bigdamnhero

Mrs. BDH was away for the weekend so I've been catching up on my Netflix queue... Ragnarok, a 2013 Norwegian action/horror/monster movie about a team of archeologists (and kids, because of course) on the trail of an ancient Viking mystery. A fun movie, fairly predictable, but well-acted with decent effects and a minimum of gaping plot holes. It takes a long time for the action to get going, but if you don't mind a slow start it's an enjoyable flick.

So you ever play in that game where no one seems sure what the plot is least of all the GM and there are cyborgs and demons and ninjas and wizards and cybernetic-demon-ninja-wizards and characters appear and disappear more or less at random with bizarre powers that also seem random and it's not clear who's fighting who let alone why and you suspect the GM may be drunk and/or high but everyone is having so much fun that no one cares? Yeah, that pretty-much describes Daemonium, a bat-shit insane Argentinian post-apocalypse (I think?) movie. I defy you to make sense out of what's happening, but who cares when it's this much fun? Streaming on Netflix. (Note the movie is subtitled in English; this trailer is not, but it gives you an idea just how over-the-top it is.)

Mongol. A joint Russian-Chinese movie about the early life of Genghis Khan. Very well done & entertaining, tho more mythological than historical per se. It was actually a much slower-paced film than I expected, because for most of the movie he's just trying to stay alive and get back to his bride, and it ends with him uniting all the Mongol tribes which is where the historical "fun" began. Apparently it was intended to be the first in a trilogy, but it's not clear if the remaining movies are going to happen or not. But still, well worth watching if you're not put off by subtitles.

Season 2 finale of iZombie. Without spoilerizing anything: when the show first started Mrs BDH & I both thought "Neat concept, but I don't see how they'll make it last more than a couple of seasons." Well S3 did a good job of widening the scope of the show and raising the stakes beyond the original crime of the week format. And the finale upped the stakes even further, and promises a very different game for S4, so looking forward to that. I do feel like they tried to cram a bit too much plot into the last 2-3 episodes tho, so I wish they'd taken a bit more time there. Binged Supernatural Season 12. Amazing that the show is able to keep delivering after 12 frickin' seasons, but they seem to have a good sense of how to fiddle with the metaplots each season without losing the core of the show. Apparently S13 is going to be their last which is probably just as well, but it's been fun.

At least they're not all sweaty, shirtless 20-somethings. And it doesn't look like the soap opera factor will be at CW levels, which would be refreshing. The only actor I recognize is Rheon from Game of Thrones. Where I actually fast-forwarded through most of his scenes because I'm not into torture porn. I wasn't actually looking forward to this show that much because SHIELD has been so mediocre and I was never really into the Inhumans anyway. But it looks like it might actually be worth watching. Besides, Lockjaw!

Even Marvel realizes that the "Avengers Assembly" model isn't the only way to do it; witness Guardians. I think there's no question the DCEU approach could've worked if the individual movies hadn't been so awful (IMO).

Thor 1 definitely, good example. I didn't notice it in AofU; I'll have to watch it again. Yeah, if you see pictures of WW from BvS side by side with her from WW, the difference is startling. Same costume almost exactly, but in BvS it looks brown rather than red. The startling color of Diana's costume amidst the darkness of trench warfare was the most Genre thing ever, and I'm glad they didn't pull their punches with it.

Despite the title, this vid is mostly about how Marvel could maybe sometimes be a little more careful about how & when they mix jokes in with their drama. As the video points out, mixing dramatic moments with comedic bits in order to make both land more effectively is Joss Whedon's trademark style, and that has kindof set the style for the MCU. And I'll certainly take that over the DCEU "No Jokes" policy. But not all the MCU writers are as good at it as Joss is, and when used carelessly you can wind up undercutting the dramatic resonance of your Big Moments rather than highlighting them. By contrast, WW did a perfect job of using humor sparingly to serve the story & characters while letting the Big Dramatic Moments be Big and Dramatic without worrying about being too "cheesy." Unlike the video author, I thought the Stark quipping in Civil War helped to contrast him with Steve, just as Clint & Natasha's joking served as a contrast to when Wanda throws Natasha aside and basically tells Clint to quit screwing around because this isn't a game to her. But I think he has a point overall. I enjoyed the jokes in Dr. Strange, but I do think that movie could've perhaps benefited from a slightly less-jokey tone.

