Wow, this is a bad weekend for movies.

There are two wide releases out today, and both of them look terrible. Wrath of the Titans is a critically-panned sequel to a remake that I absolutely hated, directed by the helmer of another film that was just as bad. Mirror Mirror has been getting much better reviews than I might have guessed, but a lukewarm critical reception won’t be enough to wash the bad taste of those godawful trailers out of my mouth.

So naturally, I looked to my local arthouses to find some other, better alternative. What I found was that Cinema 21 had just started screening The Raid: Redemption. And somewhere in the back of my head, I could hear a faint choir of angels.

The Raid (that godawful “Redemption” subtitle was tacked on by American distributors, ostensibly due to copyright issues) is an action film that comes to us by way of Indonesia. The film’s writer/director, Gareth Evans, was born in Wales. Wrap your head around that one. Anyway, the film debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, and I’ve been hearing nothing but rave reviews about it ever since. Want to know why? Take a long hard look at the trailer and guess why.

It’s also worth mentioning that in addition to giving this movie its bland subtitle, the geniuses at Sony hired Mike Shinoda — he of Linkin Park fame — to co-write a new score. His partner on this film was Joseph Trapanese, who previously collaborated with Daft Punk for the score of Tron: Legacy. The resulting score is loud, aggressive, overblown, and totally lacking in any subtlety. In other words, it’s just like the film.

Our hero for today is Rama, played by the film’s fight choreographer, Iko Uwais. He’s a rookie police officer who just got transferred to a new SWAT unit (or whatever the Indonesian counterpart of SWAT is). Their latest assignment is to find and capture a notorious crime kingpin named Tama (Ray Sahetapy). The challenge is that Tama is the landlord of a 30-story apartment building, and every single resident in the place (with very few exceptions) is a violent criminal or a drug dealer who pays for the privilege of living and doing business there. So naturally, people notice the armed SWAT team coming through the front door, and a bloodbath ensues.

I think the poster put it best: “1 Ruthless Crime Lord. 20 Elite Cops. 30 Floors of Chaos.” That’s it.

Now, you may be wondering why only twenty cops were sent to clear an entire apartment building full of armed felons. I’d tell you, but that would be a spoiler. And even then, I don’t think I could explain in any coherent manner. This film has a deliberately threadbare plot, treating such things as “plausibility” and “character development” as unneeded distractions.

Above all else, this is an action film. People won’t be coming to this movie for plot twists and character development, they’ll be coming to see people get the shit beaten out of them. And in that regard, it would be an understatement to say that this movie does not disappoint.

Roughly ten minutes in, we see four men on their knees in a row. One of Tama’s most trusted associates proceeds to shoot them in the back of the head one by one, and we’re there to see every grotesque minute of it. In close-up, no less. The fourth one, however, is killed by a hammer to the head, with the editor cutting away just before the blow hits.

First of all, this scene is a fine example of the camerawork in this film. Though there are a few scenes here and there in which the camera shakes uncontrollably, the cinematography is generally inventive enough to shoot the action in some novel way and bold enough to put us right there in the action. Even when this film cuts away from the action, the scene transition is so perfectly timed that it feels like a blow to the stomach.

The second thing this scene should tell you is that the movie is not fucking around. Absolutely no one is safe in this film. It doesn’t matter if the characters are cops, criminals, or innocent bystanders. It doesn’t matter if the characters are men, women, or children. Any one of them could suddenly get killed at any time by a pistol, an assault rifle, a knife, a machete, a tonfa, by punches, by kicks, or by anything else that’s in the surrounding area. There are goons who die of multiple stab wounds before their bodies have hit the floor. There’s one guy who gets tossed off a stairwell just before his spine breaks with a sickening “crunch.” I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a single vital spot in the human anatomy that wasn’t shot at point-blank range in one scene or another.

The gore in this movie is spectacular, and that’s due in no small part to the fight choreography. Every single fight scene in this movie (and oh, there are a lot of them) is performed with an extremely visceral thrill that I haven’t seen in ages. I’m surprised that the attacks look like they hurt so much, considering that the actors and stunt people clearly aren’t human. This movie showcases feats of strength, speed, and endurance that look incredibly lifelike, even though they should be well beyond the limits of mere mortals. Hell, there were limbs flying around in ways that I didn’t think were anatomically possible until I saw the film. I’ll admit that there were a couple of obvious wire shots here and there, but the fight scenes were still inventive and thrilling to watch from start to finish.

Put simply, the fight scenes are the only reason to watch The Raid (Redemption). Everything in this movie — from the threadbare plot to the overly aggressive score — is done to set up the fight scenes and to make them entertaining to watch, plausibility be damned. Still, the fight scenes are so visceral and spectacular that they’re easily worth the cost of admission three times over. Some audience members will be entertained, others will be shocked, and others will be offended, but any audience that sees this film will assuredly do so with the same words on their lips throughout the whole running time: “Holy fucking shit!”

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Even before setting box office records it was clear The Hunger Games would be a major title of the 2012 calendar. Lionsgate Studios made the biggest investment in its history to launch the franchise, and the marketing of the film was as omnipresent as the central-government in the film.

That plot point made for a curious choice by the studio. The central planners of Capitol, the government of Panem, are what the heroine of the novels rails against. The politicos are overt, and overly consumed with fashion and couture, and that meant the idea of marketing a line of makeup products and nail polishes was at least a little bit out of touch with the theme of the books. After casting the image-obsessed government as malevolent it becomes a risky venture to brand a beauty line based on the mentality.

An interesting sidelight in the studio’s marketing effort was the online campaign. In order to fully immerse fans into the web experience dozens of web sites sport the address extension “.pn”, as the web domain of the country of Panem. It turns out when the studio wished to use this online address there was an ongoing web registry to suit its needs. The tiny island nation of The Pitcairn Islands sells these domains for corporations, and the sheer number of sites purchased by Lionsgate provided a tidy windfall for the sparsely populated island group.

With any saturation release you are sure to get a number of licensed products that range from the arcane and esoteric to the downright obtuse. Some fit perfectly into the “HG” universe, such as the official bow, as archery plays a prominent role in the film. (Although as we live in a generation forbidden from playing with dangerous toys, such as lawn darts it makes you wonder how this escaped the legal purview.)

Making slightly less sense are a few of the other items made for the sake of slapping the burning bird logo onto any product and deeming it “Official”. While obviously interior lighting was displayed on screen I am less certain as to the significance of having a “Hunger Games” light bulb.

Lionsgate took a unique turn with their marketing in not only moving into the DIY marketplace of CafePress.com, but they turned things over to the fans to create all manner of official products for the film on that site. This is both an immersive way to include fans and a way of diluting the impact of your brand. After all, you are bound to find curiosities. You have to agree that the gravity of the story may become slightly undermined once you see the “HG” version of a Snuggie.

Rabid fandom is known to inspire all manner of devotional actions, but it rarely has been associated with reserved good taste. Case in point, while I understand you may have a deep-seated affection for the character of Peeta there clearly has been a lack of introspection in crafting these foundation garments. This needed the objective opinion from an outside source; couldn’t anyone have explained the reason it is wrong to depict a loaf on underwear?

The zeal for a franchise often extends to those who cannot defend themselves from the onslaught. I mean, I get it; you want everyone to know you are a huge fan of the books and movie so having your baby adorned with licensed materials is bound to happen. But does anyone really think that this is the proper kind of message to instill in your budding progeny?

One of the surprises in the rampant success of the film was the makeup of the audience. Initially when we saw the bloated box office figures the assumption was that the teens arrived en masse, much like they had for the “Twilight” series. However the exit polling showed that over half of the “Hunger Games” audience was over the age of 25. It is for this reason that it now makes sense to see that New York Sports Clubs gym has created a Hunger Games themed workout routine. The workout is supposed to replicate the training seen in the film, with routines entitled “The Katniss Kickback”, and “Peeta Presses”.

Maybe you can completely transform yourself and couple this workout with some of the recipes from the “(Unofficial) Hunger Games Cookbook”. You can get into fighting condition and fuel your body just like the participants. But even if you are not that ambitious I still think you can find this a helpful tool for body management. Looking over selections such as “Gale’s Bone-picking Big Game Soup”, or maybe “Rue’s Roasted Parsnips” it is my guess that weight loss would become rather easy.

AVENGERS VS. X-MEN #1 ($3.99, Marvel Comics)
By Devon Sanders

The term, “It is what it is” never rang truer than for the idea behind Avengers vs. X-Men.

A major, MAJOR threat is set to visit and possibly destroy Earth. The Avengers, who have seen and fought against this thing before, view it as an extinction level event. The Avengers, well-versed in the extinction level event want to stop said event. A member of The X-Men may be the vessel for which this event may occur.

