TOP 5 Games of 2018

5. Octopath Traveler

Despite all of its shortcomings and lack of depth, I was entranced by this jewel. I wrote a full review here.

4. Spider-Man

Another one that took a lot of my time this year -- to the point where I platinumed it. But I haven’t returned for any DLC. I wrote a full review of this one as well, and it touches on why I probably won’t be back to web-slinging until a proper sequel.

3. Red Dead Redemption II

I still haven’t finished RDR II, but it really is the most polished game I’ve played all year. And maybe it’s unfair to judge this game before I’m done with it, but that’s part of why it’s both so high and so low on my list. The previous game sank claws into me that I couldn’t escape for the better part of a year. This game wants to be more cinematic. Rockstar wants to push the art in the art form, and while that’s admirable and we should have A-list games striving for the very best the medium can produce, it also seems to have come in the progression of gameplay. I’m in the absolute minority on this so I won’t say much on it -- at least not until I’ve completed the main story. And the game still plays well. Quite well. But I dunno. The last game was still a game. This sometimes feels like the most boring parts of a film.

2. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

I don't know if I need to recalculate my score for Smash Wii U after this, because for all intents and purposes, Ultimate IS the better game. It's like the Mario Kart 8 of the franchise: refined to the point where improvement is impossible. The roster is madness, the single-player modes are grindy but better, and it feels like there's nowhere left to go. But I'm sort of okay with that. I'm ready for this franchise to retire. And maybe my score reflects that more than anything.

1. Into the Breach

Into the Breach is deceptively crystal in its presentation and gameplay. Every possibility, option, and strategy is communicated to the player at all times, and failure to exercise the best method is always your own fault. The amount of abuse I allowed this game to inflict on me is lunacy, but I felt like I gained new knowledge and motivation with each failure, and if I started over then I could finally win. I am no battle chess player, but this sucker is so simply addictive.

Something different:

I’ve been making personal GOTY choices for a very long time now and I got curious about the stack of them -- what possible stats or preferences I could glean from seeing them all together. They’ll also fluctuate more commonly than my favorite films of the year because games are expensive, I often wait for them to go down in price to try them, and by then we’re in the next year and my list has already been made. So, I wanted to look back through my choices, make any appropriate changes if I’d played anything else since those lists had been made, and see what I’ve chosen. Here’s what I found:

1998: StarCraft 1999: Super Smash Bros. 2000: Paper Mario 2001: Super Smash Bros. Melee 2002: Super Mario Sunshine 2003: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2004: Halo 2 2005: Mario Kart DS 2006: Gears of War 2007: Halo 3 2008: Grand Theft Auto IV 2009: Batman: Arkham Asylum 2010: Red Dead Redemption 2011: Portal 2 2012: Journey 2013: Grand Theft Auto V 2014: Mario Kart 8 2015: Super Mario Maker 2016: ABZÛ 2017: Super Mario Odyssey 2018: Into the Breach

Obviously, some of these I reviewed in retrospect. I wasn’t makin’ GOTY lists way back in 1998, I can tell ya that much! No sir! What a lame hobby for a child! Ha ha!

Wins by exclusives: Nintendo - 8 Microsoft - 3 Sony - 1

Wins by franchise: Super Smash Bros. - 2 Mario Kart - 2 Halo - 2 Grand Theft Auto - 2

Wins by genre: Action - 4 Shooter - 4 Platformer - 4 (5 with Mario Maker) Strategy - 4 Racer - 2

I feel pretty well-rounded. More so than I used to consider my tastes to be, anyway.

Personal surprises: I thought I chose Nintendo far more often, but 8/20 isn’t too dominating. True enough, there was a near ten year gap where I barely played much Nintendo had to offer. The Wii U might have been a financial crater, but the Wii was a creative one, and even when Nintendo cracked it (Super Mario Galaxy), there were still better games on the market. 

2001 is a funky year. I flip back and forth between Melee and Combat Evolved all the time, but I think I’m happy to leave it here. I can’t fathom how much time I spent on either of them. And speaking of time spent, that appears to be my number one criterium for determining what’s worthy for top spot. Other things can factor in when it’s close (this year, for example, I had spent far more time on Octopath and Spider-Man, but neither of them had moved me to sit down and play them like Breach -- they felt more like personal obligations I’d given myself). But it’s a fair, I think: my strongest memories of games are going to become stronger with more game time. The only reason I stopped playing Halo 2 (at 2800 matches) was because Halo 3 released, and I left that game at almost 2950 matches. Compare that to Reach, which struggled to reach 1000, or even the MCC (914), and there’s an argument for playtime = GOTY. Also, we’re not gonna talk about the INSANE stat my Xbox says about my Halo Wars 2 playtime: 233 hours. What a load! Ha ha!

My affection for Nintendo is no surprise, and neither is my love of certain franchises, but I’m surprised to see the pattern shaken up with regularity. I’ll be shocked if my GOTY for this year isn’t Mario Maker’s sequel, and thus the Nintendo/franchise love will continue, but you never know. Little gems like Journey, ABZÛ, and Breach keep popping up these days. I know my tastes are very mainstream, but I love to be surprised by excellent indie ventures. I consider Journey to be the best game of the previous generation, so we’ll see how my tastes continue.

TOP 10 Films of 2018

10. Avengers: Infinity War Here they go: they run for the doors. “Ahh, a Marvel movie? Who cares what this tasteless average joe thinks!” I enjoyed Infinity War quite a bit and was impressed by its ability to squeeze five thousand characters in a coherent plot and I won’t apologize for it. We can talk about how Marvel is destroying cinema another time. Marvel's insane experiment comes to fruition. Even if every entry from here on out falls short, this 19-film campaign of unprecedented filmmaking is enough to satiate me for, well, infinity. I don't think I'm overstating; this film is a cultural touchstone. It will inspire action artists for decades. It will be the goal of family marathon events. While this cast is sensational, especially newcomer Brolin, the script is the true star of the show. Somehow this works. Somehow this is excellent.

9. The Favourite This actually didn't smack me around the chops as much as I'd hoped; most of the comedy was utilized in the trailer, so avoid if you can. Regardless, I laughed when expected thanks to the performances. It's a farce with a razor edge. The script does a good job of making the audience cast a wide net of expectations, and Lanthimos presents one of my favourite directorial works of the year. The cast is cracking, but Coleman is the standout. She can pull laughs from a simple groan.

8. Eighth Grade Bo Burnham's script is, more often than not, honest. It feels like the genuine article. Even though enough years have passed since I was this age, this dug closer to the bone than the average teen drama. And though Burnham does a great job behind the camera, the bulk of the credit should probably go to Elsie Fisher. One of the best young person performances I've seen in years. She's an absolute, endearing delight.

7. Green Book Ali exudes class like few others. Mortensen is a stereotype that the film is aware of and has fun with. Both feel like well-developed characters. I didn't need this to get more dangerous. Sometimes films can just make us happy. 

6. Bad Times at the El Royale Yes, this will remind you of a Tarantino film. No, that should not be levied as a criticism. Tarantino, after all, has been honing his style for decades. This is mighty impressive for Goddard. He manages to enrapture through extended dialogue scenes alone, and what the film misses the mark on, it makes up for in ingenuity. One of my favorites of the year.

5. Mission Impossible -- Fallout I keep seeing directors I admire repeat each other on Twitter: nobody can stitch an action sequence with as much clarity and tension as McQuarrie. What a treat that McQuarrie has hitched his wagon to a franchise that is almost entirely action sequences. But that's selling the film short. It's more than that. It's one of the best action films I've ever seen. Tom Cruise is a madman and I hope he stays that way. I cannot believe some of the shit I witnessed in this film. See it in theatres.

4. Annihilation Well, if we're still evaluating art in fifty years from now, this will be regarded as one of the few masterworks that slipped through the collective consciousness and will probably be held up on a pedestal. The more I consider this film, the more complexities I find, and I become more in awe of it. It works as adult sci-fi, as thought-provoking storytelling, as allegory, as deft filmmaking, as nightly terrors, as the closest thing I've seen to Kubrickian since Kubrick. It's otherworldly.

3. The Death of Stalin Funniest film I've seen in a couple years, and it's not like it's hard to make me laugh. The screenplay and the cast are simply wonderful. These tried-and-true comedy presences speaking in their plain not-Russian accents sell the material well, nailing both the bickering and the physical bits. This feels like a modern Dr. Strangelove, which I know sounds blasphemous to some -- but really, I keep drawing comparisons in my head and the film deserves similar praise.

2. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Every frame is a work of art, every story beat is earned, every joke is lovely. But beyond what a spectacle this is, beyond the jaw-dropping work of art it is, it's also a cultural stamp. I can't think of anything that better encapsulates and filters and translates the flurry of the 2010s better than this, and how fitting that it's all wound up inside a superhero film. This is the best Marvel film ever made, the best Spider-Man film ever made, and one of the best films of the year.

1. Sorry to Bother You Well, this might just be flawless on every twisted side of it. It's been long, far too long, since I've seen a film so infused with feverish passion and energy, and bouncing with fun ideas, non-sequiturs that build character, while being so relevant and hysterical. I had tears streaming down my face from laughter. This film was a rollercoaster and I couldn't stop screaming, and every time I think about it, I just want to scream at others to hop on with me. Do not pass this one up, folks.

31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN -- Week 4

Subtitle: (ALMOST) 31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN -- Week 4.

I didn’t make it, but I made a serviceable effort. I’m lucky to catch half this number of films in a month, and I still saw more than this -- they just weren’t horrors. 

October 19 -- Trick R Treat (2007)

This was delightful. I knew I’d enjoy this after what a treat (yes, treat) Krampus was, and while this is certainly more adult, it’s no less abundant with endearing reverence for holidaytime mischief: it’s spooky, it’s funny, it’s satisfyingly constructed. The story threads don’t interweave in complex ways, but the spirit feels rightly captured. And they say it in the special featurettes on the blu-ray, but it’s true: where is our choice Halloween movie? We’ve all got weird, spooky flicks we like to watch during the season, but none of them are truly Halloween movies -- not even Nightmare Before Christmas (because of the whole Christmas thing). Trick R Treat feels like the answer.

9/10

October 20 -- Creepshow (1982)

In keeping with my anthology theme, Shout Factory released a helluva nice edition of Creepshow that I jumped on earlier this month. This definitely feels like Stephen King: The Range: The Movie. From nonsense non-stories that are only half-baked and don’t go anywhere (young, pulp magazine King) to stories that play out nicely with tension before spiralling down its inevitable drain of an ending (book publishing King), this is the man in full force. As a bonus, he (quite spectacularly) plays the role of a hillbilly in one, and it’s hilarious. But even with the dated effects and creature designs, Romero’s direction is a testament to the ageless art of editing. Even though I wasn’t afraid of any creatures showcased here, the possibilities that lie within the tense cut and the smart closeup are well-teased. This is a fun one. Glad I snagged it.

8/10

October 21 -- The Fog (1980)

Another cheat on my own stipulations of “only films I’ve never seen” but this came up naturally as a choice with company over, and it’s always a fun one. This is the kind of film I could prattle on endlessly about and you’d lose interest after three sentences in, so I’ll keep it short and sweet: this film is magnificent. I adore Carpenter’s simple direction, the innovative filmmaking, the atmospheric as fuck music and lighting, and the lovely camerawork by Dean Cundey.

9/10

October 22 -- Halloween (2018)

This is a solid entry in a series that -- for me -- has actually been pretty solid from the get-go. But this sequel is doing more than an average slasher flick: it’s juggling themes of trauma and how that clashes with family dynamics over the course of forty years. It also carefully constructs new characters we can easily like and doesn’t shift completely into The Laurie Strode Show. It feels like for every turning point in the plot, this film had ten different branches to follow, and nine of them would’ve been horrible missteps. Even when the plot starts showing itself toward the climax, it’s miraculous that Green and McBride played this so well. This would be a great send-off to the franchise, but unfortunately it made too much money, so get ready for the third Halloween II.

8/10

October 23 -- Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

This movie was wonderful. You know what? I’m just gonna say it: Halloween, Halloween II, and Halloween III might be the best trilogy of horrors I’ve ever seen. And I can say that because retrospect grants me the ability to view these films with an open mind and understand how derided these sequels are. But just as I found Halloween II fascinating from a structure point of view, I find Halloween III just super in terms of wacko storytelling -- a Stephen King-esque weirdo spooky tale that wants to break free from its slasher predecessors. This movie is so different. Not just from the Myers films, but from all films. It’s so freaking different. I found myself just totally engaged in Tom Atkins trying to hunt down this mystery, and when it goes completely off the rails -- hell, it’s fun. I dug this a lot.

