It All Ended [Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 ]

 And so the saga ends, and ends relatively well. The final installment in the film series based off of JK Rowling's beloved books was fast paced, energetic, pretty, fun, full of rewarding moments and some great effects and set pieces. I enjoyed myself immensely. I only wish it hadn't thrown into such sharp relief how poor her overall plotting and the structure of our heroes' journies were. After a very long conversation with a smart movie-going friend who hasn't read the books, and doing my fair share of defending the events because of the things he didn't know about but agreeing with much of what he was saying, I sat on it all for a day and decided to swing by the ol' blog and put some of this out there for posterity's sake.

For the record, this post is going to be NOTHING BUT SPOILERS.  It's also going to be very critical of the last book/movie's plot and have a lot of wishful thinking in it.



It's fair that you know this about me: The only thing I hate more than the 6th and 7th HP books is the 3rd HP movie. And like, nazis. Focusing on the wizarding world of Harry Potter, though, it's books 6 and 7 and movie 3. Everything in Order of the Phoenix seems to be unraveling, messy and scattered and desperate. At the time of my first reading the 5th book, I thought this was an intentional stylistic choice: The style and structure of the book reflected the state of the world and the character's lives.

Now I... don't think that. Books 6 and 7 made me rethink that.

It is additionally only fair to say that I have only read those books once. I sat down and read each one, cover to cover, on the mornings of their release. I scowled furiously at the pages to will them into being interesting, into making sense, into not just introducing a continual stream of characters and items that I hadn't heard of and didn't know or care about, but all I did was give myself a headache and a worry mark that has yet to fade. I have not revisited them since.

The problems I have with the final film, however, are largely descended from problems in those books.

Nothing really changes. A lot of people die, which is sad (not that you can tell that from the actions of anyone on screen after a buffer of about 10 seconds post mortem), but because EVERYTHING is about Harry's life and Voldemort's defeat, once those are addressed.... we don't get to see any lasting changes in the characters (except who they had babies with and what their hair color is and what their names are God I hate the epilogue, and except Neville, kind of, more on that below).

Ron isn't there. Oh, he's in almost every scene, standing around, looking a bit glum and confused, but he doesn't do anything in the entire movie. He didn't really do anything in the last one but it was okay because of ring-bearer syndrome, and the fact that we still had one movie left to go. I don't remember if this is accurate to the book or not, but was he a total waste of space there, too? Here is a case of the film, being a film, needing something more than what the book gave us, if so. Not even that much. Yes, he should have been doing a lot in the final installment- and we'll talk about that in a sec and, again, also, NEVILLE- but all it really would have taken is a single scene.

Harry tells Ron and Hermione he has to go (commit suicide by Voldemort). Hermione starts crying and hugging him and begging him not to and saying good-bye. Ron stands stupidly in the background, watching them with a blank face and uncomfortable posture. What should have happened then: As Harry pulls away and starts down the stairs, Ron says aloud, "I don't understand. What does he mean?" Hermione, still crying, knowing Ron knows but just won't let himself see it says something to the effect of "Oh, Ron, he has to do this. He has to." Ron, still bewildered and half-numb from the shock of his brother's extremely recent death, frowns and pushes forward past her, after Harry, saying "No, no way in hell is he going off alone. He can't go alone. I won't let him." It falls to Hermione to stop him, trying to tell him there's nothing left for them to do, that they have to let him face it by himself (even though this is ridiculous and there is no way they would ever have let him go alone if it weren't for Nagini, which renders the snake little more than a device to accomplish separating the trio).

Ron then breaks down, with a protest to the effect of "We can't, we can't, we can't let him go, not him too. I won't let him go, not him, too," and then falls apart crying which means Hermione has to get steely and be their rock, the way she always is. This doesn't weaken Ron- it shows him to be a) devastated and wounded possibly beyond repair, b) a true friend who would never abandon Harry, and c) not a cardboard cutout stapled to a mannequin. Ron does NOTHING in this movie and it is a goddamn shame, because it cements the fact that the films and their message are no longer about friendship, they're just about Dealing With Harry's Shit.

Neville is a Bad Ass. Just like we always knew he would be. I loved getting to see it. I loved that he was funny, I loved that he was sweet, I loved that he was totally manning up and being a leader in Harry's absence. He gave good taunt, he gave good but misplaced speech, he gave good sword-wielding. The only problem is.... it should have been Ron.  In the books, we've known Neville was destined for great things. We knew the Dark Lord could have marked Neville as his equal, we knew Neville kept every gum wrapper his daft mum ever gave him, we knew Neville had secret depths, reserves of strength and will that would blossom into awesomeness when the occasion called. And it did, and he did, and it was great. In the movies, though, Neville isn't set up to take the spotlight. He's not the one constantly being overshadowed by Harry's celebrity and skill, but hanging in as a good friend, regardless- that's Ron. Yes, Neville is a Gryffindor, not the misplaced Hufflepuff everyone thought him to be, and he proves it through and through. However, the emotional impact of Neville standing up to Voldemort and saying Harry would live on in their hearts along with all the others they'd lost along the way is nowhere near as great as it would have been had Ron stepped forward, told everyone that Harry had never given up and neither would they, that even with Harry gone they would all keep fighting to the bitter end because it was the right thing to do, and lifted up the sword of Gryffindor and led the charge.

It just would have meant more.


The Malfoys Suck except Narcissa. Woman had one concern and one concern only and when she had achieved her goal, she bounced. Draco didn't redeem himself by Not Doing Anything Effectively.  Failure should not count as Redemption. He just sucked at everything and so skated by as Not Quite As Evil As Everyone Else Here. Lucius should have died. More importantly, Lucius should have died defending a defiant Draco. When they told him to cross the line in the sand, Draco should have been like "No," and Voldemort should have been like "Like I care, you're such a waste, avada kedavra," and Lucius should have apparated into the path of the death beam to save his son's life and incite both him and his mother to action. LOOK, SUDDENLY THE MALFOYS ARE HEROES. And maybe if this had happened, Tom Felton wouldn't have looked like a gross weirdo in the epilogue. Maybe he would have fake-aged better.

Dumbledore Family Feud is a thing, apparently, but that's all you'll ever know. ALBUS WAS A MANIPULATIVE USER WITH A DARK PAST. The.... end. If you had to use a flashback, Yates, that would have been the time. This movie could EASILY and very SUCCESSFULLY have been another 45 minutes long, and fifteen of that could have been a journey into Albus Dumbledore's past. For real. The cost of the decision he makes about Harry that we discover, the lengths he went through to get the Elder Wand, the reason he went after the Resurrection Stone- none of that is in the movies because all we get is Aberforth the goat lover being angry, the end.

Lupin's Imaginary Son or, more overwhelmingly, the complete inability of the last two movies to convey any sense of the passage of time. Christmas happened. I know, because Hermione told Harry 'Happy Christmas' in a graveyard. But how the hell did we go from a passing hint that Tonks was preggers in 1H7 to her and Lupin having a kid and her being on her feet in fighting form in 2H7. I mean, did I know about it? Yeah, I read the books. But I had no sense whatsoever that it had been more than 9 months from what I was being shown. Suddenly makes all those sweeping panoramic views of Hogwarts changing seasons in the earlier flicks seem like a brilliant use of screen time. That's another scene I desperately wanted rewritten, and it would have gone as follows:

Harry: But Lupin, your son-
Ghost Lupin: It's all right, Harry. Someday he'll-
Ghost Sirius: Just a bloody moment, your what?
Ghost Lupin: Oh. Ah, well, Sirius, Nymphadora and I-
Ghost Sirius: My cousin? You knocked up my cousin?!
Ghost James: Atta boy, Moony!
Ghost Lupin: James, please don't exacerbate things.
Ghost Sirius: You pervy bastard, she's half our age! And you're gay!
Ghost James: ....wait, what-
Ghost Lilly: :\
Harry: Wow, I'm running late here, gotta go guys, thanks for the pep talk.

Voldemort Is Stupid. Just in general. How he gets awesomely fucked up GREAT villains like Bellatrix Lestrange and Barty Crouch Jr. to be his loyal pets is seriously beyond me. Starting in the 5th installment, all Voldemort literally does is get weaker.

