"(A)n impalpable grayness" of Moral Terror: Ruminations on Spec Ops: The Line

I killed a mob of civilians. Not out of gleeful delight. Not because I had to. I chose to gun them down because of something they did, and my squadmate followed my example. I didn't feel better afterwards, not justified or avenged or anything. I did not even have time to regret my actions because I needed to push forward because...now I forget. It must have been important, though. But I remember how they ran and they screamed, these piles of pixels draped in colors resembling flesh and blood. I remember explosions of red of cries of pain. I'm sure they deserved it. Two days ago, I killed a mob of virtual civilians in a video game, and I'm still thinking about it.

Yager's Spec Ops: The Line would not have even been a blip on my radar had it not been for significant press about the game's story. Military shooters like SOCOM, Ghost Recon, or Call of Duty never hold my interests. I recognize the near flawless controls of Call of Duty, but I'll likely not purchase another one because I cannot get into the multiplayer. On the surface, Spec Ops is one of these games, and it stays this way just long enough for the player to realize this, pitting the player, who controls a more macho Nathan Drake, against non-white enemies alongside trash-talking grunts in some desert wasteland. At some point in the game, though, things go from status quo to FUBAR--I just can't pinpoint the exact moment.

Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.--Joseph Conrad, "Heart of Darkness"

I think the fact that I cannot find the locus at which the story shifts is testament to the writing behind this game--or at least its source material. Drawing from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (the game has more in common with the latter), Spec Ops: The Line builds its narrative around two works that are giants in their respective media of literature and film. The problem I faced going in, though, was that I knew what to expect because I've read the novella and seen the film countless times. It's an ambitious project, perhaps one that stands a bit too comfortably on the shoulders of giants, but it is a successful one. The story is damn good and worth the time and money I invested in the game. Its elements were familiar, but the specifics were unique. It's more homage than re-imagining, which works in the narrative's favor.

The game's initial concept is simple, if not a bit stupid. Dubai has been hit by a sandstorm of biblical proportion, and the 33rd Battalion, led by John Konrad, tries to help evacuate those left behind, eventually staying behind after the U.S. asked them to come back. The United Arab Emirates declare Dubai a lost disaster zone until a transmission from Konrad breaks the radio stormwall, prompting the U.S. to send a Delta Force reconnaissance team into Dubai. At first, I questioned the plausibility of radio silence in the year 2012 when the game starts off as a standard military shooter in a hyperreal environment, but what begins as routine jingoistic, macho-military combat erodes into existential battles against former American soldiers. About midway through the game, I realized that "reality" (or some Baudrillardian "hyperreality") had broken down down, buried under piles of corpses and sand. Spec Ops never strives for realism that Call of Duty or Splinter Cell or numerous others attempt; instead it offers a surreality, a parallel military narrative that uses the tropes of other games in the genre only to undo them. The shifting sands, the hallucinations, and the psychedelic rock music all build an atmosphere on "unreality" in a genre that seems so focused on realism. To say much more would venture into spoiler territory--though shame on you if you've never read Heart of Darkness or seen Apocalypse Now.

The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there — there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were, — No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it — this suspicion of their not being inhuman. --Joseph Conrad "Heart of Darkness"

As with all games, though, the narrative's effectiveness leans heavily on the actual gameplay. Here, I found the game's mechanics to be somewhere between adequate and good. Gears of War and Max Payne 3 offer more competent cover mechanicsthan Spec Ops does, but I cannot help wondering if Spec Ops' simple controls are by design. Just as Conrad parodied the adventure novel and Coppola parodied the epic war film, the team at Yager Development may be lampooning the controls of the third-person cover shooter--with the addition of elementary squad commands. If so, it works. In fact, the enemy AI is far too good for the cover mechanics to offer any sort of unreliability. The gameplay is nothing revelatory, but it crashes so beautifully with the narrative that I can't help asking myself, "Why the hell am I playing this game?" I know nothing good will happen at the end, but I want to see where it all is going. To do that, I have to put myself through what feels like mediocre gameplay but opens up as I realize its importance. Each explosion carries meaning as you tear apart a city that once stood for excessive decadence and architectural beauty. The ruinous Dubai setting is perfect for a game hell-bent on dealing with the very idea of mindless destruction and its repercussions.