8/10

October 24 -- Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

Another cheater, and the last on the list. But every time I watch this, it’s like watching a new film. I think I caught this on TV when I was around thirteen and it was so bizarre that I said, “This is fucked” and immediately switched it off because I knew it was on the verge of damaging my brain irreparably. Then I sat down and watched it, and I couldn’t stop thinking about that Simpsons Halloween special and Mr. Burns’ Dracula shadow playing with a yo-yo. Then I watched it again and liked it a lot, but also wasn’t sure? 

Now that I’ve watched it once again, my conclusion is firm: I love it. Everything about it except Keanu Reeves. It’s such a fascinating film, and one of the few where I think knowing a little about its production elevates the viewing experience. For the uninitiated, Coppola was determined to achieve every special effect in the film in-camera -- no computer-enhanced or post-production effect work. And when you watch it with that knowledge, some of it is very clear, but it also heightens the power of most effects. It’s a tribute to the magic of cinema itself and what can be accomplished for the audience with slight trickery. It helps that the film feels like Coppola edited it while undergoing a fever. And the camerawork -- when it’s not fooling us with forced perspectives or clever backlights, it’s swinging haywire like a crane broke and Coppola kept it in. Yet everything feels like it’s by design. This film is made by a seasoned artist. And hell, I haven’t said anything of the performance or the music. One of Gary Oldman’s all-time best. Yeah. This is a beast of a film.

9/10

31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN -- Week 3

The week of Fridays. Sorry if that’s dreadfully boring, but I’ve been looking for an excuse to binge these and this challenge seemed like a good enough one. They’re easily digestible, especially after the third one, and short and simple. I once caught Parts 6-8 during a marathon on TV when I was young and they didn’t scare me but I was fascinated by them. Oh, I also watched Krampus.

October 13 -- Krampus (2015)

Few people seem to understand what this is, but I’m sure as hell glad I bit the blind bullet on director Michael Dougherty’s other film, Trick R Treat, which I will be watching for this challenge because it’d be dumb not to. Krampus is a gateway horror film for kids. I always derided horror in my youth because I was, and still am, a giant wuss, but the genre is more flexible than any other when it comes to aging. They’re fine wines, really. Where else would my tastes be without films like Beetlejuice in my childhood? And I know Beetlejuice has never really been considered a horror, but the film is generally spooky and can act as a gateway for kids to get accustomed to the genre -- it can teach them to have fun being scared.

Krampus is an artifact in that sense. There is a clear and spooky atmosphere, some awesome creature designed that even creeped me a little, and the film doesn’t apologize for any of it. It’s for kids -- and adults who have already been gatewayed. I found very few flaws in it.

9/10

October 14 -- Friday the 13th Part III (1982)

The Friday-a-thon begins. This film was made with primitive 3D in mind and it possesses entertainment value in that alone. I mean, it’s also hilarious because of everything else that happens, but the 3D thing is a real cincher. Objects and hands, oddly enough, keep being framed directly toward the camera. And viewing this in 2D, it’s easy to forget how this film released, so literally every time something like that happened, my brain broke a little: “What? Why would you frame something like that?! I don’t even know what I saw! A snake on a string? Huh?!?! OHHH fuckin’ 3D!” When Jason spearguns a girl in the lake, the spear fires towards the camera along a white string. When I saw that, I said, “YASSS 3D!!”

5/10

October 15 -- Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter (1984)

The franchise finally has some money behind it and no longer looks like utter garbage with flecks and dirt and WATER DROPLETS on the camera lens (sorry, Part III triggered a lot in me). And the film doesn't do much do tread new ground, but baby Corey Feldman is there, and Crispin Glover is a dancing champion.

6/10

October 16 -- Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985)

I appreciate a lot of what this film tries to do to resuscitate the franchise. Nobody like it because Jason isn’t in it, but that’s fine, I don’t care. Part V tries to bridge the previous four films in a new direction. It doesn’t pan out because, well, this is still a slasher flick and also most of the characters are pretty boring -- Tommy included -- and the ending is totally nutso bonkers and makes zero sense. Still, you know, it’s better than Part III.

6/10

October 17 -- Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI (1986)

I haven’t watched them all yet so I may retract this statement, but if there’s one Friday film I’ll likely rewatch just to legit enjoy it, it’ll be Part VI. From the outset, the atmosphere is refreshed and new: Tommy Jarvis is a new actor with a new haircut and then wacky stuff starts happening. The best part? The film knows how wacky it is and relishes in it. Look at that image. The film’s opening titles is a James Bond parody. I wasn’t sure what was happening in the beginning -- weirdo resurrections and magical lightning bolts?! But once I saw Jason walk into a closeup of his own pupil and slash the titles into existence, I was sold. 

The film has been labeled a prototype for the self-aware horror film -- your Screams and Chuckies -- and considering it has a year on Evil Dead 2, I’m willing to concede that point. Okay, okay, okay, let me set this up clearly: John Travolta’s nephew and his lady-friend are driving a Winnebago, but Jason is hiding in the back and captures the girl. John Travolta’s nephew can’t notice, though, right? I mean, he’s still driving, and also where’s all the fun when he gets killed? So, the solution to keep him distracted was for him to just love the shit out of driving a mobile home. His girlfriend gets hacked to bits and that’s constantly intercut with him shouting, “THIS IS GREAT!” from the driver’s seat. Honestly, best piece of comedy I’ve seen in months. 

This film knows the franchise won’t survive on serious slasherness ad nauseam, so it endeavors to actually be fun. Hell yeah. Also, a sweet Alice Cooper theme song to close the end credits? Done. I’m done.

7/10

October 18 -- Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)

Instead of capturing the fun established in Part VI, Part VII returns to boring seriousness while introducing telekinetic powers in Carrie 2.0. This feels like a film made by committee. “Fellas, it’s 1988! Stephen King is really popular!” Even when Jason grabs a weedwhacker, he just lumbers around. His heart’s not in it anymore. The makeup on his ugly fish face is dope, I guess. But none of the characters are interesting, not even Carrie the Sequel, and the film can’t even drum up excitement in an unstoppable force versus an immovable object. Carrie 2.0 just keeps electrocuting and drowning and throwing Jason around and he keeps getting back up. No one cares. She can’t even find a clever solution, she has to be saved by her zombie father whom she accidentally drowned in Crystal Lake with her powers as a child. There, I ruined the ending of the film for you and I don’t even give a fuck. Why is her dad a zombie? What the fuck.

4/10

Hey, let’s take a minute to cover something tangentially related that popped in my head last night: when the hell do these films take place? Let’s break it down:

Despite being released in 1980, Part 1 takes place in 1979 because I believe it takes place 21 years after the murders in 1958 (bear with me). So, Part 1 is in 1979.

Part 2 has a tiny section 2 months after Part 1, but the bulk of the film takes place five years later. So, Part 2 is in 1984.

Part 3 takes place immediately after Part 2. It’s still 1984.

Part 4 takes place immediately after Part 3. Still 1984 

Part 5 does not specifically state when it takes place in relation to the previous installment, but we know Tommy Jarvis has become an adult, or just about one. He’s 12 in Part 4, so let’s be generous and say he’s 17, which means five years have passed since Part 4. The year is now 1989.

Part 6 presumably takes place directly after Part 5, but it’s a little unclear: the film can cleverly be interpreted as a direct sequel or a whitewashing; after all, the ending of Part 5 makes no sense and is understandably whisked under the rug. Either way, though, Tommy is the same age, so it’s still 1989.

This is where it gets interesting. Jason is chained at the bottom of Crystal Lake when Carrie 2.0 is a small child (IMDb says she’s 10 so let’s go with that). I had to rewatch the start of the film, but yes, we open on Jason underwater. It’s unclear when this takes place in relation to Part VI: Jason is decomposing but he’s still mostly meat. Let’s say it’s been months instead of years. However, the film then jumps ten years. The year is now... hold on to your butts... 1999. I know Jason still has about a decade left before he’s in space or something, but damn, it’s weird that this timeline works at all.

31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN -- Week 2

A shorter week because I became a tiny bit busy. That’s fine, I’ll just cram more movies in later in the month, it’s fine, whatever, I’m sane, it’s fine.

October 8 -- Body Bags (1993)

Something a little different to kick off week 2: John Carpenter’s Body Bags was originally shot as a pilot for Showtime but is now packaged by Shout Factory as a film. It’s 90 minutes split into three spooky stories, each one introduced Crypt Keeper-style by Carpenter himself caked in ghoulish morgue makeup. Carpenter directed the first two tales -- “The Gas Station” and “Hair” -- and Tobe Hooper helmed “The Eye.” 

“The Gas Station” is still the best of the three because it holds up best in atmosphere and plot. There’s magic in simplicity. Also Sam Raimi cameos as a corpse. “Hair” feels too silly, too hammy, and almost too focused on this one non-problem Stacy Keach has. And The Eye, while sometimes creepy and featuring a fun performance from Mark Hamill, is oddly unfocused, with shoehorned biblical themes that don’t weave into the story neatly enough.

I normally don’t speak to disc transfers in my reviews, but I’m compelled to here because Body Bags’ has severe audio issues, most notably in the sibilance of dialogue. S-sounds crackle. Now, I grew up in the era of the internet before YouTube, before video was readily available, when compression was king. Crackly sibilance was a fact of life then, and I attribute that fact to my ability to tune it out over time, but it’s jarring and unacceptable that a $22 blu-ray would have these problems. John Carpenter deserves better.

6/10

October 9 -- Event Horizon (1997)

One of the scarier entries I’ve watched so far. But I can’t tell if I’m becoming less of a wuss or if the twenty intervening years since this film’s release has dated enough, because I sat through this without much squirming and then went to dreamless sleep. Regardless, I was shocked this was a Paul W.S. Anderson film because it’s pretty damn tonally cohesive, and even when it goes off the rails, it still feels controlled, like Anderson kept a guiding hand on it the whole time. 

Critics blasted this on release because of its vagueness or unwillingness to define the interdimensional threat, but I think that vagueness might’ve helped the film gain its cult status. We don’t need to understand what lies through Sam Neill’s gateway, just what it wants and how it can interact with our unwitting heroes. And, I mean, it’s not difficult to extrapolate. The goddamn gateway itself looks like something out of Hellraiser. Critics are dumb sometimes.

7/10

October 10 -- Fright Night (1985)

Yes, I’m cheating a little bit here because I’ve seen this already, but hear me out: Fright Night is shockingly unobtainable in the Region 1 market. I downloaded it a few years ago and only watched it the one time. Recently, through casual browsing of blu-ray forums (that’s right, I casually peruse blu-ray discussions), I found that not only did Eureka release a stunning transfer in the UK, but it’s also region-free AND it was on sale on Amazon.uk! So I bit the bullet, imported from the UK for the first time, and it plays like a dream! Ignoring the garish movie rating that the UK blasts on their movie cases, it’s a welcome addition to my collection.

And it holds up on a re-watch. It’s weird and the pacing is both uncomfortable but also well done. The bulk of the climax takes place on a stairway, but it never feels like the characters are standing still. And it’s just a fun film. It’s up there with Big Trouble in Little China as far as campy 80s goodness goes.

9/10

October 11 -- House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Weirdly, Amazon Prime has both the B&W and the colorized version of this, but I thought we as a society had outlawed colorized films decades ago. Check your shit, Amazon.

I would’ve turned into John Waters too if I had grown up on camp as goofy as this. The kind of camp that defined the term. I will say, were it not for Vincent Price, this would’ve been worse, but this is a surprisingly tight screenplay that trades on our expectations in order to trick us, and I found that delightful. Also some of the shit in this is just delicious.

7/10

October 12 -- Halloween II (1981)

This was kind of awesome, and I’m fascinated by it on multiple fronts. Carpenter and Hill wrote the screenplay, and Carpenter has expressed discontent with it (although who knows now -- he may have changed his mind) because, in his eyes, the story was over at the end of the first film and he had nowhere left to go. The result is this uncanny story that breaks tons of structural rules and, yet, is still a solid and intact story. We’re talking about a movie where the protagonist is on screen for maybe 40% of the film, and that’s a generous estimate. And not only that, but she’s useless throughout it. And story-wise that makes sense: she’s bruised and cut and traumatized -- where else would she be but a hospital for the rest of the night? Where else would she conjure more courage?

So the film keeps bouncing around between Loomis with the police, Laurie in the hospital, the hospital’s night shift employees, and Michael himself -- often through the camera’s viewpoint itself just as Halloween (1978) opened. And though it’s not a Carpenter film, director Rick Rosenthal and director of photography Dean Cundey sure as hell make it look like one. The camerawork and lighting are phenomenal. Shadows are constantly played with. Scares are earned. The film really only derails once, and it’s at the climax, but even that leads to an image so stark that Shout Factory used it for their limited edition steelbook (which, incidentally, is the version I watched). 