Voldemort Should Have Possessed All Three Deathly Hallows because if he doesn't, what the fuck is the point? As it happens, between the two of them, Harry and Dumbledore had ALL THREE. AT THE SAME TIME. BY YOUR POWERS COMBINED, I AM not appearing in these books. Okay, so we have the Hallows assembled and.... nothing happens with them, really, at all. Fine. Voldemort gets his hands one one of them, and by the rules of wand lore and dueling, it's not even really his. So the Hallows are worth precisely................... nothing. They're totally pointless except to have sent Harry on a wild fucking goose chase through the woods and kept him camping, literally camping. In a tent. For the better part of a year. Wha-whu-WHY? If Voldemort had all three Hallows, wouldn't that be a little more intimidating?! Wouldn't that be something they really had to defeat, someone who was suddenly supposedly unkillable?  This ties directly into the additional fact that Nagini Dies Last and it's a terrible idea. The trio needed to go after every horcrux they knew about. Their entire quest is a quest for information on how to defeat the Dark Lord. So imagine this: The Dark Lord is searching for the Hallows while the trio's searching for the Horcruxes. The trio destroys all but one: Nagini, the snake who never leaves his side. They now know their only hope for defeating Voldemort, who wields the three most powerful magical artifacts in existence, is to confront him directly and kill that snake. So they do so.

And Voldemort doesn't die. Neither, however, does he manage to kill Harry. The trio and whoever's left in their army flee, crushed and desperate and confused. Voldemort, furious that the Elder Wand is not bowing to his will and augmenting his power as it should, has his confrontation with Snape. Kills Snape, feels invincible because now he truly possesses the Deathly Hallows, yay him. The trio, knowing they're missing something vital here, do much as they did in the book/movie and spy on Snape's death, get the tears, go to the pensive etc. This makes the final battle so much more epic. First off, as the troops are rallying and recovering, it gives Harry time to ruminate on who Snape was to him, who Snape was to his family, the magnitude of what Snape has done and given up not only out of his love for Lilly, but out of his love for Harry, the last piece of her to survive. It also gives him time to wrestle with the idea that Dumbledore betrayed him. It also means that when the Hogwarts crew takes the field of battle the last time, they know two things: First off, that Voldemort thinks he's invincible because he posses the Deathly Hallows, and secondly that Harry is the last horcrux, and Harry must die. It makes everyone complicit in his sacrifice and it makes the magnitude of his death much, much greater. When Voldemort kills Harry in front of both armies, has his moment of boasting, and then Harry comes back and finishes Voldemort off with everyone's favorite locked-magic-wand-beams-going-kablooey move, it's like.... holy crap, man. That's huge. It also proves the Deathly Hallows to be what they are, which is mere shadows of power, not true mastery of death. If any or all of them are destroyed in that final confrontation, so much the better.

As things stand, the shape of events are.... less than epic. They're an ending, surely, but people don't get their due or their chance to be better or rise above or come back.  It was okay in the books- all the characters got enough page time that I never noticed them sucking. Things were scattered and confused, and I had difficulty following what exactly was happening why, when- but compressed and put onto a movie screen, all that stuff just becomes glaring, like a sharp, thick blue line of lens flare.

Sorry, JJ, but seriously, enough now.

I clapped and cheered and enjoyed the hell out of a lot of what I saw. I thought a lot of scenes were extremely effective: Seeing Fred being cornered by that Death Eater, reaching for his wand, and knowing he won't make it. The most sympathetic blind dragon in the universe getting his freedom. Ron and Hermione's kiss. Perfection. But even with a movie as well executed as this, it just made me see how poorly executed the events of the books were, in the end.

 But they're all going to be bajillionaires, so who gives a crap what I think?

Next up: Comic-Con and CAPTAIN AMERICA (fuck yeah).

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Dragon Age 2: The Mass Effectening

AKA Dragon Age 2: The Consolizationing. Or Dragon Age 2: The Not Quite As Engrossing As Dragon Age: Origins And Not Quite As Cinematic As Mass Effect 2 But Still Quite A Fun Gamening. It has, as you can plainly see, many titles. My personal favorite is Dragon Age 2: Templar Boogaloo.


The non-spoilery rundown is as follows: You play Hawke, the young refugee from Lothering, who travels from Ferelden to the Free Marches city of Kirkwall in search of an ancestral home to reclaim. You play through the next decade of Hawke's life as he or she rises from impoverished nothing to become hailed as the Champion of Kirkwall. You make friends, you make enemies, you make money, you make corpses- typical fair for any adventurer, and in the end, you make some very big choices that have huge ramifications on the lives of the people of the Free Marches and, potentially, the world.

The game bears a passing familiarity if the only Bioware title you've played is Dragon Age: Origins. It kind of looks the same, sort of. It's much prettier- the characters are rendered in better detail and are largely more attractive (Highlite the text for a spoiler: Until you see Alistair in one of his cameos and go WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?! NOT THE FACE. NOT HIS BEAUTIFUL FACE. The same goes for Zevran. Somehow, the characters from DA:O are not nearly as good looking as they were. It positively boggles the mind.) Their hair sways almost naturally as they talk or fight. It's quite charming. The environments bear a lot of the same structuring as DA:O, but are more lush, are fuller and more detailed, particularly the coasts and mountains. There are far, far fewer locals to visit, however, and this is disappointing. We finally see the world outside Ferelden (not counting the locations visited in the expansions for Origins), and find ourselves contained to one very small part of it. We have only one city to explore, one and sort of a half mountains, and one seaside. When new quests arrive, they only occur in the same recycled hotspots of each map. In terms of scale, DA2 is dwarfed by DA:O.


Despite it's uncanny, permeating and intentional resemblance to Bioware's other franchise, DA2 is similarly anemic in scope when compared to Mass Effect 2, the game on which DA2's conversation and decision-making mechanisms are based. The combat is pulled back enough to allow you to manage your entire group, not as much as in DA:O and is actually much more fun to play on a console than the first installment. In appearance and gameplay, DA2 is a very solid bastardization, taking what ostensibly should have been the best parts of Origins and ME2 and then fundamentally missing the point.

There are many places in which Dragon Age 2 succeeds. The characters are colorful and interesting, the combat is fluid, the decisions are hard, it's just that none of them reach the standard set in the two games that influenced DA2 the most. The character voicing is wonderful: Jo Wyatt moves seamlessly but distinctively through the noble, sarcastic and hard ass options, always managing to sound like the same character despite the extremes in the choices of response. Nicholas Boulton, for all that I'm only four hours into my dude!Hawke playthrough, seems so far similarly adept at managing this balance in the character. He has a nice voice, and unlike ME2, I don't feel obligated to make him a douche bag. Side note: If you haven't played ME2, do so, and play as dude!Shep, and make him as mean as possible, because nothing but hilarity will ensue. Howden, Roth, Emery, Kruger, Newman and Myles all deliver well nuanced performances as your hero's traveling ensemble, and their banter is interesting and human, but the truly stand-out performance of DA2- as Steve Valentine (Alistair) was of DA:O and Michael Beattie (Mordin Solus) was of ME2,  is Brian Bloom as Varric Tethras. Regardless of who you decide to romance in the game, Varric will probably be the one relationship you care about the most. Roguish, charming, mercenary, laconic, sharp- Varric not only has one of the coolest weapons of the game, but is by far the best developed of the companions. He is also your questionably-reliable narrator.


Dragon Age 2 is a story being told. Varric, being interrogated by an operative of the Chantry, is recounting the tale of the Champion's involvement in the plot's main event. This leads to some truly wonderful moments, particularly when Varric lies. It's a device that works tremendously well for the story, and a unique take on linear gameplay, especially when massive time-jumps are involved, that I quite liked and that Bioware really has a knack for (see also: the opening act of ME2).



In so far as Romancing goes, your options are automatically doubled as most of your companions swing both ways. Very cool. I found the lack of interaction opportunities a little vexing, though. There was always something both fun and reassuring in the fact that at any point during our travels, my Grey Warden could turn to any companion and have a conversation. In fact, the player feels encouraged to do so throughout the course of Origins, because initiating random conversations, particularly in conjunction with gift giving, frequently led to fantastically written exchanges that you had no prompting at all to experience. It felt very organic, and was extremely cool. Being instructed by the game to talk to your fellows makes it feel like a mission, and this is mostly because one is usually attached to any chat you may have. I also miss being approached out of the blue by a companion with an issue or a question. Sometimes they'll show up at your house to give you a quest- your home and theirs having replaced a 'camp' where everyone congregates- but not often. The crew in ME2 felt more disparate, and each individual crew member was not so predictable or one-note as the DA2 companions are. This is not a comment on the performances, bear in mind, but the way the characters are written. They are cool and they are interesting, but not as cool or interesting as those in ME2. They are idiosyncratic and they are human, but not half so much as the characters in DA:O.  This seems to be the ultimate trend of Dragon Age 2- the whole is not necessarily greater than the sum of its parts, but every component is somehow lacking when held up against its predecessors.



