then I thought it was the ones the fighter killed, then I realized I really didn't care), and there's a throwaway line about Barb having previously been known as Barbara Kowpetski or Kelly Kapowski or whatever, I don't care and based on her acting performance neither does Pamela Anderson. Let's skip ahead to something that matters.
Okay, a scene of a drunk guy causing problems at the bar and getting bit in the crotch by a dog, Colonel Pryzer shows up doing his best M. Bison impression...
...yeah, there's a talk between Pryzer, Willis, and Barb where Barb also points out it's difficult to do a manhunt for someone who surgically altered their appearance, the two fugitives show up, I doze off for a moment, we learn that the freedom fighter used to fight with Barb and Charlie, he and Barb have a spat, Charlie helps the two contact the resistance, the bad guys shoot some people...
Oh, here we go. We get the big flashback scene like in Casablanca. Remember how the movie detailed the love affair between Ilsa and Rick, about how they were determined to go off together, how they spent every moment together...just to have Ilsa suddenly not show up?
Yeah, condense that scene into about thirty seconds showing Pamela Anderson in army fatigues and you get a high school production of a war drama. It's actually kind of hilarious.
So the guy who hired Barb to get Krebs shows up trying to sell her the contact lenses saying he needs her to buy the one thing that lets you get past any security checkpoint to leave the country...in return for helping him flee the country. No, I don't get the logic, it makes no damn sense, let's just get through this. He stashes the contact lenses in Barb's kitchen (?),
We learn that the mind reading device the bad guys have works on dead people (?!), they see when Barb sold them Krebs, and ...oh, right, the other reason I was interested in this movie at age sixteen. Pamela Anderson climbing out of a bubble bath.
...sorry, I zoned out for a moment. The freedom fighter (that's it, I'm looking up the character's name in IMDB because I wasn't paying attention earlier...Axel. Got it) Axel shows up, he and Barb snipe at each other then start making out in her private elevator...which of course takes them right to Axel's new girlfriend, the doctor whose name I can't be bothered to look up.
Now, if you're someone on the run and when an elevator door arrives and the first thing you see is your guy making out with a naked-but-for-a-towel Pamela Anderson, is your reaction...
a) "Okay, he knows how desperate we are, and she's obviously a total slut, so he's just using a strategy of looking for contact lenses by sticking his tongue down his throat."
b) "WHAT THE HELL. You meet up with your old flame for five minutes and she's already naked? Priorities, man, priorities!"
c) "That is NOT how you make out with Pamela Anderson. Step aside, I'll show you how it's done."
d) "...you know what, screw it, time for a murder/murder/suicide."
e) "Someone remind me to call my agent. They're fired."
If you answered "c" or "d," then I like the way you think. Sadly, it's not either of those choices. It's also not really "a" or "b" either. ...I can't make any promises about "e." Instead she just acts like she caught them discussing their characters in Dungeons and Dragons and gives them the world's most "I'm bored" expression.
So the doctor waits about five seconds after watching them make out to point out she's nearby, Axel introduces Barb to his wife (...) before saying, "Look, I know this is awkward for all of us."
This movie makes me hurt. Time to top off my glass.
Okay, so, Axel and the scientist try to appeal to Barb by saying that the reason why she's being hunted is she was the head researcher on a project called "Red Ribbon" which was a weaponization of the HIV virus that kills in twelve hours a-
WHAT THE HELL, MOVIE.
WEAPONIZED THE HIV VIRUS?!!!!
...wouldya look at that, my drink's empty. Excuse me a moment, I need to take out some anger on the body of a store clerk.
 |
| Okay, maybe I'm understating it a little. |
...okay, so apparently I missed the bad guys suddenly showing up, Barb flashes her breast at the other good guys as if to say "you can trust me, would these breasts lie?" The bad guys round everybody up, Barb plays off the good guys as her choice for a menage (I'll just point out that it really is pointless to do a manhunt when you have the person you're looking for right in front of you and you still don't know). They try to retina scan the doctor, only Charlie (the blind guy) knows directly where to point a tiny device that makes the scanner malfunction, and rather than hold two possible suspects when you KNOW BARB IS HELPING THE RESISTANCE, the Colonel lets them go because obviously it's a waste of his time.
