MOVIES! Pacific Rim (2013)

It seems appropriate while in the middle of a Godzilla retrospective to take a moment to rewatch one of my favorite movies of the past year: Pacific Rim. Done initially as a "Fresh Take" when it came out, it's interesting to see how different watching it on a smaller screen is.

It's true that my 32" high def television isn't as awesome as watching these giant robots and monsters fighting on the glorious big screen (I touched upon this in the Fresh Take, discussing how the film's flat 1.85 aspect ratio makes the monsters seem more gigantic). Still, it looks really good on blu-ray. In some senses, it's been a little more enjoyable to watch it on a screen I can take in all at once. With the big theater screens, some of the little things are easy to miss if they're in the corners or if they're in a part of the screen you're not looking. On home video though, you can take in the entire image at once. There have already been a number of little things I've noticed that I missed in both of my theater viewings.

I won't go too into detail about the plot (you can check back on the Fresh Take for that), but suffice it to say it's not a particularly deep film. The story doesn't get too much beyond that of giant robots fighting giant alien monsters. The main theme of the film is the idea of "togetherness." The world comes together to create the Jaegers. The hotshot Australian pilot and the rebellious new American pilot come together to close the cross dimensional portal. Raleigh and Mako come together and open up to each other after suffering trauma to pilot the Gypsy Danger effectively. Even the two scientists come together despite their earlier rivalry in order to discover the motive for the kaiju.

To director Guillermo Del Toro's credit, the summer action flick does not glorify the violence here. Yes, it's mindless, visually intriguing action sequences, but Del Toro does not treat the film like a military recruitment ad. He specifically avoids using military terminology, instead electing titles like marshal and ranger. Stacker Pentecost even says outright, "We aren't the army. We're the resistance." The world is bleak and not much about life in the Shatterdome looks appealing.

Del Toro also stated that he wanted to get away from the typical catastrophic summer blockbusters that tend to have a level of cynicism attached. Pacific Rim is his love letter to the kaiju and mecha genres that were so popular in Asia. Instead of going with the dark and somber tones of the original batch of Japanese kaiju films like Godzilla or Rodan, he opted to go for the more innocent age of the late 1960s and 1970s. With the exception of the opening sequence explaining the situation, he is careful to show cities being evacuated before the monsters attack. We then see nothing but empty buildings as they get destroyed. In this way, we are free to enjoy the destruction the same way we could enjoy old Godzilla movies where he would destroy empty model buildings. To be specific, he said, "I don't want people being crushed. I want the joy I used to get seeing Godzilla toss a tank without having to think there are guys in the tank."

Well, that's a fair sentiment and it works for the larger destruction scenes. It is, however, kind of odd that he would say those things then specifically show us shots of pilots inside the Jaegers getting crushed (quite literally, we do see the three Chinese pilots and the two Russian pilots get crushed by kaiju). This actually works out well as it increases the drama of the kaiju fights. We know that there are "guys in the tanks." So we have a little more emotional investment in the fights. It increases the seriousness of them. However, this does wind up contradicting Del Toro's goal of making the monster violence remorseless.

Despite Del Toro's attempts to make remorseless destruction, we do regularly get shots from inside the Jaegers, giving us more of an emotional connection to the fights.

Pacific Rim is corny and fun, like most kaiju or mecha genre films, and it feels a little bit like an old flyboy film. However, it actually plays out more like a sports movie. Raleigh was once a hot shot Jaeger pilot at the top of his game. He eventually gets knocked out of it. Years later, he's brought back in (Pentecost assuming the role of "coach" here) and has to compete with the new hot shot, Chuck Hansen. It's a ragtag group of "players" coming together to "win the big game."