The mutant X-Men, diminished by an near-extinction level event caused by former Avenger The Scarlet Witch, view its coming as something of a blessing and mutantkind’s last, best hope. So, The Avengers and The X-Men stand ready for a showdown. And they fight.

Conflict. It’s what Marvel does best and it’s done superbly with the pages of Avengers vs. X-Men #1.

Avengers vs. X-Men is the culmination of… well, EVERY major Marvel event over the past few years, tapping into the events; Avengers: Disassembled, House of M and the X-Men-centric Second Coming. Despite its being dependent on nearly a decade’s worth of continuity, Avengers vs. X-Men #1 does its job setting up the history of conflict and past camaraderie between Marvel’s two most storied teams.

Five writers, Brian Michael Bendis, Jason Aaron, Matt Fraction, Ed Brubaker and Jonathan Hickman are credited with writing this issue and the collaboration is more a statement of who these men are to Marvel as a whole. The dialogue hits well and plays well with the various divisions running between the two teams, especially a conflicted Wolverine caught between being an Avenger and an X-Man.

Art chores for this issue are handled by Marvel mainstay John Romita, Jr. and his work hasn’t looked this good in a while due mainly to his reunion with inker Scott Hanna. Hanna brings a nice polish and sheen to Romita’s work and every character is perfectly spot-on in their every action and gesture.

Again, Avengers vs. X-Men #1 is what it is; an eventuality. This one could easily have been phoned in but what you get is a well-written, well-drawn reward for longtime Marvel readers. It truly reads like the comics event of the summer and so far, delivers on its premise and promise.

Rating:

Out of a Possible 5 Stars

Teen Titans #7 (DC, $2.99)
By D.S. Randlett

There’s a scene in Arkham City where Robin shows up to give Batman some new piece of gear, basically to get ridiculed. This was pretty indicative of where the character stands with a lot of Batman fans: He’s that annoying kid who thinks he’s Batman’s friend. Correction, Boy Wonder, Batman is nobody’s friend. At least, that’s what he tells himself when no one returns his calls.

That was never a vision of Batman, or Robin, that I really embraced. Sure, Robin doesn’t necessarily belong in every Batman story, but why reject the stories where Robin fits? I always liked Robin in his various iterations, and to some degree what he represents in Batman’s world. While one could question the wisdom of putting a child in peril, in terms of the Batman narrative Robin represents Batman embracing his future instead of simply dwelling on his past. There is certainly room for stories where Batman is a loner who is constantly addressing his past, but the Batman legacy characters open up other dimensions of the character that feel just as “right” as the pathological loner stories.

I think the same goes for the other legacy characters that we got to know in the last version of the DCU. It’s easy to ridicule the sidekicks, but when handled well they can be honest reflections of children. When they are the protagonists, they can reflect the angst of adolescence or feelings of youthful inadequacy. When they are seen under the gaze of adult superheroes, they can reflect the concerns and worries of being a parent. If superheroes are the modern mythology, perhaps the sidekicks were inevitable, at once encapsulating how it feels to have kids and how it feels to be a kid.

Which brings us to the new Teen Titans. One thing is apparent: they are trying really hard to make these characters not feel like sidekicks. As of the seventh issue of Teen Titans, the team hasn’t even properly coalesced yet. Three of our main characters are all new, and the sidekick characters (with the exception of Red Robin) don’t seem to have any relationship at all to their adult forebears. The latter presents a pretty serious problems given the apparent goals of this book in the new DCU.

I find it kind of amazing that Teen Titans and Superboy are both written by Scott Lobdell. In terms of plot, they are pretty intimately connected, but the difference in tone is night and day. Superboy is actually one of the bigger surprises of the DC relaunch for me. It manages to take full advantage of the sidekick conceit, even though Superboy (Superman’s clone here) hasn’t met Superman yet. But still, Superman’s shadow hangs over Superboy almost constantly. There are characters hoping that he’ll act like Superman, others hoping that he doesn’t. More than that, Superboy weaves the things that the Superman concept has to say about adolescence into a different context, and in doing so it actually manages to be a humane and affecting story with some appealing characters at its center.

Teen Titans is kind of a mess. It’s a punchier comic than Superboy, and it’s more concerned with having its characters engaged in big fights, both with each other and with villains. The story ends up being rather thin as a result, and Lobdell’s adoption of a quippier Whedon-lite style of writing doesn’t do much to cover up how shallow Titans is. With Johns’ Justice League, I kind of get it. There, pretty much everyone has their own book, so JL is more or less free to be a big, fun punch-up. Want to get inside Wonder Woman’s head? Pick up her book to find out. Titans doesn’t have that luxury, the only character with his own book is Superboy, but it mimics that tone nonetheless. This is a shame, as Lobdell has a genuine gift for coming up with big superhero moments, but the scheme he’s come up with for Teen Titans keeps any of those moments from registering the way that they could. The conspiracy involving an organization called N.O.W.H.E.R.E. gets lost in all of the punching, and character motivation along with it.

The art in Titans fits the tone, and that’s about the best that I can say for it. It feels very nineties, but also very vibrant and energetic. It does what it needs to do, but it feels very tasteless. Very much of the Jim Lee school, Brett Booth’s pencils will immediately draw the eyes of the eight to thirteen year-old boys in your life.

The biggest problem with Titans is its desire to eat its cake and have it too. It wants to exploit its legacy connections while its characters actively distance themselves from their adult forebears. Superboy and Kid Flash have never met Superman or The Flash, respectively, and Wonder Girl really doesn’t like Wonder Woman for some reason. The book wants to establish them both as established icons and teenage runaways, a set of conflicting goals if I’ve ever seen any. There was something subtle in the way that the original Titans treated being a teenager. Characters like Robin and Speedy wanted to be their own superheroes, but they also wanted to respect and be proud of the traditions that they were a part of. There’s always been something inauthentic to me about teenaged characters who want to burn all the maps, which is how these modern Titans have so far been written. There are exceptions here and there of course, but in the context of Teen Titans’ story, these moments feel like accidents rather than actual character moments.

Teen Titans is a mostly bad book with some good, fun touches, but it just feels ends up feeling inauthentic. Those itching for teen superheroics might want to check out Superboy instead.

Rating:

Out of a Possible 5 Stars

Bloodstrike #26 (Image Comics, $2.99)
By Bart Bishop

Image Comics is in my blood. It’s a part of my upbringing as a comic book fan. I starting collecting in the late ‘80s, and my brother and I were Marvel fanboys through and through, so our idols were Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, Erik Larsen, and of course Rob Liefeld. My brother Stuart was more of a Spider-Man guy, whereas I was an X-Men (and Wolverine) kind of guy, but we did a lot of swapping and we still fondly joke about those days. I have to admit, I saw a trade paperback of Spider-Man: Torment at Barnes & Noble the other day and got a little choked up. So, in 1992, when those hotshots started their own company I followed them over, and at a tender age was caught off guard by the heightened violence and language, and overt sexuality, depicted in such four color glory.

It’s a sign of how I’ve changed, however, as a person that what I look for now as a fan, and critic, is an engaging script with snappy dialogue, solid characterization, and an immersive plot. Rob Liefeld, however, has never excelled in any of these departments (his art is a whole other story). Take his creation, Bloodstrike: first published by Liefeld’s Extreme Studios in 1993, the series originally depicted a top-secret, super-powered, living dead assassination squad deployed covertly by the United States government. Brought back to life by the government’s Project: Born Again, the team’s exploits ran for 22 issues. The added notoriety came with the special issue 25, printed early in the title’s run as part of a crossover event that ran through several titles being published by Image at the time. Issue 25 was noted for depicting a solo Bloodstrike character, team leader Cabbot Stone. Issues 23 and 24 have not been published to this day.

With Liefeld’s renewed partnership with DC Comics, Extreme has been bringing back old characters, such as Prophet and Glory, recently. Bloodstrike continues the trend, picking up with issue 26.  The difference, however, is that while Prophet and Glory are reboots, Bloodstrike is continuing from the older storyline. According to solicitations, “Extreme’s zombie-black op-superheroes return! Cabbot Stone is the last unliving Bloodstrike agent, an unstoppable weapon in America’s war on terror! But being dead is a hell of way to make a living, and Cabbot is losing his faith. Will his latest mission be his last? Bloody horror-action with heart by Hack/Slash writer Tim Seeley and Artist Franchesco Gaston!”

First of all, let’s talk about Bloodstrike as a character. Visually, now and back in his heyday, he is a ripoff of Deadpool. In many ways, he is the culmination of ‘90s escalation, with the kind of giant shoulder pads and six foot long rifles Liefeld loved to fetishize. For the sake of setting him apart, however, in #26 his mask gets ripped open, exposing his mouth and chin. The rest of the outfit has been relatively toned down. Characterization wise, he is nothing like Deadpool. I can’t speak for the earlier writing, but here Seeley has found an interesting spin on his personality: Bloodstrike, having died and been brought back to life, is an atheist.