In ME2, I didn't mourn the random conversations that made DA:O so real and so engrossing. The game works seamlessly, and I didn't find any one part lacking, although during a second playthrough the planet probing aspect was tedious; In DA:O, I didn't mind not having a voiced main character, because the dialogue trees were so extensive and the performances by the companions so complete; and in both games, the mission was so grand, the tasks so epic, the world so vast that at times I felt overwhelmed by possibility, but never impatient- except in combat. Difficult fights in DA:O were messy and repetitive, and this has been vastly improved for console users in DA2, though I hear the PC gamers' experience has been less thrilling. As for everything else, DA2 just doesn't quite hit the mark.


Now, it can be argued that DA2 is a much more personal game. You're following one person's rise and possible fall in one city. Much like I think the Iron Man movies showed, a hero's journey can be personal and the stakes don't have to be world endingly high for the story to be grand and feel important. DA2's sort of doesn't, though, and at the end of the game I was left with the feeling that the choices I had made didn't really affect the outcome that much- everything is very binary in DA2. You are for the mages, or you are for the templars, there is no middle ground. At every major plot point, all the little things you thought you were doing, all the times you tried to be fair and balanced, go out the window and you're left with a black or white decision to make. So what's the point of all the little decisions in between? The overall experience just wasn't as fulfilling. This has nothing to do with any attempt on my part to replace human relationships or success in my career with video games. Shut up.

Overall, the game is very pretty and very fun, but fails to surpass what came before.


Now for the spoilertastic fangirly bits. You can stop reading now, I'll just be over here freaking out.

(More after the jump)





The fanservice in act three of this game is absolutely ridiculous. Out of the woodwork comes Leliana, Zevran, and Alistair. Oddly, they are not as attractive as they were in the first game. Alistair looks bland and puffy, and HIS HAIR ISN'T THE SAME WHY. WHY IS THE HAIR NOT EXACTLY THE SAME IT JUST LOOKS DIFFERENT WHY. DO NOT WANT. Zevran's lovely, fine boned features do not mesh well with the new Elf design, which features the nose so Roman it's practically an aqueduct. Leliana looks okay, but her lips aren't as pouty and her eyes aren't as bright. It's just sort of strange. Smaller characters from Origins reappear, also, like Cullen. Last seen being outraged at my Grey Warden's decision to spare the Ferelden Circle of Magi, he is now the right-hand templar of Knight-Commander Meredith, who is an unadulterated bitch. Still, Cullen is sort of a long-suffering puppy, and it was nice to see the ginger bastard again. The characters I missed the most, of course, were Oghren (who would not approve in the slightest of slick surface-dwarf Varric, and also- HOW did Bioware manage to make a game without Steve Blum in it? I'm baffled.), Shale and Sten. Sten, the Qunari with a heart of gold. Or something. Mark Hildreth's performance of Sten was more moving than any of the Qunari voices in DA2, but I think that has more to do with the race's activities and relationship to the Champion. If you ever read this, I love you, Mark, and whatever the whining otaku said, I thought your Heero Yuy was excellent. Man, I'm a dork.



There is some seriously dark stuff in DA2. In Origins, I was not infrequently taken aback by the choices presented me: killing a small child, manipulating my fiance into sleeping with a witch so she would conceive a demon baby, aiding and abetting despots. Whatevs. By far the most unnerving creature in Origins was, of course, the Brood Mother. The Brood Mother is what the darkspawn turn women into. They taint the women with their blood, then force feed her people until she becomes a giant grotesque darkspawn breeding creature. It is Nightmare Fuel of the very Highest Octane. Similarly, the characters have dark pasts that involve serious emotional abuse, physical abuse, enslavement, etcetera, but everything is couched in terms vague enough to be merely unsettling and not necessarily evocative of a visceral response. In DA2, when Anders just comes right on out with the information that templars raping circle mages is not uncommon, or when Fenris talks about his past as a slave and life under the magisters, it's a bit shocking.  There is a lot of very disturbing sexual content that you never see, but is most certainly there. The violence level is extremely high, not just because the blood spatter is as unlikely as ever, but because terrible things are done to people who do not deserve them and cannot defend themselves, and the repercussions are dire. Kirkwall is not a nice place, and the people in it are not, for the most part, lawful good. If they think they are, watch out, because they might be a serial killer.


No, actually.


Let's talk about the Qunari mage. In a truly grotesque moment, the player is shown what the Qunari does to their magi: they bind and shackle them, weld iron masks to their heads, and sew their mouths shut. Magic is chaos and at odds with the Qun. They are leashed like dogs and used like tools, but then, all Qunari at tools of the Qun. They may choose to be, which is obedience to the Qun, or they may choose NOT to be, which means they will be exterminated. After quite the ordeal to get a Qun mage safely out of Kirkwall, he chooses- instead of living a life as an exile of the Qun- to obey the will of the Qun and immolate himself. Not particularly quickly. It is horrific. And amazing.


Talking about horrific and amazing, let's talk about the end of the game. THE VERY END OF THE GAME. THE LAST THING THAT HAPPENS IN IT. PLEASE STOP READING IF YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED IT YET.

So, having quite liked Anders in Awakening and finding his newly tortured and Justified soul (haha) to be rather endearing, my Champion chose Anders to become romantically involved in. We were all kinds of in love, everything was going swell- until he started acting like a sketchy bitch, asking me to distract high ranking members of the church while he went a-skulking about, donning black robes and being suddenly distant and not at all affectionate. What the hell is this?


Oh, it's him bombing a church like a damn terrorist. Fantastic.  The magnitude of what Anders does is huge, and automatically belittles everything that happened in the game before it, because nothing you do can prevent it from happening. Now, this makes sense from the point of view of the narration: these events have already happened, they are simply being told and you are, essentially, acting out the telling. But nothing else you do in the game feels as though it has any real significance in the face of this event. The Arashok must be defeated, the elves are going to get wiped out, your sibling is going to either confiscated by the Chantry or sentenced to death by the Dark Spawn. There's no feeling of possibility spiraling outward from your character like in DA:O and ME2. I just wish the game had felt like more. All this said, I really, really enjoyed my time with it. I got invested and had emotional responses, I admired the turns that companions' stories took and the glimpses of the Chantry and the Qunari we were offered. The overall plot was interesting, but it accelerated too quickly into something so huge at the end, I honestly didn't know what I'd been spending my time doing for the last forty hours.


Will play again, and enjoy again. but definitely not as many times as I did Origins. I desperately hope that the next installment of Dragon Age is followed by a colon and a word instead of a number, and that they apply a lot of the ME2 mechanisms that did work to the scope and character depth of DA:O to put the player back in Ferelden, continuing on their Grey Warden's path (if they're not dead, I mean.). Fingers crossed for a trip to Weisshaupt and a final showdown with one or more witch and her demon spawn. And some freaking Griffins.


Dragon Age: The Griffoning. I'm in.

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Found in Translation: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

 [East Coast]

Spoilers spoilers blah blah blah.

Watching the Lincoln Square IMAX fill up that rapidly at 3:30 in the morning was a little startling, but not as startling as how much I loved Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (part one!). Anyone who will listen probably knows of my general disdain bordering on loathing for the film adaptation of Prisoner of Azkaban, and on paper, it's for many of the same tactics and decision Yates employed for Deathy Hallows. The results, however, are drastically different.

Some personal framework, here: I think Order of the Phoenix was the last good Harry Potter book. I found Half-Blood Prince to be draggy and largely uninteresting, stifling with the teenage love plots and what felt, for the first time, like a really tedious school year at Hogwarts. The Deathly Hallows I found to be an immense disappointment, from the endless camping trip of doom to the MacGuffins upon MacGuffins, a rankling line of artifacts and characters who had never so much as been foreshadowed suddenly becoming integral to the plot and progression of the story. It felt cheap and unwieldy to me, and the epilogue was just insult to injury. I walked away from the franchise feeling very let down.

However, Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet and Fire, and Order of the Pheonix would always be there. The trio at their sharpest, the glimpses of a wizarding world past at their most tantalizing. So it was all right. Damned if I didn't loathe the third movie though, and this is because I felt style ran rough-shod over story. Curaon made a decision to completely excise the pieces of that book that a) made pieces of the story as a seven-book-whole make sense and b) created an emotional bridge between the past and both Harry and the audience. I was horrifically angry that at the end of the movie. If you hadn't read the books, you walked away without knowing who Moony, Padfoot and Prongs were. It was not difficult to find a place to divulge that information. There were opportunities aplenty. They were all exchanged for Lupin waxing loquacious about Lily's virtues;  the boys eating candy that caused them to make animal noises; yet another 'this is where we do a sweeping virtual shot of the school grounds using a magical creature's POV' sequence. By shaving seconds off of the plethora of atmosphere/world-building shots devoid of story, they could have easily inserted one to three minutes of Lupin having ANY OF THE CONVERSATIONS FROM THE BOOK with Harry. Hell, ROLL THEM ALL INTO ONE. And then we would know who the Marauders were and why they mattered, and why Harry's patronus is a stag. Harry doesn't even know why his patronus is a stag. This willful dismissal of easily-addressed details drives me crazy because of the far-reaching effects of their exclusion.