...god this movie hurts.
The bad guys trash Barb's bar searching for the contact lenses, including hitting tables with sledgehammers, shooting down glass hanging displays, and generally being giant d- ...er, jerks. I mean, I get you're trying to make a point, but shooting the entire alcohol supply up with a machine gun just seems...excessive.
Curly is watching from the elevator, with an expression that I can't tell is distraught that he's just lost his job, or if he's really enjoying muscular men in uniform breaking things with bats and shooting powerful guns.
So Barb explains to her blind brother that the military were looking for contact lenses, and lo and behold, Charlie holds up a glass tube whose contents he cannot see and asks if she means "those." Screw you and your logic, movie. Charlie points out they could hand them to Axel, but Barb says "pfft! We're going to Europe!"
...and then another Barb monologues more stuff we already knew before she heads off to a junkyard and I get to hear a conversation that I swear made my brain spasm.
Thug: "What's the code?"
Barb: "He's expecting me."
Other Thug: "Let her through!"
...seriously?
Okay, almost done. Barb meets up with "Big Fatso," a man so big he needs an actual bulldozer to move him around.
So Barb starts to broker a deal, Charlie tries to meet up with the resistance just to get caught by the bad guys...and I have to admit, I laughed at a scene I shouldn't have here. The bad guys have killed the leader of the resistance and hung her from a noose. When Charlie demands to see her, they say "coming right down" and slowly lower their body towards him. They lower a dead person's body in a dramatic fashion...to a blind guy standing there with sunglasses and a cane. I guess they went to so much effort to arrange it, it would just be wasteful not to do it.
Charlie gets captured, Barb arranges the deal, and Charlie's tortured to death to find out where the lenses are. I did also laugh at one scene here where Charlie really poorly bluffs the bad guys that the person holding the lenses is Santa Claus. It's so stupid, but in this movie I don't expect much for intelligence.
Barb finds Charlie's body, the other good guys show up, and Barb seems determined to make the bad guys pay...which I guess means Barb Wire's now dead and Barbara Kowpetski is going to kick some ass!
Barbara Kowpetski takes the good guys to meet Big Fatso...and I swear to god, I'm not making this up, Big Fatso tries to pay Barbara with a gold debit card carried in a suitcase. This movie is stupidity to new levels. So the good guys figure out that Barbara's selling the lenses they need, and Big Fatso reveals that he sold out Barbara and the others to the bad guys. Big Fatso even says the line, "Don't you just love it when a plan comes together," before he chomps down on a cigar, making me realize that the movie is also ragging on the A-Team.
Fortunately, this is when Willis decides it's better to die an idiot than be a lackey to a villain, and slips Barb a grenade behind her back while "cuffing" her with two guards standing directly behind her.
My guess is these are the same two guys who stood behind a car and couldn't see the doors opening so two people could escape a closed off alley.
Barbara pulls the pin and throws, winding up killing Big Fatso, and we get a lengthy car chase scene, then Barbara prepares for the final face off against Pryzer...and he tries to kill her with a forklift while laughing like Mark Hamill playing the Joker.
Axel fights a guy on top of a crane, having abandoned his wife to go back for Barbara (great guy, that Axel)...and this is gonna take a while. I just need to top off this drink.
...okay, sorry, that took a few minutes and...the fights are still happening? Seriously? Okay, um, I guess nothing changed, Axel knocks his guy off the top of the crane, and then uses it to pick up the forklift and swing it around because sure, why not. Barbara climbs up to the rope after a struggle, and he comments that it's just like his favorite song, I Got You, Babe.