I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamor, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid skepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. --Joseph Conrad "Heart of Darkness"

And while the city crumbles, so too does your platoon of Not Nathan Drake and his two Not Nathan Drake's Buddies. While they start out with quippy banter and stupid machismo, their bonds are stretched and eventually snapped. While I've harped on Nolan North's over-exposure in the game industry, he delivers a stellar performance as Capt. Walker. The overall voice work is excellent, and it evolves too, in-game. Walker's reaction to suppressing enemy fire changes from an initial call for cover to a growling, "Fuck you," delivered toward the approaching enemy. A lot of times, I found myself uttering the same thing in tense firefights, resulting in looks from wife that fell somewhere concern and annoyance. It was a bit more sobering than I thought it would be.

I've made it fairly obvious here that I've a fascination with video game violence. I've discussed it's purpose in God of War and Red Dead Redemption, but rarely does a game so blatantly turn that violence outward, so much to tell the player, "You know you're a bit messed up for playing this, right?" It's a big question and one that needs asking. While I can't say I enjoyed the game without admitting my own appreciation of the macabre, I can recommend it, and I can do so highly. It warrants your attention if only to give you an abyss to stare into to see what looks back. In Apocalypse Now, Colonel Kurtz posits in what is likely the most chilling monologue in cinema history, "Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies." Perhaps this game will make a worthy introduction to both of them.

Cheers,

--David

Film Thoughts: The Dark Knight Rises and the Post-Nolan Era

Spoilers follow.  Seriously.  If you haven't seen the movie, watch it, then come back.

If you're looking for a review of The Dark Knight Rises, here it is: go see the movie.  Pay for the ticket, watch and enjoy the film, go home and give it some serious thought.  Then, go again.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Nolan's scope is epic and his project more than ambitious, capping his trilogy in spectacular fashion.  From the moment Bane first spoke in the opening scene until the final scene at the cafe, I never felt bored nor did I feel that the movie moved too slowly--which, considering the film's just under three-hour running time, is quite a testament to Nolan's script.  In fact, after leaving the theater, my friend and I agreed that we could have watched another solid ten or fifteen minutes of Bruce Wayne's training in the pit.  But the most commendable achievement of the film is that it brings Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy full circle, providing closure to his Batman universe in the best way possible.  In time, we'll likely come to think of the Dark Knight movies, much like we do the Star Wars Trilogy, not as separate entries but as parts of one grand story.

Earlier this month, I wrote a post about what I think Nolan was doing with his trilogy.  To summarize that post, I find Nolan's films to be one of the most interesting experiments with the Batman mythos that has ever been attempted.  By putting Batman in a real-world setting, Nolan proposes that the introduction of the Batman to an already complex system of criminal activity and corrupt social structure (Gotham City) would result in unpredictable consequences that ramify in increasingly dangerous ways--the apotheosis of which would be the Joker in The Dark Knight.  The only way to reset the system, therefore, would be for Batman to die, the created symbol serving to inspire but no longer actively affecting the system he meant to save.  He dares to ask, "Would Gotham have been better off without the Batman?" without providing an all too clear answer.  I think what I said in that post still holds weight, so, instead of beating a dead horse, I wish to take a slightly different approach and talk about the film in terms of its legacy.  From now on, Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy will (and should) be the standard for how to create a superhero film.  In the words of the Joker, "...I know the truth, there's no going back. You've changed things, forever."

The Dark Knight Rises, more so than any of its predecessors, is a film about superhero films.  It's comic book elements are more overt than The Dark Knight's, having a very clear act structure that felt like a comic book series.  Issue one ends with Batman re-donning the cape and cowl.  Another issue ends with the broken Bat, and yet another issue would be devoted to Wayne's training in the pit.  The structural integrity of the movie draws clear inspiration from comics like No Man's Land, Knightfall, and The Dark Knight Returns among numerous others.  And was it just me, or is the pit/prison analogous to Ra's Al Ghul's Lazarus pits (falling in and climbing out to achieve some transcendence or chance at immortality)?  Maybe, maybe not.  My point is that this film had much more in common with Batman Begins in terms of its comic book elements than it dead with the erasure of such familiarities in The Dark Knight.  I think this is by design.

