Before we embark on this month’s 3×3, we have a few things to say about Killing of a Sacred Deer, Veronica, and The Titan.
Next week: Isle of Dogs
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If you play enough boardgames, you’ll pick up the shorthand to communicate the basics of any particular game. This one is worker placement with territory control, that one is a deck-builder with drafting, and the stuff in the back of the closet is a bunch of dudes-on-a-board Ameritrash nonsense. Of course, you need to mention the theme. Set collection in a medieval village, push-your-luck with elfs and dragons, screw-your-neighbor with spaceships, or points salad in ancient Rome.
You can’t do this with a Phil Eklund game. You just say “it’s a Phil Eklund game”. Continue reading →
If you’d like a little more context, you can read my review of the game here.
So how did the biggest crossover event in history turn out?
Next week: a 3×3 about watching movies with others
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While I’m waiting for State of Decay 2 — checking my calendar, I see it’s 23 interminable days to go — I’ve got another zombie survival game to indulge my resource scavenging, survivor nurturing, and base-building needs. It even acknowledges the Metal Gear Solid V shaped hole in my heart. It doesn’t fill it, but it’s clearly trying to kick in a little dirt. I suppose I should appreciate the effort. Anything to make the next three weeks seem a little shorter.
Wait, what game are we talking about? Continue reading →
You do not want to miss Kellywand’s Olga Kurylenko impression. Or this movie, if you’re into Armando Iannucci’s dark comedy.
Next week: some kind of Avengers thing
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Brandon Cackowski-Schnell, Tom Chick, Nick Diamon, and Jason McMaster have all finished Far Cry 5, and they have a thing or two to say about, well, what does and doesn’t happen. It goes without saying there will be spoilers.
For more Brandon Cackowski-Schnell goodness, check out his podcast!
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The movie adaptation of Ubisoft’s The Division has been in the notorious “troubled project” category for a while. But with today’s announcement that David Leitch is attached to direct, it pretty much moves into the “project” category. Leitch is a big deal these days, and officially attaching his name is a real vote of confidence. The co-director of John Wick went on to make Atomic Blonde, which got him the job directing Deadpool 2, which got him the job directing the Dwayne Johnson/Jason Statham Fast and Furious spin-off. Putting The Division at the end of that line-up is no mean feat. A movie based on The Division is now as likely as, say, a movie based on Prince of Persia or Assassin’s Creed.
However, Leitch has stressed that his main commitment is to the Fast and Furious spin-off. This means there’s still plenty of time for a Division movie to collapse. But the real mystery to me is Jake Gyllenhaal’s support. Did he not see Prince of Persia? He’s not only putting his name behind a Division movie as one of its stars, but he’s putting his money behind it as one of its producers. And according to whatever press release the Variety announcement is quoting, he’s determined to make sure it’s true to the source material:
Gyllenhaal and [Jessica] Chastain have been with the film project since its conception and have been persistent in making sure that it matches the tone of the video game, while also reaching audiences who appreciate the actors’ own past work.
No word on whether we can look forward to a Michael Fassbender Rabbids movie yet.
This movie might be at 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, but it’s only at 66.6% on this podcast.
Next week: Ghost Stories
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I don’t hate the cultists in Far Cry 5 because they’ve brainwashed their followers, stockpiled firearms, bought up all the property, co-opted law enforcement agencies, dumped toxic waste into clean rivers, and installed a right-wing theocracy. Whatever. Cultists gonna cult. I hate them because they’re interrupting Ubisoft’s best open world since Far Cry 2.
I’ve come here to shoot, fish, drive around, blow shit up, and pet a mountain lion. I’m delighted with these parts of Far Cry 5. What a fantastic place to pursue happiness and bear arms, among this rogue’s gallery of people doing the same thing. But then I’m drugged and dragged into a mandatory cutscene.
For the next few days, Star Citizen isn’t just a punchline! Over the Friday the 13th weekend, you can try it for free. Go here to satisfy your curiosity. Although it won’t cost you any money, you will have to register a Star Citizen account. This means you’ll be counted among the Starites, or Citizeners, or Crobots, or Whale Wanna-bes, or whatever Star Citizen players call themselves. Now you’ll be part of whatever number the developer rolls out to demonstrate the game’s popularity. But now you can say you’ve actually played it without people thinking you threw a bunch of dollars into a hole.
“There have been 35 major Hollywood live-action films based on video games,” says Shelly Tan at the Washington Post, “and none of them have done better than 50 percent on Rotten Tomatoes”. Her article, Why Can’t Hollywood Make a Good Videogame Movie?, is another one of those mainstream articles that assumes videogame movies are bad because they’re videogame movies, not because they’re bad. She says:
“Need for Speed” failed because studios scrambled to adopt something with strong brand recognition instead of something that actually screams out for a film adaptation. The original game’s story is purposefully empty so that the gameplay — car races — can shine. There simply wasn’t a story to adapt.