Here's a good short video about how effectively WW uses color as way of drawing contrast between different places (Themiscyra vs London) and events (before Diana joins the fight, vs afterwards). He compares this to not just the other DCEU movies, but even to the Marvel movies which, while they use a lot more color than something like BvS, use it basically the same way throughout every movie.

Yeah, so the press sometimes makes mistakes. And? If you really think Millennials don't know that Wikipedia isn't the final definitive reference on all things, or don't know enough to be skeptical of news reports, especially early news reports, then quite frankly I'm not sure you've ever met a Millennial. They're skeptical of EVERYTHING, almost obsessively so. Yeah, again I never claimed the press was perfect or infallible. Or hell, even particularly good, especially these days. That's a whole `nother thread. But imagine not having an independent press at all? Imagine not having access to reference sources of any kind? Again, I'd prefer to have this thread not devolve into an NGD argument about current politics. But lots of people have pontificated about our world becoming a "post-factual" society where prominent leaders can make statements that are verifiably false, get called on it, and yet a significant percentage of the public doesn't care because they choose to get their "facts" from this or that source. So I have my "facts" and you have your "facts" and ne'er the twain shall meet. But the SW Verse seems to go even a step beyond that to where neither side has facts, or seems particularly interested in looking for them. If our problem today is too many sources of information so that it's easy to find information that supports your pre-existing biases, the SW Verse's problem seems to be a complete lack of sources of information beyond "I heard from some guy in a bar." That to me speaks of a systemic lack of intellectual curiosity that stands starkly at odds with how SF societies are typically portrayed, and much more like what we would expect from a society of illiterate medieval peasants.

I'll second Lord of Light. Also, Stephen R. Donaldson's Lord Foul's Bane, first book of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Not an easy book to read, and may hold the record among fantasy books for the most people who got 1/3 through it but just couldn't keep going. I get it. But a compelling world and story, and one of the most vivid antiheroes in literary history. The Last Apocalypse by James Reston. A fun pop history book that paints an overview of what Europe was like at the end of the First Millennium. I wrote a longer review in this thread. The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson. A story of 9th Century Vikings that ranges from Denmark to Cordova to England to Constantinople and back again. Another book I stumbled on while researching my historical FH game, but a fun read. And now for something completely different: Learning From The Octopus: How Secrets From Nature Can Help Us Fight Terrorist Attacks, Natural Disasters, And Disease by Rafe Sagarin who sadly passed away recently. Sagarin was a marine ecologist who got drafted into the War On Terror (long story) and realized that we can learn a lot about reacting to change and adapting to new threats by watching how nature has been doing exactly that for a couple billion years. A terrific, thought-provoking book, or you can just watch the tldr video version.

Had an absolutely amazing Star Wars session last week, which mostly consisted of an extended crash sequence. There's no way I can do the whole thing justice, but here are a few highlights. Our ship was smuggling Princess Leia (who in this continuity has become a Jedi) and a platoon of Rebels onto Endor so they can blow up a certain shield generator protecting a certain Death Star under construction. But our heavily jury-rigged systems gave out right as we hit atmo, causing a cascading systems failure throught the ship. As our YT-1300 makes like a particularly-unbalanced falling rock, our Rhodian Navigator tries to make his way back to engineering to help with repairs. But despite having the best Athletics roll of any of us, he manages to fail literally every Athletics check and plays slapstick comic relief for a few turns. Meanwhile my Protocol Droid PC manages to make his way to the bridge and climbs into the co-pilot seat to try and help our Captain/pilot regain control. GM: "You realize one of the things making the ship so unbalanced and non-aerodynamic is your massively oversized sensor dish. You think cutting it loose would help balance the ship out." Captain and Navigator: "Noooo! That dish is awesome!" GM: "Fortunately/unfortunately the only opinion that counts in the person with their fingers on that switch." Droid: "Would those be my fingers?" GM: "Yep." Droid: "Oh yeah, I don't even hesitate - cut it loose." GM: "Great! The dish spins out ahead of you like a massive metal frizbee, eventually plowing into the trees below..." Droid: "Wait wait!" [flips over a Destiny Point]* "How many Ewoks does the dish kill on the ground?!" GM: "Oh yeah, it totally slices through two of those ginormous tree cities. Dead teddy bears everywhere!" * Like spending a Hero Point or Bennie or whatever. Meanwhile in the cargo bay... GM: "Leia is using Force Suggestion to try and keep the other Rebels from freaking out. "Remain calm....All is well..."" Player 1: "If the cabin loses pressure, oxygen masks will drop from the ceiling. Put your own mask on first because screw that guy...." Back in the cockpit, my Droid co-pilot has managed to fail every single Piloting Roll; not badly enough to screw us, but nothing to help out the Captain. Droid: [pounds his console in frustration] "Is this thing even on?!" Captain: [leans over, throws a toggle switch] Droid: "...Ah. Thank you." [proceeds to make every subsequent Piloting check] As we near the ground, the Navigator tries to find us a clearing to land in. Navigator: "Gee, you know what would really help would be if we had a Big Ol' Sensor Dish or something!" Droid: "Hey, at least the ship is right-side up now." Navigator: "Not my department!" GM: "OK, you think you've managed to find a clearing that might be bit enough... Droid: "Wait wait!" [flips over another Destiny Point] "Is it the clearing made by the falling sensor dish?!" GM: "Awesome! Yes, the dish has cut a perfect landing strip for you!" Our Engineer has managed to repair enough fuel lines to restart the main engines in the nick of time. The Captain opens up a full burn to decelerate us as much as possible, pulling enough Gs to black out most of the crew but softening the crash enough that we all survive. (Tho our ship is probably damaged beyond repair.) Captain: "As soon as I wake up, I unbuckle, pull myself over to the Navigator's console, shake him awake and yell "Tell me you got all that on camera!!"" We had briefly had a TV camera crew onboard and had kept their camera drones. So yes, we did get it!