The character of Bane, for instance, is pure comic book villain, falling somewhere between a Bond mastermind and a tornado.  He's fast, brilliant, exact, calculating, and brutal.  He's a faceless force of nature and conviction, something straight out of a weekly serial brought to terrifying life.  While the Bane of Knightfall is equally brilliant and powerful, the violence of the comic does not match the brutality we see on screen because of Nolan's choice to set his trilogy in a realistic world.  A proposed "real" Bane terrifies more than the fantastic comic book monster ever could.  Tom Hardy's Bane, while not as interesting as Heath Ledger's Joker, still commands the screen with savage intensity, giving the viewer a comic book powerhouse with just enough realism to make him a threat instead of a caricature.  The mask he wears dehumanizes him by obscuring his face and muffling his speech, but when his eloquence emerges, it returns some humanity to the behemoth so the viewer knows that he was a person who became a monster rather than just a hulking pile of muscle.

Realistic or not, he's still 250 pounds of f*ck you up.

The comic book world seems to intrude into the real world on such a massive scale, though, that the film calls attention to itself.  It's easy to point out parallels that exist between the Occupy Movement and Bane's goal of giving Gotham back to the people, and the film seems to have a conservative slant that Mark Fisher points out in his article for the Guardian, saying that "the new film demonises collective action against capital while asking us to put our hope and faith in a chastened rich."  His analysis is fair, I think; the connections are there.  This interpretation would be fine, for me at least, if the movie were simply holding a cliched dark mirror up to contemporary issues, but the blending of the real world with the artificial (in terms of the comic's relationship with realism in film) seems to turn the issue on its head.  The film becomes less about the actual plot because the plot is easy--the film stresses the relationship of the real with the imaginary.  The film strives to be, in the words of Alfred Pennyworth (who, by the way, has more pathos in this movie than any other character) "something more."

In Nolan's Gotham, the actions of Bane will have a much more lasting impact than the actions of Batman.  The guy blows up half the city, for God's sake!  There's no going back from that.  If not for the actions of the privileged class's poster child, the mob would have never turned to the Joker in The Dark Knight. This is the same world where the rich are fat cats, the common people are terrorists, and those caught in between suffer while the city falls around them.  When the only hope for a real city lies in the hands of a guy in a batsuit, the world will burn long before it gets better.  It's the scenario that Nolan had been building since the beginning, whether he knew it or not.  He had to provide an answer for how a world with Batman could keep going, and that answer was that the Batman had to die.  When the fantasy of the comic book world meets the realism of the actual world, there will be drastic consequences.  The binaries of rich and poor, hero and villain, become simple plot points amid a chaotic world of structural collapse.  The ending of the film, then, with John Blake's (or Robin, in the most dissapointingly handled bit of fan service in the movie) discovery of the Batcave strikes me with some ambiguity.  He hasn't yet learned the lesson Wayne has, but, should he choose to follow him, he will.

I think it's safe to say that in the wake of Nolan's movies, we can all say goodbye to great comic book films for a while.  We'll get the awesomeness of Marvel's Phase 2 and maybe some solid entries in the X-Men, Superman, Spider-Man franchises, but I'm putting my money down that there won't be anything that elevates the genre to such heights as Nolan's Dark Knight movies.  They make me think deeply about what it is about superheroes that draw us to them.  Nolan has cemented himself as an adaptation auteur willing to blend thematic complexity and blockbuster action like few have done before, and it will likely be a long time before we see something like it again on this scale.

Cheers,

--David

P.S. In my last Batman post, I mentioned that I had a Batman wedding cake.  Here you go, internet:

"It's simple. We eat the Batcake."

Film Thoughts: The Amazing Spider-Man

Obligatory Spoiler Alert!

It did not take long for me to figure out where this film was going from its very beginning. I've played and given my thoughts on the game, I own copies of the Raimi trilogy, and I've read the comics (albeit over a decade ago). So, like damn near everyone else, I knew what was going to happen. But as the end of the first act approached, even though I knew it would happen, I was still shocked and hurt when Uncle Ben died in the street. I don't know whom to credit for my reaction. Perhaps it's director Marc Webb's ability to throw an emotional punch. Maybe it was Martin Sheen's pitch perfect performance as Uncle Ben (whoever cast him deserves credit as well). Or it may have been the argument between Sheen's Uncle Ben and Garfield's Peter Parker, just before the incident, when Uncle Ben completely tears into Peter the way I could see my own father do to me when I was a teenager. Whatever the reason, I saw Uncle Ben die for what seemed to be the three-hundredth time in the past decade, and it still felt tragic and powerful.

