Aliens - Cheap Thoughts

Well, I talked about Alien3 a while ago and made plenty of comparisons to Aliens, now I think it's time to talk about my favourite of the Alien movies and one of my favourite sci-fi films of all time

*Spoilers Ahead*

Aliens takes place 57 years after Alien where Ripley has been frozen for so long, everything she knew is gone. Now, with Weyland-Yutani dismissing her report and saying LV-426, the planet where they found the Alien, is now inhabited by a colony. However, they soon lose contact with that colony and send down a squad of marines along with Ripley as a consultant along with a representative of the company named Burke and an android named Bishop to find out what happened. They soon discover the entire colony abandoned and torn to pieces, with only one survivor, a little girl named Newt. After being attacked by the aliens, wiping out half the marines, leaving the survivors outnumbered, outmatched and with no way of escape. Eventually, Bishop is able to secure a spaceship and set the colony to explode, killing the aliens, and Ripley and the other survivors board a ship, kill the queen alien and destroy the colony.

What makes this film so good is that every element is as good as it can be, in the wrong hands, this could have easily fallen apart, but James Cameron is such a strict and detailed director who will try as hard as he can to make things as perfect as possible and giving us a masterpiece. Ellen Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver yet again, starts off as a broken victim of PTSD who wakes up in the middle of the night, terrified by what she's experiences and with her life in ruins, everything she's ever known is gone. But once she's down on the colony, forced to fight against these things again, she becomes the most badass woman in all of science fiction, she takes charge, she kills these bugs, all while keeping a calm head. But what really makes her badass is that she is clearly terrified, like anyone would be, she flinches around corners, sweats profusely and shakes at the thought of them, she faces the greatest fear in the universe and is still willing to continue fighting, that's the sign of a true hero, not showing no fear in the face of danger, but overcoming that fear. Ripley is one of my favourite characters in sci-fi, one of my favourite characters in action, one of my favourite characters in general. Also she bitch slaps the queen alien, because she's a motherfucking badass.

And then there are the Aliens, also known as Xenomorphs, these guys are the scariest creatures in science fiction, the designs alone are terrifying, the lack of eyes, the shark teeth, aggressive hisses and screeches, the penis symbolism (Look it up), the fact that they can tear a person to pieces within seconds, they blend in with their surroundings and they are smart, they hide and they hunt. Though one strange thing is how this film both makes them more terrifying and also less. In the original film, it was just the one Alien, nothing could stop it, but in this film, the marines rack up one hell of a body count. But to make up for it, they make them so much more aggressive. The first film sometimes made the Alien seem like he was trying to run away rather than kill them, here, they just keep coming, nothing will stop them and that makes them even scarier. Also the fact that they kill half the marines within one attack shows how dangerous they are. Also the introduction of a queen alien helps to fix some plot holes of the first film, the main one being where the hell the eggs came from.

Another thing is there is no bad supporting member of the cast, the marines are very memorable, even the ones that are killed off in the first attack are still memorable like Apone and Frost, what makes them engaging is how they all feel like legitimate pals before going down to the colony, like Frost and Vasquez budding heads like old pals, you feel a history between them. But of course the surviving members are the most interesting, Vasquez is strong-headed, brave and toting the biggest gun in the team, because Vasquez is awesome, she dies the way she lived, killing as many motherfuckers as possible. Hicks is calm and responsible, and because of that is the only one to survive, i also love the chemistry between him and Ripley as being the only responsible people amongst everyone. Hudson is all bark and no bite, once things get real he is the first person to lose his cool, but eventually redeems himself by killing as many Aliens as he can, the same with Gormon, who started out as a coward and incompetent at his job, but ends it by sacrificing himself to save the rest. Burke the biggest asshole you can hope for, because everyone working for Weyland is an asshole.