Cuaron "stream lined" it into a "coming of age" story. Well, the entire series is a coming of age story, so how much streamlining did we need to do? The worst part is, the things left out of the third movie can never be revisited, because the books get bigger and more complex. There's no room for that information. What a terrible waste.

So Deathly Hallows comes along. The decision to make it into two films was clearly the correct one, not just from the point of view of We'll All Be Rich Forever, but from a storytelling one. Brava. Now even cleaving the story in twain, we are left with an absolutely ridiculous amount of information to put on screen, largely because the books are not only tying up all the loose ends of the cast of thousands Rowling has given us, but because she introduces a whole new thousand-member-strong cast. It's like 42nd Street with magic, it's insane. Then the director is saddled with giving the extent characters their due and screentime, which is difficult enough in, say, Goblet of Fire. Yet Yates manages, despite having to streamline the hell out of what was a sprawling, often tedious and not infrequently convoluted story.

So far, I much prefer Deathly Hallows the movie to Deathly Hallows the book. The feeling of a world on the edge, of a constant rippling danger, unease and melancholy is palpable. The magic is beautiful. The locations are believable. The people are idiosyncratic and interesting and the characters are so full and easy to connect to- and almost no vital details are sacrificed. I can't even think of one off-hand.  What I'm saying is, this movie has atmosphere out the ass and yet still tells the damn story, considerably more expeditiously than the novel. Everything that annoyed me about the book is gone, and everything I enjoyed has been succinctly and stylishly committed to screen. And the scenes he added in serve a purpose! The Harry-Hermione dance sequence shows us how desperate their spirits are, how close they are to each other, that their love is platonic and that at the end, things aren't right without their third. Unlike all the conversations with Lupin in PoA which were filled with banal advice and no real information or foreshadowing and didn't further the story, the totally new content in Deathly Hallows 2.0 does all of these things. Brava, Yates.

The director has stated that he wants the second half of the story to have a very different feel and a return to the fantasy adventure of the earlier ones, which is of course the perfect way for the movies to end. All I can really hope for is a Gellert/Albus makeout scene, since JK dropped that bomb on us. That awesome gaytastic bomb. Don't let me down, Yates. You haven't, yet.

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Will AMC Save the Comic Book Movie?

For years, my go-to cry at the mention of a comic book being licensed for film adaptation was "Take it HBO, for the love of God".   The movies we're given are frequently so watered down or compromised or stripped of what makes a property great and loaded up with what producers think makes a property sell that the finished product is almost unrecognizeable as whatever comic it started out as. This is especially prevalent in the super hero genre. Now with the rough beast that is the Marvel Film Universe slouching inexorably toward The Avengers, a lot of people are feeling that comic book movies are about to suffer a bit of a backlash, or perhaps a Roman style collapse. Too much, too much, too much, and not enough dedication from the studio behind it to invest the money and give the artistic leeway that could make sure the movies are great.

That said, super heroics work well on the big screen, and frequently the stories fit happily into three readily filmable acts. Just as often, the third one fails dramatically, but that's not the source material's fault so much as its handling and the trappings of telling the story of a hero, especially an origin story. Super heroes do not the comic book industry make, however not entirely, and of the wealth of material out there to be mined, the best of it is long-form storytelling that belongs in a long-form medium.

Neil Gaiman's Sandman belongs on HBO or Showtime, I believe that fervently. It needs the kind of money and freedom to be not merely graphic, but just truly bizarre. A Dream of a Thousand Cats belongs on HBO. It just does. Similarly, an adpatation of Bill Willingham's Fables, I would prefer to see on HBO where the violence and fantasy get to be played out with equal splendor. Certainly no traditional network, NBC or ABS or even something 'edgier' like FX would be equipped to create, promote and broadcast these stories.

Then AMC happened. AMC used to play crappy movies that none of the major networks or special channels wanted to play. Then things got weird. Between Mad Men and Breaking Bad, in the past four years AMC has become the new name in avante garde tv. Telling stories that should be nigh impossible to tell, let alone sell, with grace, heart and unflinching boldness. When AMC announced The Walking Dead, I could scarcely contain my excitement. I haven't even read The Walking Dead, though I'll be starting very soon, and I knew in my gut it was going to be badass. This is because AMC has managed to do something that I don't think any other network has- they don't seem to give a damn. It's not like the channel could become less relevant than it initially was. They have nothing to lose by being ballsy and creative and believing in their properties, nothing. It's a beautiful thing.

So now word comes down the pike that Letterier, so fond of citing how he used to be making his 'little French films',  is talking to NewLine about taking over Y: The Last Man.  Let me be frank: I would be happy as a clam if this project would just die in its crib. There has not been a single name associated with Y as a filmic entity that I thought "yeah, that's awesome" since the rumors started, years ago. Not ONE. If Y: The Last Man and Cowboy Bebop NEVER make it to the big screen in live action form, I will die feeling like there are at least two pure, good things left in the world. But if it has to happen...

Let it happen on AMC. Let Y go to a channel that believes in long-form storytelling, and character. I haven't watched all of Breaking Bad, but I have seen every episode of Mad Men at least twice, and I have now seen both episodes of The Walking Dead in excess of three times. Each. Because apparently I'm the only person on the UES who knows how to use a DVR. But you know what? I'm happy to have you come over to my place and watch it, because it's so. Good. If Y: The Last Man has a home in the world of film, that home is on AMC, without question. The question of direction then becomes happily secondary- the person who counts is the show runner, and you have a stable of directors, people who don't need to be household names or have a CGI monstrosity under their belt to be considered for a 'comic book movie'.  The multiple directors factor works particularly well for Y given the hugely diverse nature of the storylines and the places those stories take you.

If they could hold off on this happening for a year or two while I get my SAG card and move to Canada where they will doubtless be filming it, though, that would be great. Thanks.

So after having some pretty intense Y-on-AMC daydreams, it ocurred to me that AMC, while probably not looking to fill this specific a niche, really could be the last, best bastion of comic book adaptations. Things that I would have decried as unfilmable or too sprawling or too anythign for the big screen or network tv could fit beautifully on AMC.  Like Powers. That's what AMC is missing, a good ol' fashioned cop show, right?

No two shows on AMC feel the same, except they all have a curious gravity to them. They are so intensely cinematic, and surprising- by far the best shows on television are, at this moment, on AMC.

...This is all my opinion, that's a given, right? I mean, my love for Supernatural knows no bounds,  and I will argue that South Park gets better with each new season, but from a stance of storytelling and quality, I can't think of anything that's on par with Mad Men. And, God in heaven, is it Sunday yet? Momma needs her zombies.

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A Very Fangirl Perspective on E3 2010

Eruditechick and Loquaciousmuse here, with our final thoughts on all things E3 2010. We tried out all of the new products from Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft and a slew of soon to be released games. Other highlights included meeting some of our favorite Tweeps, running into a nice lady from Rockstar Games who offered to send us Outlaw to the End shirts, and the Scott Pilgrim Kegger. Oh and coming into possession of a giant Sims 3 bean bag chair. That was all kinds of awesome.

Enjoy our wrap up and see you next year!

Favorites:

EC: Fable III. Rock Band 3. Nintendo 3DS. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. So I guess it was a spectacularly girly year for me at E3. I played just about everything I could get my hands on, and of those playable experiences, I took the aforementioned four away as my favorites of the convention.

Muse: Fable III, Rock Band 3, Nintendo 3DS, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Green Day Rock Band (yes I know it's out already), Your Shape for the Kinect

Hottie female hero

Fable III

EC: [This section will be cross-posted over at GameRant.com, with more footage and in-depth review of gameplay!] Fable III takes the solid interaction ideas and progression of character abilities established in Fables II and makes them organic and tactile. No longer is there a three foot buffer, a magic force field between your hero and the world. Everything from fighting to hugging to playing with your dog has become an exercise in direct contact. Like a combination of The Sims and Red Dead Redemption, suddenly your fabled hero can directly manipulate the world as they come into contact with it, instead of being a kind of warping force that passes by and generates a reaction. This major step forward in gameplay is going to be enhanced by the fact that your hero is fully voiced, something a certain Star Wars game is also- rightfully- getting much press for. The models have been reworked so your hero isn't quite as hulking and genderless. The world is as bright, vibrant and carefully animated as Fable II, but looks even more lush. Your quest and end goal, also, are better defined. At the end of Fable II, you must make a personal choice, but the end result is ultimately that you can continue gallivanting about, hero-ing or villain-ing as is your want, extorting people for money by jacking up real estate prices or killing waves of balverines til your blue in the face. The goal for Fable III is more personal, and the way you get there will have as much effect on the outcome as your arriving. The voice talent is also RIDICULOUS. I am so excited.