After rewatching it, I'm not quite as in love with it as I thought I was. Make no mistake, it's still one of my favorite films of last year. As a fan of kaiju and mecha films, it's a really nice to get something new made in the genre that isn't part of an already established film or manga series. Still, as awesome as the Jaegers were, the monster designs don't really tickle my fancy. They remind me a bit too much of creatures you can find in Gamera movies (creature design was always a weakness of that franchise, in my opinion). The two scientists are a little too kooky for my taste as well. The whole thing with the kaiju attacking Hong Kong to find Charlie Day was dragged out. There was really no need to show the harvesting of the downed kaiju.

However, something I didn't quite pick up on in my initial viewings was the usage of colors throughout the film. Del Toro is extremely intentional with his use of colors in every scene, giving each character their own unique color scheme. It's a beautiful film with well polished CGI and some awesome sets. I would have preferred more special effects, but the visual effects are top notch.

Perhaps it's Gareth Edwards's Godzilla coming out in a couple of months or perhaps it's that I've been watching almost nothing but kaiju movies lately; Pacific Rim wasn't quite as awesome on the replay as the first view. It's still an awesome, fun movie though and it's still one of my favorites of the past few years. I'm not sure it's a film that non-kaiju fans would really enjoy so much though. The monster/mech fights are really awesome and even with a slightly diminished replay viewing, I still found myself feeling like I did as a child watching old Godzilla movies, thinking, "That's awesome!"

(Just as an aside: when I was at Sundance, I saw the film "Kumiko the Treasure Hunter" staring Pacific Rim heroine Rinko Kikuchi. She might just be one of my favorite actors in the world right now, up there with Kang-ho Song and Chris Evans. See it when it comes out!)

MOVIES! The Muppets (2011)

Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller's The Muppets is one of the best all-ages films in recent memory. Clearly coming from their collective love of the Muppets, Segel manages to find the balance between capturing the old charm while injecting new sensibilities creating a new charm as well. It's a great film for old fans feeling nostalgic and new kids looking for some funny puppets.

It actually seems at times to be geared a bit more toward the older crowd, often with subtle humor that is incredibly funny that probably won't be amusing to kids. One of my personal favorite jokes (which I only just caught for the first time) is when, during the show, a bunch of celebrities show up to take the phone calls. Neil Patrick Harris answers a phone during the shot and says, "Yeah, I don't know why I'm not hosting this."  Then again, there's plenty for the kids, like Fozzie's discovery of "Fart Shoes." (Ok, so that one might also be for adults as well.) There's also a lot of breaking the fourth wall. In one scene, Gonzo hits a self-destruct button on his toilet factory. The explosion happens off screen but is immediately followed jokes about how expensive that explosion looked. Even earlier than that, Amy Adams responds to Kermit's refusal to put on a show with, "This is going to be a really short movie."

The humor is great for everyone. Additionally, there are some pretty great musical numbers. In the first couple minutes, we're treated the huge musical number "Life's a Happy Song." Though there aren't a ton of musical numbers, they stand out. "Me Party" and "Man or a Muppet" are both extremely clever. It becomes apparent very quickly that the songs have been written by Bret McKenzie of Flight of the Conchords fame (this is especially apparent in "Man or Muppet").

A good chunk of the time will be identifying all of the cameo appearances, both celebrity wise and Muppet wise. Pretty much everyone is in it. Apart from the awesome core cast of Jason Segel, Amy Adams, and Chris Cooper, there are also the cameos from Rashida Jones, Jack Black, Leslie Feist, Zack Galifianakis, Mickey Rooney, Emily Blunt, and a hilarious, Animal-dressed Dave Grohl. At other times, you get a little stuck trying to figure out who some of the Muppets are.

The story involves Gary and his girlfriend Mary taking Gary's brother Walter to Los Angeles. There, they take a tour of the old Muppet Studios. It's been almost thirty years since the Muppets last put on a show. The gang is broken up and spread all throughout the country; the studio is broken down and the buildings are condemned. This is a world where the Muppets have been forgotten and are no longer popular. During the tour though, Walter overhears oil tycoon Tex Richman discussing plans to buy the property and demolish the Muppet Studios to drill for oil. Richman is a typical, simple villain for the most part, right down to his maniacal laugh (which is literally just him saying, "Maniacal laugh!")

