Rockstar Ruins It For The Rest Of Us

Ladies and gentlemen, Rockstar has officially opened the can of worms.

The government and parent's groups have been waiting for some real ammunition against the games industry for years. Rather than admit that the vast majority of game-related problems are really due to irresponsible parenting (you know, the ones who think video games make great babysitters), they basically want to make it impossible for anyone to buy anything other than Reader Rabbit and Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, if such software could actually be construed as entertainment.

Well, they've got it now.

Leave it to Rockstar, the bad boy of the gaming industry, to finally take their continual boundary-pushing over the proverbial line. The Grand Theft Auto series has been the frontliner in the battle against violent/criminal/sexual themes in video games ever since its conception and especially since its breakout onto the console systems.

Here's the back story: Apparently there is a "girlfriend" minigame where the ultimate reward is heading back to the girl's place for some hubba-hubba. In the actual game this reward is visualized by an external shot of the house and some random (probably bad) audio of the dirty deed in question. Cue the clever PC hackers, who manage to turn this little reward into a minigame of its own, with controllable simulated sexual acts in glorious Direct3D -- I understand that no body parts are actually shown per se, but your ultimate goal in this little game is, of course, reaching your "ultimate goal", so to speak.

Of course, it doesn't take long for this to leak out, and before you know it Hillary Clinton is on CNN demanding for the game to be destroyed with an ICBM. In response, Rockstar chuckles and says, "Those dadgum hackers!"

Well, the hackers, not wanting to be the whipping boy on this soon-to-be-congressional outing, responded, saying that they only unlocked code that was already in the game. As the above article says, this was confirmed by unlocking the game in the PS2 version, which is unable to be modified by an end user.

Thanks, Rockstar. Gamers and video games have been under fire since the days of Wolfenstien 3-D, and you've really broken it open now. You snuck some content not fitting to your rating past the ESRB and now it's out. You thought you were clever, I bet. You thought it would be funny. But now the government wants to get involved and you know that it won't be pretty. Video games are now going to be situated slightly behind the porn videos at Hastings where only the deviant and perverted go.

I appreciate that, I really do.

There's an argument here that I'm not going to get into about the furor about game content among the government and other groups, given that the game is indeed rated M, the "rated R" of the video game industry, and the acts depicted in the secret little game are apparently tame compared to some rated R films; not to mention the fact that at most stores anyone can buy a rated R or even an unrated DVD while many of the very same stores require you to be 17 to buy an M-rated game. Also let's mention the fact that anyone too young to see this material shouldn't have been playing an M-rated game anyway and someone needs their parents' license taken away, the point of all that being this -- I don't see the same people getting into such an uproar about the same content in films.

I don't even really want to get into all of that, but it should give you a taste of what's wrong with the whole situation, anyway. There's not really any standards, and apparently only a few parents who manage to pay attention to ratings and tell their kids "no" once in a while (my in-laws are such parents, so I know a few actually exist). Then there's the ESRB, whose rating system is less than perfect.

Personally I don't think content like that is necessary in any video game, but if the software is properly rated I think it has a right to be sold, as long as everyone involved in the process is responsible and follows the way the system should be. Unfortunately, that rarely happens. Stores don't restrict the sale of M-rated games (should they? Well, why not? You people don't get all up in arms about showing ID to a ticket clerk at the theater). Parents not only buy the product for their kids but also fail to monitor what their kids are playing or watching. The ratings only work when people pay attention to them.

We didn't need subversive game companies thrown into the mix. I will say this for Rockstar -- it's possible that they added the content, didn't like it, and cut it out of the game. Sometimes that happens and programmers just turn the feature off while leaving the code in place. Hackers accessed the code on the PC and turned it back on. The only problem with that is that somehow the content is accessible on the PS2 without a hack, which suggests that Rockstar intentionally left in a way to get to it.

This doesn't bode well for us gamers.

Review: War of the Worlds

I honestly don't know what to think about this movie.