A protagonist that does nothing and yet there are revelations, there is a ramping of tension. Does Halloween II get away with it because it’s a sequel that directly follows a previous storyline? It’s less of a sequel and more of a continuation. Not that Laurie Strode had much to do before, but she was a better-developed character in the original. She possessed agency. Here? None. And yet that’s kind of okay because when you zoom out from these films, their connective tissue is so strong that they truly are one story. So that Laurie with the agency in the ‘78 film is still the same Laurie in the ‘81 film, just broken and battered and now terrified, terrified beyond reason, beyond the ability to scream when she needs to. Yeah, this film stoked my fire big time.

8/10

31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN MOVIES -- Week 1

I discovered a few days ago that, serendipitously, I had seen a horror film on October, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd -- and, well, that was enough to make me try this insane experiment. Others may be able to do this no problem; 15-year-old me could’ve done 62 films in October. But I’m old and consistently tired and have responsibilities. 

And yet! One week is down. I’m determined to do this. I don’t know why. But let’s review my first week.

October 1 -- The Howling (1981)

From the outset, I was impressed with Joe Dante’s direction. There’s a neat moment where Dee Wallace walks through a pornography shop toward the camera. She needs to pass through one of those antiquated beaded doorways, but the camera is going to pass through it first, ruining the illusion. So, what does Joe Dante do? Just plants some guy standing in the doorway who leaves when the camera needs to dolly through. Really clever in its subtlety. 

It’s also an impeccably lit film, which is an odd compliment, but the film is almost exclusively in the woods. And where do all amateur filmmakers shoot their terrible, too-dark-to-see movies? The woods. Dante and cinematographer John Hora are experts. The woods are always perfectly dark and bright, complemented with oodles of fog. I’m sidestepping the best stuff, though, which is the groundbreaking werewolf transformations. Sure, today we see a guy take 2 minutes to transform and get mad at Dee Wallace for not using that opportunity to run, but I think she’s just engrossed. I sure was.

8/10

October 2 -- The Changeling (1980)

All I wanted was a schlocky ghost story with George C. Scott. I should have known, though, that George C. Scott wouldn’t just let some basic ghosts stomp all over his professional acting career. This movie is the oldest I watched this week, but it’s also the scariest. In fact, it’s the only film this week that managed to spook me. And that’s because director Peter Medak keeps it simple: sound effects, inanimate objects moving on their own, things breaking, unobtrusive but effective music, creepy set designs.

But then it turns out the script is also not a pile of garbage! Ghost stories have claimed nonsense as their trademark for so many years now, I forgot good stories could be crafted from them. And it turns out, everything that happens to George C. Scott, everything trying to spook us the audience, has a purpose related to story. And then that story takes several turns and started to remind me of Chinatown a little -- a complex family history haunting the modern day. I don’t choose horror films based on their critical reception, just what looks like a good experience. This ended up being better. This ended up being a great film.

9/10

October 3 -- Angel Heart (1987)

Angel Heart is a film I’ve been telling myself to watch for fifteen years -- since my teenage fascination with my favorite actors playing Lucifer (Nicholson in Eastwick, Pacino in Devil’s Advocate). But I never got around to this until now. And I think I would’ve liked it more fifteen years ago. Rourke is tasked with finding somebody, and from the outset it’s not difficult to guess the twist. With each lead, Rourke is hounded by dead ends and murder. But there are no false leads for the audience to follow. We’re only frustrated by the lack of progress. This needed something to string us along, a plot thread that, when dissolved, would shock us. 

Alan Parker's films have always been just shy of being memorable. His style here is pretty stark -- most reviews at the time accused the style of overwhelming story and character, when really I think they were just let down as I just articulated. And this film is well made. I just don’t know why it has to be so obvious.

7/10

October 4 -- Night of the Creeps (1986)

This is as wonderful as I’d hoped it’d be. It’s a masterwork of tone control and genre juggling. Retro sci-fi, zombies, body and creature horror, hilarious dialogue all blend together and the film never feels like it’s taking too much on. This felt like it could be an original Stephen King story: the characters are well-realized and funny, the affection for 1950s science fiction is very real, and the modern (80s) twist allows for grosser, weirder elements. I just really enjoyed this.

The script isn’t flawless, though. A lot of spooky things happens and characters tend to just forget or not mention it because the surprises need to keep coming. It’s a little silly in that respect, and tightening those few loose bolts would’ve made this excellent.

 8/10

October 5 -- A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

The creativity on display in this sequel is both impressive and refreshing. Not every Freddy kill is scary (see above), but they’re certainly something only the coke-fueled 80s could dream up (nowadays we’d be all like, “TVs don’t have that many mechanical components -- it makes no sense!!”). 

And though I’m still no fan of this franchise, I’m fascinated by its goofy sequel Freddy’s Revenge and now this one. Dream Warriors especially kept surprising me with new ideas, and the story mostly made sense. An extended sequence with a stop-motion life-sized skeleton maybe doesn’t hold up so well thirty years later (and I kind of doubt it looked good then, too), but everything contributes to the film’s charm. 

7/10

October 6 -- Chopping Mall (1986)

This is self-aware fun that’s also been compromised. It has to be self-aware. The fucking robots kill people and then say, “Thank you, have a nice day.” And to the film’s credit, a lot is actually pulled off in a real mall where the crew couldn’t break anything and had to be out before 9 AM; there’s a surprising number of physical effects that occur despite those parameters. But still, there’s only one major explosion at the end of the film. The rest occur off-camera and are weak flares shot into frame. A lot happens off camera, actually. Like the supposed robot blood? I don’t even know.

The film is only 75 minutes long and yet it struggles to fill that runtime. I’m a little annoyed, but not surprised, that the film abandons its “find the control room” motivation in favor of boring cat-and-mouse sequences. One girl is left standing with around fifteen minutes to go, and if you need to remember how long fifteen minutes can be, that’s a good section to watch. The movie is fun, but it needs a group to watch it with, and probably some intoxicants.

4/10

October 7 -- Dead Ringers (1988)

This one is a stretch in terms of the horror genre, but another aspect I’ve given this challenge is to only watch films I’ve never seen before, so all I’ve got to go on without spoiling movies for myself is how others have treated and categorized them. And Dead Ringers ends up in a decent number of horror lists. IMDb lists the genre under its title. Maybe it’s my messy psychology, but this definitely felt more like a morose drama than a horror. That said, I’m not upset with watching it or with putting it on this list. That Cronenberg quality is enough, maybe.

Dead Ringers is one of Cronenberg’s more accessible films, but also it’s not(?). The film is methodically slow, like a surgery, and it takes a little time before you can differentiate the two Irons performances (though once you can, you’re never confused). I was compelled throughout, thanks mostly to Irons and the few moments Cronenberg can push his aesthetic, and I can’t say the ending let me down, as quiet as it is. It’s a challenging film and one I’m likely to re-watch in the future (fingers crossed for an HD Criterion update). This is undoubtedly Jeremy Irons’ best performance, though. It’s worth watching for him alone.

8/10

Game Review: SPIDER-MAN (2018)

No doubt that SPIDER-MAN for the PS4 is the best Spidey game on the market. That’s a high bar, too, and no, not because of the supremely overrated Spider-Man 2 game, which is only praised because it was the first one to crack web-slinging (and nothing else), but because of Neversoft’s SPIDER-MAN (2000). That game was a Spider-Nerd’s dream: web-slinging that did what it needed to do in a game that fooled us into believing it was open world (because, for game tech at the time, it pretty much was) and a slew of Spidey’s rogue gallery, each fun and different battles. I also firmly believe that game was the prototype for Rocksteady’s ARKHAM series, because not only did it employ enjoyable but repetitive combat, it also had stealth sections. And surprise, surprise: SPIDER-MAN PS4 is in many ways influenced by the ARKHAM series.

That should be a good thing -- that it’s inspired by the ARKHAM games -- because I adore that series and what it’s done for Batman. And while I appreciate that inspiration, I keep coming to the paradoxical conclusion that Insomniac’s SPIDER-MAN simultaneously does enough for a Spider-Man game, and also doesn’t.

My first impressions felt like I’d been thrown into boot camp. The training wheels last for seconds and then you’re on your own. Combat is surprisingly difficult and fast -- and that makes sense for a Spider-Man game. Unlike Batman, Spidey’s enemies aren’t kind enough to attack one at a time, and so you quickly have to train yourself to realize that just because you’ve dodged one attack doesn’t mean another isn’t halfway headed towards you. I’ve found that leveling up and gaining more gadgets has really been what’s saved my keister progressing through the game, and now I approach combat confidently with just a touch of caution -- as opposed to being Batman, just smashing through fifty thugs at a time.

Combat is fast and loose, perfect for Spider-Man. Stealth missions are also given a similar cavalier attitude. Spidey can web people from considerable distance, which can even be upgraded farther, and he can do it from almost any high hiding place. What’s more, a scan of the environment won’t keep enemies highlighted like Batman (unless you use that upgrade), but it will tell you if attacking an enemy is safe or not, zapping some of the challenge. And really, there’s not much else you can do in stealth missions. The trip mine is fun but fidgety. That’s kinda it. The majority of your moveset is embedded in combat, which again is often so rapid that you forget half of your own arsenal. 

Boss battles range from tedious to stressful to fun to easy; it’s a broad spectrum, and when you’re not quite sure if you’re using the correct strategy, you’ll probably fumble through it alive anyway thanks to button prompts. I’m usually pretty harsh on quick-time events, and my criticism is no more lenient here, but at least most of them are withheld for bigger cinematic story moments. Late game boss fights involve a two-on-one scenario, and that’s when I’ve found my own inventiveness and personal style could flourish. 

Web-slinging, of course, is awkward at the start and easier the more you practice. I found myself starting many side-missions before progressing through the main story just so I could practice everything from slinging to combat, and that helped a great deal. Like I said, the game won’t hold your hand much, which I like. And it should feel awkward webslinging between buildings, unaware of your next way to gain height or momentum until the precise opportunity appears. That feels like Spider-Man. It’s a nice touch that your webs do in fact need something to attach to, but Spidey is agile, and after a while I began to use all manner of tricks from launching off points to wall-running to twirling through fire escape stairways. 

So, why can’t I put the game down lately? Because it has that small-dose appeal also present in the ARKHAM games: a large open city with multiple things to do in each quadrant, each one a little different, each one testing your different skills, and they’re all relatively short and fun. Quick shots of adrenaline. Quick adventures that you can approach with your own personal flair. You are Spider-Man in this game, so make each mission your own, solve it in your style. It’s the same reason I played the ARKHAM ASYLUM demo fifty times before the game came out: each attempt could be made unique based on my own whims.

But that’s all SPIDER-MAN is. And is that enough? I keep asking that question. Lots of side quests and enough main story (for me, anyway) -- so what’s the problem? Is it that I kind of did this already with ARKHAM CITY? I mean, the games both play very differently and very similarly, and I can’t stop drawing comparisons. It also doesn’t help that -- like the ARKHAM games draw heavily from the scores from BATMAN (1989) and THE DARK KNIGHT (2008) -- SPIDER-MAN PS4′s music is way too close to Danny Elfman’s themes for the Raimi films. Maybe if the ARKHAM games weren’t personal favorites of mine. Maybe if this game had pushed a little harder to give us more to do. But what else? I don’t even know. Insomniac’s last outing, SUNSET OVERDRIVE, held my attention for five hours or so and then fizzled because it felt almost too open-world, too directionless. SPIDER-MAN clearly has boundaries and I’m having fun cleaning everything up within them. So why am I not taking more selfies? Maybe we’ve already seen it all.

Game Review: OCTOPATH TRAVELER (2018)

Wh... wha? Where the hell am I? ..... My knees hurt. My hip hurts. My back can’t straighten anymore. No, I’m not dying of old age I think! I’ve been on the couch for way too goddamn long. I’m not fifteen anymore, you guys. I can’t sit and play KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC for like 20 hours and then get up and, I dunno, make a sandwich. But I just lost seventy hours of my life to a video game without doing much else in my life. (That’s not entirely true but it’s true enough). And I’m not finished with OCTOPATH TRAVELER, but I had a moment last night where, after losing to a boss three times before finally beating it, I realized three hours of my life had been extinguished without me noticing a second. So, a bit of a revelation struck me, and while I haven’t totally finished the game and intend to return, I’m forcing myself to take a break.

I’m not even a JRPG guy. I tried to think of the last one that snatched my attention so ruthlessly and I think it was GOLDEN SUN. The first one. On the Gameboy Advance. I turned that sucker on after I got it Christmas morning 2001 and didn’t see the sky again until I was a man. But seriously folks, what the fuck’s going on with me? I don’t have the time for games like this! I purposefully avoid games like SKYRIM because I specifically do not have the time or willpower or attention span to dedicate meaningful hours to it. And OCTOPATH is doing several things wrong as far as good RPGs go -- things that GOLDEN SUN did better seventeen years ago. But OCTOPATH has a certain hook in the pleasure centres of my brain, so amongst its issues it has perfected a gameplay formula that won’t let me go.

