RocketShip Games

Hive Lords defend the flanks against a Chaos incursion.

From a PAGE CC 40k ‘Ard Boyz practice day out at Collin’s.

Tron: Legacy showed up on NetFlix Instant recently so I finally got a chance to watch it.

I am of course a big fan of the original Tron, though I am definitely a bigger fan of it conceptually than practically.  Cash-in sequels being what they are, I was naturally extremely skeptical when I heard of this movie.  My skepticism, as usual, was well founded—Tron: Legacy is terrible!

As a sensory experience the movie is fairly solid.  The much vaunted graphics are not so amazing or compelling that you could watch it endlessly.  However, much of the imagery though, particularly the cityscapes, is often starkly beautiful.  It adheres fairly closely to the original vision.  The grid, lightcycles, recognizers, etc., all look very similar though notably updated.  Interestingly, the clothing looks better in some ways because it has a much better dark/bright contrast going on.  In other ways it doesn’t look as good; it’s all just dark rubber with simple strips of light and doesn’t have the circuitry patterns the original had.

Lightcycles!!!

Ignore the guy inside, he's an idiot. Focus on the lights!

Putting it over the top though, the original musical score from Daft Punk is pretty close to amazing when combined with the visuals.  They go together almost perfectly, a synchronized, syncopated aural and visual beat that drives the whole movie.  It’s not really the kind of soundtrack you could sit and listen to, but it’s definitely one to play in the background of a long code rave or something like that.

Unfortunately, these good pieces pretty much go to waste; after the music and visuals, everything mostly falls apart.  Most of the plot largely scans like the first one—fight the master control, get to the portal.  Hanging off that there’s a bunch of cliched nonsense about daredevil playboys jumping off buildings, new ultrapowerful digital lifeforms, sentient programs, and digital worlds.  It’s not really very compelling.  The digital world aspect was all done better and more novel in the original movie.  Somehow, among all the glitz, Tron: Legacy lost the simple, basic magic of delving into the geometric, mathematical, binary inside of the machine.

Recognizers!!!

Worse, a lot of the movie doesn’t really make a ton of sense.  There’s no internal logic.  On several occasions characters take unmotivated actions, such as Quorra running away from the Flynns onto the warship.  Other characters, particularly Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), have powers that wax and wane dramatically with no apparent reason.  Sometimes as a user he’s near all-powerful.  Other times he’s helpless.  This is a key component many sci-fi pieces miss—you can mess with physics, logic, etc., but everything within the new system has to be consistent and the mechanics clear.  As a notable positive example, for all its other flaws, The Matrixlargely did a good job with that in a very similar digital world setting.  On top of those logic flaws, most of the characters and acting are pretty generic.  Jeff Bridges does a credible job with not a lot of material, but otherwise it’s pretty much all a forgettable wash.

Oh my god... I won an Oscar.... What am I doing here?

One of the few characters to really stand out. Unfortunately he stands out for being really annoying and almost uncomfortably out of tone for the movie...

These holes and unmotivated actions appear at an increasing rate as the movie goes on, enough that I actually couldn’t really bring myself to keep paying attention.  Not that I was hoping for Shakespeare here, but at least the first movie had a clear narrative, connected actions, and some logical reasoning.  Here it often goes lacking and is generally just somewhat boring.  All in all, I wasn’t particularly surprised by Tron: Legacy: It’s an ok visual and audio experience to put on and just let play, but not really something to particularly watch.

On the upside, the tech people did a pretty good job making some credible computer interfaces. Check out the command sequence here!

Ok, so it’s actually a TV show and not a movie—but everything’s a movie when there’s no commercials!

In any event: The Walking Dead, Season 1.  This has gotten a lot of hype, and I have to say it mostly lives up to things.  Not the greatest show ever, but certainly well worth watching for anyone with even remote interest in zombies and similar affairs.

In all of this I note that I have not read the graphic novels and know nothing about them, so I really have no idea how the show compares to the books.

Not being one to be driven by the crowds, what really brought me in to the show were some of the visuals.  Really just one, the main promotional/cover image:

That’s a hauntingly beautiful, very well done, eery set piece, and it shows up and fits into the show itself very nicely.  To me it well evokes aspects of Stephen King’s fantastic The Dark Tower series, which no doubt had no small part in me deciding to give the series a show.  It also has some immediate similarities to some scenes in Children of Men, another plus.

!!! SPOILER ALERT !!!

Seriously, stop reading if you haven’t watched Season 1 already.

"Srsly, stop reeeaaadddiinnggg!"