It's well-made. It's a good movie. It's nice and personal and the acting is good and the special effects are top-notch and it's a decent storyline, even the ending. So why don't I know if I like it?

That's a good question. I just don't like how it made me feel, I think.

You can get the details and the good/bad about this movie from many other reviews. That being said, instead of talking about whether the movie was good or not, I'm going to get down to how I really felt about it.

You see, it really all goes back to September 11th and how it affected the movie industry. Lots of projects were scrapped or put on hold or reworked after it because of how the event affected the American psyche. Movies like Spider-Man were wildly successful, I believe, because at that time America was desperately in need of a superhero, even if it was just in the movies.

War of the Worlds is the first movie I've seen since then that really jars the emotions people felt at the time back up again. That might have been their intent. That might just be a side effect of how the movie was made. It obivously was made well because it did manage to evoke such emotions. The problem is this: I don't really know if I wanted to feel those emotions again.

A lot of people idolize September 11th as a national holiday; a day of mourning and loss and the like, much like December 7th probably was for a previous generation. I don't really know if I subscribed to that -- I memorialize 9/11 like most people do, but I don't live my life based upon it. On the other hand, I cannot deny that it changed some fundamental things I felt in my life, especially my attitude towards death.

War of the Worlds is different from the typical "disaster movie" because it focuses on the people rather than the event, which, in turn, makes the death of said people more impactful, even if it's just the people on the street. I cared about them. It really was terrifying and gut-wrenching at the same time. This movie sucked me in to the point that I was relating to the movie like it was really happening, and I don't know if I liked it at all. I felt a bit of the terror on those people's faces, and you know what I couldn't help but think of? You guessed it. September 11th.

Perhaps it's that I could never relate to a disaster movie before because we had never really witnessed a disaster unfold in front of us on national TV (or for some it unfolded just outside). But the looks on the faces of the people in the movie were looks I had seen before, in real life, and I just don't think I was comfortable seeing it in a movie that was supposed to be entertaining me. I might never be again. It just means something different now.

Reading this and thinking in restrospect, the movie obviously worked -- otherwise I wouldn't have been so involved that it actually upset me. There were a few things that did yank me out at times (Dakota, no more screaming, please). And perhaps I was a little more focused on the scariness of it all than the main characters, because I walked out of the movie haunted by the victims rather than remembering the survivors.

So I'm not sure what I think about it. It was good but I didn't like it. It makes no sense, but in a way I suppose it does.

Now, for a bit more review-ish talk.

Much has been said about the ending. It's too happy. It's too abrupt. I think a lot of people, including the filmmakers, missed some underlying themes in H.G. Wells' original work.

****NOTE: SPOILERS ARE AHEAD. DO NOT READ IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE ENDING. I WARNED YOU****









If you've seen the ending, you know that the aliens are done in by bacteria. A lot of people are thinking that this is a cop-out. In reality, it was how the original work ended and it was Wells' full intention of ending it that way. Why? Well, there was a point to the ending, and that was a simple one: Humans, don't get too big for your britches. We may think we're in control and all-powerful, but then something bigger comes along that we can't stop. But to really hammer the point home, something tiny and insignificant can defeat that something that we can't. That's the whole point. Remember that this book was written at the height of the industrial age. It was machines vs. nature, and nature won.

I think the inherent problem is that the movie doesn't really even touch this idea and so the ending feels abrupt. They kept the motions but forgot the point of it.

To round this out, here's a few things that worked and some that didn't:

What worked:

• The music. Williams kept a low key on this one, and the complete silence during the entire Tripod emerging from the street sequence was simply terrifying. There's something to be said about a composer (and perhaps an editor or director) who knows when to not play anything.
• Performances: Aside from Dakota Fanning's hideously annoying screaming, everyone did really well, even our friend Cruise.
  
• Special Effects: ILM's work has been hit-or-miss over the last few years. They were back to form for this film, and it was good to see.
• Morgan Freeman!
  