I didn’t pay attention to too much of OCTOPATH’s marketing. Once I saw the announcement, I knew I’d buy it because I’ve been craving an RPG in my life lately and the graphical gimmick OCTOPATH brandishes is so goddamn charming and consistently intoxicating. But from what I remember, OCTOPATH was sold to the masses as “Play whatever adventurer’s journey you want! There’s eight of them, motherfucker! Hey! And you know what? If you want, you can play them all on one save file! Or don’t, whatever, it’s what you make it!” I may be wrong on this assessment, but I don’t think I am, and it’s kind of a misdirect. You almost need to start and level up at least four characters to have a chance.

And the stories themselves? Okay, this might sound harsh, but OCTOPATH may be the worst writing in a video game I have ever experienced. Every character is a cardboard cutout of the fantasy RPG trope that exude their respective stereotypes with pride. The dialogue sections are slow and repetitive and I couldn’t take it by the end anymore -- I’d started to skip cutscenes because they’re not actual cutscenes, they’re pixels with dialogue bubbles that contain things like “......” or “...” or “...?!” And I get it, folks, I get it: that’s JRPGs for you, but holy god the writing is so bad. So stupid. 

OCTOPATH shines in three areas: the graphical presentation that deceptively pushes the Unreal 4 engine, the charming music, and the combat system. I’ve played my fair share of RPGs and I’ve seen turn-based schticks before. Some of my favorite combat schemes include PAPER MARIO, which varied based on your weapon of choice and included timed button prompts, and CHILD OF LIGHT, which focused on you and your enemies on a speed timeline with the goal of affecting said timeline to strike as often as possible. OCTOPATH takes that timeline idea, simplifies it, and boils the goal of combat down to breaking your enemies. Find what your enemies are weak against, then knock their defenses down to “break” them -- then they lose a turn. Sounds simple, but the depth this strategy can go is shocking, and where I found the game was engaging me most. Big, powerful bosses in particular, which can change or lock down vulnerabilities on the fly, kept me problem-solving. This may be what kids today do when they’re old instead of the crossword puzzle. 

Despite the brazen repetition in the game’s story progression -- every story beat (4 per character) is agonizing dialogue sequences, then a cave/dungeon sequence against strong enemies, then a boss battle -- the combat is what kept the game from feeling too samey, because encounters were random and your strategy would have to adjust with each fight. Additionally, you had to take the specific character along for their story beats, and each character has impressively different movesets, so the combat was constantly different and new. Even now that I’ve finished the final chapters for all eight characters, I’m still finding side quest bosses that are utterly testing my competence. 

Another thing that marries well with the breaking gimmick is each of your characters have a BP meter. You gain one BP per round where you don’t previously use any, and you can use up to four BP strikes if you’ve saved up enough. For standard attacks, BP allows you to attack as many times as you’ve used BP. For magical attacks, extra BP stacks the damage you deal massively. So if you’ve got a boss with a 12 defense, you now have to strategize how best to quickly break, who in your team has the tools do to so and how to max their BP quickly so they can get the job done. I know it all sounds convoluted. Even the tutorial videos Nintendo published prior to launch made the combat sound convoluted. But experiencing it is streamlined. The best kind of gameplay: easy to understand, difficult to master. You can’t switch your brain off, and I guess my brain appreciates the endorphins and adrenaline because I’ve been playing for seventy goddamn fucking hours.

If there is a downside to this combat system, it’s that you’re likely to lose difficult fights on the first go because you’re wasting time trying to figure out their vulnerabilities. And enemies, especially high-level bosses, will exploit every inefficient choice you make. Break big and often and you’ll maintain the advantage, but if you’re desperately trying all of the twenty-odd attack types to find out weaknesses, you’re probably gonna lose. 

One last thing before I try to stop thinking about this game: side quests. These often feel shoehorned into the game, and most of them require a bit of memory work (there’s that crossword puzzle again!) trying to recall who needs what and what town/city they’re in. Most are solved by inquiring or stealing from literally every NPC you come across. I’ve completed side quests as soon as I started them because I’d stolen the needed item beforehand without even knowing what it was for. Some side quests result in boss fights, and those are the best, but most of the time the process feels vague -- like trying to play the game through a fog. The side quest menu, also, is shockingly unintuitive for a JRPG, or any kind of RPG. Side quests have been a thing for forever. I barely remember how GOLDEN SUN tackled them, but I’m pretty sure it did them better. 

RANT: The State of Star Wars

I grew up with Star Wars. I was nine when The Phantom Menace released and, despite its convoluted politics and greyscale senate proceedings, I loved it. Because I was nine and it was new. It was my Star Wars. In fact, I didn’t even know people hated it until several years later. I thought we were all on the same page. I mean, my mom liked it! And even though I’m old now and understand the very objective problems with the prequels, I’m still able to tap into my nine-year-old self’s mind and recall the enjoyment. 

And I love film, too. When I say the prequels have objective problems, I mean that seriously. They are stilted cartoons that stomp on the original trilogy’s mythicism several times over and attempt to redefine the magic of Star Wars in very clinical terms. But I can ignore that. Bless--I can ignore those things. And that was okay. I’ve never received more than a minor ribbing over my ability to watch the prequels. Because they’re Star Wars movies; the most accidentally great franchise in cinema. So, the current state of Star Wars tends to depress me. 

Star Wars was my everything as a child. I owned countless action figures and memorabilia. I owned an alarm clock shaped like a Trade Federation donut, I read books about Darth fucking Maul, I asked for a character on my birthday cake every year, I dressed up as Darth Vader no less than three separate Halloweens, I hung posters and artwork and cheap plastic masks. I used to write stories that would liberally borrow from the movies while I listened to the soundtracks. I loved the music so much that I would hum it to myself. I would say lines from the movies in real life situations and be ridiculed for it.

In seventh grade, I sat next to a nasty kid in homeroom. He found my adoration of Star Wars repugnant. Remember, nerds weren’t popular yet. Superheroes weren’t part of the zeitgeist yet. So, he’d pick on me for it. He’d hear me hum the Imperial March and tell me to shut the fuck up. He’d laugh when I’d find my books were mysteriously ruined with juice or soda. He made it clear, on a near daily basis, that my love for Star Wars was simply too much.

One day, I’d had enough. I’m not a fighter and I’m not eloquent when I’m emotional. I caved and decided that he was right: my Star Wars love had become too much. I stripped my room of everything that belonged to the franchise. Every figure was put away in a drawer, every picture was taken down. My alarm clock was replaced with an older, neutral one. But I didn’t want to erase Star Wars from my life. I still loved it. I just had to hide that I loved it. So, I set up some shelves in my closet, shifted my clothes around, and placed my favorite Star Wars items for display in there. I’m sure it looked like a secret shrine, but it was just an easy way for me to close it off from the rest of my life, to keep it apart and prove to others that I wasn’t pathetic. 

My love of Star Wars has never waned, and after a few years, I began to shift some things back into my regular decor. I understood, when I got a little older, that it was okay to love what you love, but moderation was best. I’m almost thirty now. My apartment is fucking adorable. My partner and I have excellent taste. But if you look close, you’ll find the odd Star Wars item. Maybe a couple things in my display cabinet. A handful of video games. Some Force Awakens glasses my mom bought me a few years ago. 

Force Awakens lifted a weight on fans. This franchise could be fun again. And though it was largely a retread of old ideas, it was the correct way for Disney to rejuvenate this galaxy far, far away. But Disney is on a path of global domination. We should’ve expected a new Star Wars film on a yearly basis until the end of time. And we should’ve known that it would’ve been near-impossible for all of those films to be good. Myself? I feel lucky. I’ve enjoyed all four of Disney’s Star Wars films (yes, even Solo). 

But wait, Star Wars has already been bad before. There are three films that are still objectively worse than any other. But I’ve noticed a weird trend with fans lately: the prequels maybe, possibly, aren’t so bad? Some are bold enough to suggest that Revenge of the Sith is one of the best! Up there with A New Hope and Empire, or at least in third place. You remember Revenge of the Sith, right? The one where every single thing except for the cast is digitized? The one where talented actor Ewan McGregor is physically unable to convey the emotion of Anakin “killing younglings”? The one where the dreaded Emperor Palpatine--the all-powerful face of evil--flips over his chair like Chevy Chase?

Apparently, this is the third best Star Wars now. Except it’s not, you guys. It really, really is not.

So, I have to wonder a few things about the state of Star Wars. Are the prequels getting a fair shake anymore? Or are all of those kids who were my age when Phantom Menace came out, and can still watch those movies with childlike enjoyment, now letting that ability cloud their judgment in the face of Disney’s new entries? I think that’s a reasonable assumption. You used to get blasted on any forum on the internet if you admitted you liked the prequels--now Reddit comments stating that Revenge of the Sith is the third best film of the franchise gets large upvote counts. 

And for these folks, has Star Wars ever been bad before? I guess not. So, when they confront their sad feelings over The Last Jedi, I guess it’s the first time they’ve ever had to do that. I’m sure this isn’t the case for every fan out there, but I think it’s a factor worth considering. Because, more than not, fans liked Force Awakens and Rogue One. They were new, but they gave fans what they wanted: Han Solo back to smuggling. Darth Vader slaughtering rebels. Nobody asked for anything that’s in The Last Jedi. That’s one of the many, many reasons I love it so much.

I love The Last Jedi. I think Disney will be hardpressed to produce another Star Wars film better. Many hate The Last Jedi. And that’s fine. It turns out that was fine for older fans of the original trilogy who had their hearts broken by The Phantom Menace. Because some still blather on about, sure, but pretty much everybody moved on. Seeing so-called fans harass Kelly Marie Tran into shutting down her social media accounts makes me question the state of the franchise, and the mental states of these “fans.” I know not all detractors harassed her, but any discussion of The Last Jedi on the internet is met with such vitriol. 

It makes me think back to when I was bullied for liking Star Wars. It makes me wonder what kind of fan I would be today if I hadn’t been forced to closely examine my adoration for what is, ultimately, just a handful of movies. Not to excuse or belittle the harm of bullying in any context. What happened to me still should not have happened. But I wonder about these things. I wonder when the fans became the bullies. I wonder if this venomous reaction to The Last Jedi isn’t the same that The Empire Strikes Back would’ve received in the age of the internet. 

I could write essays of arguments articulating my viewpoints on Star Wars; I could draft out my points, anticipate or research counterarguments, create my own responses to those. The cycle would be endless. I’ve made my thoughts known on The Last Jedi since it released and several rewatches has not altered my view. I love it. Many hate it. And that’s okay. It’s when that conversation starts to treat these things as any more than business ventures for one of the biggest corporations on the planet--that’s when I wonder about the state of Star Wars. I knew Disney was always going to run it into the ground, but now I wonder if the fans may beat them to it.  

Movie Review: BOOK CLUB (2018)

I work at the box office of the biggest movie theatre in my city and I’m going to tell you something all of you need to take to heart right now: never, ever, under any circumstance, in any situation, never underestimate the power of the Elderly Lady market. Scholars refer to it as the EL Equation, or the “Senior Spendthrifts” market in more layman company. Elderly ladies could rule this planet if they saw fit. 

Elderly women, folks? Elderly women? They hate dumb comedies with one glaring exception: if it’s a dumb comedy starring famous women around their age range. And when you make said dumb comedy with famous old ladies, well, the EL Equation will sell out your megaplexes. 

They come in droves. Droves. They opened the newspaper to read reviews, but stopped and made up their mind to see it after the word “Fonda.” They arrive by cars (some of them still drive), by boats, by planes. I suspect there is a Book Club shuttle that picks up from the airport and the ferry terminal. They come by city buses. They do their best with the double doors at the theatre’s entrance (the cleverest ones use the wheelchair door button). And they make it inside. They make it inside. Droves of them.

They see the ropes set up in front of the automatic ticketing kiosks. They ignore the opening we’ve made closest to the kiosks because it’s 1 PM on a Monday and it’s not busy enough to use the ropes. They weave left and right through the useless line, pretend to act dizzy like it’s a disorienting maze because they’re elderly ladies and that’s peak humor (or so they think--wait until they see Candice Bergen try on that bra thing!). They frown at the kiosks because they either don’t know how they work or they disapprove of their very existence--insist that they “don’t even use self-checkouts at Walmart!” But they are often friendly, often willing to learn; anything to get that sweet, sweet Book Club ticket.