Muse: I too loved Fable 3 and probably terrified the lovely British Lionhead producers who had to deal with 45 minutes of non-stop questions from myself & Eruditechick. BUT THERE WERE THINGS I HAD TO KNOW, OKAY?!?!?! I wrote about everything we learned here, but wish I had gone back on Day 3 to chat some more. In Fable 2, you could marry anyone who wanted to marry you, regardless of gender, and subsequently sex them as often as you wanted (...well...as long as said spouse is in the mood, of course.), but the sweet sweet love makin in Fable 2 happened entirely through sound - the screen always went black when anything dirty took place. I wanted to ask and make sure that nothing has changed in terms of same sex love & marriage. I saw plenty of the demo's hot female hero kissing decidedly less hot men, but will she get to kiss women as well? Does the kiss/touch feature play a role in bedroom seduction or does the screen still go completely blank? Am I total weirdo for wondering these things?!?! Would it have been totally awkward for me to ask the producers a slew of avatar-sex questions?!!? Probably. But don't act like you aren't curious also. Punk.

Awesome new drum set

Rockband 3

EC: Pro Gameplay. In the words of Brodie Bruce, holy shit. Nevermind that the game looks beautiful, nevermind that all of your Rockband content dating back to the first game and including all DLCs, expansions and band-specific releases are exportable into Rockband 3, leaving you with a library of almost 2,000 songs, nevermind that the intricacies of gameplay- harmonies, difficulty levels- have been made exponentially more interesting- one of the controllers if a freaking Fender guitar.

Let me say that again. One of the controllers you can buy for the game is a Fender guitar, that plugs into an amp, and is a guitar. It's a guitar. It's an electric freaking guitar. And not just an electric freaking guitar. It's a goddamn Fender, and it's beautiful. This freaking electric Fender guitar also happens to be a game controller. In Pro gameplay, you are presented essentially with scrolling tablature. It teaches you how to hold chords, how to pick lines. It shows you what string to strum and what fret to hold. You play actual guitar. If you unplugged it from your console and plugged it into your amp and followed along on the screen, you would still be playing the song. Because IT'S A REAL GUITAR, ARE YOU PICKING UP WHAT I'M PUTTING DOWN? JFC, WHAT? WHAT? ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS SHIT? WHAT IS THIS, THE FUTURE?! WHAT?!

So I liked that.

Muse: Again, I'm right there with Eruditechick. HOLY FUCKING SHIT YOU GUYS. WE HAVE TO USE CAPITAL LETTERS FOR A REASON. THAT REASON BEING THAT PRO GAMEPLAY IS SO EFFING COOL YOU DONT EVEN KNOW TIL YOU SEE IT WHAT THE FUCK EFF.

We have similar ways of expressing our excitement, Eruditechick and I.

 For the specifics we discovered regarding Rock Band 3 - head here and prepare for your head to explode.

In terms of gameplay, I only tried out the keyboard and the drums, but I can tell you this much - with the addition of the symbols to the drum kit, drumming just got A WHOLE LOT MORE FUN. When you see a red, yellow or orange, I believe, you have the option of hitting its cooresponding symbol instead of the drum. This allows for a bit more flexibility & interaction and also makes you feel really cool. The keyboard was incredibly difficult for me at first, but by the end of the song, I had the hang of it. I'm looking forward to mastering the technique. I felt like I was in Josie and the Pussycats playing a keyboard up there and I LIKED IT.

Only PART of the line for Nintendo 3DS

Nintendo 3DS:

EC: Oh, that's right, it IS the future. It MUST be the future, because I'm holding what's one step away from a freaking holographic projection in my hands and using it to play with a puppy. While waiting in line at the Nintendo booth for my turn with the gadget that had been having its virtues be so vocally extolled since the press conference the day prior, I had a lot of time to think about what glasses-less 3D meant to me. In my head, I could see it. I could see a shiny square with a screen that had 3D images on it. I know what 3D looks like, this wasn't difficult. I had remarkable ease, during the waiting, conjuring a mental image of what the technology should look like. Should. Not necessarily would. Then they put it in my hands and it did. My mind was sufficiently blown. Other than the severe ghosting on even the gentlest of 3D settings for the Resident Evil non-interactive trailer, the technology was insanely effective. It's like peering into a diorama, and every once in a while something is thrust up out of it, into your face. Truly impressive, also, were the 3D camera capabilities which freaked me right the hell out and made me cackle in a rather unlady-like manner (quelle surprise!, cry those of you who know me and also happen to speak French), and the movie trailers. Tangled, in particular, the next 3D animated princess-centric fair from Disney looks almost painfully enjoyable, and even more so on the 3DS. Everything is probably going to be more enjoyable on the 3DS out of sheer principle.

Muse: Yes, we had to wait in line for about an hour and a fifteen minutes to get our hands on a 3DS, but it was worth every minute. It didn't hurt that Nintendo's booth was carpeted with white, plush happiness that was quite pleasant to sit on. I'd been dying to check out this new innovation, as, unlike Eruditechick, I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it could POSSIBLY look like. The idea didn't make sense in the head and I could not conceive of an image. When I finally looked at the 3DS screen, I was overcome with a sense of awe. Yes, you have to hold it a certain distance away to acheive the full effect, but a small price to may for utter brilliance. The first game I tried out was a Samurai fighting game, and all I found myself being able to say were things like "HOW THE FUCK" "WHAT THE FUCK" "HOLY FUCK"...you get the idea. I also tried a driving game (looked amazing, but I don't like driving games), watched some 3D trailers (How to Train Your Dragon) and gameplay footage (Kingdom of Hearts), took a 3D picture (I'm obsessed with it), took a photo of myself, which automatically modeled a 3DS Sims 3 character after me (fucking cool), and possibly my favorite bit - PLAYED WITH A 3D PUPPY. I was sad to have to say goodbye. Cause it looked like an actual puppy was stuck inside and it made me sad. Upon exiting the 3DS arena, my cohorts and I looked at each other and screamed loudly "SO. WORTH. IT." Cause it was.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.

EC: I'm not saying it's okay to go around surreptitiously stabbing people in real life, or not-so-surreptitiously jumping off of rooftops and stabbing people as you fall upon them from great heights in real life, but I am saying that doing these things to people over XBox Live is going to make my life substantially more awesome. The environments are the same we loved so dearly in ACII, the character models are compelling and fun, and the system of who is killing whom and who is marked for death is satisfyingly complex, but presented in a straightforward manner. Do want.

Muse: I also loved this demo. Eight people got to play at once, two sessions in a row, one to learn the controls and one to actually go for it, doing your best to assassinate your target - one of the 7 people beside you. This mode was instantly more enjoyable than most Xbox Live games I've partaken in. Sure, I still got pwned by the dude who clearly plays a lot of Assassin's Creed or just stabs people a lot, but I also got one really badass aerial kill, for which I was awarded 400 points! The concept is this - Pick your assassin, pick your special ability. A photo of the person you must kill pops up in the upper right hand corner. There is a blue indicator that gets more full, the closer to get to your target. When you see your target, kill him (or her - YES, there is a playable female character!). Of course, it's never as easy as it sounds. You are not only a predetor, but prey yourself. As you are stalking your target, someone is stalking you, and more than once I found myself dead JUST as I was about to make a kill. Also, if you start running after your target, he is alerted and will in turn run away and find a place to hide. You also get points for successfully evading your predator once the chase is on. Special abilities include throwing knives, smoke bombs, changing your appearence, creating clones of yourself and more. I gotta say, it was also wonderful to revisit that universe, the controls, and the gameplay. I've missed you, Assassin's Creed, and it's only been about two months!

A whole lot more after the jump!

Attendees and Harmonix employees rocking out before we TOOK. OVER.

Green Day Rock Band

Muse: This may seem like an odd choice as it is out already, but we must have performed at least 8 Green Day songs over the course of an hour and a half and that shit DID NOT get old. Green Day is fun to sing, play & harmonize to and I'm figuring out the best way to get it without paying full price AS WE SPEAK. Plus the Rock Band demo area of the South Hall was all the way in back so apparently no one knew about it? Or maybe the people who attend E3 aren't also the type of people who like to get on stage and sing? But Eruditechick and I couldn't get enough. You've sold me with that demo, Harmonix. I'm buying it.