This. They seem to regard "traditional" Superman as an embarrassing anachronism they need to distance themselves from. I haven't played the Injustice games, but I read the first couple TPBs of the comic based on it. "What If Superman Decided To Take Over The World" isn't exactly a new idea, tho I thought the comic did a decent-ish job of showing what it might take to push Supes into that corner. My biggest beef with the comic was how easily half of the rest of the superheroes went along with it; in particular their portrayal of Wonder Woman as this Lady MacBeth-esque psychopath had me literally spitting.

Apparently the idea started as a fan theory and Marvel decided to run with it. I can certainly believe a young Peter would've moved heaven & Earth to make it to the Stark Expo, especially if it was in Queens. (Can't remember if that location was specified in IM2 or not?)

Sorry things suck, HM, but good to hear from you!

Spectral, from Netflix. A military sci-fi movie about a group of American soldiers in Generic War-Torn East-European Country #7 who encounter some sort of ghost-like beings. I expected a pleasant time-waster, but it turned out to be surprisingly enjoyable.

Heh, I didn't catch the tank or the plane. Tho the plane is easy enough to justify: German operations in Turkey were considered such a low priority that all the planes they could get were obsolete hand-me-downs. And I thought the same thing about the Blue Max, but Hollywood always tends to overdo it on the medals anyway - it's recognizably German, so Trevor must wear one so the audience knows he's in a German uniform. Same reason why half the US Generals in movies have the Medal of Honor, a CIB, and at least three Purple Hearts. Yeah, that bugged me as well. I'll put that one down to sloppy editing. And Zeropoint wins the No Prize for post-hoc rationalization! Well, that's the name that was on all the boats. Whether it was "our world's" Schwaben or not is another matter, but they did choose to name it after a real world ship, which inevitably invites real-world comparisons. True dat. But in general the less stretching you have to do, the better. And there were so many spots where they could've papered over the plot holes easily but just didn't bother.

Hey, everyone's suspension of disbelief stumbles on different things, especially when it rubs up against something you have KS in. For me, the existence of superpowers, gods, etc in some ways exacerbates this because I'm already being asked to suspend my disbelief for the fantastic elements - so the more "real world" stuff they get wrong, the more they threaten to pull me out of the movie. Then I'm no longer immersed in the story world, I'm just watching someone's made-up nonsense. Which can also be fun, but isn't nearly as engrossing for me. That said: yeah, a few extra boats is pretty far down on the list. But it can also be fun to explore something after the fact and see how closely it matched reality; not out of criticism but out of, y'know, learning something? That was actually one of the major "nitpicks" that pulled me out of the movie the first time I saw it: why is there a village so close to the lines this late in the war, and why are they talking like the Germans just took over the village if - as we're specifically told - the front hasn't moved more than 2" in as many years? And how did all those fleeing civilians and their carts get across no-man's land when we're specifically told no one can survive out there? None of it makes any sense in the historical context. And yes, you can always answer "because story." But I'm sorry, that's just a lazy-ass excuse for sloppy writing. I could probably come up with 10 different ways they could've made that same scene work without contradicting themselves.