They will make you rethink every showtime set and how busy it’s “supposed to be.” If your mid-afternoon set is supposed to be the slowest time of the day, it will be--until Book Club starts, and then? Elderly ladies. Elderly ladies everywhere. A couple husbands roped in. One suspiciously eager husband. They will all use cash to avoid using the automatic kiosks and they will all forget what movie they’re going to once they finally approach the counter. They will turn half around at their friend in the lineup and say, “Oh, Christ, Mary, what’s the name of it again?” and Mary will say, “Oh, uh, oh, Book Club” and they’ll turn back around and say, “Book Club.” They’ll insist on the senior rate, even though Book Club appears to be exclusively for seniors--the pricing for General and Children don’t even appear on our monitors! And when they forget to mention they’re seniors, I ring them through like that anyway because they have gray hair and excessive wrinkles and they have a coin purse inside their actual purse, and when they see that they say, “You didn’t even ask if I was a senior!” and I nervously chuckle because it’s technically rude to say something like, “Well, you’re old as fuck!”

This is not intended to be offensive but rather observational with a dash of sass on top. The vast majority of these ladies are sweet and friendly and the best clientele any business could hope for. But when you realize the sheer might they could wield if they were compelled by one singular force--something akin to but perhaps more substantive than, say, Book Club--then you shudder a little inside. You remember that all of the assholes that make up the patriarchy have elderly mothers they probably answer to.

As for Book Club the movie? It’s fine.

TOP 10 Films of 2017

As usual, my personal blurbs are from my Criticker profile. Also as usual, there will always be films from this year that I will see at later dates and fall in love with, but this year has been very kind to me in terms of cinema entertainment and I feel confident in this list.

10. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Always been a fan of McDonagh's writing. Here he lowers the heat on the comedy significantly. I gotta say, the way the film is structured kind of leads you to believe we're on a runaway course to an explosive climax, kind of like in his previous two films, but Three Billboards uncharacteristically and jarringly takes a highway exit just before we get there. Yet, character-wise, these people have gone through their changes. Tough pill to swallow but it works. McDormand and Rockwell are aces.

9. Spider-Man: Homecoming It took Spider-Man coming home to Marvel, but they've finally topped Raimi's Spidey 2. Compelling and understandable villain, fantastic and well-rounded humor, Holland is pitch perfect, RDJ doesn't crowd the show or steal scenes. Shit, this is probably the best film in the MCU. It meshes impressively well with the universe, takes past events and utilizes them in clever ways. The action is well-dosed and varied. Jesus, I'm having trouble coming up with actual criticisms. Just goddamn great.

8. The Shape of Water A very personal-feeling film. It's intimate. A film that's becoming harder to find in wide release these days: a vision brought to life without compromise from a talented artist. The characters are endearing, the score lovely, the camerawork gorgeous, the storytelling engaging. This was a treat. I left the theatre in the glow of satisfaction that only well-wrought stories give us.

7. Call Me by Your Name We're getting close to the point where films with this subject matter are in danger of saying nothing new. I had my doubts through some of this film. It wasn't until about the last two scenes that really cinched this up as cinema worth studying and talking about. This isn't to say the rest of the film isn't engaging, but rather the ending elevates it. Chalamet gives the best performance of the year.

6. Coco Lee Unkrich ought to step in as head of the studio now, because every single Pixar venture he touches is the new gold standard of what they're capable of producing. Coco is gorgeous and heartfelt. The words aren't in me right now, nearly a week after my viewing, to emphasize how this film touches the human heart. I could yammer about the characters, the animation, the music, the talent that's beating inside this film, but it would be an injustice to the truth of it. Just go watch it. 

5. Dunkirk I don't intend to belittle the events portrayed here whatsoever when I say this, but Dunkirk is kind of like riding a rollercoaster than watching a movie. It's something you experience. I hear the complaints about underdeveloped characters, but I feel the lens is intentionally retracted to relate these harrowing events in the massive perspective it requires. Again, Nolan plays with time and it's not always obvious how, but it eventually clicks and feels unique. This is an artist at work.

4. Phantom Thread Feels like a return to form for PTA, and a return to form for him is a splash of new filmmaking and story ideas seamlessly interwoven with each other. He knows exactly the kind of story he's crafted and the exact best way to showcase it; classical in presentation with his usual elegance factor ratcheted up a few dials. The cast, of course, magnificent, but I felt the truest star of the show was Greenwood's score.

3. Baby Driver It's unfair that movies can be this flawlessly orchestrated, but it's also why we love the medium. Wright's elegant direction pumps the film's action scenes with well-earned adrenaline and the quieter moments brim with endearing character moments and humor. I honestly don't have much else I can squeeze into a mini-review other than to say my score for this may continue to rise on retrospection. One of the best of the year, no question.

2. Star Wars: The Last Jedi Rian Johnson is a talented filmmaker and Star Wars benefits from his craftsmanship. Visual storytelling leaps from every frame, daring ideas explore uncharted territories, and the whole cast sells this affecting vision with renewed gusto. Driver and Hamill are especially fantastic. All of this in the most beautiful Star Wars to date. This only takes a few wrong swings, and I know fans are divided and calling it riddled with plot holes (it's not), but this is where Star Wars needs to go.

1. Blade Runner 2049 How. How did Villeneuve craft a film that fits snugly in Scott's 1982 universe while still being an original, thoughtful, aesthetically perfect piece of art? How did he fashion a sequel that will, in the future, be studied alongside its original in film classes? I truly cannot overstate how good this is. Everything about it. Deakins should finally get his Oscar, the entire ensemble is magic, the direction, pace, story, music -- flawless. This is the film to beat this year.

I said that this year has been kind to me at the cinema and while I’m aware that in the top 25 grossing films of 2017, only Dunkirk was an original work while the rest were sequels or reboots. That said, this was a good year for franchises. The corporatization of Hollywood has not yet broken me, though I’m sure it will someday. But I finally got a Star Wars movie I’ve been waiting for since childhood. I got to see Marvel take its films into weird directions with extra emphasis on comedy. Fucking Thor Ragnarok is a straight-up comedy. Homecoming, which was so good as just a film it cracked my top 10, has Tim & Eric level humor in it that still boggles my mind. The best film of last year was a sequel, and it’s living, breathing work of art, and a testament to the fact that we shouldn’t outright deride films just because they’re not original. And still, 70% of my top 10 are original works. Cinema is far from a dead dinosaur.

This said, I’d like to acknowledge some of the other films from 2017 that I had a ball with:

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, dir. James Gunn

Thor: Ragnarok, dir. Taika Waititi

It, dir. Andy Muschietti

The Post, dir. Steven Spielberg

The LEGO Batman Movie, dir. Chris McKay

Paddington 2, dir. Paul King

All the Money in the World, dir. Ridley Scott

Molly’s Game, dir. Aaron Sorkin

The Disaster Artist, dir. James Franco

Murder on the Orient Express, dir. Kenneth Branagh

TOP 5 Games of 2017

5. Crash Bandicoot: The N. Sane Trilogy

I’d been asking for this for years, so of course it’s gonna break my top 5 of the year. Actually, it broke my top 5 because Vicarious Visions managed to recreate the original games as faithfully as possible from the ground up. The more I play these games, the more I’m impressed with the amount of work that must’ve gone into adjusting it to a 16:9 HD world. I wrote a more eloquent review of this game earlier this year if you want to know more of my thoughts.

4. Halo Wars 2

I had given up on this game early. The mechanics looked too far gone, it appeared ugly and complicated in game demos, and the beta was a total disaster. But I gave it a chance based on the good word of mouth following its release, and it became one of my biggest time-sinkers in 2017 -- over 163 hours, to be precise, eclipsing my time spent on Halo 5. The game had monthly DLC drops that added new dimensions and options to battles, so it kept feeling like a fresh experience. I know fifteen years ago the game would’ve released with all of those extra leaders and content intact, but this is where we are. In all, I didn’t feel too squeezed purchasing the season pass. What worked best in this game was a more in-depth resource management system and a greater focus on counter-unit strategies. RTSes are not my usual cup of tea, but this franchise has won me over twice in a row.

3. Horizon Zero Dawn

As I’ve rambled on about before, my 2016 gaming experience is best characterized as a dying, dead, decomposing corpse. Horizon Zero Dawn shook me out of my slump and got me into the medium again. The gameplay sucked me in, then I became invested in the story, then the world-building, then the beauty that surrounded me everywhere I went. It’s one of those unique, original gems that surprises out of nowhere. I enjoyed every second I had with it and intentionally platinumed it so that I could say I was done. When the DLC pack goes down to a decent price, I’ll happily return. Overall, though, sometimes my memories of experiencing a game are sweeter than actually playing the game itself. Horizon Zero Dawn got me back on a horse that I’d been missing but felt little compulsion to return to, and for that I’ll always be grateful to Guerilla Games. 

2. Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle

I’ve never liked the Rabbids. I think their entertainment factor is on par with the Minions -- cheap gags and for children. Yet, somehow, when tactlessly shoved into a standard Mario adventure, they provide much-appreciated freshness and levity. The game is really an RPG battle sim broken up by puzzles, and as you progress the strategies become more complex. If the core mechanic hadn’t grabbed me by the horns, the game would’ve sat on my shelf, but it’s pretty addicting -- and the levels continue to raise the bar without making you feel like you’ve missed a step. Every time you fail in this game, you know it’s your fault and there’s a way to do it differently. It’s something lacking in games lately: the inspiration of failure to do better next time.

1. Mario Odyssey

I played this for a couple hours and knew it would top my list. Nintendo knows games. They just know games. Odyssey is fun for the sake of having fun. The imagination and designs and challenges are all centered on that belief of “is it fun?” and each one must answer a resounding “Yes” before Nintendo stamps its approval on it. Odyssey is kind of like a blissful drug: it’s a good time for as long as it lasts, and really, how much more perfection can we ask from a video game? So much else is going right for Odyssey, but I think everything under the cap has already been said by reviewers far better than me. 

Star Wars: The Last Jedi FAQs

Spoilers ahead.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi has undergone some harsh criticisms. While I need another watch to fully form my viewpoint, I came out of the film exhilarated and happy with the direction Rian Johnson had led this franchise into. If Star Wars is to survive, it needs to grow, and growing pains are a fact of life. One of the best defenses of the film is by Jacob Hall on Slashfilm -- the crux of which is that Rian Johnson deliberately set fire to all that we know about Star Wars, burned it down to the ground, and did so as a fan of the series himself. It’s a fascinating take and one I will try to avoid repeating here -- just read the article. Instead, I simply want to answer some frequently asked questions -- or FAQs as the kids call them these days -- to soothe some of the still-lingering rage hangovers some fans have. 

Q: Why doesn’t Holdo just tell Poe her plan? She could’ve avoided all of the bad shit that happened! Right?

A: Why would she tell Poe her secret plan to ensure the literal survival of the Resistance? Poe is coming hot off a bombing run where he needlessly cost lives. His arrogance got him demoted by Leia. So explain to me why Holdo is beholden to give her answers to any stir-crazy pilot that’s crisscrossing her bridge, making demands, flailing about dramatically while questioning her ability to lead? Leia’s last conscious act beforehand was to demote Poe, but because we can see an easy way to avoid Poe’s mutiny that means Holdo as a character should? This is a case where fans keep trying to apply logic that we, as an audience, understand but the characters in the context of the film do not. Holdo owes Poe nothing. She derides his recklessness and, almost in punishment, keeps him in the dark. It comes back to bite her, but she has no reason to believe that Poe would be so reckless as to initiate a mutiny, and we can’t expect her to just because we’re on Poe’s side.

Q: Why don’t people just hyperspace kamikaze ALL of their enemies if it’s such a successful, devastating military maneuver? 

A: Some questions based on the premise of this question: How do we know this has ever been attempted before? Did Holdo, in her desperation, know what the effect would be, or was she just acting in desperation and hoping for some kind of result? But even if these questions don’t give you pause and you still think the Rebels should’ve been hyperspace-suiciding since the early days of A New Hope, what would possess the Rebels to do that? They’re a small alliance against a hopelessly overwhelming Empire, but they should just be sacrificing valuable people and ships in kamikaze attacks? Sorry, don’t buy it. Holdo’s act was the first we’ve seen of it because it was an act of desperation. She was literally out of options and possessed a ship that was doomed anyway. If the Rebels/Resistance did this all the time, they’d be depleted within a week while the Empire/First Order just builds more war vessels.

Q: Why did Finn and Rose have their side-story at all? It didn’t amount to anything!

A: It does a few things: it keeps Finn’s character arcing and it pushes him to the point where, by the end, he’s willing to sacrifice himself for the Resistance. Early on, he’s still willing to abandon ship just to save Rey. His adventure with Rose widens and shapes his perspective. Secondly, this side-story does have a direct result on the plot: the code-breaker flips them and reveals to the First Order that the Resistance is secretly escaping on transports. Some may not like that our heroes go on an adventure only to worsen everything by accident, but that’s a thread running through this whole film. To lean back and see it stretch from opening crawl to broom boy is to see Rian Johnson’s thematic intent. And maybe that’s too artsy for some, maybe that’s too thin a line to hang your film on for some, and some may not just care. But I argue Johnson’s theme of failure, which I’ll return to, deepens an already character-heavy film. The way it echoes across each storyline makes the film more cohesive than some are saying it is.