Bishop always remains the intelligent and reasonable member but always with that element of curiosity in him, he always has it in his heart (or microchips) to help the others, but the fact that he remains the same from beginning to end is what makes him engaging because the previous film had the emotionless android be the traitor, so here, our android remains emotionless, but stays honest and true from the start to the end. Newt is just adorable, but more than that, she's not annoying, if anything, she's pretty cool, she's able to survive for 17 days all on her own against the aliens, the marines couldn't even survive a day. It's the relationship that builds between her and Ripley that is what makes her a worthy character, she brings emotional stability to an unstable person...but mostly because she's adorable, seriously though, it's the cutest thing when she calls Ripley "mommy" just that one word completes Ripley's character arc in the film.

Also the end of the film is also something that I love, in the first one, Ripley being the only survivor felt predictable, but here, having multiple survivors makes it feel more realistic and satisfying, but not too many, just a handful, while everyone else had a satisfying character arc of their own. But at the same time, they wrote the characters well enough to make the audience care about them rather than just Alien bate. This still remains one of the best written action films I have ever seen, the story is engaging and well paced, the characters likeable and the villain terrifying.

Then there are the special effects of the film, they are impressive as hell, not only for the fact that there is no CGI, but how minimal things really are. Watching the film, you believe that there are an army of these creatures all coming to kill them, but in reality you will never see more than six of them on screen at a time. But the aliens look amazing, the amount of effort that went into these costumes, sets and props, it's all top notch, creative and clearly a lot of work. Not to mention the sound effects of the guns are some of the most iconic sounds in the film, and i have no idea why, it just sounds nice to hear them.

Personally, i prefer the special edition release rather than the 1986 original, the added extra scenes flesh out the characters just that little bit more to make them even better and it doesn't slow the pacing of the film at all, so if you can, watch that version.

As for issues, i don't have any, everything about this film works for me, James Cameron has made a lot of amazing films in his time but this remains his best. To simply put it, I love this film because it has the best female action icon, the best sci-fi monsters and the best soldier ensemble. I'm giving Aliens a 10/10.

-Danny

Easy Readin'

Wow, I think yesterday's post is probably my longest post without going full rant mode (Keyword being "full"). I think i'll take it easy for today, especially seeing as there's no Flash this week...oh dammit.

-Danny

Nintendo's Gaming Policy

Back in January, Nintendo announced a new policy on handling let's players, videogame critics and all YouTube videos that uses any of their material. In the policy it was said that should YouTubers agree to this policy then Nintendo gets a 40 percent cut of the revenue from those videos, but there's more, they can only play Nintendo games allowed by the company, and they can only play Nintendo games, so nothing for PC, Xbox or Playstation, just Nintendo. Now even at a quick glance you may be able to see how stupid of a policy this is, by pretty much exploiting their power as a large co-orporation to manipulate and abuse smaller and more independent businesses, seeing as most YouTubers, especially critics and lets players, are just one man shows.

So let's analyse the problems with this system one by one, starting with the percentage cut; Nintendo gets a 40% cut of your revenue, now this might need some clearing up, remember, YouTube also gets a 40% cut, so is this 40% taken out of that initial gross, or is it 40% of your 60% that gets taken? Because either way that sounds like you're getting screwed out of your money and despite you doing the most work, you seem to get the least amount of pay. So say you made £1000 on a video, YouTube takes their cut, so you have £600, but if Nintendo takes a 40% cut too then you only have £240 left, or if they do it the other way then you're only left with £200, out of an initial £1000 revenue. And when this is someone's job, that's not really a whole lot to live off of, and i doubt Nintendo is struggling to the point where £400 is going to save their business, so it's completely not necessary.

Not to mention, what is the thinking behind this? "They're making money off of our product and we didn't!" well no that's not true, they bought the game, they bought the console, they bought the controllers, they gave you their money, they already paid so they could do this. And don't go throwing about your copyright claims because it's protected under fair use of them making critique and commentary over your games. Even more so, Nintendo has some pretty good games our right now like Bayonetta 2, Super Smash Bros, Majora's Mask 3D, games that I would have had absolutely no interest in if it wasn't for YouTube gamers talking about them so much, they say how awesome they are and i think "wow, if they like it, maybe i should play it" and i know i'm not the only person who has thought this, how many copies of Nintendo games have been sold because Caddicarus, ModernWarNegro, Total Biscuit or dozens of other YouTube gamers saying how awesome they are.