Your Shape for Kinect

Muse: I waited so effing long to play this but I'm SO glad I did. The moment this was introduced at the Microsoft pressy, I knew I had to demo it and would most likely purchase it. And yes, I will be purchasing it. I will be saving up my moneys and purchasing it. It scans your whole body. Your whole body! And then you see yourself as a colorful shape or YOUR ACTUAL SELF, standing next to a digitized instructer who you are supposed to mirror. It was painful to see my pathetic knee-bends in relation to perfect-fake-computer-woman, but it also gives me something to work towards in an easy to measure and understand kind of way. When I hit the yoga poses correctly, the system told me so and the system was RIGHT. You can't cheat here - it sees your whole body. My favorite category was the Gym Exercise, for which they had kickboxing available to try. You punch and kick the green boxes and it's sofuckingcool I could do it all day. Plus, again, YOU SEE YOURSELF, so you know if you are doing it correctly or looking like a complete moron. Fun fact! The producer in the room with me said I had the highest score in kickboxing all day. SUCK IT. The only thing I didn't love right away was the controls menu. Unlike the other Kinect games, where you just hold your hand out like you're using the force, here you have to contort your arm & hand into strange positions to get the desired result. Hopefully that kink will be worked out, and then I can work out. Get it?!

Things We Liked Bunches But Don't Need To Own Immediately:

EC: Kinect. Sims 3. PS Move.

Muse: Kinect Games (other than Your Shape), PS Move, Wii Goldeneye

Kinect
EC: So, Kinect is pretty awesome. The concept is so fantastical that it's difficult to conceive of it permeating the industry and being something you can use for games that aren't dancing, working out or Wii party games on an XBox. That said, I desperately want Dance Central. DESPERATELY. And Your Shape looks amazing, although Muse will have to speak further to that, as she demoed it and I was too busy playing MvC3 to bother with that exercise shit. However, I will wait to get a Kinect until there is a Star Wars/Spider-Man/I Am A Super Hero and I Kick Your Ass/Respawn 1st Person Shooter for me to play on it. So plz hurry Microsoft omfg.

Muse: I definitely enjoyed this demo, even down the menus, that, as I mentioned earlier, require you to hold your hand out and keep it there, much like you are using the force and commanding someone to do something. It's fucking badass. The biggest thing I walked away from Kinect with was the feeling that suddenly my dream had true & I had acquired super powers. It makes you feel like all the power is in your own hands and I think people are really going to enjoy it. I totally get why Willow went power-mad, you guys. I got addicted after 5 minutes of gameplay. So much so that on the way out, I sneakily picked something on the menu again, because I HAD to. I just had to. We made friends with a dude from Microsoft outside of Kinect who told us about some...ways of using Kinect...with other games...that are in development...and some that are NOT in development..... but we're not sure we're supposed to repeat them, so hell no is this info going on the Internet. But keep an eye on Kinect.

Sims 3

EC: The Sims 3 for console basically trades the user's ability to create custom meshes and game mods for Karma Powers. This is... actually pretty reasonable, as one of the Karma Powers is, I shit you not, METEORAIN. I think I would rather have Sims3 for PC, but it would cost me lots more money, cuz first I'd have to buy a computer that could play it, and then the game, whereas I already have a 360 so buying it for console would therefore be cheaper. Either way, I'm getting it, I'm just going to get other things first.

Muse: I've never played a Sims game, but I'm sure I'd like it, especially after seeing the 15 minute demo presentation at the EA booth. I'll get it once it's discounted and have some lazy summer afternoons with nothing to do.

Erudite Chick's own hands demonstrating the PS Move.

Playstation Move

EC: PS Move is like Wii for grown ups, not that you could tell after waiting in line for forty minutes and being put into a room with Britney Spears karaoke. Muse and I sort of stared at the PS escort guy for a minute until he was like "Oh, did you want to play.... real games?" at which point Muse was like "YOU WILL GIVE ME SOCOM4 OR PERISH" and we were promptly walked to the correct room. After watching her play through the demo level, it was my turn, and I have to say I quite liked the mechanics of it. First off, the game is great. Nice cinematics, ambiance, the bloodspray was pleasing. Utilizing the aim/fire in one hand and the move/traverse with the other took me about ten seconds to get a hold on, and then it was away we go.

The gentleman walking us through the demo nervously remarked on how vocal I was, moreso than anyone he'd had play the game in the last two days, particularly with the obscenities, and also that I had picked up on the mechanics of the game- the fact that it's best to only tap the trigger in three second bursts to combat the gun's recoil, the targeting systems- with alarming speed. I took it as the compliment it was. Verdict: Me likey, but would rather play MW2 with the Kinect.

Muse: Things you need to do in your lifetime - play a game with Eruditechick that involves her shooting people. You will not be disappointed. Somehow, Eruditechick magically picked up the controls to SOCOM4 with the PS Move in about 30 seconds. I barely got a hang of it after 5 minutes. But I still walked away wanting to play more. The controls didn't frustrate me, like the Wii controls often do - they challenged and excited me. I'm not sure what the future of shooters really is with a 'mote of any kind, but it's definitely more fun, intuitive and full of potential with the PS Move then shooters have ever been on the Wii. Also, Little Big Planet 2 was super fun and if I get a PS3 bundle with a Move, hells yeah am I getting LBP2 as my first Move game.

Wii Goldeneye

Muse: This was super fun and definitely took me back to a very specific time and place, but it's for the Wii and the graphics bother me and I'm just not adept at wiimote first person shooters. I still think people with a Wii, who also have fond memories of [getting killed a lot in] Goldeneye are going to love this.

EC: I payed as Odd Job. I killed people with my hat. V.nice would play again.

Things We Wish Had Been Awesome But Weren't:

Muse: Tron: Legacy. Rise of the Six String.

EC: Disney Sing-A-Long.

Tron: Legacy:

Muse: Meh. Got bored after a minute.

Rise of the Six String

Muse: May win for best swag (I got like 8 guitar picks and Pacman ran out of lanyards, AND I DIDNT GET A GUYBRUSH DOLL CAUSE LUCASARTS WAS ALL PRIVATE ROOMY, STUPID LUCASARTS) and playing actual strings was definitely fun, but the drums made so little sense - a sensor picks up what you are doing so you dont have to actually hit the drums - that I just became frustrated and wanted to stop early. A valiant effort, but ultimately, nothing can touch Rock Band 3 and those Harmonix sexpots.


Disney Sing-A-Long.

EC: I am completely serious. Anyone who doesn't like to get wasted with their friends and sing A Whole New World isn't a human. The problem is, they've designed the game like four year olds are going to be using it, which, sure, they are, but not without supervision. The microphone did a shoddy job of picking up notes, and the after-effects- Alvin and the Chipmunk-ing your voice, turning it into a weird toneless roar, making you sound like a robot (not GLaDOS, just... just a weird unintelligible mush of electronic noise)- all suck. The technology exists to make this stuff neat, silly, fun, cool, whatever, but they don't do it here. One would hope Disney could expend a fraction of the same creativity, ingenuity and eye for aesthetic beauty to something that uses the catalog of their best movies and greatest songs that they did on the Toy Story 3 game or Epic Mickey. But they didn't. Boo.

Bang bang bang bang bang bang bang!

The Given: Marvel vs Capcom 3, duh.

EC: It's an upgrade. That's literally all it is. And that's pretty much all one could want it to be. Though I have a particular fondness for the character design in MvC2, dating back to X-Men vs Street Fighter, the new '3D' renders are slick and fun, the special attack screens are eye popping and well animated, the combos are the same as you remember them. Deadpool is there, so you know life is awesome. He beats people to death with his life bar. I mean... yes. YES. So, clearly I will own this. It gets its own category, though, because from the moment it was announced, I knew this to be the case. Mmmn. Marvel vs Capcom. Mmmmmn.

Games We Considered Trying/Seeing, But Didn't

Call of Duty: Black Ops

Muse: Treyarch. Meh. Will try it out if someone else buys it. But I'm good.
EC: I'd rather play CoD4.

Halo Reach

Muse: Not big on Halo
EC: I'd rather watch Red vs Blue.

Fallout: New Vegas

Muse: I've never played a Fallout game, though I do hear I would love it. As we were exiting the West Hall on Thursday, I glanced over, noticed the giant Bethesda booth and realized I had completely forgotten about the damn game. Oops.
EC: Fallout 3 was an exercise in patience for me. Which I failed. So... I dunno, I have to think about it.

Dead Space 2
Muse: I don't like terrifying, claustrophic games. There's only so much my soul can handle, people.
EC: I DO! I want it, but didn't get a chance to play.

Twisted Metal
Muse: Meant to try it out, but kept forgetting it existed. I've never played Twisted Metal so wanted to see first hand if this was something I'd be interested in buying. Oh well.
EC: I used to play this game! I'm sure I'll play it again. I'm not gonna buy it, though.