...okay, four things. One, that song is no body's favorite song. Two, how does a midair battle against a bar owner/prostitute/stripper on a forklift remind you of that song that played every morning in Groundhog Day? Three, why didn't I watch Groundhog Day instead? That movie's awesome! Four...so, killing her brother didn't really make her mad, trying to arrest her didn't make her mad, punching her in the face a few times in a midair battle didn't make her mad...but referencing a song makes her so mad she says "Don't call me "babe."" and pulls the hook release?
You know what, movie, I don't care anymore. Go ahead and finish. The bad guy dies in a fiery explosion (because that's what forklifts do, right?), we get our airport scene where Barbara reveals she was wearing the contact lenses the whole time, the lenses change the doc's eye color to blue and somehow a retinal scanner accepts that cause it doesn't care and I don't care, but at least we'll get our ending speech. I mean, even this movie would at least try to have something that would rate up there with that "hill of beans" speech.
Axel: "So I thought Barb Wire doesn't take sides."
Barbara: "Keep it to yourself."
..................................................... AUGH.
Doc and Axel get on the plane, we get a stupid comment in place of the "beautiful friendship" line, and then...apparently someone on the set went nuts because they just now realized how stupid this was and shot everybody up because it ends with rapid gunshots before going black.
The Good:
Well, I found stuff I wasn't supposed to find funny funny...and if you're between the ages of thirteen and sixteen you know precisely why you're watching it and it isn't for Pamela Anderson's acting talent.
Curly was also good. He was the only person who seemed to realize just how much acting effort his role required and made sure to have actual fun with it. Big Fatso was...offensive, but his goofy expressions made me smile because it was about the time he showed up that the movie went absolutely insane and stopped making any sense whatsoever. I laughed a lot in the last half of the movie, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't supposed to. I kept alternating from pure rage to helpless guffaws.
The Bad:
EVERYTHING ELSE.
I'm not kidding when I say this is probably the worst movie I've ever seen, and I've watched movies done by Mystery Science Theater without the MST part. The storyline makes no sense, there are HUGE shifts in tone (I swear, it goes from something like Blade Runner to a Looney Tunes cartoon right after the bar gets smashed), there are huge, gaping plot holes all over the place (if they think the contact lenses are destroyed, why do they go to the airport?), and I couldn't even enjoy the nudity because Pamela Anderson was trying to act while in various states of undress! Pamela Anderson's acting made me feel dirtier than seeing her strut around naked!
And it's trying to be Casablanca! It's trying to be one of the best movies ever made! How do you take a classic story about escaping Nazis and rediscovering your desire to help people and replace it with electric torture, forklift duels, and Pamela Anderson rolling johns on city streets to "supplement her income?" Who thought any of this was a good idea? You weaponized HIV, people! THINK!
Overall:
It hurt less when I rewatched Judge Dredd with Stallone, because at least they knew you weren't supposed to take that movie seriously. I watched this movie for 100 minutes, and I feel like I just lost a weekend.
Screw this movie, and screw Valentine's Day! I'm done!
...now if you'll excuse me, I need to get a shovel and get rid of this body.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Valentine's Week! Day Four
All this week, Erik gets into the spirit of a holiday cynically looked at by many as simply an excuse for crass commercialism and insincere gimmicks under the false title of "romance" to try to find examples of real, genuine relationships in media. It's day four of "Valentine's Week!"
It's Valentine's Day! A day for people to celebrate their relationships with close friends and with their significant other and to appreciate that they aren't alone in the world.
Of course, if you don't have someone in your life, this can also be somewhat depressing, so why not go for something a bit more...simulated?
...not that kind of simulated, I mean something...digital.
...wh- no! I'm talking about video games!
...
...
...
...no witty picture? Okay, let's continue.
Video game developers have been working on making "simulated relationships" a key part of the game experience. If your action hero has a girlfriend or wife, they want you to have feelings for that girlfriend or wife. If the RPG storyline allows you to have other characters fall in love with your character, the developers hope you choose someone you've developed feelings for, as well. This isn't a new development, but only in recent years has it really taken off and become a key factor in a lot of games (see: most things put out by Bioware).