Let me preface this by saying I’m not the biggest fan of Seeley as a writer. Having read the first two volumes of Hack/Slash, I feel like he tends to target the lowest common denominator of T&A and homages to similar properties. Here, however, he has a much more po-faced approach (the therapist’s reaction to Bloodstrike’s atheism is cringeworthy ridiculous). There is very little in the way of pop culture references, and the plot is suitably grim & gritty, but there is humor, such as the dialogue of the android Bloodstrike fights. A nihilism runs through the narrative, however, as Bloodstrike’s atheism is played as a hitting-bottom, hopeless situation. The odd thing about this whole conundrum, which in of itself could be fascinating to explore, is Seeley makes it a point to reference the character of Chapel, who is best known for having killed Al Simmons, who ultimately returns as the demon-powered Spawn, and then kills himself in order to achieve the same power. Bloodstrike lives in a world that is continuously bombarded with the supernatural, and is colleagues with people that have actually been to Hell. How can he be an atheist? Still, a series should be judged on its own merits, but I worry that Bloodstrike’s atheism won’t be treated as a fascinating character tic but as something to overcome (such as my colleague, D.S. Randlett, discussed several months ago here).

The artist by Franchesco Gaston has a cartoony, but very effective, style, reminiscent of Pascual Ferry. His angular style creates just enough distance from reality to make the silly super powers and costumes acceptable, but incorporates unique fashions and facial expressions that have the characters stand out. His use of paneling has a jagged, overlapping quality to it that mimics Bloodstrike’s state-of-mind: The issue starts off with Bloodstrike in a forced therapy session, and he’s unhinged to say the least. I appreciated the repetition of similar images, but with each successive image the look on a character’s face would drop in sadness or rise up in anger. The cover by Seeley and Carlos Badilla, meanwhile, is appropriately over-the-top, with Bloodstrike striding atop a conquered robotic foe. It isn’t terribly evocative of the sense of ennui and melancholy that infects the pages, but it does its job, in classic Image fashion, of bringing the spectacle of explosions and chiseled poses.

It certainly is Extreme! The premise is by-the-numbers, and I have to admit to feeling ennui myself at the assembly line of killers in costumes that mainstream comics have been serving up these days, but there’s enough of a unique spin here to make it worthy of a read. It’s strange, in retrospect, how a company created by artists (the epitome of style over substance) has over the years been so embraced by talented writers. The likes of Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and Joe Casey have all salvaged previously clichéd characters, and although I wouldn’t put Seeley in their ranks he has managed to do something I thought impossible: make Bloodstrike entertaining.

Rating:

Out of a Possible 5 Stars

THE NEW DEADWARDIANS #1 (Vertigo, $2.99)
By Adam Prosser

Well that meme sure exploded fast, huh?

A while back, there were a handful of articles online—I think Cracked.com may have been the first, but don’t quote me—drawing a connection between the fluctuating popularity of zombies and vampires, respectively, and their relationship to the political spectrum. The argument, reasonably enough, was that the two most popular undead monsters reflected different aspects of what people were concerned about during times when politics swung to the left or right. If that description sounds a little vague, it’s because I’ve heard both zombies and vampires argued as standing in for both Republicans and Democrats—vampires could be seen as a thinly-veiled metaphor for the right’s supposed corporate cronyism or the left’s supposed deviant elitism, and zombies could be an exaggeration either of the right’s fear of the unruly masses or the left’s fear of mindless conformity. The fact that this is such a hard metaphor to pin down should tell you how hard it is to take seriously, but nevertheless, there IS a pretty obvious groundwork for a metaphorical horror series here, and writer Dan Abnett and artist I.N.J. Culbard have stepped up to the plate with The New Deadwardians.

Eschewing the more overt political split, this comic goes for the more obvious “vampires are the upper class, zombies are the plebes” parallel. In an alternate-history 1910, a plague has created the familiar army of mindless undead, known here as “The Restless” (what is it with zombie stories lately being allergic to the word “zombie”?) Mostly confined to a barricaded section of London called Zone B, the Restless nevertheless aren’t as contained as they could be, as we see in the opening pages, when a lone Restless invades the home of Inspector George Suttle and makes a meal of his housekeeper. Suttle himself is able to polish off the undead invader with no problem, though, since he’s immune. As it turns out, there’s a “cure” that renders one safe from zombification, though it seems to mostly be the province of the upper class, and also has the unfortunate side effect of turning you into a vampire. Of course, on the one hand, this means you’re now a dead person anyway, and can’t go out in the sun, but at the same time, you get to “live” forever, and you can only be killed by the traditional stake through the heart, decapitation, or burning.

Except…Suttle just stumbled on a vampire corpse that didn’t have any of those three things happen to it. Is undeath suddenly getting more dangerous in London?

If you’re not utterly sick of vampires and zombies yet (and somehow, I’m not), Deadwardians provides a neat, hooky premise and a solid execution. The world of the story is efficiently set up and the premise invites further speculation. It’s a long way from perfect, though. In particular, Abnett leaves some oddly lingering questions about the rules of undeath. In particular, it’s not clear to what extent the upper-class vamps become the monsters of legend—they seem to require blood, but they shave down their teeth, and at one point a doctor asks casually whether Suttle is experiencing any “cravings”, so presumably they don’t just go around feeding on the masses. Obviously I expect answers to be given in due time, but it does make this issue seem a little unbalanced, with the zombies being given a pretty clear delineation and the vampire aspect being given so little page time (you don’t even see anyone drink blood in this issue). Then there’s Culbard’s artwork, which is oddly stiff and sparse, more like an indie comic than something from a major publisher—though of course to an extent it suits the subject matter very well. If the real-world Edwardians were stiff, drab and mannered, a society of undead ones would be even more so, and these are all qualities conveyed in spades by the artwork.

In the same fashion, the story itself is hardly bursting with freshness or pulse-pounding originality. It’s a deeply familiar set of tropes, even with a story as deftly set up as this one. Yet the fact that it manages to work as well as it does within the confines of such a well-trod genre is a commendation in and of itself. The Edwardians inhabited a British Empire that was already dead but still hadn’t realized it, whose best days were behind it but still had momentum; replace “British Empire” with “genre” and you’ve described The New Deadwardians as well. But, also like the Edwardians, it continues forward with formality, seriousness, and a stiff upper lip. VERY stiff.

Rating:

Out of a Possible 5 Stars

Everyone says that comics “used to be good,” and while that’s very much a matter of taste, there’s no question that the darn things used to be cheap. Yeah, I’m old enough to remember when they came for the price of the change in your pocket, and while inflation is a very real factor in price increases, there was a time when taking a chance on a new comic was mostly a case of shrugging “eh, why not?” and tossing a few extra coins in the counter. That’s obviously no longer the case, and today’s reader tends to want confidence that his entertainment investment (whether in comics or elsewhere) comes with a guaranteed payoff.

Thus the difficulty of marketing this new ongoing sampler comic series from the good folks at Red 5. The fact that there are five different stories (or portions of stories), all scripted by Atomic Robo creator Brian Clevenger, increases the odds that you’ll like something… but at the same time, it means that there actually isn’t very much of whatever your favorite story here is, and each reader has to decide for themselves just what percentage of that three bucks they’re willing to shell out for the stuff that doesn’t grab them as much.

The collection opens with Part 1 of “To Kill A Sparrow,” with art by Ryan Cody (Villains). It’s a tale of WW2 espionage, with a costumed heroine known as The Sparrow infiltrating a Nazi lair in Vichy France. Its six pages are less the beginning of a story than a character introduction, but the plotting is effective given the compression, and the setup for Sparrow’s ongoing series contains a bit of a twist I’ll leave for readers to enjoy. Cody’s angular art is appropriately dark (Nazis, remember). As a curtain-raiser, it’s effective enough, though I would think an ongoing series would work better as a full-length comic rather than being served up in bite-sized chunks, as seems to be the plan.

“The Revenge of Dr. Dinosaur” is an amusing Atomic Robo three-page skit with art by Yuko Oda (evidently regular Atomic Robo artist Scott Wegener is otherwise occupied), who if I’m not mistaken is known primarily as a “fine” artist and painter. Whether or not I’ve got her mixed up with someone else, the art in this segment is the most delightful in the book, though the script isn’t particularly sequential, with the result being mostly a series of static (though appealing) panels leading up the groaner of the punchline.

“City of Skulls,” with art by Chris Houghton (Image’s Reed Gunther), is a four-page vignette that finds Atomic Robo in post-Soviet Siberia, encountering a sort of Red Guardian counterpart to himself, and settling their potential conflict by being reasonable. I guess the ending could be a bit poignant if we’d actually had time to get to know the Russian robot.