Let me be honest here: I still think it's too soon for a Spider-Man reboot. Sure, the gritty real-world aesthetic of Nolan's Batman trilogy reinvented the way we think about superhero films, and, on the surface, it would seem that Webb strives for the same type of aesthetic. But Batman Begins released a decade after the visual abortion that was Joel Schumacher's Batman and Robin, and it's only been about half that time since Raimi's Spider-Man 3. I think Raimi's trilogy still holds up fairly well, though I'm willing to admit my own nostalgic connection to it. So it came as a bit of a surprise to me that Hollywood wanted to revisit the franchise so soon. Sony, it seems, pushed the movie out the door because they wanted to keep the movie rights, and they should, considering how they need the capital.

I know you do, buddy.  I know you do.

I'm obviously not an economist or a marketing pro, but I predicted they would sell the rights back to Marvel so they could roll Spidey in with the Avengers universe. I don't know if we'll ever see that happen now. Instead, the Webslinger will be subject to things like this: 

Headline: J. Jonah Jameson Is a Jerk

Anyway, here's the bottom line: Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man is much darker than Raimi's camp-fest; however, it is certainly no less fun. It's a much more patient movie, willing to build up the scenes with Peter and Gwen (played by the always charming Emma Stone) before delivering with the action sequences we all paid good money to see. Peter doesn't even get bitten until about twenty minutes into the film, and watching him develop his powers delivers some of the best entertainment in the whole movie. I think the first-person web-slinging section could have been a solid minute and a half because it was an absolute blast. And here's where I credit Webb's directorial skills. The movie is patient, but never slow. The characters are charming, but never impossibly cheesy. The action sequences are fast and acrobatic, but never so busy that it impedes the viewer from understanding the action. Stan Lee's cameo was hilarious, but not...eh I got nothing--it was pretty awesome. If I had not known going in, I would have never guessed that the same man who directed (500) Days of Summer also directed The Amazing Spider-Man. Webb really has an eye for clear, precise action scenes that I could not have predicted. I left the theater pleasantly surprised.

Returning to the question of acting, everyone seemed right for their respective rolls. Aside from Martin Sheen, Dennis Leary gives an excellent performance as Capt. Stacy. His gruff demeanor matched the character perfectly, and, even though I knew what would happen to him, his character arc served as, arguably, the most interesting. Rhys Ifans fit the Kurt Connors/Lizard's scales, but the villain had nowhere near the bombastic fun of Willem Dafoe's Norman Osborne is Raimi's 2002 incarnation. Garfield's Peter Parker outshines Tobey Maguire's, giving a bit more gravitas than his predecessor to the titular hero. He and Emma Stone really make the non-action sequences worth watching. Of course, in the great tradition of the information age, we all know where their relationship will inevitably lead.

The film does have one problem, though: it's an origin story. It's a well-told, well-acted, well-choreographed, and entertaining origin story--but it's an origin story, nonetheless. And we just got five (if you want to include The Incredible Hulk, which I am for emphasis, though I probably shouldn't) of those damn things from Marvel. Five. In the last three years. So, while I was watching the movie, I couldn't help but constantly challenge what I saw, demanding, "Convince me that you needed to be made and not tied to The Avengers." I don't think the film can validate its own existence, at least not for me. We don't need this movie because it offers nothing new. Crazed scientist due to chemical enhancement? Check. Teenage angst/love story? Check. Hero born from death of a father figure? Check. The real place this movie differs from Raimi's (besides it's darker tone) is the tension built between the NYPD (and Capt. Stacy) and the overall question of vigilantism. To be honest, I would have preferred more from this arc as it offered something new for Spider-Man. What's there is good; I just wanted more.