But this isn't new to video games. Going back, there were moments in early role-playing games where you, the lead character, would have someone special to you that you were either trying to lead to safety, rescue, or fight an ancient evil alongside with. One of the first I remember doing it really well was, as I've previously mentioned, Final Fantasy Adventure for the Game Boy.
In this game, you're a gladiator who is forced to fight for the amusement of the Dark Lord (seriously, that's his name) until you make your escape. You meet a "mysterious young woman" (a common trope in video games) who accompanies you at certain points in the game and needs rescuing in others, but for the young me, the bond between the two became the key part of the story. At the end, when (spoiler alert for a game that came out in 1991) the female lead has to sacrifice herself to become the new tree of life, your character becomes the tree's guardian, never leaving its side.
I got choked up when I was 11. It was pretty powerful stuff.
Now, while games where you build a character and try to build relationships with other characters is a big hit now, over in Japan an older variation of this has been around for quite some time. I'm talking, of course, about "dating sims."
Now, there are multiple types of games like this. Some are true "dating simulators" where you, in essence, play yourself trying to convince simulated people to go out with you and fall in love with you. Another is the "digital novel" style, where there's one clear-cut story, but you can sometimes make decisions that affect the direction the story goes. These are the equivalent of a digital Choose Your Own Adventure novel, just with slightly more ways to get a terrible "you die" ending.
Now, when I first discovered these (back in the 90s), mostly the stories were things like "you're a senior in high school, and you've got eight girls that you have crushes on, see if you can do things to get at least one to like you!" However, in the past ten years, the "story" of the novel has grown to encompass everything from historical dramas or science fiction stories. Sometimes the romance happens in the midst of a battle for the fate of the planet itself, other times you're just trying to run a successful business while making sure you have a personal life.
I dabbled with several of these types of games, initially out of curiosity, and then it became part of my then-obsession with Japanese culture along with tickling the part of my brain that loves puzzles. I was intrigued by the idea of trying to get inside the head of a digital representation of a common cultural stereotype (the quiet, artsy girl, or the athletic, abrasive girl, or the best friend who just never thought of you that way, etc) to see if I could sway their opinion of me. I'd have to puzzle out which presented speech choice would garner me favor with the character, while in the back of my head trying to figure out if this was the type of person "I" would actually want to spend a digital life with.
Now, because it's Japan, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that many of these types of games are more "adult" in nature, with the culmination of your attempts to woo someone resulting in a presented sex scene. And while "hooking up" was the ultimate goal of certain games, I always found the story leading to that moment to be the most interesting. Having the digital "me" talk to these characters, finding out what their (fictional) hopes, dreams, and lives entailed, and finding there were characters I genuinely liked more than other characters. It really was a simulated social life during a time when I was extremely shy and shut away, and it allowed me to envision what the "ideal me" would do in those situations.
Now, in the end these are just games, and whether it's developing a relationship during a Mass Effect game, fighting to save your girlfriend in Prey, or taking a supermodel on a date in Tokimeki Check-In, its' important to remember that these are still just collections of 1s and 0s. They might have voices now and might look a lot more real, but buying a box of chocolates or flowers for a game disc not only makes you look really silly, but also comes across as really pathetic.
I haven't played a "dating sim" or "visual novel" in a very long time, and the ones I did play are pretty foggy in my memory. But every now and again I'll hear of an attempt to bring this style of game play over to the United States, whether or not it's a romance or simply a means of telling a story with multiple endings. I wouldn't mind seeing the more story-driven games become more wide-spread, especially since they'd be easier to have on portable game devices, but I think we can all agree that there's certain things that we can leave out of games.
...thanks for keeping it classy, Japan.
It's Valentine's Day! A day for people to celebrate their relationships with close friends and with their significant other and to appreciate that they aren't alone in the world.
Of course, if you don't have someone in your life, this can also be somewhat depressing, so why not go for something a bit more...simulated?