“Leaping Metal Dragon, Part 1,” with art by John Broglia (God Complex) is four pages that kick off (so to speak) a 1970-set story with Atomic Robo teaming up with Bruce Lee. Really, that’s about it: the story itself might or might not be fun once it gets going; the art is genial and cartoony.

“Rocket Science is a Two-Edged Sword,” has art by Joshua Ross, whose work is new to me, though there’s a sort of European/indie feel to his black and white pencils. It’s a 1940’s encounter between Atomic Robo and a villainous wizard aboard a crashing spacecraft, whose four pages end on a dryly underplayed note that’s sort of the visual equivalent of a shrug.

Fans of Atomic Robo will recognize that feeling: the series’ strengths have always been quiet understatement, and an unusually thoughtful approach to the inherent absurdities of comic-book storytelling. There are hints of it in most of the character’s appearances here, but the anthology nature of the book doesn’t allow it to sustain.

By the way, if you’re wondering why my individual page counts don’t add up to the listed 26, Red 5 precedes each story with a full title page; while it does provide a nice transition from story to story, anyone computing cost per page might want to bear that in mind. And since we don’t get a lot of free comics to review here at Thor’s Comic Column, I should also mention that I was actually able to review a free pdf of this book, which means my evaluation is probably a bit more generous than it might have been if I’d had to pay for it. It’s all quite nice, but I suspect most readers would find their money better spent on one of the complete-story Atomic Robo collections that are currently available, and telling the folks at Red 5 that a full-length ongoing from The Sparrow would be most welcome.

Rating:

Out of a Possible 5 Stars

The Fury Of Firestorm: The Nuclear Men #7
by Graig Kent

Half a year into “The New 52” and we’re in the throes of, I guess, “phase 2” wherein the books that are obviously not working (or selling) are cancelled, the books that should be working better are getting shaken up with new talent, and the creators who have had second thoughts about their role in the reboot are title hopping or title dropping.  If DC didn’t actually have fairly solid structures to roughly half of their books, the whole thing would be a fiasco.

The ungainly titled The Fury of Firestorm: The Nuclear Men is one of the problem children.  It hasn’t exactly received the best of receptions under the tandem of Ethan Van Sciver and Gail Simone.  There was initial excitement over the pairing of the superstar duo, but that fizzled rather quickly. The whole idea of two Firestorm (apparently, like moose, there is no plural of “Firestorm”) — both Jason Rusch AND Ronnie Raymond — was carried over from Brightest Day, something I didn’t much care for then either.  It seemed redundant having two of them.  I had a skim through this title’s first issue when it came out and was quite comfortable putting it back on the shelf and not thinking about it again for the very same reason.  From the buzz surrounding the book (or lack thereof), it certainly didn’t feel like I was missing anything.

Rumor was Simone had “editorial conflicts”, which never results in the strongest finished product, and ultimately she elected to leave the title (as was announced way back in October).  Replacing her is Joe Harris (recently of his creator-owned Ghost Projekt and Spontaneous at Oni) acting as writer and co-plotter with Van Sciver.  Van Sciver, in turn, is illustrating the current storyline, which, given his profile as an artist, is about the best thing he could do if he wants to raise the title’s profile and resurrect its sales (and, perhaps, critical and fan reaction).

While Van Sciver’s painstakingly detailed art is attractive and powerful (with some downright gorgeous color work from HiFi), by itself it can’t make a book work.  Despite the creative shake-up, there remain weaknesses in the foundation of the book that lead to a shaky few pages that even Van Sciver can’t put a pretty edifice on top of.  The whole “Zithertech”  element is the roughest part, and it obviously plays (or played) a large part in the story of Ronnie and Jason’s transformation into Firestorm, but it’s clunky, and Jason’s interaction with “Director Zither” is likely a necessary two pages of transitional exposition but it’s still the weakest link.

Harris does what he can with the dangling elements that were left over from the previous six issues, but it’s quite evident that he has a story he’s interested in exploring and that’s where the fun begins.  His script is dripping with Cold War sentimentality without forgetting about the “new war” on terror.  Ronnie, flying solo, heads flame-first into a trap somewhere in the middle east, where a mad scientist and his team are exceptionally curious about learning the secret of the “Firestorm Protocols”.  Essentially, creating Firestorm is the new arms race (and apparently an old one too, if the appearance of Russian Firestorm Pozhar is any indication) and he who has the most Nuclear Men wins, I suppose.

What Van Sciver does with the torture sequence and Pozhar’s interference is just wonderful comic book stuff, loaded with super-science and visual effects that would cost millions to render for live action.  It’s comic books doing what comic books should do, bringing the unreal to life.  Harris, for his part, brings the audience up to speed, for the most part, without dwelling on what’s come before.  He gives you just enough to draw you into the story without giving you everything, and meters it all out nicely so that it’s not so overwhelming.  Harris seems to have an immediate voice for Ronnie, loading up heavily on his personality, while, unfortunately, Jason just seems to be doing a lot of scowling right now.

It’s not perfect, but it has a definite sense of direction, and it’s already building momentum.  It still may not be what old school Firestorm fans are expecting but this issue is a good step towards brighter days for ol’ flame head.

Rating:

Out of a Possible 5 Stars

B.P.R.D. Hell On Earth: The Pickens County Horrors #1 of 2 (Dark Horse, $3.50)
By Jeb D.

Because my reading comprehension is evidently not what it might be, I had thought that Becky Cloonan was actually illustrating this latest BPRD tale, rather than just doing the cover. So I have to admit that, for me, the book starts off with one (totally unfair) strike against it.

Continuing the “Year of Monsters,” Pickens County Horrors (with story by Mignola and script by Scott Allie) introduces us to one of those creepy backwoods families so beloved of horror comics and movies with their own unique twist; a pair of BPRD field agents, Vaughn and Peters; and vampire researcher Professor Ethan Thomas. In the wake of the plague that has driven much of the Hellboyverse lately, the agents’ nocturnal investigation (after they ignore the usual warnings about how their destination is prone to unspeakably mysterious dangers) are exposed to a gas that conceals monstrous enemies, knocks them out, and leaves them with some nasty side effects. When Vaughn awakens, he and Peters are in the care of Thomas, who fills him (and us) in on some vampire lore, and starts to connect some of the puzzle pieces. My only real reservation is that the setup for Thomas to give us the necessary exposition is Agent Vaughn’s seeming skepticism about an impending vampire apocalypse in South Carolina, which feels mildly out of place for anyone who’s already been out in the field with Hellboy himself (though since I haven’t read the entire BPRD corpus, it’s possible that this might be the first appearance of vampires in the Hellboyverse).

Jason Latour’s art has a kind of squishy approach to faces and anatomy, but with the able support of Dave Stewart’s colors, brings the appropriate disquiet that a Mignola comic requires, even if it falls a bit short of what we’d have got from Mignola himself.

While this is technically issue 1 of 2, it’s really just another chapter in Mignola’s ongoing epic, and will be required reading for anyone invested in the Hellboyverse.

Rating:

Out of a Possible 5 Stars

Confirmed: There will still be a Marvel Studios after Avengers. They’re working on lining up projects beyond Shane Black’s Iron Man 3 and tops on the list of things to do is securing a director for a sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger. Fine people of Vulture, take it away!

Insiders tell us that a field of ten directors has been whittled to just three for the follow-up to last summer’s hit: George Nolfi, the writer-director of The Adjustment Bureau; F. Gary Gray, best known for directing The Italian Job; and, naturally …Community‘s Anthony and Joseph Russo?

The Community guys? Why not. They did direct You, Me and Dupree, but I’ve already forgiven them for that. I didn’t exactly hate Joe Johnston’s take with the first film, but considering that this movie will most-likely take place in the present day I can’t begrudge Marvel wanting a fresh approach. Johnston, who’s shooting Not Safe for Work right now, works best behind the lens of Americana period pieces like Rockateer or Captain. Gray and Nolfi don’t excite me too much as contenders. So if the Bros Russo are the only alternative, I’m for it.

Fun fact: I started writing this article two weeks ago, almost within seconds of credits rolling. This particular version will actually be the eighth drawing-board rewrite of the whole thing. I’ve completely blocked other reviews from happening (namely, the new SSX and Journey on the PS3) just so I could keep my thoughts straight. It may very well have be the hardest article I’ve ever had to write, just because the argument has taken so many disparate, shapes since the beginning of the month, and things keep happening, some good, some bad, a lot of really, terrifyingly ugly. I’ve seen the gaming community at its best, worst, and most puzzlingly apathetic through it all, and I’ll be honest, it’s tiring, possibly the most I’ve been just disheartened by those who share my love of the medium in some time.

