Prognosis: The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)

I remember going to see this movie in theatres, cautiously optimistic. I figured, hey, this could be great. The original, made in 1951, was a great little movie that I thought had the potential to make a solid reboot, giving a modern reinterpretation of the actions that take place in the film. While the posters and trailers of the older movie advertised the robot-attack as the feature of the movie, most of the film was a commentary that discussed peculiarities of human society from the perspective of an alien, such as family dynamics, societal norms, and war. In the end, it left us with a hopeful message of global reform to encourage a unified planet. A reboot would be an excellent opportunity to reinforce this message while reiterating more relevant modern societal issues.

Oh, how wrong I was.

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Concerning Star Wars Kinect

Honest, does this little shrimp look like you?

Now that exactly fifteen people have asked me if I've heard about the "disgrace" called  Star Wars Kinect since it came out, I'm going to put my full reaction here for the record.

I'll go ahead and say it; the fanbase response is patently ridiculous. Why should the fans even care? Is anyone forcing you to play this game? Is this game targeted at your demographic? Was this game somehow meant to expand canon? No, nope, and never respectively. Older, jaded Star Wars fans are just using this as another flimsy excuse to indulge in their favorite pastime - shitting on George Lucas. In all honestly, I find this reaction and the practice it stems from mortally embarrassing as a fan of the franchise.

Seriously. If you're over the age of 16, LucasArts gives exactly zero fucks about what you think of Star Wars Kinect. This is not your toy.

Off Topic: Oh no, not Miracle Whip again...

This post is a bit outside of the gaming purview of the blog, but it's something that's been bothering me. I thought I'd seen the end of this dumb marketing campaign ages ago. If you're in the states, I'm almost certain you know which ones I mean from the title -- a seductive female voice tells you about how cool and trendy Miracle Whip is for all you hip kids out there while attractive, smiling youths in fashionable clothes pose suggestively with jars of mayonnaise, all filmed with a shaky camera while abstract shapes float through the background. Classy stuff.

Needless to say, I was a bit disappointed when I opened The Onion today to find an edgy Miracle Whip graffiti splash sprawling over the top stories.

Avengers Tangentials: Whedon, Firefly, etc.

With the Avengers' movie coming out, I'm finding that I'm particularly more reserved regarding Joss Whedon compared to the rest of the geek community at large. Please don't misunderstand me here -- I like his stuff. He's got talent, his work is solid, and he's definitely been a hit with the geek crowd. I'm in no position to say he is bad in any capacity. However, it's his notably high popularity in the geek crowd that makes me wonder about his inclusion in The Avengers. I assume the movie will be fine, and that Whedon's style will fit well with the team-based story at work. I just can't shake the feeling that he was included so they could brandish his name around to attract more viewers. Again, this is likely not the case, but it's just that nagging though in the back of my brain.

I can understand that someone could say the same of George Lucas or Steven Spielberg, and I'd a agree to an extent -- especially in the former. Whedon and Lucas are both creators of highly popular franchises, so they both carry the associated baggage with their name from other projects. Maybe it's just because of the people I hang out with and the sites I visit, but Whedon's name always snags people's attention, almost instantly getting people to instantly wax nostalgic over Firefly and Buffy. The same applies for Lucas and Star Wars., although there is often a hint of animosity with the Star Wars "purists" (another post? I think so). Spielberg's name, while it gets your attention, isn't associated with any popular franchises* and instead gets you by individual titles, like E.T. and Schindler's List. Franchises just seem to be what sticks to the mainstream, which isn't a bad thing at all -- Firefly, Star Wars, Pokemon,  Twilight, Game of Thrones, The Avengers, and Batman are but a few modern examples.

Sci-Fi Ideas: Savoring the "New Toy Smell"

We all know the sensation -- that satisfying smell when you crack open a game for the first time, the lingering scent of a new car, opening a bag of Legos for the first time. It's that sickly sweet smell that permeates the air after opening a package, giving us the satisfying, sensual reward of spending our hard-earned money. We often use it as an argument against digital distribution of games and music. Consumers love it so much that they will actually purchase fragrances to make things smell as though they were new, which is made even more ironic given the nature of these fumes. So what's the deal with that "new toy" smell?

Naturally, part of this smell comes from our own projected expectations -- something about opening the mint copy of a game you've searched years for is different than opening a new copy of Microsoft Office for Windows 7. Still, there is a tangible element of the smell created by the off-gassing of plastics, including chemicals like formaldehyde, phthalates, esters, and industry-made fragrances -- for example, the famous "new car smell" is actually a product of the glue they use to hold parts of the cabin together. Multiple studies have shown that these chemical cocktails are detrimental to your general health, but that doesn't stop us from enjoying the scent of Sharpies or heavily scented candles. These chemicals mixed with our expectations produce a unique unboxing for any given car, game, disc, or toy.

My thought: what if box-opening eventually becomes something similar to wine-tasting? If you look at it in the broad sense, there are plenty of parallels. To me, it seems to all stem from the concept outlined in this XKCD strip. Even if it doesn't pan out in the real world, it's definitely an interesting sci-fi premise to explore.

Prognosis: Stay Alive (2006 film)

 
To say the least, Stay Alive is quite a... curious film.

For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, it’s a fairly formulaic horror flick with the now memetic tagline “If you die in the game, you die for real.” Essentially, a group of teens and twenty-somethings play a survival-horror multiplayer game together. As each character dies in the game, they die in an almost identical fashion in the next hour. It’s a neat idea with no big surprises here. What’s so disappointing about this movie is that it should have been pretty good. The premise was original, the late-movie twists were good, and there was lots of fairly creative direction. When you watch the film you can see that most of the pieces of a quality film are there. All things considered, this should have been a B- movie. Sadly, the final cut feels sadly more like a struggling D+ by the time you get to the credits.

So where did Stay Alive go wrong?

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"Avengers" Tangentials: the Hulk

I'm really excited for the new Avengers movie coming out this summer. Honestly, with all the buildup and foreshadowing they've had in the past several Marvel movies, I really can't help it. We get to see significant interaction between superheroes for the first time, the convergence of several very different plotlines, the first action role of Nick Fury, and generally a lot of exciting things.

While this is the case, it does bring several of my thoughts on the genre and the general state of science fiction to the forefront of my mind. It reminds me of how superheroes have contributed to the recent surge of nerd popularity, my general dislike for the Hulk, my impressions of Joss Whedon relative to the rest of the science fiction community, and how this massively successful genre has helped reshape how blockbusters are written, directed, and produced. I'll use the next few Mondays to use The Avengers to expand on these thoughts, starting this week with my thoughts on the Hulk.