In order to save the Muppet Studios, Kermit must get the gang back together and put on one more show. Doing so will raise money to keep the property. In this way, the film is almost literally a love letter to the old Muppet Show. It's a film about the Muppets and more specifically, the Muppet Show. Of course, in the end they save the studio, Walter finds his place among the Muppets, Mary and Gary get engaged, and even Tex Richman finally learns to laugh (albeit from a head injury during the credits).

As someone raised on Muppets movies, it's nice to see the birth of a new generation of Muppet fandom. To say that the Muppets are just kids fare has always been a bit inaccurate. The Muppets are and always have been a family affair. The Muppets is a perfect example of this.

FRESH TAKE! Remember Me (With Spoilers)

You might have heard of Remember Me. It's the game that got a tiny bit of publicity for struggling to find a publisher based on the fact the protagonist is female. (See here for more details: http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/20/remember-me-publisher-female-hero/) Eventually, it found a publisher and very quietly was released. It was still a smaller game and came out with little noise. Never meant to be a bigger release, how does it ultimately stack up as a game?

Well, there's really nothing about it that would merit the kind of apprehension the publishers gave it. As a game, it's totally fine. It's nothing amazing and borrows a lot of elements from other games, but it's a fun, interesting, short little game, probably better than half the crap that gets published and put out there.

You play as Nilin, a memory hunter in the future of Paris where the world has become addicted to the capturing and trading of memories. Somehow, they've managed to create technology that can remove, add, or alter a person's memories. The goal was to remove sorrow and misery, but it turned into something more. Nilin awakens in a prison where many of her memories have been removed and she is about to become "repurposed." She is broken out by the mysterious resistance leader, Edge.

You run through La Bastille and the broke, poverty-struck regions of neo-Paris, lit by bright neon lights and littered with garbage and "memory addicts." It's a bleak and sad concept of the future, but it makes sense. The people in power, controlling memories, are slowly altering and manipulating the people. Meanwhile, the broken down, poor are stuck without their memories and desperate for anything they can get. In one moment, you walk past an addict begging for "one more hit of a happy memory." Stuck in the bowels of the city and abandoned by the government and society around them, these people are desperate for a happy memory. In essence, the technology created to fight misery has instead created more.

With Edge guiding you through the missions, often speaking in riddles and poems, you struggle to get a grasp on what exactly is going on while frustratingly questioning the motives. With no sense of who you were and are, you must also find your own memories. Slowly, Nilin's backstory is filled in as she steals memories from high ranking officials, and the game ends with a few big revelations, namely that your parents are ultimately behind everything and that Edge is the supercomputer where all memories are stored. He's contained all of the worst memories that he has himself grown miserable and desperately wants Nilin to "kill him." We've seen these kinds of "twists" before, where the mysterious person who seems on your side is ultimately the villain, but here, Edge isn't a villain for villainy's sake. He's manipulating you with the intent that you kill him, knowing that by killing him, everyone else will be better off. It's a nice twist on the "big twist" ending and makes it much more interesting and compelling than the twist in say, BioShock.

Still, the story is shaky at times. Late in the game especially, it starts to feel a bit rushed with the big "connections" being a bit forced. More could have been made of Nilin's search for herself, although her doubt of Edge's goals was a welcome plot element.

The story is interesting and the it's got a cool visual look to the world. The gameplay itself is fine too. It's essentially a beat-em-up game. You fight enemies with punches, kicks, and combos. As you gain experience, you unlock "Pressens." Pressens are basically the buttons you can assign to combos. There are a variety of different kinds - damage, cooldown, and healing. The combos are always the same, but how the impact your character during combat varies upon how you assign them. If a combo were X-Y-Y, you would customize the two Ys in the combo. If you unlock a Y from the Pressens section and a Y from the damage Pressens, you could customize that so that when you perform the X-Y-Y combo, the second Y regenerates a little health and the third Y in the combo would do a little more damage and break through blocking enemies. There isn't much variety in the combos themselves, but it's up to you to determine the order of the Pressens in them. Cool down and health Pressens wind up being the most helpful.