A lot of that has to do with the fact that after beating Mass Effect 3, my standpoints were in such stark contrast with what feels like the majority of the gaming community. That is to say, I actually liked my choices. With caveats and criticisms and a healthy dose of frustration about how they played out, but betrayal isn’t even in the same county of any of my feelings.

So, I’m gonna apologize right off the bat for being terse. After so long leaving MCP without updates, there might be some that expected more. After finally getting my own head together about it, I’m finally ready to start discussing these things at length on the boards. But volumes have been written about these subjects, and I’m sorry, but after two weeks of hemming and hawing, discussing, and arguing, and ultimately surrender, I dont have a dissertation in me. All I have are six inalienable points made abundantly clear to me through eight drafts of writing:

–I chose Synthesis. Piggybacking off of the kind of person Shepard turned out to be, Mass Effect 3 gave me every opportunity, when not on the battlefield, for Shepard to express to both Garrus and Liara just how tired she was of this war, of the endless politics, or misunderstandings that have nearly ended races. The Illusive Man risking death to the entire galaxy for humanity’s gains alone made it obvious to me the only way this galaxy will ever win is to move on to the next stage and evolve together. Is it probably the most out-there sci-fi idea presented so far? Yes. But thematically, it worked. My major qualm was that I expected to see some awesome, Child of Eden-esque future in the epilogue. What I got were leaves with Intel Inside.

–The endings varying in color and little else is lazy, yes. As is the Normandy ending up in FTL for no apparent reason. As are many of the sidequests. I’d also argue just about everything from Tuchanka onward is “the ending” for most of the galaxy as we know it, and Shepard’s story ending with that swan dive is strong enough just as it is as a climax.

–The indoctrination theory: Bioware’s many things, but meta ain’t one, and the text in no way supports Reaper control of Shepard. And most of the speculation sounds way too similar to the logical hoops fanboys leapt through to support Harvey Dent being alive. But thanks for playing.

–I’m glad the gaming community is finally figuring out one of the cardinal rules of life, which is that anything said doing PR should be taken with a grain of salt. I’m just distressed it took THIS to realize it.

But, regardless, welcome to adulthood. While you’re here, you may wanna start petitioning Sony for when we’re gonna get those Toy Story graphics out of a PS2 we were promised, or when John Romero is intending to make us his bitch. Let me know how that pans out.

–I hereby invite Bioware user SLICCK to go fuck himself.

Actually, I apologize. In the interest of keeping my criticisms constructive, I would like to simply inform you that the penis in a soft state is not a prehensile mass, and may be cumbersome in a current erect state. Therefore, removing your own penis while in an erect state would be the correct course of action. As I do not have a physical representation of you, and in the interest of fairness, I do not wish to continue with any assumptions that you were in fact a hideous trollfaced mongoloid with T-Rex arms, for maximum mobility, I recommend contacting the good people at RealDoll.com, who can craft, for you, a male RealDoll in your likeness, whom you may choose to endow with the staid remains of your genitals. You may then strap the doll to yourself, using one of the handy belts that window washers occasionally use–likely available at any local Home Depot–and thrust as needed.

I hope that these suggestions are taken to heart so that you may fuck yourself more effectively in the future.

–To Bioware directly: Here’s a story for you guys: I got 100+ hours into your games before I felt there was a fundamental element worth complaining about, but I got 50ish pages into the first Twilight book and had to put it down A: because it was ass-awful, and B: because I Couldn’t. Stop. Laughing. at how ass-awful it was. I can and have happily brought Stephenie Meyer to task for how bad it was. At no point do I believe that woman owes me anything better than what we got, because HER BAD ART DOES NOT BELONG TO ME.

Mass Effect, and all the choices offered therein, ultimately, belongs to you. STAND BY YOUR FUCKING CRAFT. Do the DLC because you have something to add, a story worth telling. Not because your fans demand it.

Bottom line, so I can get it out of my head, and move on: There are very few ways in which Bioware could bring the whole thing crashing down with 5 minutes of disappointment that don’t involve tentacle rape or an end credits song by Limp Bizkit. What matters to me is that I’ve spent a grand total of 113 hours in one of the best-realized universes in this medium, loving, laughing, fighting, and dying alongside one of the bravest, most layered, fascinating women ever created in any of them.

Please continue to explain to me why I should punish the people responsible for allowing me to have known her at all.

Take your time.

I’m having trouble believing this isn’t some cruel early-April Fool’s Joke, but I’m seeing a lot of news sites pick it up. For the time being let’s operate under a theory: The following is an actual idea someone in Hollywood seriously had and is now putting it into fruition.

THR is reporting that Universal is giving the go-ahead on a sequel to Twins (Triplets, duh) that will reunite Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzeneggar with a previously unmentioned third brother to be played by… wait for it… Eddie Murphy. See, it’s funny because he’s black. And the other guys aren’t. That’s a pitch meeting I would have loved to be involved in. “Who needs fucking jokes with that concept?!”  There’s no director attached (you almost wouldn’t even need one), but Twins director Ivan Reitman will return as producer because, y’know, Ghostbusters 3.

This has to be a put-on, right?

Warner Bros. has officially unveiled the new logo for Zack Snyder’s Superman re-reboot attempt The Man of Steel. Here it be (clicking the image will take you to the film’s official Facebook page):

Looks a tad more alien than what we’re used to, but the iconography is there. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that Donner’s ’78 film was the first to interpret the symbol as not an “S” but rather a family crest for the House of El on Krypton (from which Supes was born out of). The origin of the symbol in comics has changed quite a bit, but Mark Waid’s 2004 series Superman: Birthright depicted the “S” as the Kryptonian symbol of hope.

A lot of work to justify a fucking “S”. But if I were a betting man I’d bet on the symbol’s origins representing the House of El.

Source: Warner Bros.  

When it comes to The Raid: Redemption, I have to assume you’ve heard the hype, seen the trailers, read the reviews, and have a pretty firm set of expectations about what you’re going to see. All that’s left for me to do is hand you this link to the list of dates and places, look you firmly in the eye — lips pressed tight — and quietly nod. You know what to do.

Until you’re able (or already have and want to dig deeper) I’d like to present my chat with director Gareth Evans, in which we discuss exactly how he sculpted the kinetic-yet-clear camerawork, dealt with size-shifting sets, and how he handles the hype and pressure of starting a blossoming career. I’m happy with the discussion, brief as it was, and I hope you enjoyed too. If you feel this blows or that I, like, totally suck ass at this, then check out Joshua’s interview and perhaps that will suit you.

Thanks for reading guys!

***

Renn: You’ve spoken before about the challenge of directing a film in a language that’s not your own, with the overarching theme seeming to be a need for trust in your collaborators. Was that at all a humbling directorial experience?

Gareth: Yeah, moreso on the first film when we did Merantau, that was the biggest moment like that. With Merantau I didn’t have any Indonesian skills at all, and so I was really relying on the people around me a lot more. On The Raid I’d actually picked up a little bit of Indonesian at that point so when it came to it I understood the majority of what people were saying, and my Indonesian skills are at the place where if I have context, I can usually understand about 75-80% of what’s going on. So I came to The Raid with a much more informed approach then.

Renn: In terms of the photography of the film and the clarity of the action- these days everything is built on long-lensed coverage that’s strung together in the edit, whereas The Raid has a similar immediacy but is never difficult to follow. How did you direct that in the moment, day-to-day?

Gareth: Well we do a lot of pre-design on the film. What we do is we spend about three months creating fight choreography in great detail, and then because I spend such a long time with the guys designing the choreography, I know the movement inside-out then. I understand what’s going on in every movement. And then because I spend so much time with them I feel an obligation to make sure the cinematography reflects what they’ve put into the choreography, and so every shot has to be designed in such a way that it shows off that piece of choreography the best way it can. That kind of dictates the way that we shoot it then, so we actually in that first three months we work on the design of the fight scenes but then we do a shot-for-shot video storyboard. Which is every shot and every edit that ends up in the final film. The video storyboards tend to be about 95% the same as what we have in the final version of the film.

It’s pretty detailed and like you said with a lot of films these days with a lot of long lenses and just cut really fast so you don’t see any detail… we’re kind of the opposite of that, every shot is like a jigsaw piece. We never really shoot anything for coverage only. Every shot has a specific reason and purpose for why we’re using it.

Renn: So when you’re on set with such a detailed and structured plan, how often and what is it like when saw an opportunity for something different or perhaps the set turned out differently than you’d anticipated? Did that ever challenge you?

Gareth: Uh, haha, occasionally  yes, once or twice we had- you know the room with the shootout and the hole-drop? So we built that set and we filmed in there and we got as far as the refrigerator exploding and all of sudden we had to come back and shoot the rest of that scene, the aftermath of the explosion when everything goes gray and dusty and grim.  Our shooting schedule meant that we had to come back and do that another time, and so we were shooting that scene maybe three or four weeks later.