...not that kind of simulated, I mean something...digital.
...
...
...
...no witty picture? Okay, let's continue.
Video game developers have been working on making "simulated relationships" a key part of the game experience. If your action hero has a girlfriend or wife, they want you to have feelings for that girlfriend or wife. If the RPG storyline allows you to have other characters fall in love with your character, the developers hope you choose someone you've developed feelings for, as well. This isn't a new development, but only in recent years has it really taken off and become a key factor in a lot of games (see: most things put out by Bioware).
But this isn't new to video games. Going back, there were moments in early role-playing games where you, the lead character, would have someone special to you that you were either trying to lead to safety, rescue, or fight an ancient evil alongside with. One of the first I remember doing it really well was, as I've previously mentioned, Final Fantasy Adventure for the Game Boy.
In this game, you're a gladiator who is forced to fight for the amusement of the Dark Lord (seriously, that's his name) until you make your escape. You meet a "mysterious young woman" (a common trope in video games) who accompanies you at certain points in the game and needs rescuing in others, but for the young me, the bond between the two became the key part of the story. At the end, when (spoiler alert for a game that came out in 1991) the female lead has to sacrifice herself to become the new tree of life, your character becomes the tree's guardian, never leaving its side.
I got choked up when I was 11. It was pretty powerful stuff.
Now, while games where you build a character and try to build relationships with other characters is a big hit now, over in Japan an older variation of this has been around for quite some time. I'm talking, of course, about "dating sims."
Now, there are multiple types of games like this. Some are true "dating simulators" where you, in essence, play yourself trying to convince simulated people to go out with you and fall in love with you. Another is the "digital novel" style, where there's one clear-cut story, but you can sometimes make decisions that affect the direction the story goes. These are the equivalent of a digital Choose Your Own Adventure novel, just with slightly more ways to get a terrible "you die" ending.
Now, when I first discovered these (back in the 90s), mostly the stories were things like "you're a senior in high school, and you've got eight girls that you have crushes on, see if you can do things to get at least one to like you!" However, in the past ten years, the "story" of the novel has grown to encompass everything from historical dramas or science fiction stories. Sometimes the romance happens in the midst of a battle for the fate of the planet itself, other times you're just trying to run a successful business while making sure you have a personal life.
 |
| This is how I picture a bad date on eHarmony turning out. |
I dabbled with several of these types of games, initially out of curiosity, and then it became part of my then-obsession with Japanese culture along with tickling the part of my brain that loves puzzles. I was intrigued by the idea of trying to get inside the head of a digital representation of a common cultural stereotype (the quiet, artsy girl, or the athletic, abrasive girl, or the best friend who just never thought of you that way, etc) to see if I could sway their opinion of me. I'd have to puzzle out which presented speech choice would garner me favor with the character, while in the back of my head trying to figure out if this was the type of person "I" would actually want to spend a digital life with.
Now, because it's Japan, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that many of these types of games are more "adult" in nature, with the culmination of your attempts to woo someone resulting in a presented sex scene. And while "hooking up" was the ultimate goal of certain games, I always found the story leading to that moment to be the most interesting. Having the digital "me" talk to these characters, finding out what their (fictional) hopes, dreams, and lives entailed, and finding there were characters I genuinely liked more than other characters. It really was a simulated social life during a time when I was extremely shy and shut away, and it allowed me to envision what the "ideal me" would do in those situations.
Now, in the end these are just games, and whether it's developing a relationship during a Mass Effect game, fighting to save your girlfriend in Prey, or taking a supermodel on a date in Tokimeki Check-In, its' important to remember that these are still just collections of 1s and 0s. They might have voices now and might look a lot more real, but buying a box of chocolates or flowers for a game disc not only makes you look really silly, but also comes across as really pathetic.
 |
| On the other hand, game characters don't ever say "hey, why don't we watch Jersey Shore?" |
...thanks for keeping it classy, Japan.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Valentine's Week! Day Three (A special Ask Erik!)