Overall, the movie deserves film-goers' attention. I left completely entertained, and I think I like it better than the originals (including the stellar Spider-Man 2). I also think the film will age well, maybe even more so than the Raimi trilogy, but it will have nowhere near the longevity of all the Avengers films. (That's another thing that bothers me; I can't talk about the film without using caveats and qualifiers. It's good, but... I liked the story; however...) As much as I enjoyed The Amazing Spider-Man, I can't shake this feeling of deja vu; I've seen it all before, it just happens to be better this time. I don't think that's enough to warrant making the film, but I'd be lying if I said it's not worth the price of admission--even if that means subjecting myself to watching Uncle Ben die one more time.

Cheers,

--David

Opinion: A Longtime Batman Fan's take on Nolan's Batman Trilogy

Note: This is not about video games (obviously). It is, instead a collection of thoughts on Nolan's Batman trilogy.

I've always been a Batman fan. Having read numerous comic books and owning over twenty of them, I'm well aware that my knowledge of Gotham's protector extends further than the average Batman fan's (though not nearly as far as the die-hard DC enthusiast, so if I misspeak, please correct me). One semester, I used Alan Moore's The Killing Joke in a freshman writing class in order to discuss how we read comics, and just this past weekend, the groom's cake at my wedding was adorned with the Bat Signal. Needless to say, Nolan's movies stay on constant rotation in my blu ray player, and bout midway through what was likely the twentieth time I watched The Dark Knight, I realized a possible logical terminus for the story Nolan had begun with Batman Begins. Speculation surrounding the fate of the Dark Knight abounds, and, since the first trailer released last summer, fans everywhere have been wondering whether Nolan will kill his titular hero. I must confess, though, don't find this question as tantalizing as most loyal fans do. I cannot wait to see how it all ends, but I don't really care if Nolan's Batman lives or dies or passes the mantle or any other scenario in terms of its narrative importance; the movie's going to be awesome, that's a given. Nolan's said repeatedly that this is going to be his last Batman film. He's explained that he's looking to early film epics like Metropolis or maybe Birth of a Nation in terms of cinematic scope. We know he's going big, also, because the movie is nearly three hours long.. Perhaps a more useful question than "Is Batman or Bruce Wayne or both going to die?" would be "Why would Nolan feel compelled to kill off the Dark Knight?" The key difference is that the latter question broadens the discussion of of the films in dialogue with not only other incarnations of the Batman but also discussions of American ideologies. Nolan's changed the way we perceive one of the most influential and persistent contemporary American icons, and I think it's about time we talk about what exactly that means.

"But They never talk about the mean one. The cruel one. The one who couldn't fly or bend steel in his bare hands. The one who scared the crap out of everybody and laughed at all of the rest of us for being the envious cowards we were." (Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns)

Nolan's movies are not as divisive among comic fans as one might expect. He grounds his project in a reality that asks us to think semi-realistically about what would happen if Batman would enter a real world scenario, and few people with whom I've discussed the films tell me that Nolan's tampering with the Batman universe borders on blasphemy--and we all know how loyal fans can be. I like to view his films as Elseworld's type stories (i.e. Thrillkiller or Gotham by Gaslight), a type of alternate Gotham that gives the auteur a large enough sandbox to play in. The result is a movie that "feels" like a Batman movie even though it's not the same Batman as the one ("ones"?) in the Post-Crisis continuity. The Dark Knight entertains as both a cape and cowl caper and a provocative crime drama. Nolan's films can have their cake and eat it too, so to speak.

Placing a comic book concept in a very serious, real-world context, though, should call attention to how weird it would be for a guy in a costume to swoop around the city and attempt to stop crime, but that rarely (if at all) happens in Nolan's movies--at least not explicitly. Sure, people have discussions about whether the Batman is "doing good" for the city or whether he is simply, as Gordon puts it in Batman Begins, "Just some nut." But the overall seriousness of the film suggests that its world could (or ostensibly does) exist. In this way, Nolan's trilogy offers the best experiment with the Batman mythos I have ever seen, but it yields problematic results. The films are so damn good that casual fans begin to think of Batman as a real character rather than a pop culture icon, and I'm not sure Batman can withstand the seriousness. I think the Joker in The Dark Knight calls attention to this problem directly with his (painfully over-quoted) mantra, "Why so serious?" The famous line is a meta-question not just to his victims but to the fans. Why do we need such a serious hero in a serious movie that deals with serious subjects like murder on massive scale simply to cause societal chaos?