In some sense I think the flashback opener really saved me from being immediately turned off.  As it stands, the “Woke up from a coma and there were zombies everywhere!” cliche was still a little hard to stomach.  If I’d been hit by that right up front I think the show would have lost significant appeal immediately.  Similarly, I was a little disappointed in the “slobber me up in gore so I can walk through the zombies” cliche.  It was obvious that bit was coming from miles away so I was a little let down that the show actually carried through with it.

Similarly, I feel like the gore gets toned down a bit as the show goes on.  I guess it’s necessary for the genre, but it doesn’t really bring anything much to the content.  For example, I thought the scene of the zombies beginning to feast on Grimes’ horse dragged on and on.  To me, none of the appeal of the show really relies on those gimmicks, so it’s good to see them recede a bit.  As a side note, it’s actually a little disturbing to consider that the excessive flesh eating, etc., brings nothing to the drama or tension, but obviously large numbers of people want it, so there’s basically a lot of people out there with a very mild strain of some awful fetish…

"Trust me, no one around here's going to be hit with a shovel except the people I hit with a shovel..."

Beyond that, the core interpersonal relationships certainly have enough going for them to keep the show alive as a drama.  For example, it’ll be interesting to see how the Grimes’ marriage plays out.  Given her reaction to discovering Shane was incorrect in telling her Rick was dead, it doesn’t seem that Lori was cheating on Rick with Shane before Rick’s accident.  However, certainly Rick seemed to think the marriage was not in a good place and Shane probably had feelings for her beforehand.  Was there something going on there, even just some tension?  Will Dale turn into more of a father figure or more of a potential partner for Andrea?  There’s a lot of pretty good stuff going on that could evolve and blow up in a number of ways.

Plot-wise there’s probably just enough to keep things going.  I can’t say I care a ton about the ultimate secret of what caused the zombie plague.  This thing’s been done so many times I just don’t know that I can bring myself to care.  I’m sort of interested as to what Jenner whispered to Grimes, but it could be more or less interesting.  At first blush I assumed it was some government conspiracy secret about Wildfire, but with more thought it’s probably more closely related to the blood tests.  Either someone’s about to go zombie or—more likely—Lori’s pregnant.  I hate to say it, but the latter’s probably the most interesting of the three options.

The sheriff's many years as champion pig in the greased pig competition at the county fair finally pays off.

In a similar vein, it’s definitely the lower scale story arcs that will keep this going.  Merle’s return will no doubt be filled with drama and horror.  I sort of look forward to him being pitted against Daryl to some extent, the latter having moderated a bit as the group continues to succeed, survive, and bond.  Will Morgan and Duane catch up with the group?  Part of me hopes so, though it’s a much more poignant story if they are basically stuck there to die, Morgan unable to put down his now-zombie wife and unable to move on and leave her in such a state.  I only put it at 33% that we’ll see them again.  Merle’s almost a definite.  There’s just enough of all these little threads out there to keep things interesting, and unlike, say, The X-Files, I’m fairly confident the writers and developers here won’t be sucked into detrimentally over-exploring the overarching global story.

On another note, interestingly, AMC keeps up its trend—at least, judging by this and Breaking Bad—of having very little profanity but not shying away from more adult material when necessary.  Certainly there’s a ton of violence and gore throughout.  Merle also tosses out the n-bomb a couple times, which is kind of a cheap play but within character, probably realistic, and not unreasonable.  There are very few sex scenes so far and they’re certainly not graphic, but at least Shane/Lori probably isn’t ready for network TV either.

All in all, an excellent series season debut.  I look forward to the second season of The Walking Dead appearing on NetFlix Instant.  Now the big question: To read the graphic novels, or not???

This is usually how I pack for a fun weekend getaway as well. Saddle up, cowboy!

Listen guys, when you're painted up all evil looking, you probably shouldn't hang out in places like this...

From ‘Ard Boyz, defending against Chaos incursion!

I haven’t read a ton of Alastair Reynolds’ books; I’m always a bit leery of space opera types.  I was particularly hesitant to grab Terminal World from the library.  However, it’s a very good novel.  Firmly in science fiction territory, mixing together space opera, post-apocalyptic, steampunk, a touch of old west, and even a bit of zombie fiction.

The book opens as somewhat of a sci-fi noir movie, with the main character Quillon beating a rapid escape from his home territory via a series of underworld characters.  This exodus has a fair bit of drama and grip to it, but it also highlights the structure of the world, composed of many zones of workable technological level as well as human habitation.  All of Quillon’s outbound trip is definitely engaging.  The mix of world types and beings here is enough to keep any sci-fi fan hooked—augmented humans, giant steampunk cyborgs, post-apocalyptic reavers, insane animal-form half flesh killer robots, a lost airship-based air force.