What didn't:

• Character development -- Honestly, the jerk-dad-to-nice-dad routine is old and tired, and they really didn't do much to change it up other than throw aliens into the mix. They could have done a lot better than this.
• Explanations!! -- Come on people, you can't tease us with the info that the aliens had already been here for thousands of years and not tell us HOW! I wanted to know how, when, and from where. Yes, I understand that the mystery was part of the scariness, but I was really intrigued and was pretty let down when they let it go. Other examples: The red weed! In the original the aliens were from Mars, and at that time no one knew why Mars was red (late 1800s). So Wells said it was covered in red weed, and the Martians came and grew it here on Earth to make it more like home. So if they're not from Mars, what's up with the red weed in the movie? What purpose did it serve other than to look scary? Inquiring minds want to know. Again, I understand that the story is told from the standpoint of the characters, so if they don't know, we don't know. But how about a Morgan Freeman explanation at the end? We find out what it was all about eventually, right? Right?

So there you have it. A lot of people are saying now that this is the film to beat this summer, just like they said about Batman Begins two weeks ago, but I honestly can't say this was a better movie than Batman Begins. I don't know if it had the heart that Begins did.

Finally, some movement on Jurassic Park IV?

Everyone's got their guilty pleasures, right?

I probably could stay on the safe side here and say that I really loved Jurassic Park. I think most people would agree with me on that. But my unabashed love of The Lost World and Jurassic Park III tends to be where most other people get off the dinosaur bus. Like I said, though, everyone's got their guilty pleasures.

Jurassic Park IV tends to be, in movie fan circles (as far as I've read around the intarweb) a title that doesn't evoke much more than a sigh and the usual "Do we need another one of those?" comment. My answer to these naysayers is unequivocally YES! We do. Okay, so maybe we're not all dying for another sequel. But I'd sure like one. I have my own ideas on what should really happen (go back to the original island!!!), but one way or another I'd loves me some more ILM dinosaurs on the big screen.

As some (or most) of you know, rumblings of a script floated around a while back that Moriarty at AICN got his hands on and posted a summary of. This script polarized what fans the franchise had left; it contained such wild elements as genetically engineered dino-soldiers with cheeky names. Not my cup of tea, folks -- I want to see people running from dinosaurs in the jungle, not some Saturday morning cartoon Dino-Riders extraordinaire (needless to say, I wasn't a fan).

So since then there's been little to no news regarding the film. Some were starting to wonder if it had become stuck in development and Spielberg & Co. had lost interest. Personally I was kind of hoping that at least something was going on with the flick, and apparently I was right.

Enter Film Rotation. As part of their War of the Worlds coverage, Gazz got a friend who was interviewing Steven Spielberg for a radio station to drop in some choice tidbit questions, including these:

What about Jurassic Park 4? Is that actually going ahead?
John Sayles has just handed in what we'd like to consider the final draft a few weeks back.

So the script review that surfaced on the internet last year...
[laughs] ... It was probably written by the same guy that wrote and reviewed all those Indy 4 scripts. There's only one Jurassic Park 4 script and one Indy 4 script and I have both of them!

So what can you tell us about Jurassic Park 4? Will you be directing it?
I can tell you it has dinosaurs in it and I can tell you I won't be directing it. My job will be exactly the same as it was on number 3, no more no less.

Needless to say, I'm a happy dinosaur. Sayles doesn't exactly have a bunch of hits under his belt but I'm hoping for the best. And at least it's not that off-the-wall script we all heard about before.

Site Status Note

I've decided to shift the focus of Gonktacular to strictly film and media related writing. My original intention was to have this be a little bit of everything, but I've found myself focusing more on movies and TV when I write. That's not a bad thing, for sure. I've been noticed a bit (Film Rotation picked me up on its newsfeeds). So I've decided to move all personal related updates (pictures, posts, etc) over to Gonktacular Too, a new personal blog. Feel free to visit.

Review: Batman Begins

Does anyone remember Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith at this point?

That was only a month ago, you know.

That's what I thought.