"No, I don’t keep count. But you do. And I love you for it." (Joker to Batman in Miller's The Dark Knight Returns) 

Christopher Nolan's Batman is played seriously because he's in a serious universe that would never involve Killer Crocs, Clayfaces, or have the main hero hanging with aliens, yet fans are willing to forget (or they just don't know) that the universe(s) of the comics contains these characters and incidents. As a comic book character, Batman is no more grounded in reality than Spider-Man or Superman, nor is his origin more tragic--hell, as much as I don't like Superman, he lost an entire planet along with his parents. Nolan, however, draws on the aspects of the Batman mythos that humanize rather than immortalize the Dark Knight, and, by doing so, deceives the viewer into thinking of not just his Batman but the character in general in terms of his realism. Others, of course, have tread this territory before, but they did so by exploring Batman's humanity in an unreal universe. One story that comes to mind is Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, in which the inmates of the titular madhouse take over, and Batman wanders Arkham's halls, battling inmates and his inner demons. But the difference here is that Batman is humanized in a world where the supernatural (aliens, mutants, Solomon Grundy, etc.) exists alongside the natural, whereas Nolan's Batman attempts to become "more than a man" in a purely natural world. At any rate, it's made it much more difficult for me to recommend Batman comics to friends who just know the Nolan movies...though everyone should read the top five graphic novels in IGN's list.

"People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy, and I can't do that as Bruce Wayne. As a man, I'm flesh and blood. I can be ignored, I can be destroyed. But as a symbol … as a symbol, I can be incorruptible. I can be everlasting." (Batman Begins)

So what happens when we introduce Batman to real world besides bad ass action sequences and damn good storytelling (despite the fact that three men can meet on a rooftop while one wears a bat suit and no one takes a step back to say "Wait a minute...what the fu....")? We get a world of consequence. In Batman Begins, the main conflict is about administering justice to preserve balance. Gotham is a functioning system of political corruption and underworld crime, and Batman serves as a destabilizing element. When Batman stops Ra's Al Ghul's League from dismantling Gotham's infrastructure, he does so to give himself time to destroy the criminal structure of the city, but the increased pressure on the mob prompts them to employ a mercenary psychopath who, in turn, spreads chaos through the city in a way that neither the mob nor Gotham's protector could have anticipated. It's textbook chaos theory, in which a single alien element introduced in a system has the potential to ramify unpredictably. By the end of The Dark Knight, Batman understands that in order for the system to be reset, he must remove himself from the equation, giving the police someone to hunt (himself) and someone to idolize (Harvey Dent). Then, eight years later, something ambiguous happens (though the trailer in which Selina Kyle cryptically warns Bruce Wayne has clear overtones of the occupy movement) which awakens the Batman from his eight year slumber--Bane brings hell itself to the streets of Gotham. And we all know why Bane's dangerous...

  

I am Bane -- and I could kill you... but death would only end your agony -- and silence your shame. Instead, I will simply... BREAK YOU! Broken...and done. (Knightfall: Broken Bat)

It's only appropriate that Nolan endshis trilogy with Bane. The Joker essentially "wins" his battle against Batman at the end of The Dark Knight when the Gotham police hunt Batman just as the Joker predicted:

Don't talk like you're one of them! You're not... even if you'd like to be. To them you're just a freak, like me. They need you right now, but when they don't, they'll cast you out. Like a leper. See, their morals, their "code"... it's a bad joke, dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show you. When the chips are down, these uh, these "civilized people", they'll eat each other. See, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve.--The Dark Knight

Since Batman has had his struggle with Ra's al Ghul and the Joker (my two personal favorites in his rogue gallery), the logical terminus for this trajectory is brutal, punishing agony. Bane provides Nolan with the perfect vehicle to kill the Batman, to kill Bruce Wayne, or, on the other hand, to provide the greatest physical and mental challenge for the Dark Knight. Ra's al Ghul strives for order and obedience. The Joker thrives on chaos. Bane utilizes pain with surgical precision to break Batman physically, mentally, and spiritually. He is a brilliant tactician and a juggernaut of hurt. If there is anyone capable of delivering the killing blow to the Bat, it would be Bane, and that seems to be Nolan's goal here: to punish the Batman for upsetting the system that keeps not only the microcosm of Gotham working, but also the macrocosm of the perceived real world.