Join us now, as we take on another of your questions in this special "Wuv, twu wuv" edition of "Ask Erik!"
To Erik: Who's in the five best and the five worst relationships in comics?
No jokes to get things started this time, let's start with the good couples. I will point out I'm going to be focusing on actual loving, physical relationships. No bromances here.
5) Tom Beland and Lily Garcia
I discussed Tom Beland before in this blog (and he responded to it *insert high-pitched girly sound here*), but I didn't really go into a lot of discussion about the primary book I know him for, True Story Swear To God. This book is an autobiographical look at how a cartoonist from Napa, California managed to meet a radio DJ from Puerto Rico and how the two of them simply "clicked."
The comic is sappy and romantic, with drama layered in perfectly. We know Lily is still alive, so when Tom recounts having to get updates at work as a hurricane rushes towards the home of the woman he loves, we don't wonder if she makes it, but we do wonder about the experience and the loss that comes with it, which Tom captures beautifully in (relatively) simple drawings.
There are deeply personal stories that draw the reader in, whether it's Tom and Lily dealing with intimacy issues, family problems, or simply adjusting to an entirely different culture (on both sides of the family), their drama speaks and communicates to the reader, like a dear friend is sitting down with you and just talking to you about the most amazing person they've met.
Now, the last I heard the real Tom and Lily did divorce but later reconciled. However, the large collected edition of the books put out by Image sits on a shelf over my head when I sleep, and I bring it down to flip through when I'm feeling bad and need to smile.
It's the most honest relationship comic I've ever read and showed me that you have to be fearless when it comes to relationships, because sometimes you have to move out of the country (it's a territory, but still) to be with the one you love.
4) Peter Parker and Mary-Jane Watson
I could go into what I love about this relationship, but instead I'll just redirect you to my second favorite Tom Beland work.
3). Big Barda and Mister Miracle
I haven't read many comics that spotlight these two as a couple. Sometimes they'll show up, either singularly or as a pair, in other comics I read, and each time they do I smile. It's not just because they're the perfect antithesis of the usual "power couple" in comics (he's nimble and agile, able to escape any kind of death trap, and she's strong enough that she could punch out Superman), but it's because of what they represent.
See, the young Scott Free (later Mr. Miracle) was part of an "infant exchange program" set up by his father, leader of the New Gods, and Darkseid, the greatest evil the universe has ever known as part of a "cease fire." Scott struggled daily to escape his the planet wide prison he was on, constantly struggling against a cosmic force trying to break his spirit. This continued from his childhood to adulthood, never bending, never breaking.
Also on that planet was Barda, leader and most powerful of the Female Furies, the fiercest (and craziest) soldiers to serve under Darkseid. She was moved by Scott's struggles, the two fell in love, and they managed to escape from Darkseid and have since been together.
Now, Darkseid has been "defeated" before. Punched by Superman, shot by Batman (that's a post for another time), slammed by Wonder Woman, for someone like Darkseid these are usually more "temporary setbacks" since "Darkseid is eternal, hail Darkseid. Hail Darkseid. Hail Darks-" Sorry.
Now, one of the only true "defeats" Darkseid ever had was that, for all his power and control, not only could he not crush the spirit of this one individual, but Scott's love for Barda helped her break free as well, proving there was something much stronger than anything Darkseid had. Their love defeated Darkseid, completely and totally, and nothing he could do would ever change that.
That is epic storytelling.
2) Reed Richards and Sue Richards
Ever since the beginning, the Fantastic Four has been about family, and nothing embodies this better than the fact that two of the members actually started a family. Reed and Sue have faced things that would tear any other relationship apart, from dealing with opposing views during the superhero "Civil War" to kings of other nations trying to seduce Sue, from the stress of raising two kids balanced against threats from beings who look at humanity like it views bacteria, Reed and Sue have proven that, even if they're separated by distance, they are always together.