Q: But space Leia?!

A: I’m gonna be downright honest here, folks: I don’t get it. No, not this scene -- I mean you folks who are probably making Rian Johnson dummies to burn in effigy over this scene. I found the scene provocatively different, an interesting take on the concept of the Force, and a humungous pick-me-up after believing we had lost Leia so early and so simply. Those angry that we’d never seen Leia use the Force to such an extent before should be pleased that we have confirmation that, yes, the daughter and mother and sister of three of the galaxy’s most powerful Force-wielders can also, by golly, control the Force to some extent. If you’re complaining about how silly it looked, well, I mean, sure, but Star Wars is full of silly-looking stuff. I dunno, I didn’t think it looked that bad, and this really comes down to a matter of taste. But if this is the hill some fans are willing to die on? Oof, good luck, Episode 9. 

Q: Who is Snoke?!

A: Yeah, really, where did he come from? This all-powerful, evil being with untold knowledge of the Force, with powers we can’t yet comprehend, able to coax one of the galaxy’s best and brightest to the dark side -- where the hell did he come from? What’s wrong with his face? It’s all grey and melted and shit! And how the hell did he become a Senator for Naboo anyway? When the hell did that shit start? Did he just think, “Oh, yeah, Senator for Naboo -- that’s a good start to taking over the galaxy!” -- like it’s working up the chain at a Walmart or something. 

...Oh! Sorry. I thought we were talking about, uhh, someone else. Yeah, who the heck is that Snoke guy? It really matters for some reason.

Q: Luke? Luke?? LUKE?!?!

A: The time of Luke Skywalker is over. I know we all wanted to see Luke’s green lightsaber ignite into frame the moment all odds looked insurmountable. I know we wanted to see him cut a bunch of troopers down, to make the First Order tremble, to finally meet Kylo Ren in a duel. Those are the easy answers. Those are the “Darth Vader Rogue One” answers -- and though they might kick ass, they might send fans into foamy-mouthed frenzies, Star Wars needs to start subverting our expectations, it needs to stop appeasing everyone’s expectations, it needs to stop making us feel safe in our galaxy away from home, because it needs to grow out of the shadow of the Original Trilogy if it has any hope of flourishing in Disney’s hands. The decisions Johnson made with Luke in this film -- all of them mirror that. They’re smart, deeper character decisions that show us another side to the hero we grew up with, and ultimately make him a more complicated man. He bests Kylo through his mind, not brute strength, and he saves our heroes with a self-sacrifice that closes his chapter and allows new ones to continue. It’s not the epic finale to a lightsaber duel that we pictured growing up. But that’s okay. There’s kind of a beauty in the fact that this sequel trilogy is mirroring the OT -- the second act completely breaking from the good-fun-times that was its predecessor to dive into dark waters and deeper into its characters -- while trying to weed out our preconceived limits of what Star Wars should be. 

Q: Why did Rose save Finn? He would’ve saved everyone and his character would’ve had purpose!

A: Somehow not buying that if the First Order lost their battering ram canon, the Resistance would be saved. They hadn’t assumed an escape was possible until Luke showed up. As for Finn, what does delaying the inevitable slaughter of his friends do for him in the long run from a story perspective? The guy needs to reunite with Rey and Poe and apply his newfound perspective to grander purposes, not flicker out in a useless self-sacrifice. Rose saves him because the time for self-sacrifice is over. The Resistance needs every last fighter. Keeping the wolves at bay won’t do it. The wolves are still out there at your front door. Ya know, it just isn’t enough for Finn, if you ask me. I’m glad Rose saved him. I’m glad to see him fight for another Episode.

Q: Why did they bring Phasma back just to have her go out like a punk again? Boy, that was unsatisfying!

A: Yeah, I can’t believe a Star Wars film would introduce a cool-looking character and then just kill said character off in such a quick and unsatisfying way.

Q: What’s with all the humor? If this is the dark second act, why are all these cheesy jokes flyin’ at my face? They’re all such groaners, too!

A: I dunno what kind of sad audience some people saw this with. I watched this on opening night with a sold-out theatre of over 400 people, and everybody was fucking gobbling up the jokes. And by jokes, I mean every damn joke. The opening Poe/Hux dialogue, the Porg stuff, the tenser moments undercut by humor. Everybody was having a good time with it. I think it’s Rian Johnson’s natural writing, to be honest, but it’s not like they’re a far cry from what we normally get in these movies. I will take a few more jokes than normal as opposed to what George Lucas proposed as comic relief in 1999, followed by long stints of political debate in literal greyscale. By the way, has anyone watched any of the original trilogy lately? Because shit like “Laugh it up, fuzzball” and “scruffy-looking nerfherder” and C-3P0 being mistaken as a god by a bunch of teddy bears... really, all of the humor from those movies holds up and I don’t know why we don’t see more of it in modern films.

Q: But the “on hold” line from Poe, though... right? I mean, contemporary phrases in a Star Wars film? That doesn’t fit. Does that even make sense in this universe?

A: I don’t know, but if this is what broke your immersion, then in the immortal words of Han Solo, I’ll see you in hell.

Q: How did ghost Yoda conjure lightning?

A: How the fuck do ghosts anything in these movies? God! Obi-Wan sits down on a fucking tree stump in Return of the Jedi because Alec Guinness is old and tired, but lightning? From the sky?? Puppets can’t do that! I mean Force ghosts can’t do that! You guys are right on this one! It doesn’t make sense! The whole movie is ruined now. What’s that about failure, Yoda? I wasn’t paying attention to you literally telling Luke/the audience why everybody in this movie keeps failing and why that’s important for us to see and why that’s also a great message for kids to hear because twenty seconds ago you conjured lightning from the sky! That’s not how the Force works! I should know -- I’m just some guy!

Q: Rey’s parents are nobodies? That kinda sucks! What a letdown!

A: No, it’s great! It’s fantastic. People need to let go of their theories. Learn to separate them from the path the films need to follow. This whole Skywalker dynasty thing needs to end. Luke is so relatable in A New Hope because he’s a nobody from nowhere, yet he’s able to tap into the Force through his own individual talents and determination. That’s inspiring. Rey being special because she’s got Skywalker or Kenobi blood is, well, not only does it zap that relatability from her, but it’s boring. We’ve seen the bloodline stuff. It’s time to follow a different kind of destiny, a different kind of story. We need to allow Star Wars to breathe outside of the echo chamber we’ve made of the past. This decision may have been the best and wisest of them all, which is why it wouldn’t surprise me if JJ Abrams retcons it with Episode 9 to say Kylo was lying just to make some of the whiners out there happy. 

Look, folks, The Last Jedi is far from perfect. It doesn’t reach the dazzling heights of Empire, but I’ll be shocked if Disney ever gets there. The film has real issues with pacing and plot, but the most common criticisms, as I’ve just listed, are misplaced and require some more thought. That’s my only goal here: not really to change anyone’s mind, but to at least encourage some more thoughts on what people think isn’t working. I was excited about the possibilities after this film, especially Rian Johnson’s side-trilogy. But the response to this film really made me scratch my head. For the first time, I wondered how many Star Wars fans actually know Star Wars.

Game Review: MIDDLE-EARTH: SHADOW OF WAR (2017)

It’s 4 AM and I’m mad. I’m mad at the current political climate, I’m mad about the literal climate, I’m mad that it’s 4 AM, I’m mad that you can’t order CDs through Amazon unless you like cracked jewel cases (yes, I still own physical CDs and also purchase them!). And I’m mad at Shadow of War, which is weird because I normally don’t give unenjoyable games much time. But I’ve poured over 50 hours of tears and groans and sighs and sweat and blood on that one day I had a hangnail into this game, and I’m still mad at it.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Loading had one job: be better than its predecessor. This is not always easy when you borrow two of your game’s biggest mechanics from franchises that have failed to top their earliest entries (Arkham Asylum and Assassin’s Creed), but bless Monolith Productions for givin’ ’er anyway. 

Hey, if you’re reading this far and I still have your attention, let me ask you a question: what the hell is this game? What the hell is going on? Are we even alive? 

Backstory: in the first game, Shadow of Mordor (better title, too), you hacked through orcs, snuck up on orc fortresses, did battle with strong opponents, and got to play around with the unique chess board called the army menu. You could single out orcs. Orcs that bested you rose higher on the board and you felt compelled to hunt them down to cut their ascension short. The game made you plot you every step in battling warchiefs. Were you going to run in sword blazing? Or would you assassinate his bodyguards to weaken his defenses? Or would you dominate his bodyguards – turn them to your side – to ambush the warchief? Different strategies for every enemy, but how you played that chess board was left to you.

Shadow of War should be called Shadow of Army Screen, because that’s the crux of the game. You must take over a significant amount of captains, and you must place high-ranking followers on each of the five capturable forts in order to progress. Things have improved in that you can order your followers around in much more interesting ways. You can create missions for yourself to level up your captains the way you want to. Or you can do this up to a certain point, at least.

Okay, here’s the thing. Here’s what really got my goat. I hit a level cap before I hit the actual level cap. I beat the game, but the game doesn’t truly end. The game consists of four acts, and the end of Act Two culminates in the whole game inverting itself on your ass and nothing being as it was again. It doesn’t really affect the gameplay, but it affects the story. Sure, fine. Act Three is two boss battles. The end. Act Four – oh, ho, ho, Act Four. Act Four is called the Shadow Wars, and this is where the forces of Mordor try to retake all of your forts. Multiple times. These are siege battles, and they’re actually kind of fun, though more so on the attacking side. The stronger your warchiefs in the fort, the stronger the fort, and you’ll be given an effectiveness rating to compare with your attackers. Level up your guys, gain some better defenses, improve your rating, win the siege. Simple, right?

Ah, you fools! Your followers cannot be stronger than you. So if you’re level 45, then level 45 is the strongest possible orc in your command. A problem if, within the attacking siege party, is a couple of orcs above level 45. What’s the big deal, you’re asking me. What the fuck is wrong with you, you’re asking me. It’s an RPG action-adventure hack-and-slash regular-old piece-a-crap – why don’t you just level up your dude so you can level up your orcs so you can beat the fucking sieges and finish this godforsaken game? Well, you arrogant fucks, because leveling up is slower than orc blood in January in Act Four. Once all story missions are finished, you have little options to gain XP. One is to farm nemesis missions, which net about 3000 XP each. Of course, you could be like me and just press on into the sieges because they grant the most XP and hope, with your head and your heart, that the game will propel you enough to keep you on track with the next sieges.

But it won’t! 

I… I don’t know what to do. Ever since I reached Act Four, I feel empty inside. I feel like the game gave up on me, but I don’t know what I did. Why did it just up and leave me? We were having a good time, I thought. Sure, I was groaning and sighing a lot, and I’ll get to why, but we had something. Or I thought we did. I dunno, man. I hit level 45 and it felt like there was no reasonable way for me to level up to continue at the same pace I’d been moving.

I don’t know if I’m getting older or if games are getting more lax with the bullshit. It might be a sad combination of the two. And I’m not talking about loot boxes here. I’m talking about games taking their sweet, sweet time with every. Single. Fucking. Thing. They ask you to do. This game takes six hours to load every time you jump between regions. That’s bad enough. But good lord baby Jesus, why does Monolith keep taking the game out of my hands?

In the previous game, each time you confronted a captain, they gave you a little speech that rarely eclipsed fifteen seconds. That tradition continues in the sequel, but now these orcs… these fucking orcs. Sauron taught them how to read Shakespeare or something because they absolutely will not shut up. I’m pretty sure some of them yammer for the better part of a minute. And the problem with that is twofold: 1) I don’t care what these orcs have to say. Nobody does. Nobody ever did. It’s always the same shit over and over and over again delivered from one of three different voice actors. At least in the first game these speeches were short like “Arrrgh I’mma kill ya now, ya fuck!” or something, you know? 2) You did not have to confront nearly as many captains in the first game as you do in this one. This game is all about confronting captains. If you didn’t confront captains, you would not be doing anything. The game could be called Shadow of Confronting Captains. And you still have to hear their speeches every. Single. Time. It wears thin.

This sounds like a trivial complaint, and maybe it would be if the game would just let me play it. That’s all I ever wanted! That’s all I ever ask of a game: let me play you. But the cutscenes are obnoxiously common. The game will surprise you with an ambush or a betrayal way too frequently and – I’m certain it’s programmed this way – at crucial moments with other tasks. I’m an achievement hunter, and there’s one for killing a drake while on a graug. These creatures are randomly generated and they’re not too easy to find. You can probably find a graug in a cave, but then you’d have to find a drake. Twice I managed to do this. Both times, just before I could finish the drake, I was ambushed by a follower betraying me, and I lost the drake kill because every time you’re ambushed, the whole game just totally stops and suddenly there’s an orc and suddenly you have to listen to his whole goddamn speech. 