No way that was a battleship; not nearly big enough. Maybe call it a light cruiser? It looked like they already had the boats out looking for Trevor's crashed plane, and they started the beach invasion before (or about the same time) that the ship was running aground. But sounds about right othewise. According to my 5 minutes on Wikipedia, German light cruisers of that era had crews of 300+ men. And those ships weren't automated, so they couldn't have put more than maybe half(?) of the crew in boats and still have enough to run the cruiser. It didn't look like there were more than several dozen Germans in the beach battle, certainly no more than 100? And yeah, once the Amazons had repelled that first wave, they wouldn't have had trouble picking off the rest of the crew swimming ashore (since I'm assuming all their boats had already gone out). Which basically means the Amazons butchered a lot of mostly-helpless unarmed men in a situation where any force from "Man's World" would have been obligated to render aid and rescue them. Yeah I know, Themyscira didn't sign that treaty. But still, doesn't exactly give them much moral high ground. And don't even get me started on Injustice, which spent tons of focus on pushing Superman over the edge to a point where he's willing to kill; but apparently that universe's Diana was always a barely-restrained ball of murderous fury.

Oh, a few notes on things we've discussed that I paid specific attention to this time. The opening "I used to want to protect this world..." voiceover is definitely Diana. Hippolyta's line to Diana is "If you choose to leave you may never return." The line reading is ambiguous enough that it could be interpreted as either a prohibition or an expression of concern. Probably done that way on purpose to leave their options open. Diana say's "We speak hundreds of languages" and the other Amazons can clearly communicate with Trevor on the beach, so the polyglot thing is not just her. Ares' "I am the God of Truth" line and extended self-justification is all delivered while bound by the lasso. So either the lasso doesn't work on gods, and/or he's speaking what he believes to be true. I'm going with the latter. Also I didn't notice it the first time, but the last shot of the German destroyer off Themyscira looks like it's listing to one side as if it hit some reefs or something, which I guess explains why we don't see it again. Sloppy editing, but ok. (I might've put the reefs outside the cloaking field, but that's just me...)

Just saw WW again, and enjoyed it way more the second time. For whatever reason, my brain was stuck in Film Critique Mode the first time and I was distracted by a bunch nitpicky errors and omissions. This time I could just sit back and enjoy all the things the movie got *right.*. Which was a lot. Revising my grade from solid B to A-. Even more impressed with the acting & direction than the first time, and even Ares didn't bug me. Much. The only part where Critical Brain kicked back in was at the end of the boss fight, when the surviving Germans take off their gas masks, gaze in wonder at the sunrise, and all the people who just killed all their friends. I kept hearing Tom Lehrer in my head: "Once all the Germans were warlike and mean, But that couldn't happen again. We taught them a lesson in 1918, And they've hardly bothered us since then!"

"The Greatest Adventure" from Dynamite Comics, written by Bill "Fables" Willingham, with art by Cesar Razek. Essentially an attempt to mash together all of Edgar Rice Burroughs' heroes together into one story. Only 2 issues in, but a lot of fun so far and definitely captures the "feel."

Looks like there are a lot more of us in the Denver area than I thought. We should all get together for a beer or a backyard BBQ or something. It'd be nice to meet y'all face to face.

Yeah, I've watched enough foreign films that I'm not even consciously aware of the subtitles anymore. In fact I used to strongly prefer them because the quality of the dubbed voice acting used to be so poor that I found that really distracting; that seems to have improved in recent years tho. I still remember trying to special order Seven Samurai on VHS from the video store back in the 90s. The look from the clerk was priceless: "So it's 3 hours long, black & white, in Japanese with subtitles - that's the version you want?"

I feel about slo-mo fights the same way I feel about shaky cam: both are good in small doses but tend to get overused. I didn't have a problem with any of the individual bullet-time scenes, but could've done with fewer of them overall. But then, most of my game group felt those were the best bits, so YMMV and all that. Re Ares claims: it wasn't entirely clear to me how much we're supposed to believe everything he said about really being the God of Truth, not actually starting wars, etc. What was y'all's take?