The Legend of Zelda - Skyward Sword
Muse: I wanted to try this because Ocarina of Time was one of those self-defining experiences that solidified my love of gaming in the first place. But. Wii. I don't know, man.
EC: Sadly, the more I see of what's next, the less impressed I become with the Wii. I can handle childish renderings, I'm all for style, but the blocky, chunky, pixel-y stuff... can't deal.

Donkey Kong Country 2
Muse: Really wanted to play this and convince my family to buy it for their Wii so I can go over there from time to time and play when I feel like wasting time. I LOVED the original Donkey Kong Country when I was a kid. Alas. Kinect was calling.
EC: It's on like, well, like it's predecessor, but I'm not compelled to purchase it.

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Dear Marvel Writers Who Aren't Mike Carey: Knock It The Hell Off [Updated]

Okay, first things first, and please be aware that this post is going to have bad words in it, but first things first- have you seen this shit?

 ....Uh..... okay, one word for this, lemme just dredge it up, oh yeah, that would be- NO.

When? When, exactly, in their long involved history of being such dear friends and teammates, did Rogue and Sentry- OH WAIT THEY WERE NEVER THOSE THINGS. Hmmn. Back to the drawing board.


It's this sort of irresponsible bullshit that clutters up a canon to the point where Peter David has to be hired to come in and fix it. I am stunned that in the middle of Mike Carey's extraordinary work with the character, the years, now, he's spent bringing Rogue back to a place of real characterization after she was drowning in a sea of muddled unhealthy 'romance' plots, Paul Jenkins (with the influence, I would image, of one Brian Michael Bendis) would pull a bush league move like this. It's crap.


I want a timeline. I want a backstory. I want citations. How dare you make something as important to Rogue's character as physical intimacy a punchline in a book that has nothing to do with the X-Men or their lives. It is so disrespectful to the fans, and to the writers who actually love and are writing the character. This is nonsensical. This is LAZY. This is stupid. This is detrimental to both of their characters. This is sloppy, thoughtless retconning at its worst. And you should be extremely disappointed in yourself.

Addendum: I want Mike Carey to respond to this, and then I want him to fix it, and I believe he CAN.

Addendum Redux: HE DID. Reader and my new best friend James sent us an email that contains Mike Carey's response from his facebook wall.

Mike Carey: Wow. I need another cup of coffee.

Okay, guys, I'm going to comment here in a fairly circumspect way. I've responded to some of you in one-to-one message threads, and I'm going to ask you not to come back to me on this, because there won't be anything I can add.

As everybody knows, I try not to do ret-cons - and as I type that, my nose just ... grew by about a foot and a half. What I try not to do is "type 2" invasive ret-cons that erase things that are commonly supposed to have happened. I'm shameless about type 1 ret-cons, where stuff happened but you just didn't know about it until now. The whole of the Professor X incarnation of Legacy was made up of stories of that kind.

This is a type 1: it happened, because Rogue says on-panel that it happened. It was behind the scenes, invisible, and the chronology isn't clear, but it happened. Is it surprising? I think so. In terms of Rogue's behaviour in relationships, her sexual morality insofar as we can infer it, her personal history up to this point, this revelation is hard - on the face of it - to reconcile.

But as someone says above (sorry, thread is too long to find the reference again quickly) what we know is minimal, and we can fill in an infinite number of stories around these few details. There are ways it could have happened that would make sense. I won't be the one who tells the story of how it actually did happen, but I'm accepting that it happened and the story is there to be told.

Characters in a shared fictional space are created by a kind of consensus. Someone dreams them up and puts them onto the stage, but a whole lot of someone elses then fill in the blanks. When you get contradictions, or apparent contradictions, fans build their own conception of the character from the parts they like most or believe in most.

This is a dangerous and frivolous analogy, but look at the Bible. I'm an atheist, but I'm happy to acknowledge that there's a core of teachings in the Bible that vast numbers of people base their lives on - but crucially, it tends to be a different core for each of them. You take what makes sense to you, and you view the rest with some mixture of tolerance and caution.

I think you have to do the same with shared universes.

 Does it bother me that Mike is, to an extent, going gentle into that good night? Yes. It absolutely is. Because I want him to be as vocally disdainful and outraged as I am. But Jenkins is, in the loosest and only most technical of terms, Carey's peer and so he can't call the dude out. No matter how I wish he would. Alas. Still, knowing that he disagrees with this on the most fundamental basis of the character reassures me that he'll deal with it- or not- as is appropriate and make it somehow work. Mostly I feel this because, post-Nicieza, Mike Carey is the only one who has.

Oh, and: Come on, Fraction. EMMA FROST got to speak at Kurt's funeral over Rogue? EMMA FREAKING FROST? And then the one funeral she shouldn't have even BEEN AT, let alone spoken up during, and away we go. Good Lord, Marvel, get it together.

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Clown Science is Better than Insane Clown Posse Science: A+

I really don't like clowns. I'm not afraid of them, I just don't like them. Seeing a clown doesn't make me want to cry or hide, it makes me want to punch them in the stomach or hit them in the face with a cricket bat, although in all fairness this latter response is born out of playing too much L4D2. So when I was taken by a person I consider a trusted friend to a clown show, I was startled and unsure of what to expect. As the three of us loitered outside The Hayworth in downtown LA and peeked through the window to a room filled with colorful hand-made posters and plastic chairs, a clown in a blue blazer popped up from FREAKING NOWHERE and started doing magic at us.

I didn't react well.

We moved inside to loiter in the foyer before being ushered forward by the money-collectors, only to be greeted by a tall, comically-stern looking clown with a 'hall monitor' sash on and a pretty clown with intensely round eyes and a pad of post it notes. You gave her your name, she interpreted it into a flower, smiley face or shining sun and put it on your t-shirt. Friend Rob tried to be clever and gave is name as 'Turkey'. She stared at him with the same wide-eyed jaw-agape expression until he gave his real name. She wrote 'Rob' and stuck it on his chest.

We proceeded into the room we'd been spying through the window and were drawn to a child's sized plastic table and chairs with a cup of water and tiny paint brush on it. We were offered seats by an adorable-scamp sort of clown with a little dash of black under his eye (like those puppies, with the perky ears and the spot over his eyes, you know what I'm saying). He offered me the paintbrush and asked if I'd like to race - all through gestures, by the way. No one spoke, and when they used items, they did so without looking at them, the effect being strangely hilarious- and I said, hell yes, let's race. He pulled a Star Wars coloring book page of Jango Fett out and put it on the table and, knelt on the floor, removing his own coloring book page of clone troopers. Then he pulled out a spray bottle and a gigantic paintbrush.

They were water activated painting pages. Oh dear god. I feverishly worked the paper with my teensy tiny paintbrush while in three strokes he was done.

The bastard.

The night progressed along this vein, stopping by various stations while distinct clown personas showed us things or 'conversed' with us. Occasionally, we would be drawn aside and shown some sort of performance- from the gym teacher pat-pat (the hobo clown with the unicorn doll) or the guidance counselor Gary (whose sex-ed lesson became about his divorce).

Eventually we were led upstairs to the main event, the science fair. Traditional trifolds were set up around the room, each of the clown students standing in front of theirs, ready to provide demonstrations of their hypotheses. Now, in addition to the highly amusing demonstrations, vignettes would occur. Having gotten to know the the clowns in the previous two segments, we now got to see their relationships with each other, and they were hilarious, charming and sweet. Then the headmaster went around and each clown student had to present their work, and each was assigned a letter grade. This process was perfect, as it allowed the audience to see the exhibits they might not yet have experienced personally, although we could all tell the scoring process was not entirely kosher since the headmaster was clearly romantically interested in one rather sadsack young clown who gave a heart wrenching presentation on polar bears.

So, I like clowns, now. Even though I got shamed into sweeping for the janitor and then given detention for job theft and then detention for quitting my job and then detention for aggressive lewdness and then  detention for having too much detention. Clock, the Class Clown clown who had been on the detention stool and became my detention buddy, kept getting me into more and more trouble. This was to be a continued theme of the evening, as he proceeded to be a destructive force during the science fair going so far as to sabotage other students exhibits. He was hilarious, if a bit of a bastard. He in fact stole another clown's clothes and tried to accept his award at the end of the evening, and was only thwarted when said rival student appeared, still bound in duct tape.

Awkward.

The evening was hilarious. The character work being done by these actors is stunning, and they are wholly unrecognizable with their noses on. I know this, because I had met several of them in real life and had no freaking idea who I was talking to at any given moment. Especially Pat-Pat, portrayed by Negin Singh. Ridiculous.