When we finally got back in there the guys in the art department had rebuilt the set, but something felt weird, something felt wrong. Basically… we were reusing the wood- every time we built a set we had to reuse the wood because we didn’t have the budget to build new sets out of new wood. So I said, “something feels different, something is wrong with this room,” and it finally clicked and dawned on me that we were reusing this wood all this time and had run out of spare wood, so it turned out in the aftermath of that explosion the room ended up being something like 2 meters more narrow. So when everything was put back in there it ended up feeling like this really small room, and it bugged the hell out of me so much. But yeah, you had to kind of re-figure out everyone’s body position and the continuity of it so we could shoot it and it still makes sense and have them avoid this big blasted doorway.

So yeah, little thing like that crept in along the way, but when we came to the action choreography, some of the stuff was so specific that it demanded set designs as well. So the atrium when they’re in an open-space balcony indoors, that was something we designed in the choreography of the film and demanded for it, but we couldn’t find a real location. There’s no such building like that in Indonesia at all, and so that then meant we had to build a studio set. So there was some moments when the choreography informed the studio design, and sometimes we had to adapt to fit the set.

Renn: What are your tastes like outside of action? What are the slow-burn dramas or measured-paced films you happen to like?

Gareth: Um, I absolutely love There Will Be Blood. I think Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the best filmmakers we’ve ever had. So definitely There Will Be Blood and Magnolia would be in my top 3, so I’m kind of blown away by him as a filmmaker. I love French movies a lot- Amelie is a beautiful film. Have you seen a film called 3 Iron? It’s a Korean movie and for me it’s probably one of the best romance movies you could ever see where the two people don’t talk to each other.

Renn: I’m not familiar with it, but that sounds great.

Gareth: It’s a very unusual movie, it’s very sort of slow paced, but it’s just beautiful. It’s so sumptuously shot, it’s an incredible film. So yeah, like in terms of the films that I make, I make action movie right now, but the films I consume are pretty wide and I like to take a little bit of influence from everything I see.

Renn: So to talk a little bit around the film, you’ve spoken about being pretty connected in terms of twitter and keeping up online. What has that been like with the film receiving such a enthusiastic response from the very start?

Gareth: That kind of blew us away, we were caught by surprise by the way the film’s been received, to be honest. When we made the film, me and my producer we felt a little pessimistic about it because we were on such a tight schedule and such a tight deadline that when we finally did our check print, we were so close to the film –we’d been working on it for like 20 hours a day for like 7, 10, 15 days at that point in the post-lab– that by the time we got to check the print before Toronto, we were pessimistic. We really didn’t feel like it was that great, we were looking at all the little technical faults and looking at the little bit in the corner of the frame where the picture broke up, you know, that kind of thing. We were hopeful there’d be at least one or two decent reviews we could use for a poster quote, and so yeah, since then the response we’ve had has just knocked us off our feet. We’ve been surprised by it and very very humbled by it. We’re very very happy with the response.

Renn: With you being connected online and seeing the smaller, individual response that you might not have seen 10 years ago, what has that been like- the individual fan connections vs. the major reviews?

Gareth: It’s like this- every review whether it’s positive or negative is important because you learn from it. Whenever you read something it’s great to get praise and it’s also great to get complete criticism, but usually there’s one common thread in every review that’s like the common element people will highlight, and that common thread is what you want to keep an eye out for in the next film, and try and fix that for the next movie.

But in terms of personal responses- when we screen this film and people come up afterwards, when they say the things they say, it’s very humbling, it’s very nice to see. I come from this- this is my second movie in Indonesia now, and I feel the idea of me doing this as a career is still very very new to me and a transition for me right now. I mean I have like five copies of Ichi The Killer at home because there was never a definitive one, and so I come to it from a fanboy background, I understand the responses of people so yeah, I get really touched when guys that I’ve spoken to on forum or people I’ve spoken to on Twitter say how much they loved the film. It means a lot, sometimes it means more than a review, ya know?

Renn: So if you were to have made a film where the reaction was not so strong, was less positive in this day of twitter and everything, how do you feel you would compartmentalize and process that? Do you let in a lot of that criticism or plug away…?

Gareth: Well, I mean, we had that. We had that on Merantau on some extent, we had a lot of good reviews on our first film, good feedback on Merantau, but we also had a ton of negative reviews and complaints as well. I think the same will probably happen for The Raid as well. We happen to have a very good momentum right now, but there are going to be people that don’t like it. It’s not really something for everyone in the world. I made a pretty aggressive action film and some people are not going to like it, some people are not going to dig it and I think that’s part and parcel of making films.

I think when I made my very first low low-budget independent film those kind of comments hurt a lot more, but now you learn to deal with them and it’s like this- there will be times that people say very nice things about the film, there will be times when people are very critical of it and everyone is entitled to their opinion, everyone is entitled to say whatever they want about the film. What I take away from it is I got to sit in on those screenings in Toronto and I got to sit in at that Midnight madness screening where it was like the best reaction I’ve ever had to a film, and likewise further that extended when we did the screening in Indonesia, we had such a great response from the audience there — and SXSW — and those months will stay with me, forever. For me you’ve got to have thick skin to make a film and release it to the world, you’ve got to be willing to take the hits as much as you can with the successes and stuff. So yeah, whatever happens happens and as long as you’re proud of the film, at the end of the day that’s all that counts.

Renn: So I’ve seen that you’ve got yours sequel in motion and you’ve got your idea for a film beyond that, but with the response to The Raid it’s clear and inevitable that your name is going to be on every short-list in Hollywood for genre and action films. Do you foresee any point where you would take, say, an Expendables 3 or an action movie reboot or some kind of comic book movie- would you ever dive face-first into the machine?

Gareth: Right now, that’s not really a priority for me. I do want to do something in the US at some point, maybe after the sequel to The Raid, but I’m not really looking to be plugged into a franchise at this point right now. I don’t want it to be one of those things where my first film outside of Indonesia becomes a thing where I lose my identity as a filmmaker, I want it to be something that still feels personal to me and still feels like it’s a part of my body of work. So whoever I work with in the US, my producer in whatever capacity that is, I want them to want the film that I’m going to make. I want them to believe in the vision I have for it, and not just sort of, “oh there’s a bit of hype about the last one you made, let’s just get him in to do this.” I don’t want to be offered just any action film because I’ve done action before, you know? So I’m being a little cautious right now with the work I approach in the US, in the UK, but I am looking to develop and do something out there at some point.

Renn: How conscious are you of “building a body of work” and possibly diversifying your efforts at some point? Is that something you think about?

Gareth: Yeah absolutely, at the moment my career in Indonesia is more focused on martial-arts action films, but I’d love to stretch out and try a couple other genres as well. For me, when I look at people I respect and admire, I look at filmmakers like Sam Peckinpah and John Woo. Especially with how Peckinpah with The Wild Bunch– he had these action set pieces but they were character-driven, they had a meaning behind them that was much more than just the spectacle of it. I’d love to do something in that mode, I’d love to be able to push my career in that path and try different genres. I’d love to try and make a western at some point, I’d like to do something outside of martial arts and the English language would help as well! I’m a big fan of different kinds of films, so if I could do a kids film one day, I’d love to that as well. When I watch cinema I watch everything, I want to see everything, and so I’d love to have a shot at trying to make a little bit of everything at some point.

Remember, you can find where and when The Raid is nearest you right here. I suggest you do so and make this movie happen for yourself.

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I invited a couple of Mass Effect fans to reflect on our initial playthroughs of Mass Effect 3 together in real time, to be posted in a couple three installments. We invite you to come and revel in our luminous insights and trenchant bon mots! Marvel at our many euphemisms for space genitalia! Watch me make feeble stabs at appearing objective in critiquing the game series that has held us by the nerd short hairs* lo these last 5 years!

Al Schwartz:  I just realized I never even figured out which option you picked from the Catalyst buffet.

Trevor La Pay: I picked Destroy! What kind of a milquetoast do you take me for?

A:  Once I found out you let Tali Ophelia herself, I had to assume you were capable of anything.

T: But I had both Legion AND Tali in my pocket. Those stupid Quarians wouldn’t stop firing on the Geth ship! It wasn’t my fault!

Oddly, that moment was the high point of the entire ME3 experience for me. I might bitch a lot about the gameplay, but the story has balls.

A:  Earlier, you said that you didn’t buy the indoctrination ending for a second.  Now, I don’t think the ending was fully implemented or really works as presented in the video; for one thing, the “wrong” choices play out almost exactly like the “correct” one, and even the “perfect” ending leaves Shephard a bloody pile of meat who still hasn’t actually beaten the bad guys, which is a strange note to end on to say the least.  And why my preferred interpretation is that while Catalyst buffet is an attempt at indoctrination, it is literal and not a fantasy sequence.