In the critical summer movie season, memorability and staying power are what eventually crown champions. Quick -- name a movie, off the top of your head, that came out the same summer Jurassic Park did. How about Independence Day? Some of you might, but most probably won't.

While there's still plenty of steam left in the summer, I'm putting my money down that two or three years from now people will look back on this summer and remember Batman Begins. Will they think of other films? Maybe. But this one has defined this movie season. Star Wars set the tone and the stakes, and Batman has already managed to steal its thunder as THE movie of the summer.

Can we talk about this film fanboy to fanboy for a second? I'm going to step out of the persona of a reviewer and jump into my own comfortable fan skin. This movie is ten pounds of awesome in a five pound bag. It's got enough awesome for all the people in the theater to take home some awesome of their very own when it's over. It's not just awesome, it's generous with its awesome. It's the Carnegie of awesome.

Now that I've got that out of my system, I'll be a little more succinct: Batman Begins is so far the best film this summer and perhaps this year. It is a well-written, well-acted, well-directed film. I don't even want to call it a comic book film, because if the costume wasn't there it wouldn't even be considered a "comic book" film. It's far beyond being pigeonholed into the same category that the previous Batman films and far worse have been relegated to.

It's practically two movies, one relating the origin of Batman and the other relating his first appearances in Gotham. These stories, which almost neatly divide the film, are tied together by Ra's Al Ghul and his League of Shadows, who train Wayne to become what he is today and then later are the shadowy puppeteers behind the plot to wipe out Gotham. Both are spectacularly shot, mostly on location, which give it a vibrant imagery in the first half and a gritty realism once we get back to Gotham.

Christian Bale has turned in some great performances in the last few years yet still manages to be relatively unknown -- until now, of course. His Batman/Bruce Wayne is much truer to their source material than previous incarnations and he plays the part with a manic intensity that almost spills off the screen and assaults the viewer -- and that's a good thing. He is focused, determined, and yet reserved at the same time. Director Christopher Nolan manages to make a great performance better by surrounding Bale with an all-star cast of great actors -- Michael Caine, who brings life to Alfred in a fatherly way (somewhat missing in the previous films); Gary Oldman, almost stealing the screen from Bale at times as James (future commissioner) Gordon; Morgan Freeman, who always manages to make any move better; and even Rutger Hauer, who isn't onscreen all that much, makes his character (Earle, who runs Wayne Enterprises) perfectly hatable. Cillian Murphy, a relative unknown, makes a great unhinged doctor. And then there's Liam Neeson. This guy can do anything. He certainly isn't Qui-Gon any more.

Which brings us to a weak point in the film: Katie Holmes. She's really trying not to bleed Dawson's Creek while she's onscreen. Her performance is good, but could have been played by anyone (and better). She's forgettable for the most part, and is more of a prop. The film would have been better served by a enthusiastic D.A. named Harvey Dent (who might pop up in the later films anyway).

The effects in this film are invisible, which makes them incredible. Believability was the mantra of Batman Begins and most of the effects work was traditional stuntwork and models -- adding yet another layer of realism to the film. What CGI there was managed to be inconspicuous and seamless.

Much has been said about the music in this film, especially the lack of a traditional theme. I really enjoyed how the music played out in the film, though I have yet to listen to the soundtrack by itself (curse you, retailers, for not stocking it around here), so I don't know how well it stands on its own. The collaboration by two of my favorite film composers -- Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard -- has produced a deep, moody, perfectly scored background. There is somewhat of a theme that is prevalent throughout the movie, though it lacks structure -- a rhythmic drumbeat/note sequence that underscores much of the movie. I walked out with it in my head, which is a good sign. Perhaps they didn't want to step on Danny Elfman's memorable theme from the Burton films -- which is wise. Perhaps they were trying to move away from the traditional superhero meme in film music, which would fit with the tone of the film as it also tries hard not to be a superhero movie. Either way, it fit the film excellently.