Then there are the other issues, they can only talk about Nintendo games, and even then, only a pre-approved list of Nintendo games...Because fuck free speech apparently. YouTube has always been a great service because it means anyone and everyone can use it, people can turn on a camera and talk about their opinion on a videogame. And several years ago, gamers faces a similar issue, YouTube's copyright system went hyper-sensitive and was flagging everyone left and right and some companies were abusing this power, thankfully these days things are getting better, except Nintendo had to go and throw a spanner in the works and try to be a dictator and tell people what they can and cannot do, because apparently Nintendo lives in 1984 (At least they'll be popular again).

Now the reason why i'm bringing this up now when the policy was installed in January is because recently, YouTuber Angry Joe did a let's play of Mario Party 10, it got taken down and he did a rant, discussing a lot of what i've talked about here and announced he will not be making any more Nintendo videos. This has gotten a surprising amount of attention and has become a big news story and has brought up the debate again, except this time more of "Is Angry Joe in the right?". Because Joe knew about this policy so he shouldn't have made a video. On one hand, I can see where they're coming from, except this isn't the end all-be all rule that will be set in stone for eternity and no possibility of it changing, people want the rule to be changed, because the system is fucking stupid, it's harming someone's lifestyle and just creating bad press for Nintendo, he complains about it, brings up the conversation again and maybe, just maybe, Nintendo will finally fucking listen. But nope, some people, not taking names (ROOSTER TEETH) would rather patronise Joe and say "you should have done what you were told ya big dumb-dumb!" because i'm sure this system will sort itself out if no one ever talks about it or does anything about it...right?

Joe Vargas currently has over 2 Million subscribers on YouTube who all care about his opinion, and if he says don't buy Nintendo games, a lot of them are probably going to listen, I know i certainly don't want to support these cunts anymore. Not to mention getting support from Boogie, NerdCubed, even fucking Polygon is on his side...Polygon. Fact is, there is no end result here that looks good for Nintendo, you fuck over the little guy and suddenly you lose a lot of consumers and you get a really bad reputation, the Wii U was struggling as it is, you don't need bad PR like this. Now one of the arguments in favour of Nintendo is that they do have to right to prevent people talking about their content, positive or negative, yes but again, that's a really bad business practise, if so many people are giving you free publicity and telling everyone to buy your games, give me one logical reason why they should do it? Remember, if you don't criticise a faulty system then nothing's going to get any better. The other argument is, even under fair use, they still deserve a percentage of revenue from it, and that i agree with, it is their material and YouTubers wouldn't be able to make that video without it, but not 40%, something more like 10%, they already paid for the game, they're giving you free publicity and it's not like you're dying for the revenue, anything more is just going to harshly affect the actual YouTuber, thus encouraging them to make less videos featuring your product.

So yes, I am on Joe's side, I think Nintendo needs to seriously update their policy here because with it, no one comes out the hero on the other side. Also Rooster Teeth can go fuck themselves.

-Danny

My Favourite Characters - Soos

I absolutely love Gravity Falls, i've talked about it enough times to make that obvious, time for another Gravity Falls post. There are a lot of things that can be said about Soos that can be said about all the other characters as well, he is equally funny as he is charming, a statement like that pretty much describes half the characters. But it's usually within the specifics that changes each character from each other. Soos is the idiot friend of Gravity Falls, he says the dumb stuff and does the dumb stuff, but where a lot of shows go wrong is by making the dumb character be more of a burden than an asset. Soos is a very dumb person, and while it allows for a lot of jokes for us as the audience, in the context of the show this can be problematic, he does something dumb and it endangers our main characters, yes that still happens here, but Soos has plenty to make up for it. Usually if Soos is the one making a mistake, he either is the one who suffers for it, or he's the one who ends up fixing it, one way or another, he redeems himself, and you'd be surprised how very few shows actually remember to redeem their dumb character, forget to give the characters a reason to want to spend time with them. But it is clear why the other characters like Soos, he has a heart of gold and is always there to help them, he has an adventurous spirit and is always up for doing something fun, he's strong, he's brave, he's a Pterodactyl Bro. Hell, he's even willing to betray his boss to save Dipper and Mabel, and he genuinely loves them like family, he acknowledges everything they do for him and he's grateful for it, and is more than happy to return the favour in any way, shape or form.