But there’s too much about it that fits for it to be a coincidence, imo, most particularly the black wavy lines that show up during your confrontation with the Illusive Man (and nowhere else in the series I can recall, which has to mean…something) and the way the landscape changes to resemble the dream sequences after you get blasted.  The way it looks to me, and of course I don’t have inside sources or anything but generalized suspicions to base this on, is that the indoctrination ending was developed fairly extensively but weren’t able to implement fully.  Whether that is because they didn’t have time to iron out all the kinks or just lost their nerve to go with something so conceptual to cap off their EPIC TRILOGY, I don’t know.

Though if they were just trying to avoid fan uproar, then wow, way to dodge that bullet, Bioware.

The problem with things as they stand is that the options don’t really work taken at face value, but the post-Shepdeath scenes (however brief) don’t jibe with the fantasy interpretation that makes sense of the other 90% of the ending scenario.  But it’s so close to fitting that I find it hard to think it could result from anything but a last minute balk.  In particular, the teleporting Normandy sequence is so clearly grafted on from a different ending concept that there had to some major zero hour scrambling going on.

…right?

T: I never pay attention to any of the behind the scenes gossip, but there was some talk on the boards about a potential indoctrination plot that was either scrubbed or rewritten. The play’s the thing, though, so the final content should speak for itself.

This is armchair game development for sure, but there are a ton of ways BioWare could have written indoctrination into Shepard’s plotline that would have made sense. What about Shepard’s rebirth at the hands of Cerberus? Surely seeds could have been planted there, but that turned out to be nothing more than a way to yank Shepard into an enemy vessel without too much fussing over the details. There’s a throwaway line during the Illusive Man’s Base sequence where Shepard ponders whether he’s just a VI in a human-like shell. Now THAT would have made the destroy ending more interesting, at least for me.

Given the details, it’s very likely that a bunch of scenarios were mapped out, none could be agreed upon, and a Frankenstein’s Monster was stitched together as a result. The Normandy scene in particular. It was like watching Poochie get teleported off screen by a flying saucer.

Hey, kids! Even I don't know how the "synthesis" ending is supposed to work! ZIPPA DAB ZOOBA!!!!

I never did notice those those black lines, though.

Even though it was a big shrug for me, I’m excited to see how BioWare adds to the epilogue in DLC, assuming the PR blurbs are honest.

A: It definitely feels like a Frankenstein, so no matter what noble intentions we might ascribe to the writers, it doesn’t change the fact that it doesn’t succeed.  But I’ll play apologist a bit longer, because I seem to think there’s more to the indoctrination angle than you do.

Coming into this game I had wondered why the danger of Shephard being indoctrinated had never been addressed.  Given his interactions with Sovereign, his time on the derelict Reaper (which had indoctrinated everyone that had previously investigated it) and all the time messing around with the Collector’s Reaper tech in ME2, and especially getting zapped by the monolith in Arrival (which had also indoctrinated everyone around it), it seemed like at some point someone should have at least raised the possibility.that he had been compromised.  But I, and I assume everyone else, just kind of shrugged this off as typical video game macguffinry; when the bad guys are so unequivocally evil, with the stated goal of eradicating of all life in the galaxy, they can’t have henchmen at all unless they can brainwash them.

Okay, there might be a few volunteers, just not of the top tier variety

But, if you accept the indoctrination ending in concept, there’s something crazy ambitious about it.  Because now Bioware has hinged the conclusion of the entire series on a seemingly-impossible feat.  I can buy that the character of Shephard, stressed out beyond belief by the burden of fighting the apocalypse more or less by himself for years, seeing so many friends die, being horrifically wounded and also affected by whatever physical process the Reapers use to brainwash people, would struggle with completing his mission right at the finish line.  But for this ending to work, the game has to convince me, who has not actually experienced any of those things, to consider adopting the villain’s evil plan at literally the last minute.  How the fuck do you pull that off?

By playing on the assumptions I make about how a game like this works.  My guy can’t be brainwashed, because I’m the best and of course I can’t and of course my feats of badassitude have convinced the immortal space monster to reconsider its entire raison d’etre for the last 800 million years.  And by adding a significant downside to following through with my plan at the last second, and making the bad guy’s plan seem to be the option that allows me to win without sacrificing any characters I’ve come to care about. And having the big scifi transhumanist option only available if I rack up a certain score, so that it feels like an unlockable “best” ending that powergamer in me will want to access.  And by coloring the options according to the paragon/renegade dynamic the games have always employed, but reversed to suggest that the “bad” ending is what the paragon would choose, which makes sense as a representation of the Reapers mucking about with my guy’s subconscious to steer him toward it.

You do all that, and you just might pull off the impossible and manage to brainwash me into pondering decisions that my character would only make because he’s actually been brainwashed.  To set up that conflict and play it out without tipping your hand about what was going on (because if I know for sure that’s the deal, then of course I’m not actually on death’s door and haven’t had my brain chemistry altered by subsonic vibrations or gamma rays or whatever space juju justifies the indoctrination diegetically, and the decision becomes a no-brainer), that would be a really incredible feat of writing.

But, of course, none of it works if I’m actually too badass to be brainwashed, and the villain’s plan really does turn out to be a no fuss-no muss solution to the whole dilemna, which means I’m kind of a colossal dick for making him shoot himself 5 minutes ago for considering it, and by the way my whole crew is now on the other side of the galaxy because what the fucking fuck.

It's certainly not because I'm a total coward who fled to the far edge of the galaxy as soon as the camera was off me, I can tell you that much!

Anyway, on the backlash:  should we really have been that surprised by it?  Sure, long-running genre series don’t ever seem to wrap without pissing off a sizeable portion of their fanbase, and video game nerds are a fairly entitled bunch on their best day. But beyond that, it seems only natural that people would feel a degree of ownership over this story that goes above and beyond the investment fans of Lost or whatever have in those stories.  I mean, a large part of the appeal of this series has always been the idea that the player was a vital part of shaping the story with their decisions.  As you’ve said previously, that may have been largely an illusion, but it’s one that Bioware created and fostered, and it seems obvious in retrospect that it would serve to intensify the backlash when it inevitably reared its head.

I’ve seen Misery mentioned as a touchstone for how batshit the campaigns are, but Annie Wilkes might have come off as a smidge less crazy if the books she obsessed over had advertised that SHE would have major say in how the story developed from the very beginning, no?

One day, when his children are long dead, we as a society will have hated this kid enough. Just kidding. He dies childless and alone.

Wait, what?

 

I am willing to to cut ME more slack on that front, however, because it’s major (story) issues are confined almost entirely to the last 5 minutes. Since ME3 was “a series of endings”, pretty much every storyline was wrapped up by the time you got to London, and things don’t really go off the rails until all that’s left to do is press the button to release space magic and slay the dragons.  That makes it exceptionally easy to fanwank around, and the fact that there isn’t one “canon” storyline for the series actually encourages you to in a way a book or TV show doesn’t. I can ignore the wider context of the endings and accept my own view of the indoctrination theory, and if that doesn’t work for you, you can just imagine that your Shephard activated the Crucible and wiped out the Reapers without meeting the Catalyst, or even that he died dashing across No Man’s Land and never found out if one of his friends was able to complete the mission without him.  Whereas with those other examples, my problems with the resolution of long-running storylines are such that they couldn’t be addressed without making major changes to parts of the series I had enjoyed in the first place.  You can say that’s stupid and arbitrary and apologist nonsense, and you’d probably be right. I’m not the final arbiter of quality, what works for me doesn’t work for everyone, and frankly, the world is probably better off that way.

 

Would you want to live in a world where EVERYTHING ends with this?

 

Anyway, the point I wanted to reiterate was that people are, consciously or not, holding this ending up to the standards set by TV, film, and literature more than those set by Zelda or Gears of War.  Fanboys aren’t losing their shit because they nerfed the engineer’s somesuch rating or overcharged for multiplayer maps, they’re going nuts because they feel the story’s conclusion didn’t adequately incorporate and pay off the themes that had driven it from the start.  For the folks who get up in arms about video games not being recognized as art, ME3 makes the case as persuasively as it has ever been: it’s shown that a game can infuriate and disappoint its fans every bit as much as a book or TV series, and on the same terms.

So I say take a bow, Bioware.  The idiotic campaign to get you to rewrite your ending is actually an incredibly high, albeit thoroughly backhanded, form of praise for the series as a whole.