Quillon’s inbound trip though begins to lose a lot of steam, almost literally.  For most of the book it retains its interest by revealing new mysteries about the world as he travels.  However, it becomes much more expository and loses that driving escape narrative the book opened with.  Elements of the closing sequences are both fairly predictable and anti-climactic, while the really big stuff is left largely unaddressed.  Despite all the buildup, there’s very little explanation of what happened to this world, or even what world it is—there are strong but not clear implications made throughout that it’s not actually Earth.  Not that I’m looking for hyper detailed, ridiculous sci-fi garbage explaining the clear cataclysm this world has suffered.  But, something a bit less vague and mystical than what we get would be nice.  The book seems really set up for a second novel, though as far as I know it is not generally Reynolds’ style to pump out trilogies and series.

In any event, Terminal World is an imaginative and well written novel that is well worth reading.

I’m not sure I would have ever tried this movie if I hadn’t seen a short trailer at some point, though the cover poster is very excellent and pretty compelling.  In any case, I’m certainly glad I did watch it.  Troll Hunter is an unspectacular—in both senses—but very solid and worthwhile film.

The basic premise isn’t even remotely hidden, so it doesn’t give anything away to say that the movie is based around a film crew that inadvertently hooks up with a man who turns out to work for the Norwegian government hiding trolls.  You know, trolls of the hundred foot tall, earth crushing, turn to stone in daylight, how could anyone possibly not realize they’re around variety.

A big hurdle to this movie is its shaky cam, found footage, mockumentary style.  Adopting this style is definitely the biggest weak point of the film.  It’s not unbearable but it’s not awesome either.  This is a style genre that should really be pushed toward the door sooner rather than later.  Part of it is just that it doesn’t make any sense.  Who would continue to hold a camera upright, positioned, while running for dear life through the woods???  What camera crew in this day and age sucks so much to produce such shaky footage while just standing around interviewing people?  How do people have batteries for all this?  Again, it’s not awful here, but the style really doesn’t bring anything to the cinematography, which is certainly at its best when it slips out of the paradigm a bit.

Yo, stop steppin' on me, yo!

Further, the found footage structure essentially condemns a movie to have a weak, predictable ending.  You know they’re going to die and it’s a pretty good bet the details won’t be super clear.  It’s particularly bad in this movie as it’s really just not clear at all what happens to the camera crew.  Certainly they don’t seem to be in any immediate danger, and the other government characters aren’t given nearly enough menace earlier in the film to support other plausible theories.

Don't worry, Hans has got it covered. Covered in troll piss...

That’s a shame because up to then the movie is pretty engaging and seems to be building a bit, so it’s unfortunate that it just ends.  The camera crew is never too annoying, but clearly Hans the trollhunter and his car steal the show here.  Otto Jesperson gives a great understated, half comedic performance that fits the bill perfectly.  He’s ultra badass and cool as ice, but it’s also just his job and he does it, walking on up and just taking care of business.  The mix of the banality of bureaucracy with fantastical action is clever and funny in a subdued way.  A few hints here and there like the overly-long hug from the veterinarian also hint at just a bit more background to him.

The Range Rover is basically a fifth main character in the film, and a good one---second only to Hans in understated badassitude!

This car got what was coming to it, shoulda known it ain't no Hansmobile!

Effects are pretty good throughout.  Trolls seem to fit well with mythology and look fairly original for big screen movies.  Notably, both their portrayal and Hans’ attitude toward them gives them a fair bit of depth and sympathy.  They’re not raging horrors to be simply exterminated without thought, they’re basically just giant dumb animals.  This aspect is well done.  Apparently the whole movie had a $3.5 budget so the well integrated effects are particularly praiseworthy in that context.  Many of the landscape scenes are also gorgeous.  The ending setting in particular has a stark majesty to it that’s very appropriate.

Yay, as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will verily enjoy the mighty scenery.

Not the Range Rover, nooooo!

All in all, Troll Hunter is definitely worth checking out.  It would have been stronger and much better as just a straight up movie without the found footage framing, but it’s still worthwhile.  The Internet informs me this has been optioned for an American remake, so make sure to watch the original soon as that effort is sure to be so bad as to make people’s minds bleed upon mention.

Tag! You're it!

Buuut guys, I only wanna play!

Move move move!

From a PAGE CC ‘Ard Boyz practice day out at Collin’s.  More pics in the gallery.  This was also a BoLS pic of the day.