If you live in LA and have the opportunity this 15th, I highly recommend going to Everybody Nose Science. It is immensely engaging, genuinely funny, and brilliantly observed comedy from a young and vibrant troup. A+. Blue ribbon. Bravo.

Here's the official write up of the event,

Everybody Knows A Science Fair, a playful and inventive take on the American educational system, runs this Spring for three Saturdays, April 24th, May 1st & May 15th. The interactive walkthrough will play as a durational one hour and a half piece, during which the audience will enter a space that has been transformed into a “Clown School” filled with clown students, teachers and administration. The first part of event takes us through part of a functional "Clown school", complete with a cafeteria where delicious food will be served, a classroom, the guidance counselor's office, a gym, and the headmaster's office. The centerpiece of the evening will be the “Clown Science Fair” during which audience will be able to, at their leisure, walk through an assortment of independently operating clown science projects. No mere spectators, the audience will also serve as judges of the science fair, and will each be issued an evaluation sheet on which they will mark their favorite pieces. In addition to the durational science projects, the piece will feature “clown happenings” every five or ten minutes, rehearsed clown solo or duo bit relating to the science fair at hand. Approximately twenty clowns will participate with projects, each clown proposing to solve a major world problem with their personal project. Recommended for ages 13 and up. Tickets are $10 or $7 with a student ID. Tickets can be purchased online here.

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Freakin' Twilight

Okay, back at Wondercon, this thing happened with Twilight, so you already know it's going to be ridiculous. What happened was, some footage for Twilight: Twiharder or whatever the next one is called was shown during Trailer Park. Half the audience screamed with pure swooning adulation that swelled with the kind of hormonal dissonance that makes chandeliers crumble into sand. The other, predominantly male half booed, more in reaction to the excited audience members than the footage itself. A high profile blogger even commented on the latter reaction and the studio representatives' cringing responses to it backstage, although he left out the bit about the squealing. So, if you weren't at Trailer Park, you might have read this and been like, "Woah, Twilight takes a hit!"

Well, no, Twilight didn't take a hit. The only way Twilight would take a hit is if they recast Larry David in the role of the main sparkly vampire with the hair. This event is in no way indicative of how Twilight is doing with its fans or within the world of the conventions. All this is indicative of is that fanboys like to harass fangirls, which I'm pretty sure we've all known since 2nd grade. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Really, if anything, this story is kind of awesome, because it shows that there were enough LADIES in the audience to even provoke a response from the male contingency. And at Trailer Park, no less, not even a Twilight panel, or Polly Pocket or whatever the hell else it is is being marketed at us girls these days.


God, I hated Polly Pocket. Anyway.


My roommate loves Twilight. Well, okay, my roommate loves Taylor Lautner's abdominals, and the most expedient way for her to get her fix is to watch Twilight (or look at her computer's background image). I'm not going to judge her for this. Much. I suck down the True Blood novels like oxygen, I'm not about to start pointing fingers. I'm not going to judge what someone loves on the quality of the writing or production values, on the casting or the demographic to which it's being marketed. I really don't have a problem with Twilight on any of those levels. High vampire romance with a lycanthropic element? Yes, please. No, my problem with Twilight is that the protagonist is useless. But there are a trillion articles you can read on this, though I would most fervently recommend Cleolinda's Twilight extrapolations over at her livejournal.


Kevin Smith once said:

How dare you pass judgement on those twelve year old girls who like vampires? They need to be encouraged because in six years they'll be eighteen year old girls who like vampires... don't poo poo it, it's- there's a plan, and it's working.


And he has a point. So what needs to happen, really, is Dark Horse needs to publish an ashcan 1-shot comic that chronicles the love affair of Buffy and Angel. Then they need to distribute it, for free, to the line waiting to get into Hall H for Twilight. Then they need to hire teams and send them to theaters when the lines start forming for the next movie's midnight screenings, and hand them out again. Because Buffy is what these girls are going to need once Twilight is over. Buffy is going to be their portal to becoming real people.


The Chosen one will guide the way.

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In Defense of Hit-Girl

Since Kick-Ass was released in theaters, there's been a lot of swirling hubbub about Hit-Girl- her place in cinema, her place in feminism, her place in the film. It's an interesting debate, since the space she's occupying is unique in Western cinema.

There is a wonderful article about the phenomenon of ass-kicking pre-pubescents over at a wonderful blog, The Mystery of Girl's Media, and I'm going to touch slightly on some of that here, but you should give it a read.

One of the comments about Hit-Girl's ease of disposing of other humans is that it seems indicative that she will become a serial killer. I don't think Hit-Girl is going to turn into a serial killer. Especially now that she's going to be acclimated to life as a normal kid and has a supposedly strong father figure, who was her father figure before, who she trusts and loves and who apparently believes in the value and the power of the law (or else he wouldn't have stayed a cop). In the first place, serial killers aren't trained to be serial killers. They are innately serial killers. They're not carefully taught to torture animals and derive sexual gratification from torture and dismemberment. It's readily apparent in most case studies that there is something about a serial killer that is exceptional and usually off from a very early age. At no point are we shown that Hit-Girl has a built-in disdain for human life or a hatred for older men. She has a massive daddy complex, sure, but guess what: So do lots of girls.

She does, however, enjoy violence. But enjoying a bit o'the ol' ultra violence does not a serial killer make, not by default.

What's interesting about Hit-Girl is that she has ZERO sexuality. NONE. Even the winks and nods to male fantasy tropes amount to zero in effectiveness because she doesn't have it, it's not there. The blown kiss, the school girl uniform. She's not cashing in on the lust of the men around her, she's using her own guilelessness to make them uncomfortable or lure them into underestimating her.  The doorman doesn't let her in to screw her, he lets her in so she can use his phone to find her mommy and daddy. They don't want to do her, they want to pat her on the head and give her a cookie, or shoo her away. She doesn't count, until she's stabbing them.

Back to a prior talking point, she enjoys violence, something girls, especially little ones, aren't supposed to do. People are up in arms over a little girl using that language and liking weapons and being violent, but to be honest, I think that's better than the picture she herself painted (over sundaes with her dad at the bowling alley) of an alternate 11-yr old's reality. One where she wants to own and idolizes Bratz dolls, and is taught through Miley Cyrus videos that the best thing to be is sexy and available to boys. A girl is just as likely to become a hooker from playing with Bratz dolls as she is a serial killer from playing violent video games- in fact, the social imperative to bombard girls with images that tell her she is supposed to be hyper sexualized make the former a much more likely prospect than the latter.

Album cover
and Nickelodeon
Broadcast
Performance.













I've been babysitting a girl from age 7 to age 9 and I have tremendous difficulty dealing with that aspect of her world. That said, while, yes, killing people is bad, in the grand scheme of morality, I sorta think it's cooler to be killing violent drug users in your teen years than getting pressured into having sex or doing sexual acts with boys. ...have I mentioned lately that I'm completely well balanced and normal? I am. I swear.

Interesting fact 3: She hasn't been sexually abused. In WESTERN cinema, I would challenge you to find a young girl fighter character, particularly one who ever dons a school girl uniform to kill people, who wasn't either sexually abused or the object of sexual desire for her mentor. Yes, Hit-Girl has been abused, by having her childhood replaced by grueling, painful, dangerous training at the hands of an obsessed father. However, he has real affection for her. They drink hot chocolate with marshmallows. And he isn't sexually interested in her. Leon in the Professional is kind to Mathilda, but wants her, though he is a moral enough person not to act on the desire. Big Daddy does not think of Mindy in those terms, which is a revolutionary aspect to that character outside of, well, Japan, and even Japanese school girl killers are largely fetishized (see: Kite).

The biggest problem with the character is that the film is constructed in a way that has the audience too busy cheering her on for anyone to mourn how tragic she is. There just isn't time, and even if there were, it's all a bit candy colored and kinetic for it. A half a scene with her ex-legal guardian telling Big Daddy something we already know- this isn't a childhood, and Mindy deserves one- doesn't quite do the trick. We're watching a little girl who's been turned into murderer hack'nslash her way across the kind of ordinance Spike Spiegel would have had difficulty with. But I was reveling in the action of it, not heartsick over what she was going through. So it's an interesting push and pull.

Ultimately, Hit-Girl has created a template for future girl fighters- ones that aren't being grabbed, groped, oggled. Ones that don't kill men after they've attempted rape, but just because it's their job, or their opponent is a bad guy.  It may be charged with all kinds of controversy, but the fact that Hit-Girl's character, power, and appeal doesn't revolve around her or anyone else's sexuality is in fact the biggest step a female action hero (or anti-hero, or participant, in the least) has taken in some time.

Stop back in three days, when we talk about why The Losers was fun but Aisha was a wasted opportunity.

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