Recently, I was defending a fortress in a siege. Things were going south. All of my captains were dying. When your orcs are in peril, they begin to bleed out and you have to rush over to them and hold B to revive them. This is almost always impossible – you’re often too surrounded by enemies to complete the revival. But guess what happens every time one of your captains dies? That’s right! The whole fucking game stops and you have to watch them bleed out in slow motion, because somehow bleeding out in slow motion is a thing that is even possible to convey. If you have ten orcs fighting for you and shit goes south, that is ten times the game will halt you, no matter what you’re doing – attacking a difficult enemy, trying to regain ground, trying to counter an attack, trying to dominate an enemy, trying to execute an enemy – no matter what you are doing, the game will whisk you away so you can watch your orc die because there is no better way they could have possibly given the player such information. 

On the army chess board, your followers will randomly enter missions. If you have a specific orc in mind for a specific task but he’s busy in a mission, you cannot control him until you either force the mission to start and see it to success or advance time three times, which takes forever just from the loading screens. If you seek out an orc to dominate because he’s perfect for a plan you’re crafting, he can instantly enter a mission after he joins your army, and he’s useless to you until he’s free of that mission. If you enter the mission and help him complete it, there is a possibility he will instantly enter another one. Again, you will have to complete that mission before you can use him for what you needed him for. This happened three times in a row with one orc. Just let me play the game! This is not playing the game. Nobody wants to do these shitty things. You can’t set up your game on the premise of free exploration and a choice of how to proceed, then box players in because you couldn’t figure out a better way to integrate this system into the chess board. 

So, these loot boxes. The rule of the follower level cap still applies. If you find yourself desperate for powerful orcs, you can purchase them in loot boxes, but they still won’t be a higher level than you, so if your problem lies in enemies stronger than you, loot boxes won’t help. You can gain XP boosts, which seems like the only route to take at this point. 

There are two “online” modes: Vendetta and Conquest. Both have you enter another player’s world, which looks identical to yours, and either kill a warchief (Vendetta) or capture a fortress (Conquest). Both modes take ages to load, ages to complete, and the perks are minuscule at best. You rack up spoils of war points, which is a point system segregated from your single-player experience, and every online victory brings you closer to a free loot chest. I’ve thought about doing a bunch of these in the hopes for free XP boosts, but the sheer time it would take is offputting. 

The most tragic thing about Shadow of War is the core game, which is identical to its predecessor, is still fun. That’s why I’ve sunk so much time into it. There is a good time to be had here when you brush past all of the garbage development choices. I want to hit the actual level cap, but I have never in my life played a game where I feel like I am just unable to because there’s not enough for me to do. I could farm nemesis missions for days on end and eventually get there, but I’d only resent the game more for it and have a worse time than I am now. I actually Googled a solution to this because it baffled me so much – I was certain I had missed something or done something wrong. The top solution amongst players is to lose your fortress in a siege, then retake it, because that grants you three times the XP of just defending it. I can’t think of a less satisfying way to beat a game, so I may never see the sun in Mordor again.

TOP 5 Games of  2016?

It’s October 2017, so I can’t think of a better time than now to reflect on the games I played last year and rank them based on specific merits. But wait! Did I even play any games last year? The answer… is no. But also yes, kinda. 

Look, this is gonna be a little different than my standard list, all right, because shit got weird and sad last year, so let’s just get this over with.

No Man’s Sky and Overwatch

I hit what I’ve trademarked as a Gamer’s Slump, better characterized as The Great Game Slump of 2016. But here’s the thing: I had no reason to. Two games, that I own, that came out in 2016, have become relevant, life-altering pillars in my good friend’s world – No Man’s Sky and Overwatch. But NMS had one of the worst launches in history and I canceled my preorder. I didn’t buy it until this past summer when I grabbed it for $13.

And No Man’s Sky is… stressful. It has a decent difficulty curve, which is admirable, but it also makes all actions a slog. Everything needs improvements and all of those improvements require hours of time slotted into the game like quarters in a Galaga machine. This is fine if you have a bong to hold you over with the crazy visuals and the weird animals that all look different but also all look the same, but I don’t. I gave that game 4 hours. I came close to death several times and my ability to survive close calls excited me. Then, randomly on my trip between planets, space pirates blew me up. I died and it seemed there was nothing I could have done about it.

I played that game on Twitch and my friend watched the stream and then sent me several paragraphs of bullet points of what I was doing wrong. I think he even said I could’ve avoided death from the space pirates. But I couldn’t find out how at the time. And that’s kind of the biggest problem with NMS: it feels like walking into Grade 10 Spanish without knowing even knowing what Ay caramba means. It’s a good game for budding game developers to learn that, yes, while we generally hate games that hold our hands to the point where it’s playing for us, we also still need a semblance of guidance. No Man’s Sky drops you, alone, with little in the way of intuitive guidance, and that’s part of its charm, but it made the game feel cold and uncaring to me. 

But also, I’m not done with it. I will return to it, but it’s difficult these days now that my Game Slump is officially over (seriously, I am having trouble squeezing all the games I love this year into a Top 5, and the year’s not over yet).

I should have gotten sucked into Overwatch. But I didn’t and I’ve tried, oh lord, oh lawd, how I did try. And I’m still willing to try because it’s not like I’ve disliked my time with it, it just hasn’t grabbed me by a big metal hook and yanked me into the fray. So, again, another game that I want to spend more time with before I can even decide if it belongs in a Top 5 list.

Remakes, Remasters, Returns

The new games in 2016 didn’t excite me much, so I delved into some remasters. I like remasters. They give me an excuse to play older games I missed that are now overpriced on the used game market or a chance to replay one of my favorites. The latter applies to two games (or should I say 4 games) that took up a sizeable chunk of my gaming time last year: Batman: Return to Arkham (which has the first two remastered Arkham games) and the BioShock Collection (of which I only replayed the first and third). 

It’s no secret that the Arkham games are some of my favorites of all time. The first game is a masterpiece. I own every installment, even those not developed by Rocksteady, so this was a no-brainer. And it was fun! This, in part, is why 2016 was so slumpy, because I craved fun. I didn’t want to work, and work, and work, and work towards better stats or perks or shit like that. I didn’t want to rely on other players to have a good time. At the start of 2016, I was just walking out the door on the Halo franchise, which is to say I was done with its online multiplayer. Guardians was so far removed from what actually made Halo an addicting franchise, but also I think I’ve grown cantankerous and grizzled and I have way more fun with local multiplayer these days. I like to joke around with people I know, to challenge them upfront, to call them out on poor judgments, instead of what Guardians had devolved into: a joyless, grindy, perk-based pay-to-win pile of puke where nobody talked to anybody else because they’re in a party with their three pals. I was over it and I think Overwatch got caught in the wake of that.

But the Akrham games? Those are still polished perfect. I don’t need no other stinkin’ players to have a good time with those! The only downside was Arkham City kept fucking freezing!

And BioShock, well, it had been like ten years since I played the first one, so it was neat to dive back into that. And it holds up! Infinite even more so, though I think Infinite is best delivered as a first-time experience. Knowing the twists and turns, it’s not the rollercoaster it was the first time around, but it still plays fantastic.

Gears of War 4

Last time I tried to cobble a Top 5 of 2016 list together, I was so desperate that I actually considered Gears of War 4. Boy, how this franchise has fallen. I’d almost consider this new addition worse than Judgment, which was always a third-party placeholder game and played like one. Gears of War 4 is mechanically great, but holy shit is it boring. The campaign never became a good time. The only moment I remember is Marcus angry about his fuckin’ tomato plants. The rest blurs into gooey sounds and robots and insufferable characters. And it’s not like this franchise had great stories or characters to begin with, but its macho, Starship Troopers-like atmosphere made it feel like violent 80s schlock that straddled the line of ridiculous and somber. The new game? It plays tight. The Coalition knows how to make this game feel right. But everything they have you do is just mindless. 

ABZU and Firewatch

Two games that stood out from last year – indie gems that were fun to play and emotionally involving. That said, I didn’t play these in 2016. I played them both in 2017, after the Game Slump lifted, and so they didn’t ping on my radar until well after 2016 was over.

Firewatch is grossly engaging. It’s the same praise you’ve read a hundred times over. Its biggest hiccup is that the main twist in the story is one based on backstory that has no bearing on your character’s involvement with the story. As well, I’m not sure how much the opening choices affect the plot, because they seem pretty unrelated, but it did function as a nice way to emotionally anchor the player into something serious.

ABZU is a fantastic water-based Journey that is a little too gamey with a camera that is sometimes wonky. I love Journey. It’s my favorite game of the Xbox 360/PS3 era. ABZU is sort of a cheaper version (except it’s more expensive, ha ha). The music isn’t quite as good, there’s no unique multiplayer stuff, the emotional punch of the story is muted in comparison to that heavenly ascension. But it’s still beautiful. There are several moments that are so gorgeous and spiritually affecting. I saved this clip from my first playthrough where I encountered the whales: 

If I had to pick a #1 of last year, ABZU would probably be it. And even though I haven’t said much about it, I think that’s all I need to say. There’s a poingancy in its minimalism that can only truly be felt by playing it.

2016 was a weird year. I think I can thank Horizon: Zero Dawn for breaking my slump and bringing me back to games. I’ve been playing different things non-stop since February and I’m eager to boil down my favorites of the year into a Top 5 list. Here’s hoping 2016 was an anomaly that won’t repeat until I have responsibilities and priorities well beyond sitting on my ass.

Game Review: CRASH BANDICOOT: THE N. SANE TRILOGY (2017)

Whoa! [Translation: Click “Keep Reading”]

Oh, how I have waited for this day...

The year is 1998, or something. My mom bought me a PS1 and, what was probably recommended to her by the Futureshop employee on shift at the time, Crash Bandicoot. The original. The first. The beginning. The hardest fucking thing I’d never played.

8-year-old me was dumb, though. I sunk around twenty hours into Jersey Devil without ever understanding its mechanics or how to progress (a couple years back I thought, “How did you progress in that game?” and found out that you progress like any other free-roam platform and 8-year-old me was just an idiot who liked the game’s spooky aesthetic). I played the shit out of Beast Wars and could rarely progress (in fairness, that game was tough). It took me maybe a year to get to Darth Maul in the Phantom Menace game, but I could never beat him. Then I lost the save file, tried again, and got stuck in a Rancor pit halfway through the game, inexplicably decided to save my game there, and from then on insta-died every time I loaded it back up. 

But Crash is a fairly linear platformer, and those I understood from my SNES days. What Crash beat into me and thousands of kids around the world was that the hand-holding days of cute dinosaurs was over. See that fish? That innocent little fish flopping around? IT JUST MURDERED YOU. Oh, you fell in the water? Haha -- NOW YOU’RE DROWNING AND DEAD LOOK AT YOUR FLOATING CORPSE. 

1998 was also in the era of cheat code books and passwords. I made it, impressively I think, to Road to Nowhere before I gave up and found myself copying these codes down. Once I unlocked free movement across all levels, most of my time in Crash Bandicoot was spent fighting all of the bosses in succession (the hardest is N. Brio by the way). Levels like Road to Nowhere, Slippery Climb, The Lab -- these never got touched. I beat the system so I didn’t have to beat the levels.

Then Crash 2 came out. And I beat it from start to finished. Ditto Crash 3. So enough down memory lane; how does the remade trilogy stand up?

The answer is: pretty goddamn perfectly. There are some things I’ll address, but the overall package is sharp and faithful. It feels like re-living the games of my single-digit years and that was the biggest box Vicarious Visions had to check. They’ve tszujed up that bandicoot sheen while recapturing the fun of Naughty Dog’s original gameplay. Were this a remaster instead of a remake using assets from the PS1 classics, it wouldn’t be so remarkable, but VV built this from scratch and still managed to nail everything. Huge kudos to them on this. Not sure anything of this magnitude has been achieved -- remake-wise -- in the industry before. 

When the game released, the Crash Bandicoot subreddit exploded. Highest among the complaints were: jumping is off, hitboxes are off, and Crash’s shoes have been coated with bacon grease. And they weren’t technically wrong: these things are changed from the original games. Jumps are not as high as they were and I don’t remember having to hold X in the first one to gain distance. Hitboxes can be wacky and drastically different from what they were in the originals, making veteran players misjudge when to spin. And Crash doesn’t land flat on surface edges anymore -- with today’s scary technology, he can realistically slip off instead of standing on 85% thin air. Creepy! Wrong! Worst game ever! Back to the PS1 classics that look like ass on my 70″ 4K HDTV!