What's not so great about this film? Well, not much, really. The "wipe out Gotham" plot is spread a bit thin and moves almost too quickly, as it is compressed into the latter half of the film -- a symptom of the amount of time they spend at the beginning with the origin story. But it still works, though it could have been developed a bit better. I thought Scarecrow was actually pretty underused. And while Holmes was a weak point, her performace is far from bad.

It seems, as I wondered a few weeks ago amid the Star Wars hype, that this movie will end up being the one to beat this summer. Perhaps Star Wars will make more money (it probably will), and perhaps War of the Worlds will steal its thunder in turn as it did to Star Wars (likely, but not on the same level). But when we look back on this movie summer, I'm willing to bet that it's Batman that we'll remember the best.

X3 and the Temple of Doom

Yeah, so X-Men 3 is looking like it's going to be a disaster. With an out-there script that effectively takes four of the main characters out of the running, by death or otherwise, and gives the focal character of the first two practically nothing to do (script ruminations based upon this review), and a director who's less than impressive, AND given the fact that Tom Rothman at Fox tends to have something akin to the Midas touch with a twist (instead of gold, everything he touches turns into excrement), this is one franchise that might be dead in the water before it even leaves the dock.

Now they've got a teaser poster out, and it's less than impressive and obviously timed to staunch the flow of PR blood that they've been gushing since Matthew Vaughan left the project (possibly even since Bryan Singer left the project to direct Superman Returns). Judging by fan reactions, they're not buying it. These folks (including me) were already turned from the project the minute they started bantering around Brett Ratner's name for replacing Vaughan. Ratner's not the antichrist (this guy continues to be, while this guy is obviously his evil minion), but he's not exactly someone people wanted to see on this project -- especially after the fun the fans had tearing his involvement with Superman into shreds.

Which leads us to a funny set of parallels here. At one point in the past, Bryan Singer was attached to direct X3. Directors had long come and gone for Superman but suddenly Ratner's name was attached and there was this script. Oh yes, that script. The J.J. Abrams draft. The one where Lex Luthor is an alien from Krypton and various other atrocious concepts were bandied about like it was a great update to the franchise when all the fans really wanted was another good Superman film. The crapstorm that followed that saw Ratner off the project, and guess who they snagged to replace him? Bryan Singer. So that left X3 with an opening that would eventually be filled by Matthew Vaughan and subsequently vacated for dubious reasons.

And now we have Ratner, who somehow managed to land the X3 job. Funny, ain't it? At some point in the past X3 was looking to be good and Superman was the unmitigated disaster. The irony never ceases.


Have you heard George Lucas' latest little blurb about the new Star Wars TV show? Apparently he approached Daniel Logan, our favorite mini-Fett, now well into his teenage years. So could we see Boba Fett return to his roots and show up on the small screen? It's where he was introduced, after all, though Lucas would rather you forget that (Star Wars Holiday Special, anyone?).

I don't know about it, really. I don't think I want a TV show about Boba Fett -- the mystique that made him cool in the first place is long gone, thanks to the prequels. Of course, the same could be said about Darth Vader. He doesn't seem quite so menacing in the Original Trilogy once you know the whiny brat-child that's inside that suit. Anyway -- I'm thinking the new series should follow an original character, with cameos from famous ones. It wouldn't be hard to get Vader onscreen. Some of the other characters would take a little more work (i.e. there's no way they could get away with replacing Ewan McGregor with someone else as Obi-Wan).

Regardless, it needs to take a fresh look. It needs a new angle. Star Wars has been around for nearly 30 years now and they can't get away with just re-hashing the old stuff like the EU novels have been doing for years. Let's hope they do so.


Batman Begins soon for me. Possibly Friday. I'm looking forward to it.

Profundity

Flowers die in 100 degree heat when they're not watered. Just a bit of botanical wisdom there for you.

Wow, it's gotten hot. Unfortunately the April showers and May flowers never really came (neither did the pilgrims, for you wise guys out there). However, the showers did manage to show up rather late to the party in the last couple of weeks of May, and then the weather got a little warm. Welcome to my outdoor sauna.

Slow week. Not much else to say. Check out Film Rotation if you're bored.

That is all.