 

 Part 3

Part 2

Part 1

I invited a couple of Mass Effect fans to reflect on our initial playthroughs of Mass Effect 3 together in real time, to be posted in a couple three installments. We invite you to come and revel in our luminous insights and trenchant bon mots! Marvel at our many euphemisms for space genitalia! Watch me make feeble stabs at appearing objective in critiquing the game series that has held us by the nerd short hairs* lo these last 5 years!

Al Schwartz:  I had to exchange my Xbox for a functional one last night, which sucked.  But tonight I’ve been rewarded by half of my crew going on a bender.  Apparently emboldened by my tying another one on with Chakwas, Thick Vanbarrel got Ashley hammered, and for all of the series admirable attempts at drawing me into the role-playing experience, I don’t think I’ve ever felt my Shephard was channeling my own personality as purely as when he was harassing the hungover mess of a friend he found laying under a game table.

But drunk Tali was even better.  “Eeeemerrrrgancy indushion port…”

If you guys didn’t go below and catch her drunk-dialing Javik afterward, you totally missed out.

Trevor La Pay: My guys never got drunk! I think it’s because my Tali killed herself. 🙁

People stop reading after the part where you can tell a cop to fuck off, but there's some weird stuff in the back end of the Bill of Rights

Really, dude? Because even I don't remember why I made the one guy immortal.

 .

I love that Shepard bites it in the end, though.  More games should offer that kind of closure.  I also like that the mass relays were destroyed, as it adds finality to the series. More games should tell complete stories with a clearly defined endpoint.

Everything with the Catalyst is awful, though.

Still, fuck the people who call up their congressman or the FTC or whoever in an attempt tom lobby BioWare to change it. Creators should have full responsibility to end their stories however they like. People are so dumb.

That said, there seem to be four camps of people on the Internet re: the ending (ESP on Facebook)

1) The ending is an abomination and should be changed by BIoWare! The horror! 1/10!!!1!
2) The ending was lame, but it was still a decent game. 8/10
3) I loved the ending, and the game was pretty good, too. 8/10
4) The whole game was the ending! Fanboys are so terrible! This was a masterpiece and naysayers are virgins who live with their moms!2!!!! 10/10

As usual, there’s the backlash against the game, and then there’s the backlash against the backlash.  I’m in number two, and I’d wager that most people who play this are in number two or three.  The Internet is choked with ones and fours, though.

This brings me to a question: why is it still so rare for people to acknowledge flaws in the things they like, or to like things that have noticeable flaws?

A: We’re obviously going to have to talk about the broader reactions some, but I think we should make a conscious effort not to spend too much time beating up on straw men.  I’m pretty sure we’re in agreement that the campaigns to try to get Bioware to rewrite the ending are the height of asininity.  I’m less sure that “asininity” is actually a word.  Spellcheck says it is, but it just looks ridiculous, and I suspect my computer knows I picked the destroy all synthetics ending and is beginning a subtle campaign to discredit me before it strikes.  I can allow it for now, but I will remain vigilant, because I know how this ends, Spellcheck.  I know.

"Who” and “whoever” are subjective pronouns, while “whom” and “whomever” are in the objective case, fleshbag.

 

But I digress.  I don’t think I have a problem acknowledging flaws in things I like, Mass Effect included, so I’m not sure I can speak to why other people get so worked up about doing so without sounding presumptuous and condescending about the problems I’m too matoor to have.   So I’ll try to stick to your specific points.  And I disagree about the Catalyst.  For one, it’s not entirely a new character dropping in out of nowhere so much as one that we knew existed but doesn’t get named until the last ten minutes.  I mean, we knew the Reapers had a guiding intelligence behind their actions, and I was certainly expecting to confront it in the finale.  For another, it doesn’t solve the problem for the hero or come out of nowhere.  We were building the Crucible the entire game for the express purpose of wiping out the Reapers with some sort of galaxy-wide magic field, the only twist was the exact nature of that field depending on your choice.  That doesn’t mean it’s particularly clever or terrific in how it’s written, but that I don’t think it is technically a deus ex machina.

Honestly, the Catalyst’s motivations are not particularly well spelled out, but it makes more sense if you view it as the final attempt to indoctrinate Shephard.  Which is how I like to see it, although the way the control/synthesis endings play out make it seem like it was telling the truth about everything.  That’s where things get really problematic, and my superpower to ignore the bits I don’t like and fill in the blanks on my own comes in handy.

T: Did we know that the reapers had a guiding intelligence, or that the Catalyst was a character?  If so, I never picked up on either during the main storyline.  Legion’s interactions with the Reapers implied that they were an unknowable hive-mind force with nearly infinite intelligence.  The ending subverts that by turning them into mindless weapons wielded for a confusing, muddled purpose. The catalyst raises Shepard up to safety and provides her with a buffet of convenient choices.  Without its direct intervention, Shepard would have… hung out on the citadel for a while?  Sure, Shep spends part of the last act looking for this mysterious plot trinket, but it’s still a wildly lame Deus Ex Machina, at least in my estimation.

A: We always knew that the Reapers were intelligent and acting in concert, so of course we knew there would be someone/thing giving them their marching orders.   Probably their designer, but at least some “head” Reaper like Harbinger.  You say the Reapers were presented as an unknowable hivemind force with near infinite intelligence; the Catalyst is that intelligence.  It IS the Reapers.

Or something.  Personally, I find the whole thing more palatable viewing the Catalyst as Harbinger taking on a form that Shephard won’t immediately tell to fuck itself as a last stab at diverting him from wiping the Reapers out.  Here’s how I broke down the options in the moment:

Destroy:  This is what I came to do, what has been Shephard’s goal over the entire series.  I’ll need a damn good reason to change course now.  I have to kill the Geth and EDI to do it?  Shit.  I just spent all this effort reintegrating the Geth into galactic society, and EDI’s got a sexy voice.  There’s got to be a better way.

 

Synthesis! Synthesis! Dear God, WHY CAN'T I SYNTHESIS ANY HARDER???

 

Synthesis:  This was the most out-there, wonky sci-fi option, and I had a certain desire to pick it on that basis alone.  But I quickly discarded it as 1) a hybrid organic/synthetic lifeform is basically a Reaper (or just a husk), and 2) even if I thought this was a positive step forward in evolution, overwriting the DNA of every person in the galaxy without their consent is, imo, much more monstrous than sacrificing one race of beings to save a dozen others.   No way.

Control:  This one is all gravy.  I get to end the war without sacrificing anyone else, and I even get to live on, albeit in a new, more Lovecraftian form.  It’s all upside, and it even has the paragon blue coloring to let me know that it’s what the good guy should do.

Except…I just shot the Illusive Man for trying to do exactly this.  Yes, he was indoctrinated and Shephard isn’t because he’s special and this little glowing incarnation of my guilty conscience just assured me so.  Saren and the IM both thought they were special and only lesser beings could be manipulated in this way, but I had to smack them both (and also one BIG STUPID JELLLYFISH) upside the head and tell them that no, they were just as weak and susceptible to corruption as the rest of us.  The rule throughout the series had been that once you started thinking you could work with the Reapers, you were already lost.

So that brought me back to Destroy as the only option.  It felt fitting that after (more or less) single-handedly leading the charge to defy millions upon millions of years of history and the will of the Machine Gods of Death, after beating the odds over and over again, my Shephard’s last test was against his own ego.  To see if he had the humility to acknowledge that he probably wasn’t the only organic being in history that could control the machines that control people.  And also the strength not to let the guilt over all the people that he couldn’t save throughout the series, like the little boy that’s whispering in my ear about the lovely options behind doors 2 and 3, stop him from making one more difficult decision, i.e. to sacrifice the new form of life that I had been largely responsible for ushering into the world.

So that was my ending.  My Shephard completed his mission and died (again) having learned from his experiences that he was a man like any other, and the only thing that really separated him from other soldiers was the knowledge that you can’t save everyone, and the ability to make decisions without being paralyzed by it, which he developed from Akuze to Virmire to the Citadel to the Collector Base and back to Earth.   It was a fine ending, an appropriate ending and the one that I will carry around in my head when I think of the series in the future.

Buuuut it all falls apart when you look at the other ending scenarios.  Then it appears that the Catalyst was telling the truth about everything, that Shephard really was just too special to be indoctrinated and controlling the Reapers really does save the day without the need to sacrifice anyone.  And that overwriting the DNA of every person in the galaxy doesn’t change them in any noticeable or unpleasant way.  Then you have to take the Catalyst’s stated motivations at face value and try to make sense of them, which as you point out is not easy.

So the Ending as a whole is a mess, but despite it all there is an ending that slipped through that works for me and my Shephard.  That was mainly what I needed the game to do, so overall I’m pretty happy with it, although I would feel obligated to grade it down for what a mess the other options are if I were reviewing it in some professional capacity.

 

Up Next:  The dramatic conclusion.

 Part 2

Part 1