A great example was a recent storyline where Reed met a "council" of Reeds from various realities, and they offered to help him "fix" everything that was wrong or could go wrong on Earth. No wars, no disease, no pollution, no cosmic threats looming in the distance. The only cost? Reed would have to abandon his family and join them to keep fixing other Earths after his was done. He turned them down. For both members, family (and each other) always comes first.
1). Bigby Wolf and Snow White
I think it's rather telling when a traditional "villain" completely changes his ways for the woman he meets. A capable writer would set this up as a fairy tale, where the monster's heart is tamed. An extremely capable writer could set this story amidst an epic war or some other dramatic backdrop.
A superb writer does both.
This is the case of Bigby (a.k.a. "The Big Bad Wolf" of fairy tale lore) and Snow White, who are both key characters in the title Fables. They didn't start out as a couple, he had to work at getting them together. But it's mostly the small details of this relationship that makes it so much fun to read about. When you learn that Bigby smokes cigarettes because he can actually smell peoples' emotions and he needs to drown them out, that's a cute touch to a character. When he explains the only smell he can never drown out is Snow's, and when you realize the extent one of the biggest "monsters" of fairy tales would go to in order to protect her, it carries even more weight.
There are some other honorable mentions, like Lois Lane and Clark Kent, Medusa and Black Bolt, and I was really tempted to fill this entire article on the cultural significance of Kevin Keller and Clay over in Archie Comics...but that'll be another time.
And now the worst relationships in comics. I'm skipping some that I think are required to be on this list, like Norman Osborn And Gwen Stacy, Carol Danvers and Marcus, but I think the ones I listed are perfectly horrible in their own way.
5). Rogue and Gambit
There are not enough words to express how much I dislike Gambit as a character. I'll go into more detail in another post, but the fact that these two spent so much time mooning over each other killed my enjoyment of any X-Men comics I read with the two of them in it. Between painful accents (mostly from him because writers can't write Cajun accents) and the never-ending whining of him wanting to get her in bed rock her world and her constant incessant explanations of what would happen if they actually touched, it was the world's most annoying soap opera.
Of course, part of the problem was that, if anybody ever pointed out that, at any given time, there were probably fifteen to twenty ways for Rogue and Gambit to actually be able to just have sex and get it over with, it would defeat the purpose of their story arc. See, Rogue I like. While all of the X-Men, in some way, embody a sense of fear or rejection, Rogue is the only one who acts as a strong warning to teenagers all the time, since the moment her hormones kicked in, physical relationships are deadly.
You could read it as a precursor to the HIV/AIDS awareness, or to other STD education. It could be a warning about unplanned pregnancy, or just how simply getting involved too early could ruin some one's life. There are so many different ways for a character like that to be read, it's a shame she was paired up for so long with a guy who seemed to care, yes, but could never accept that she wouldn't strip down and jump his bones anyway, without looking into any possible solutions.
4) Every relationship that Paige Guthrie has ever been in
Oh, Paige. I liked you in Generation X, and then things went seriously downhill. You have the absolute worst taste in boyfriends, and, well, let's look at the list.
First, there's Chamber, a young British lad whose mutant powers manifested by blowing off his chest and face, leaving a small explosion present in their place. Then you hooked up with the X-Man Angel, including a particularly bright moment in your life where he swooped down, carried you into the sky, and you had sex in the air...with your mother standing directly below you two. Now it seems you're getting into a relationship with Toad, a character that existed since the 60s and I'm pretty sure is signiiiiiiificantly older than you. Oh, and he might keep one of your "skins" to store in his room to have tea with. Yeah, not creepy at all.
Seriously, Paige, you're an adult now. I can forgive being drawn to the emo kid when you were a teenager, but you really need to get your act together.
3) Archie and Betty/Veronica
When I was younger, I used to think that Archie was just a confused young man, trying to constantly figure out who he had true feelings for while Veronica would scheme her way into his life and Betty would simply try to be there when Veronica got bored and tossed him aside. I used to always silently root for Betty, the "good girl," and figured maybe one day the story would end with Archie at her door, saying "I choose you."