The template for the Need for Speed movie wasn’t any videogame. Instead, it was The Fast and Furious, a competing movie studio’s hugely successful racing series. Disney wanted a piece of that pie. The videogame label was just a branding deal. As a movie, Need for Speed was typical car culture silliness, with a hint of 70s cross-country counterculture. There were some bright spots in the cast — Imogen Poots, Rami Malek, Dominic Cooper, and a ridiculous Michael Keaton performance as a DJ — and the car sequences were adroitly staged and shot. Which is what you’d expect from a longtime stuntman. Need for Speed’s director had just done a movie called Act of Valor, which was little more than a string of action sequences that would have fit snugly under a Call of Duty brand. If the Need for Speed movie failed (I, uh, actually liked it) there’s no reason to blame the source material, because its connection to the source material was threadbare.
On the other hand, mythology-rich games like “Warcraft” suffer when adapted into movies, too. Trying to stuff over 100 hours of gameplay into a two-hour movie is a doomed effort…
There is zero gameplay stuffed into the World of Warcraft movie. Or inserted in any fashion whatsoever. It is a fantasy movie with lore and visuals inspired by Blizzard’s Warcraft license. The problem is weird cartoony CG, a director out of his element, and a confused script from an inherently ridiculous genre. It could have just as easily been based on Elfstones of Shanarra, Dragonlance, or The Witcher. It’s the same with the recent Prince of Persia, Assassin’s Creed, and Tomb Raider movies. Their problems have very little to do with the medium of their subject matter and everything to do with bad filmmaking. Consider the Resident Evil movies, which aren’t really Resident Evil movies; they’re Paul W.S. Anderson movies that he makes with Milla Jovovich. They are the Kurosawa and Mifune of movies that happen to have videogame licenses in the title.
Tan suggests “a better game to adapt would be something like “Oxenfree,” which has an eerie coming-of-age story that can be finished in about five hours.” There are two problems with this premise. The first is that the Oxenfree license will put zero butts in seats, and that’s the whole purpose of a licensing deal: it guarantees an audience. The second problem is that Oxenfree’s eerie coming-of-age story has already been done as a movie, may times over. Donnie Darko, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Super Dark, River’s Edge, and so on. But Tan then goes on to say that Last of Us wouldn’t make a good movie because changing it to live action “wouldn’t add much more”.
The problem with this article, and the many articles like it, is the writer’s lack of familiarity with videogames. If you don’t understand videogames, you don’t understand how little of them actually make it into movie adaptations. Movies are an established medium and when they’re bad, it has very little to do with the lack of story in a racing game, or the way games rely on interactivity, or the playing time of a videogame compared to the length of a movie, or the amount of lore in a Blizzard series that dates back to 1994. Tam concludes that there must be something uniquely difficult about adapting a videogame:
…filmmakers have that much more work when it comes to adapting video game material. It isn’t enough to rely on brand recognition or reuse the exact same story; something original and creative has to be added. The tough part is figuring out just what that original thing is.
It’s not tough at all. That original thing is good filmmaking.
(By the way, Shelly Tan does a great job with cleverly designed visual presentations at the Washington Post. Any Game of Thrones fan needs to check out this wonderful thing she made.)
At any point, pause this trailer for Cultist Simulator, the upcoming game from Alexis Kennedy, one of the writers behind Fallen London. Now admire the snippets of evocative text the way you’d admire a screenshot from a less imaginative game.
Morland’s Shop. Inspector Wakefield. Glimmering. Enid, an acquaintance. A Red Secret. Paradoxical Curio. I am afraid, sometimes, that they can see what I am, as one sees ink coiling under glass. These are the Dead who do not descend or ascend, but who remain in the Mansus and dream of Winter. It’s eyes are avid, looking, looking. My new body is smooth without and red within like a sweet fruit.
Now imagine piecing these shreds of prose together to make things happen. Now dismay that you won’t be able to do it until May 31st.
I bet you figured we’d all hate this. Wrong!
Next week: A Quiet Place
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All right, let’s get this out of the way. The name “Hexplore It”, or “HEXplore It” if you want to get technical. Why would someone call this game that? Maybe it’s a warning that the map has hexes, but who’s still scared of hexes these days? I’m more scared of square tiles. Can I move diagonally? Does it cost extra? Why not? There’s less to remember with hexes. The Hexplore It developers went further, though. One of the faces on each die is marked with a HEX logo. Replacing the 6 on the d6 makes sense, since a hexagon has six sides, a six-sided die, fair enough. But how do they explain the 1 on the d10 being replaced by a HEX logo? And more importantly, why would a crunchy, in-depth, detailed, hardcore fantasy saga get a name that sounds like something inflicted on third graders forced to learn geometry? Fortunately, the folks who made this game gave it the subtitle “Valley of the Dead King”, which is a much more sensible name for a hardcore fantasy saga. They’re currently Kickstartering a sequel subtitled “The Forests of Adrimon”. Think of Hexplore It as an unfortunate prefix.