Not to mention he has a very emotional backstory (I know right) his father abandoned him when he was a child and for years he let that burden him emotionally, it wasn't until Dipper and Mabel helped him that he was finally able to move on and develop even more as a character. Again, not something you see very often for the dumb character. And yes, there is the final point to be made that he is very funny, he's hilarious, I am constantly going back and forth over who i think is funnier, Soos or Mabel, not to mention he has the most quotable lines "On second thought, gonna flip the script, what if I...ate your brains? Yay? Nay? Seeing a couple of yay faces over here". Godammit Soos, even as a cannibalistic zombie you're still hilarious. In the end, Soos is a bro, and remember "Bros before Dinos!"

-Danny

Comparing Tragedies

I don't know if you know this, but the world can be a truly awful place at times, war, genocide, racism, sexism, murder, rape, tragedy after tragedy after tragedy. And amongst all these disasters, a fair amount get over shadowed, people will go through a traumatic experience and the world won't even notice, especially if it's something that happens in a third world country then it can get overlooked. Thanks to the power of the internet, people can tell their stories all around the world and show some of these events the coverage they deserve. However there is a certain trend developing when sharing these stories that is sickening, and that is comparing tragedies. I recently saw someone share a story on Facebook about a mass murder in Kenya, now the fact that it is a story that was shared from an unofficial source on Facebook of all places, means I have no idea how legitimate this story is, but for the sake of this topic, i'm gonna say it is.

In the description of the event, they mention how the whole world stopped and marched over the killings in France over the Je Suis Charlie, how entire nations rallied around this support of freedom of speech and the tragedy of that event. And these people complain in discuss over how people support that tragedy yet ignore this one right here, where they suggest that this is the worse tragedy. And this is the ideology that really pisses me off, yes, more people died during your tragedy and not even a fraction of the people are talking about it, but don't be the kind of fucking piece of shit that says that the other tragedy doesn't deserve the attention it gets. It's this same type of thought pattern that whenever you say "oh i've had a really bad day" and someone says something stupid like "well there are starving children in Africa who have it worse", this is the equivalent of saying you can't be happy because someone else in the world is having a better day than you, it's a stupid fucking argument, and it's even worse putting it on this extreme of a pedestal.

Yes it's sad that the deaths of some get attention over others, especially when more people died in the latter, but you know what the important part is? At least there was a reaction rather than no reaction. People rallied for Je Suis Charlie and they showed respect, they demanded change and they did not back down to terrorism, does it really matter what the cause is when they are able to make a difference? Yes in the long run it isn't going to affect much but there are always going to be disasters in the world, at least for now these people are trying to make a difference, it doesn't matter the cause of the change. And even then, how far can you take this logic? Would you go up to the parents of the Sandy Hook School Shooting and say "well it's no 9/11, so how can you be so sad?" no, because that's fucking stupid! And you know what's not going to help your cause? By being disrespectful to the people who died in another tragedy by saying they're not as important! You stupid piece of shit!

-Danny

Can Videogame Movies Be Good?

Yesterday I did a Cheap Thoughts on the movie adaptation of the popular videogame franchise Silent Hill, and the main thing that I wanted to express in that post was that Silent Hill is in my opinion the best videogame movie we have ever gotten, certainly the best adaptation of a videogame so far. But then that's an interesting topic to discuss, can movies based on videogames ever be good? The time we live in now, videogames have some amazing stories, writing and themes that most definitely put them up their with movies as art, in many ways, they surpass movies as art. The Last of Us, Shadow of the Colossus, Mass Effect, Spec Ops The Line, Uncharted, Metal Gear Solid, all amazing in so many ways, and those are only a handful of videogames that do this. Now I do firmly believe that videogames can be made into great movies, but they're looking at it the wrong way. Take something like The Last of Us, everyone says it would make a perfect movie, and while I agree it would...it doesn't need to be. The Last of Us was a perfectly written, acted, paced story and turning it into a movie, while it wouldn't be bad (You would have to really fuck up to make it bad) a movie isn't going to be able to add anything, just take away things by making the story shorter and taking away the gameplay.