I was in the same camp when I first booted up The N. Sane Trilogy. My first death was on the very first game on the very first level on the very first enemy. One of those giant fuckin’ crabs that you only see in level one because they’re huge and slow and the training wheels are still on. It killed me because I spun when I always used to spin in the original, and that was wrong. The hitbox for them changed. This probably caused most of my frustration with all three games for the first several hours, but I’m what the baby boomers call a “video-machine gamer,” all right? I’m adaptable. I can alter my approach to things. I can learn from errors. And a changed hitbox, as it turns out, is not the same thing as a broken hitbox. You just re-learn when to spin stuff. Now I’m not bothered by it.

Same goes for the jump. Mastering this again took time and patience, especially with certain parts of the game that don’t function properly like the ice physics in Crash 2. However, after nailing when to hold X for greater height and understanding that now Crash needs a more precise landing to avoid slipping, I’ve gotten adept at this as well. All of this is to say that those players who initially flipped out at these tweaks were hopefully just following their gut reactions like me but have now adjusted and are now having fun -- like me. 

The slipping, though, man. It makes Crash 1 even harder than it was, but I still won’t call it a mistake. From what I’ve ascertained, Crash’s character model is now pill-shaped, meaning he’s gonna slip, all right? It’s just gonna happen. BONUS: watch me, in the Twitch chat room for my friend’s first play-through of this game, try to offer this advice and him taking it the wrong way.

So what are the biggest criticisms I can levy against the trilogy? Well, the music stands out as subpar, especially in direct comparison to the louder, more interesting original score. The new music feels timid -- like it’s afraid to be the bombastic presence it was in the classics. A more faithful approach to the music’s original sounds would’ve been appreciated. I’m still listening to the original score because the new one is too orchestral. It’s not as video-gamey -- not as wacky, and so that charm and atmosphere are lacking in the new trilogy. Here are some comparisons:

Temple Ruins [Original]

Temple Ruins [Remastered]

Crash Dash [Original]

Crash Dash [Remastered]

This isn’t to say the music is bad or that every remastered track is worse than its original counterpart (see: Hang Eight, Toad Village, Toxic Waste, & Future Frenzy for just a few examples of excellent new takes), but even when the music is worthy of the original score it often fades into the background and gets lost in the sound effects. I know you can adjust the volume settings to make the music louder, but I shouldn’t have to, nor do I want to -- I like all the noises in Crash Bandicoot (except the goddamn didgeridoo Crash-angel plays). This is just an area where the flame doesn’t burn as brightly as it ought to.

Also? I don’t like Cortex’s design or voice. Or most of the voice acting in general. I don’t mind how Crash sounds, but I’ve been hearing John DiMaggio voice every character in existence since 2006 and now when I hear him I can’t unhear him -- I know it’s him. Kind of like when you know Tom Kenny voices Spongebob, you’ll always know when Tom Kenny shows up in something. I know the original actor for Dingodile died 12 years ago but come on. I blame Twinsanity for this, which was the first time the series saw a massive design shift and Cortex became the weird cartoon he is now. He’s lost his menace. 

I think it’s the gums. I miss Cortex’s gums. 

Cutscenes are particularly bad in Crash 2 whenever Cortex addresses you in the warp room. There are no effects to show Coco taking over the broadcast. Seems kinda lazy. 

These complaints are superficial to a quality game, though. I did something 8-year-old me couldn’t do the other day: beat Crash Bandicoot without any cheat codes. I sweat and swore through The High Road and Slippery Climb, came out of it, and climbed the tower to kick Cortex off it. That feeling of accomplishment has been missed in most games these days. And now I find myself obsessing over gems. Those clear sparklies that 8-year-old me never sought because I’d shrugged them off as “way too hard” to get. I’m over halfway to nabbing them all in each game and I’m going -- oh yes, I’m going to get that motherfucking red gem on Slippery Climb. I spent 45 minutes trying to get the yellow gem on The Lab, you think I’m gonna stop now? I’ve got a collectible mind, motherfucker. I can’t pass that shit up. I’ll probably snap my controller but that’s all right because you know what? I’m a fucking adult now and I can just buy a new one. Fucking red gem!!

...Yeah, so, I love this game.

Understanding THE LORD OF THE RINGS

The Lord of the Rings has already inspired two blog-like posts from me: one, written on a particularly nostalgic day, chronicles the most tear-jerker moments of the trilogy and the other, my review for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, served not just as a critical analysis of that film, but I used the Lord of the Rings trilogy as a consistent counterpoint to illustrate why those films are so seminal. I note these two pieces to emphasize this point: Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy is a monumental cinematic achievement in my eyes, and greatly shaped my appreciation for film and its possibilities. They’re simultaneously well-honed adventure epics and brimming with hints of former lore -- of a history that has shaped the world we get to see. Having taken The History of Middle-earth course, those gaps are now filled, and my appreciation and comprehension of Tolkien's world is far more complete than it was before.

The portrayal of Middle-earth in the films is one of decay, of a bygone era long-crumbled, and the remnants are now scattered kingdoms filled with weak or illegitimate leaders. This is clear from the first viewing of these films, and I always understood that there was a rich history behind these images. The film consistently brings them up: Aragorn sings of the Lay of Lúthien, Frodo and Sam happen upon a decapitated statue of a king, Gandalf warns “they are not all accounted for -- the lost seeing stones” -- the only backstory we get of the Palantíri. Indeed, even things we are shown in the prologue are only given so much information. Viewers have no idea of Mordor’s history -- was it always there? Has Sauron always been a plague on Middle-earth? Where did he come from? And little is told of Valinor, the land Frodo sails off to in the end, the land Gandalf gorgeously describes to calm Pippin during the siege of Minas Tirith. 

The Silmarillion tells us of before Earth (or Arda) is even created, how the beings that helped shape it reside in Valinor across the western sea. From it we have better descriptions of Valinor than the poetry Gandalf musters, and we understand the Valar themselves -- their limitations of understanding, their unique desires to see different aspects of Arda to fruition, and the thousands of years of history that explain why Valinor is such a coveted destination -- and a particularly impossible one for the race of Men. 

That’s a heavy amount of information already, but it’s enough to bring the grander vision of Middle-earth into the light. Before the course, my understanding of Valinor was that it was a Tolkienized vision of heaven; a place where you never die, you never hunger, you never feel pain. And while heaven isn’t exactly a wrong term to describe Valinor, it’s also incorrect in its lack of nuance and understanding. Valinor is a real place in Arda, a place with its own geography and names and cities. The majestic beauty of the Valar, the godlike beings who first shaped Arda and reside in Valinor, bestow upon the lands a light that gives it a heaven-like quality, but it isn’t a heaven in the religious sense. 

While I always inferred a sense of ancient history to The Lord of the Rings, I had absolutely no comprehension of how far back that history ran, nor how much the geography changed since Arda’s formation. When we follow the Fellowship into the Mines of Moria, there is a sense of hundreds of years of decay, but the truth is the oldest places of Middle-earth are under the sea -- sunken from a great battle to expel evil (more on that later). Time, and just how much of it has passed and shaped the people, the world, is lost in the films. All we see are bones now; ruined monuments, frail kingdoms. Another example from Moria is when the Orc stampede awakens a Balrog. This moment is superbly done in the film and still gives me goosebumps: the music halts, stone creaks, and Gandalf for the first time has no answers except “run.” The entire following sequence has entered pop culture. But I was left to come up with my own idea of the Balrog’s origins. It seemed like the depths of Middle-earth held a powerful evil, one of the worst of which could be the Balrog. Turns out, well...

The Silmarillion describes one of the Valar, Melkor, who strayed from the light from pride and desire, and eventually sought to undermine the other Valar and rule Arda. He was the one who began to torture Elves, twist them into Orcs through cruelty (this is shown once in the films and is quite ambiguous -- another gap filled by the history). And Melkor, later named Morgoth, supplemented his armies of Orcs with legions of Balrogs. There used to untold numbers of those foes. They slaughtered Elves and Men in several wars, before the western lands sank, and they even had a leader named Gothmog (a name I suppose Jackson & Co. liked so much they donned it upon the crippled Orc leader in Return of the King). Tales of these wars, of the heroes within them, are often told in detail, and when Morgoth was finally defeated (after a very, very long time), the remaining Balrogs fled into the deeper, darker regions of the world, to hide and await the return of their master. The now-classic Khazad-dûm sequence is given layers of context from this: a creature of ancient evil, created by a Valar of all beings. No wonder Gandalf is out of options; the Fellowship doesn’t have a chance against such a creature. Moreover, when Gandalf holds the Balrog on the bridge, he says, “I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the Flame of Anor. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn.” The Silmarillion teaches us that the Secret Fire, or Flame Imperishable, is with Ilúvatar, and that Anor is another name for the Sun. Again these indications of a greater lore behind the present storytelling, but only indications -- only mentions. The Silmarillion doesn’t break down this phrase, but it does use this terminology. I could get the gist of what Gandalf was saying beforehand, but now I know exactly what he’s saying and referencing. And this adds layers to Gandalf, too. Sure, he knows what a Balrog is from the start, but now I know he’s referencing Illúvatar, the light of the Sun as provided by the Valar, and he knows the Balrog’s master, and Melkor’s first fortress Utumno. A kind of snowball effect begins to occur with the extra knowledge of this history, and soon every character feels deeper, feels more connected to a root system going back thousands of years.

Through the history, the origins of seemingly random things can be traced, thereby eliminating their randomness. Sauron, though the highest power of evil in the Third Age, was a mere lieutenant to Morgoth. And Sauron was a corrupted Maiar, a lesser version of the Valar, tasked to aid the Valar with the keeping of Arda. In the Unfinished Tales, we learn that wizards like Gandalf and Saruman are Istari, sent in the fallible form of Men in the Third Age by the Valar to help steer Elves and Men along the path of the light in the wake of Sauron’s growing influence. This was always a point of contention with pedants: “Why can’t Gandalf use magic to help them out here?” -- akin to the “Why can’t he summon the Eagles to fly them straight to Mordor?” argument. My answers, before the course, were more defense of story structure than actual answers. But it makes sense, given the history of Maiar like Sauron, that the Valar would send the Istari to Middle-earth with restrictions on their powers, lest they be tempted to rule by force or seek power. This still happens with Saruman, and so the Valar seem wise to have placed limitations on wizardly powers. But again, these answers are not clear from the films. The films don’t tell us what Maiar are, and thus Gandalf and Sauron simply are. They exist without given reasons. The history detailing the Istari not only illuminates on Gandalf and Saruman’s backgrounds, but it raises the stakes for Gandalf. His susceptibility to human weakness makes him less otherworldly, less out of place from the Fellowship, and the challenges he faces seem greater. He cannot just poof away his problems. And these sorts of things continue to show up in the histories. Ungoliant, a presumed twisted Maiar in the form of a wretched spider-beast, is pivotal in a dark moment in the ancient history of Valinor, and her appearance (without even mention of it) makes Shelob’s presence in Return of the King more acceptable (as in, it’s more than just “a giant spider monster happens to dwell in this tunnel”) and fearsome.  

To the strongest point of the history’s effect on the films, I think the theme of doom and how it ripples through the timeline even to Lord of the Rings is the most compelling and rewarding for later re-watched of the films. Morgoth doesn’t start out as this vicious, evil spirit, but his slow descent from disobedience to power-hungry lust is what does it. He learns to lie, to deceive and spread half-truths, to sow evil into the hearts of (first) the Elves and (then) Men. And it reaches out from there. Countless times, a small act from Morgoth eventually incites violence, and those involved don’t even know of Morgoth’s involvement half the time. In Valinor, during the First Age, Morgoth is the catalyst for rumors of discontent among one of the Elvish clans -- the Noldor. And when Fëanor creates the Silmarils, beautiful orbs of light from the Trees of Valinor, Morgoth steals them with the help of Ungoliant. Because the Noldor have learned of deceit, learned of greed, and even learned of weapons thanks to Morgoth’s “advice,” violence and tragedy strike through Valinor as Elves attack Elves, banishments from the Valar are placed, and foul oaths are taken. The Silmarils, through the course of the First Age, bring nearly every big player in that era to their knees, and this theme of doom echoes around them -- the fate of Arda being tied to them. Fëanor, so enamored with his creations, swearing to destroy any kind of being -- Elf, Man, or otherwise -- in pursuit of the reclamation of his treasures echoes the weak will of Isildur to destroy the One Ring. Even the rings themselves are connected to Fëanor via ancestry through Celebrimbor.

This theme of all beings of Illúvatar and their weakness, their ability to succumb to power, to self-aggrandizement, to doomed desire, encircles the entire history of Middle-earth; it isn’t just unique to The Lord of the Rings. The fact that this keeps playing out again and again, in different ways, with different consequences, and yet always with grief and strife one way or another, makes those themes in The Lord of the Rings even more tragic and poignant.