For years, I've been comfortable in the knowledge that I don't like anything Quentin Tarantino touches. I can't quite pin down why, but it's pretty consistent. He's a little too aware that what he does isn't seen elsewhere. He seems more focused on imagery than story. He loves dialogue--just actors speaking. They don't have to really say anything. I don't mind a little bit of gruesome, but I have my limits.
I'm a fan of the more cut-and-dried "heroes" who make it very clear on which side they stand. That said, I recognize the storytelling-goldmine that is a more nuanced character. A little bit of personal turmoil or second thoughts are good places to draw the audience deeper into the narrative (if it's done well, of course).
Quentin (I asked, he's fine if I call him that) creates bland characters who curse more than a drunken Irish sailor who just broke a toe and was then shat upon by a seagull and then interact with those nearby using only their most base, predictable, and boring instincts. Then(!) he has the audacity to present these characters as some sort of commentary on the human condition or some such bullshit. I fully confess to not really paying attention anymore.
Then, I started seeing some ads for "Inglorious Basterds" and I had hoped that I could see in Quentin what so many have fawned over--talent. I like Brad Pitt and the main Nazi guy. They generally amuse me. I don't like Nazis. I don't mind violence. So far, so good. The clincher: people I trust told me it was good. Shit. Maybe I've been wrong all these years.
NOPE! Two-and-a-half hours. TWO-AND-A-HALF HOURS! Nothing happened. Nothing fucking happened for the whole goddamn movie. The characters I'd hoped to like turned out to be as smarmy as every other lead I've seen in a QT movie. The characters I'd started to like--the ones who made the occasional impression of emotion--ended up being as lifeless (and doomed) as I'd first feared.
The violence is grotesque and shows that the characters for whom I'm supposed to root are at least as bad as those they hunt. It's not even used as juxtaposition. If we saw what the Nazis were doing, and then saw the retaliation, maybe that could add some counterpoint. If the idea of becoming a monster in order to defeat one were explored, that could've been interesting.
Nazi leadership was portrayed as a bunch of overly-dramatic nincompoops who can scarcely pass each other in the hallway because they've got such hard-ons for the movie-within-a-movie that is at the core of what they'd call--a label applied in poor taste--the plot. It's like a cross between "The Birdcage" and a History Channel special. Except with a lot more Nathan Lane than black-and-white-footage.
We get a close-up view of Brad Pitt carving a swastika into a German soldier's forehead. We get a full-frame view of Hitler's face reduced to mush as one of our supposed good guys looses an entire clip of whatever-that-machine-gun-is-that-looks-a-lot-like-a-Thompson. That same supposed good guy gives us a wonderfully gruesome idea of what happens when a Louisville Slugger and cranium meet at high velocity. Several times. We see close-ups of scalpings.
"Inglorious Basterds" is a snuff film. QT either has some serious pent-up rage at the Nazi regime from 65+ years ago or he suspects the Jews are a stupendously violent group of people. Neither's rational (or true, I suspect). There's not a compelling argument that this movie was to tell a story. There's not a compelling argument that this movie was to show a place in time. There's not a compelling argument that this movie was to bring us into the mind of someone from the past.
I'm uncomfortable with a movie (and director) that sets a tale in this era and makes the Nazi colonel of the SS the most interesting and human character.
"Inglorious Basterds" is not even a little good. I don't have a redeeming quality to discuss. If I were to rate the movie on a five-point scale using my fingers, I'd punch it in the face.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
From the Beginning, You Know the End
Halo: Reach is out. It's really, really good. This game is more than a sequel though; it's the culmination of a decade's work and refinement. Way back in 2000, visitors of E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) got the first glimpse of Halo.
I don't think it had a subtitle yet, but it also didn't really have a focus. That's a really long video in which nothing really happens. The world they show is huge! Rolling hills and a cool vehicle. Not much, looking back, but there's a kernel. Keep in mind that this video came out in an era when the most impressive gaming environment came from Super Mario 64 and the best shooter on a console was GoldenEye 007. I have fond memories of both, and I'm certain I was still playing GoldenEye around the time Halo started to matter.
Halo had another year to refine itself and became a launch title for Microsoft's Xbox in November, 2001. It hit big. The first I'd ever heard of the game was from a friend in high school who insisted I play. And play we did. I was enthralled. Halo: Combat Evolved was a beautiful (at the time) first-person shooter with good voice acting, a solid story, and an absolutely terrifying enemy. There are some levels in that game that work their way under your skin with ruthless timing--long, foreboding tunnels where nothing happens punctuated by frantic battles in close quarters where there is neither enough cover nor ammunition to guarantee survival.