Now I did do a post on what videogames I would like to see get movies because they could translate well and a movie version could add something new, so clearly I do think that these are two mediums than can work well together, so why haven't they? Well first of all, not a whole lot of videogames in the 80's and 90's focused much on story, so why they ever thought they could adapt Super Mario Bros and Mortal Kombat into movies, I don't know. Another reason is videogames can be a lot more ambitious than movies, take something like Devil May Cry, something so over the top, so large of a scale that it is hard to picture a film ever doing something like that, but if they were, they would have to have enormous budgets and the bigger the budget, the bigger the risk.

But really, all it takes is one. The big money maker these days is easily superhero films, but people forget that there was a time where a good superhero movie was a rare event. Superman (1978) was the first mainstream hit of the genre, but we wouldn't get another hit like that until Batman (1989) and then throughout the 90's we had to go without a single good superhero movie and they were seen as box office suicide and a genre of movies never to be taken seriously. That was until 1998's Blade, which was dark, mature and above all else, a big hit, thus opened the floodgates for X-Men, Spider-Man, Batman Begins, and eventually get to where we are now with The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, Batman V Superman. All it took was that one risk, not starting off with a juggernaut like Thor or Wonder Woman, but going small and then slowly building up to the point where we can see characters like Dr Strange, Aquaman and Thanos on the big screen, when just a decade ago, we couldn't do that.

Videogame films can do the same thing, right now we have Ratchet & Clank, Warcraft, Assassin's Creed and The Last of Us in development, and one day we could see Uncharted, Halo, Mass Effect, Metal Gear Solid, Playstation Heroes, Shadow of the Colossus as movies and not have them be dead on arrival. All it takes is one, one videogame movie to be amazing and really show what videogame movies are capable of and it won't be a genre that people would say Wreck-It Ralph is the best videogame movie just because of a technicality.

-Danny

Silent Hill - Cheap Thoughts

You often hear how videogame movies suck...they do. Super Mario Bros: Sucks. Max Payne: Sucks Bloodrayne: Sucks (Get it? Vampires? Sucks...no you suck). Usually people will say that the best videogame based movie is Mortal Kombat, but even then they refer to it as just a guilty pleasure type movie, and not a legitimately good movie. I disagree, not the good movie part, but that it is the best videogame based movie, for me, that is 2006's Silent Hill.

*Spoilers Ahead*

Based on the popular Silent Hill Konami series (Specifically the first 3 games) Silent Hill follows the story of Rose as she believes her daughter Sharon has some sort of mental condition, where she sleep walks, has night terrors and hallucinations, all revolving around a town called Silent Hill, eventually she decides to travel there with Sharon to get answers, but finds the entire city abandoned and she is unable to leave, though she loses her daughter in the town, she meets up with a police officer named Cybil in hopes of finding her daughter and a way of leaving the city, escaping and hiding from multiple monsters infesting the city. Eventually they find a cult made up of the former citizens of Silent Hill and tell them the town is cursed by the spirit of a witch who plans on sacrificing Sharon. Eventually the cult betrays the two women and Rose discovers that the citizens of Silent Hill have a long history of witch burning, eventually sacrificing a girl named Alessa and her spirit was split in two, one part haunts Silent Hill while the other was reincarnated into Sharon and the citizens plan on sacrificing Sharon to destroy the monsters, already killing Cybil. In the end, Rose brings Alessa to the church where the sacrifice is to take place, and she takes her vengeance on the townsfolk, and allowing Rose and Sharon to leave Silent Hill finally, and although they return home, they discover they are still in the same reality that Silent Hill exists in, rather than their own reality.