Additionally, you gain special abilities (called S-Pressens). When you hit and get hit by enemies, your Focus Bar builds up. Gaining enough focus allows you to perform S-Pressen attacks. Most of them are primarily for use against special enemies, but a couple of them are very helpful against the normal foes. To add to it, you eventually get the use of the "spammer," which is essentially a gun that shoot digital data to overload enemies and destroy structural weaknesses in the levels.

Combat isn't overly complicated, but the game doesn't throw anything out. Every tactic you are introduced to throughout the game is important to keep in mind all the way to the end. Often, they throw you into scenarios that require you to use every technique you've learned. It can get a little frustrating at times, especially when swarmed by enemies who seem to know where you're going to dodge to before you do, but it means that you can't just button mash and hope to clear the level. You need to pay attention, dodge appropriately, and use every ability at your disposal. Nothing gets tossed out the window. This is especially true of boss fights which always test your grasp on the whole system. This might actually be an area where the game stands out from other fare. Often times, games don't require you to use the whole combat system. You can get by with a limited grasp on it. Here, you can't skate by just knowing combos.

The levels are rather straight forward. People would likely complain about the missions being too linear, but I've never had much of a problem with linearity. Giving some diversity in paths is certainly preferable, but I tend to prefer things a little bit more linear when it comes to gaming. There are secret packages hidden throughout each level which requires exploration, and there are strange parasite looking objects you can collect that require searching for, but more or less, you go from point A to point B. When you're not engaged in combat, you spend most of your time climbing things and leaping across rooftops.

There's an intriguing narrative element to the gameplay as well: remixing memories. Every so often, you can essentially hack a person's brain and alter their memories. When this happens, you watch a scene and then go through the scene rewinding and forwarding slowly until you find "glitches" in the memories. You can then change that aspect of the memory to get an entirely new ending to the scene. This doesn't change anything in "real life," of course, but it does impact all of the characters you encounter. It's eventually revealed that your big crime was changing someone's memory to thinking that he had killed his wife. His sorrow and guilt drives him to commit suicide. In reality, his wife is still alive. It's an interesting dynamic to the narrative of the game and it can be fun - if at times frustrating - to see all of the different ways you can impact a person's memory.

Ultimately, the feels like an amalgamation of different things. The gameplay is very reminiscent of Arkham Asylum and Uncharted, with hints of BioShock. The story and narrative is reminiscent of Assassin's Creed and Mirror's Edge with a hint of BioShock. And the visual look seems inspired in part by Blade Runner and Mirror's Edge. This isn't to say it brings nothing new to the table though. It does introduce its own unique elements to the equation; it's just that the influences feel a bit obvious.

I must admit, I thought it was just ok at first. It's by no means a bad game, but it's not particularly great either. It's fun and challenging at the same time, and at times the plot is a bit contrived. Some of the characters are dropped almost immediately after introductions and a couple of the chase sequences take forever to figure out. There are some good puzzles spread throughout though and the combat is fun.

It's disingenuous to credit this game at all for simply ignoring gender roles in gaming. As a game, it stands up perfectly fine on its own. There's no real reason a game like this should struggle to find a publisher, and it's a shame to think that elements of Nilin's backstory were cut do make male gamers feel "more comfortable." Still, the game does give female characters their time. Apart from Nilin as the protagonist, you get a few other critical female characters in key roles. Many of the characters - male or female - aren't given the attention and depth they deserve, but it's nice to see a game treat gender as no big deal.

The more I reflect on this game though, the more I must admit that I really liked it. It's not just a blatant rip off of other things, even if their influences are clear. And it brings a fresh new take on a few game and narrative conventions. The game is ultimately a bit too short, with characters being a bit glossed over to really be a great game. It's not a "must-play," but it is definitely a solid game.