Halo: CE was the first console-based game to really compete with what had already existed on computers for ages: compelling games with striking graphics. Xbox was about as powerful as many desktops at the time and game developers used that power to, for the first time, horn in on "real" gaming.
Halo has an awesome ending. Huge battle, witty dialogue, and victory. Very, very cool. The sequel was announced. I am so there!
It's worth mentioning that Halo: CE and Halo 2 are running on exactly the same hardware. The differences you see are all coding wizardry.
Halo 2 came out November, 2004 and was about as cool as its predecessor. I didn't bond as tightly this time around. The writing and voices that I liked were still present, but there was a spark missing. Trying too many new things? The story was too confusing I guess. Lots of moving parts. Alliances made and broken, but the player only knows that through implication. Successful in that I was probably as confused as Master Chief was, but that's not really praise.
The ending was brilliant though! Lots of people didn't like it. Lots of people didn't like it. It was a cliffhanger. Bungie, the developer, insists that wasn't the original plan. They needed to ship and were forced to choose between a completed story without polish or a truncated one with a glimmering sheen. I think they chose wisely.
Halo 2 suffered from unfortunate timing though. Almost exactly a year after Halo 2's launch, Microsoft released the Xbox 360. Where gamers had three years to devour the first game, the sequel had scarcely one. For those unfamiliar, games of the previous generation often stop mattering once they're successfully associated with "previous".
Naturally, when Halo 3 was released in September 2007, people were excited. It helped that Bungie and Microsoft marketed hard. The Halo 3 ads were some of the most ambitious and engaging things I've ever seen. The first was the 60-second teaser. Premiered during a Super Bowl, if memory serves. Shortly before release, we saw some gameplay. We'd expected those. "Believe"ing was a bonus.
The "Believe" ads stand out in my head even now, three or four years removed from them. Seeing them (research for this post) still takes me back to that place of unbridled excitement. We have "Museum", "Enemy Weapon", "Hunted", and "Gravesite". Microsoft commissioned a diorama to represent the final battle with the Covenant; it was 1200 square feet and nine feet tall! You can still see it here. Finally, Neill Blomkamp (of "District 9" fame) released three live-action shorts set in the Halo universe. They were later cut together and dubbed "Landfall".
Halo 3 was a good game. The bar was set and Bungie's popularity reached a nerd critical mass where they could release pretty much anything they wanted and be successful. The next installment was Halo 3: ODST and surprised gamers in several ways. Master Chief wasn't in this one. You were an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper--Marines dropped from space into active battlefields to break the enemy. The ODST motto: "Jumping feet first into hell isn't your job; making sure it's crowded when you get there is." We get a glimpse into this mindset with another remarkable video.
Now we have Halo: Reach. I am Noble 6 of Noble Team. The FNG. Reach is a human colony. The single most important, heavily fortified planet humanity can call home other than Earth. Anything spooky and powerful starts there. The Covenant, the bad guys, finds the planet and breaks the defenses. With the fall of Reach, it's only a matter of time until humanity follows--until the Covenant find Earth. All we have are losing battles, but we continue fighting. We fight because the alternative is extinction. We fight because if the inevitable is delayed only moments, those are moments of freedom.
This is Reach. "From the beginning, you know the end." There are no happy endings here. You fight and claw and struggle because the alternatives aren't on the table. This game is what happens after ten years of honing one's craft. Everything feels right.
For a decade, Bungie has set the standard time and again with their releases. Some games do some things better than Halo, but none come together as neatly. They are among precious few developers who continue pushing the medium forward. Too many find a formula that works--that sells the most copies. Bungie found a world. They built a universe on imagination, hope, music and writing. It's that universe that I find engaging. It's that universe that I look forward to.
Halo: Reach is Bungie's swan song; it's the last Halo game they're making. The property belongs to Microsoft. Games will still be made, I'm sure, but I worry. There's more to this than code and physics and bitmapping. There's the world. I worry that'll be lost. Time will tell.
For now, Reach is a fantastic game. It feels like Halo: CE did eons ago, but it, too, has grown up.
I don't think it had a subtitle yet, but it also didn't really have a focus. That's a really long video in which nothing really happens. The world they show is huge! Rolling hills and a cool vehicle. Not much, looking back, but there's a kernel. Keep in mind that this video came out in an era when the most impressive gaming environment came from Super Mario 64 and the best shooter on a console was GoldenEye 007. I have fond memories of both, and I'm certain I was still playing GoldenEye around the time Halo started to matter.