Now those of you who have seen the film might notice I left out something pretty big in the movie, and that would be the subplot of Sean Bean's character (Rose's husband). The reason why I have left this out is because his subplot is completely inconsequential to the rest of the movie, i can understand him being there for the beginning and end of the film but for the rest of the movie he can be taken out entirely and literally nothing will be any different. The only reason why his character was included was studio executive bullshit who felt like there weren't enough men in the film, the main character is female, the child is female, the cop is female, the villain is female, yes, all of the main characters are women, and as a man i want executives to know that i don't give a shit if the main cast is made up of just women; if you're concerned that it's because i won't relate to the situation, you're in fucking Silent Hill, that's not a situation people are likely to experience, but even if they were, i'm sure people would react the same way regardless of whether they were a man or a woman, and that reaction being "Holy shit! This is fucking terrifying!" so as far as I am concerned, Sean Bean wasn't in this movie.

As for the main story itself, it is for the most part based on the original Silent Hill story, but i'll get to the adaptation elements later, as for the film itself, the story does seem quite basic at times and one could argue the pacing can go at the speed of a slug at points, but personally it doesn't bother me all that much, I for one was actually pretty engaged for the most part, I thought the film had great tension building at the start and ended in a great pay off, though I will admit for the middle section of the movie where a lot of the exposition takes place, I found myself getting bored. I've heard some complain that the story gets confusing at times, but I didn't find it to be confusing at all, a hard core religious cult burns a girl who they think is a witch and the spirit of the girl wants revenge, I think it's pretty basic. I also found Alessa's backstory to be incredibly interesting and effective, giving a pretty 3-Dimensional personality to your spirit-like character, which is rarer than you would expect in horror movies, though I wouldn't argue against someone saying the other characters seem a bit too basic, their motivations are understandable but the personalities can be lacking and one could see the cult as being rather one dimensional and i would be one of those who agrees.

The film was directed by Christophe Gans, who while not the greatest director in the world, you cannot say he didn't try with this film. Konami is known for being very protective of their properties and it wasn't until Gans did a 40 minute presentation explaining what Silent Hill meant to him as a fan of the games and what he would do if they sold him the movie rights and it worked. And that is the best thing about the movie, how loyal it remains to the original videogames, the story is based on the original videogame, changing a few things such as character names and the gender of the main character, but apart from that this movie is loyal to an insane degree. Multiple sets were based on levels in the game and they made them as accurate as possible, the monsters are all based on creatures from the first 4 games of the series and a lot of the cinematography (especially near the beginning) are all steady high angle shots in dark corridors, just like in the original videogame. They even use the original score by Akira Yamaoka, and anyone can tell you that the atmosphere of a game, especially a horror game, comes from the score, and it really helps sell the idea that this is Silent Hill. So even if you don't like the movie as a movie, no one can deny that this is an amazing adaptation, in fact i'd say it's probably the most loyal adaptation of a videogame that I have ever seen.

But it's one thing to look at it as a videogame movie, and another to look at it as just a movie, we also have to look at it as a horror movie, and being honest, this is the movies biggest downfall. Now first off the biggest compliment I can give this film is that there are no jump scares, not one, the movie actually tries to scare you through atmosphere and visuals alone, and for that I am always going to be grateful. But on the other hand...the movie isn't scary; it has memorable visuals and an engaging atmosphere, but no scares, and I watched this movie on my own, in the middle of the night with the lights off, and I was never scared, I slept just find that night, I liked the movie and respected a lot of the choices they made, but in the end, if your horror movie isn't scary then how good can it really be? A big reason why I think this is, is because of how scares in a videogame differ from those in a movie. A lot of the Silent Hill creatures show up fairly early in the movie, where Rose is the only character, the monsters hunt her down slowly and she has to quickly find an escape before they attack her, the problem is, with her being the only character, we know she's going to survive and find a way out. But how this scenario works in a videogame, is that we are the main character, we're making the decisions, we have to find a way out, we don't know where the exit is, we don't know if we can make it out of this, that works in a videogame, not in a movie.

I can understand if you don't like this movie, but one thing you can't say is that the movie was bad because of a lack of effort. As an adaptation, it's amazing, as a movie, it's good, as a horror movie, it's disappointing. Putting all of these together I am going to give this film a 7/10.

Oh, and the sequel: sucks.

-Danny