...and then I realized that they'll never stop printing Archie comics.
And this brought something new to light. When you first start reading Archie, you can understand his amazement that two gorgeous young women want to be with him in a purely platonic, milkshake drinking relationship. But at some point, Archie has to figure out that he has a great thing going on, and he doesn't want to ruin it.
Heck, there are frequent story lines where Archie is trying to juggle two girlfriends at once. This makes him, as science can clearly support, "a bad guy."
These days, I still get enjoyment from the occasional Archie comic when the spotlight isn't on the constant love triangle these three have, and while I never really cared when Cheryl Blossom entered the picture, I will admit I had extremely conflicted emotions when Archie started dating Valerie from Josie and the Pussycats.
2) Terry Long and Donna Troy
...I'm just going to start at the beginning for this one.
Donna Troy is the
Donna Troy is a teenage girl with Wonder Woman's powers who starts attending college starring in a book that still has Teen featured prominently in the title.
Terry Long is her 29 year old college professor who works part time in a book store and is working on studies involving ancient Greece.
These two hooked up, got married, had a baby. Terry and the baby later died in a car accident after they split up, but both came back during a big zombie storyline...so yeah, Donna Troy had to fight her own zombie baby with superpowers.
...look, I'm just going to post the following pictures (the first ones are from one of their first real dates) and be done with this garbage.
...okay, maybe one more thing that someone else used to reference Terry Long.
So, who's my number one choice for worst relationship?
It's not Cyclops and Emma Frost.
It's not Scarlet Witch and Vision.
It's not even that brief moment when Superman and Big Barda were almost forced to star in a porno together (long story).
1) Superman and Lois Lane
"But wait," you're saying, "you already picked these two as runners up for one of the best couples."
Yes, I did. But in this instance, I'm cheating and pulling Superman and Lois Lane from the movie Superman Returns. It's a comic book-based movie, so I can do it.
Superman's been in space for five years, leaving behind Lois Lane (who conveniently has a baby in under a year after he goes), who starts a relationship later on with Richard White. When Superman returns (see? the title is so clever!) he tries to rekindle his relationship with Lois. Let's ignore the fact that Lois is either lying to Richard because she knows that her son is Superman's, which is a pretty lousy foundation for a lasting relationship, or she doesn't know her son is Superman's because he kept wiping her mind in pretty much every movie he was in, and that has more implications than I want to even think about.
When Lois gets kidnapped, Richard goes with Superman to save her. WITHOUT POWERS. Richard is willing to raise Lois' mystery kid. Richard is, apparently, the greatest human being who ever lived...and Lois dumps him (her fiancee) because Superman's back in her life again.
This is, of course, after he spies on her for a while, and then takes her up into the sky to have some intimate alone time while Richard and her son wait for her. Of course, Lois isn't exactly prone to making wise decisions since she takes her son (possibly with or without knowledge that he might be bulletproof) along with her to investigate Lex Luthor's yacht, and then later uses him as a distraction while she tries to summon help (with a fax machine...which is a phone...that you dial...and can talk through, Lois, you idiot).
...don't get me started on Superman's kid killing a man with a piano. That's a whole other bucket of rage, and it runs deep.
I realize it's late, and I'm not typing this in an organized manner, but it's not because I'm tired. It's because trying to mentally put together how anybody in this relationship besides Richard White, the damn romantic rival, was supposed to be a likable character...it makes me lose the ability to think straight. Superman deserves his own rendition of Do The Creep up above, being the world's strongest deadbeat, and Lois Lane is a vindictive woman who's a terrible parent and seems more than willing to spend her time with the guy who crushed her heart five years before...and may or may not know he's the father of her son!
It- I- it just- ....I hate this movie and I hate what it did to this couple. Richard, go over to Riverdale and rescue Betty Cooper. I'll pay real, American money to follow that story.
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