Halo had another year to refine itself and became a launch title for Microsoft's Xbox in November, 2001. It hit big. The first I'd ever heard of the game was from a friend in high school who insisted I play. And play we did. I was enthralled. Halo: Combat Evolved was a beautiful (at the time) first-person shooter with good voice acting, a solid story, and an absolutely terrifying enemy. There are some levels in that game that work their way under your skin with ruthless timing--long, foreboding tunnels where nothing happens punctuated by frantic battles in close quarters where there is neither enough cover nor ammunition to guarantee survival.
Halo: CE was the first console-based game to really compete with what had already existed on computers for ages: compelling games with striking graphics. Xbox was about as powerful as many desktops at the time and game developers used that power to, for the first time, horn in on "real" gaming.
Halo has an awesome ending. Huge battle, witty dialogue, and victory. Very, very cool. The sequel was announced. I am so there!
It's worth mentioning that Halo: CE and Halo 2 are running on exactly the same hardware. The differences you see are all coding wizardry.
Halo 2 came out November, 2004 and was about as cool as its predecessor. I didn't bond as tightly this time around. The writing and voices that I liked were still present, but there was a spark missing. Trying too many new things? The story was too confusing I guess. Lots of moving parts. Alliances made and broken, but the player only knows that through implication. Successful in that I was probably as confused as Master Chief was, but that's not really praise.
The ending was brilliant though! Lots of people didn't like it. Lots of people didn't like it. It was a cliffhanger. Bungie, the developer, insists that wasn't the original plan. They needed to ship and were forced to choose between a completed story without polish or a truncated one with a glimmering sheen. I think they chose wisely.
Halo 2 suffered from unfortunate timing though. Almost exactly a year after Halo 2's launch, Microsoft released the Xbox 360. Where gamers had three years to devour the first game, the sequel had scarcely one. For those unfamiliar, games of the previous generation often stop mattering once they're successfully associated with "previous".
Naturally, when Halo 3 was released in September 2007, people were excited. It helped that Bungie and Microsoft marketed hard. The Halo 3 ads were some of the most ambitious and engaging things I've ever seen. The first was the 60-second teaser. Premiered during a Super Bowl, if memory serves. Shortly before release, we saw some gameplay. We'd expected those. "Believe"ing was a bonus.
The "Believe" ads stand out in my head even now, three or four years removed from them. Seeing them (research for this post) still takes me back to that place of unbridled excitement. We have "Museum", "Enemy Weapon", "Hunted", and "Gravesite". Microsoft commissioned a diorama to represent the final battle with the Covenant; it was 1200 square feet and nine feet tall! You can still see it here. Finally, Neill Blomkamp (of "District 9" fame) released three live-action shorts set in the Halo universe. They were later cut together and dubbed "Landfall".
Halo 3 was a good game. The bar was set and Bungie's popularity reached a nerd critical mass where they could release pretty much anything they wanted and be successful. The next installment was Halo 3: ODST and surprised gamers in several ways. Master Chief wasn't in this one. You were an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper--Marines dropped from space into active battlefields to break the enemy. The ODST motto: "Jumping feet first into hell isn't your job; making sure it's crowded when you get there is." We get a glimpse into this mindset with another remarkable video.
Now we have Halo: Reach. I am Noble 6 of Noble Team. The FNG. Reach is a human colony. The single most important, heavily fortified planet humanity can call home other than Earth. Anything spooky and powerful starts there. The Covenant, the bad guys, finds the planet and breaks the defenses. With the fall of Reach, it's only a matter of time until humanity follows--until the Covenant find Earth. All we have are losing battles, but we continue fighting. We fight because the alternative is extinction. We fight because if the inevitable is delayed only moments, those are moments of freedom.
This is Reach. "From the beginning, you know the end." There are no happy endings here. You fight and claw and struggle because the alternatives aren't on the table. This game is what happens after ten years of honing one's craft. Everything feels right.
For a decade, Bungie has set the standard time and again with their releases. Some games do some things better than Halo, but none come together as neatly. They are among precious few developers who continue pushing the medium forward. Too many find a formula that works--that sells the most copies. Bungie found a world. They built a universe on imagination, hope, music and writing. It's that universe that I find engaging. It's that universe that I look forward to.
Halo: Reach is Bungie's swan song; it's the last Halo game they're making. The property belongs to Microsoft. Games will still be made, I'm sure, but I worry. There's more to this than code and physics and bitmapping. There's the world. I worry that'll be lost. Time will tell.
For now, Reach is a fantastic game. It feels like Halo: CE did eons ago, but it, too, has grown up.
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