Thus, my long belabored point emerges: I think Nolan's films illustrate that being Batman in the real world is a potentially bad idea, and we're about to find out if Bruce Wayne's choice to become the Batman was the right one. By that, I don't mean it's a cautionary tale about why you shouldn't dress like a bat and fight crime--that's a terribly obvious lesson. The lesson runs much deeper. Much like Alan Moore's Watchmen, one way to read Nolan's films is to say, "Thank God all we have to deal with in real life is nice, clean organized crime. Because when people actually become superheroes, things...go awry." Batman enters a fragile system as a chaotic element, and we see these repercussions in The Dark Knight more clearly than any other Batman story I've encountered. It'll be interesting in The Dark Knight Rises to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. All in all, I think Nolan's films are about consequence rather than about character. Perhaps people do need a dramatic symbol "to shake them out of apathy," but Nolan proposes a scenario that explores what happens after the system that symbol disrupts fights back. Whoever wins, fans will have a lot to chew on and debate for years to come.

Cheers,

--David

Beenox's Amazing Spider-Man: An Issue of Trust

In an earlier post, I explained why I was excited for Beenox's new Spider-Man game. I did not like Shattered Dimensions, so I didn't bother playing Edge of Time. Nevertheless, I felt drawn to The Amazing Spider-Man simply because I wanted to swing. After reading Greg Miller's IGN review (and several others), I decided to buy the game despite its lukewarm reception. Now that I have completed the game and spent substantial time with it, I find that the game can be a lot of fun, but I do not think I'll return to it. I agree with most reviews that if you come in with low expectations, you'll be pleasantly surprised. Overall, though, Spider-Man fans and gamers alike should ask for more control and nuance, as well as a certain level of trust in the relationship between player and product.

The Amazing Spider-Man has its great moments. Beenox really nails the Spider-Man aesthetic--not so much in the comic book sense, but it seems like a world where Spider-Man fits. The story and characters come together and create a genuine atmosphere, and in no where is this more present than Spider-Man's swinging movements. The camera's close focus on Spider-Man's movements brings the web-slinger to life as he thwips around Manhattan. The web rush mechanic, although simple, sets in motion some stunning traversal animations. Just looking at this gameplay video reveals the elegance of Spider-Man's swing animation:

Bringing the game back to Manhattan proves successful. As I said in my earlier post, Spider-Man needs his concrete jungle to be Spider-Man just as Batman needs Gotham to be the Dark Knight. It's an absolute thrill to swing around the city, and the numerous comic book pages scattered throughout give the player impetus to explore every corner of the island. The buildings shine, and the changes in time of day breathe life into the city. Due to poor to middling draw distance, though, sometimes the streets look deserted, but this changes as Spider-Man falls toward them, catching himself at the last moment, whether you want to or not. And therein lies my biggest gripe with the game. Beenox does not trust the player to control Spider-Man.

The repetitive mission structure doesn't bother me. I am more or less unfazed by the indoor missions; they neither interest nor bore me. The sometimes awkward or uninspired character models have no real bearing on my dissatisfaction with the title. And I could ultimately care less about spoilers for the upcoming film. The problem I have with The Amazing Spider-Man is the fact that the game does not seem to respect the player's ability to work to become the titular hero. In what is undoubtedly an attempt to be more cinematic, the game moves Spider-Man almost automatically, wresting control and consequence from the player.

IGN community members (myself included) have made comparisons between The Amazing Spider-Man and Rocksteady's Batman: Arkham City, and these are not without warrant. Beenox borrows heavily from the Arkham formula, especially in combat and stealth mechanics. Spidey strikes from the shadows, and he takes on groups of enemies with the Batman's method of attack, reversal, jump, and stun (in this game, you can stun enemies with webbing). While this combat system works, most encounters left me feeling bored and cheated. The system works in the Batman Arkham games because Batman's combat style is precise and punishing, incapacitating enemies with surgical efficiency. Spider-Man's fighting style relies more on speed and disorientation; the character flips, webs, punches, kicks, and bounces all around the combat area in order to confuse his opponents while administering a barrage of pain and wisecracks. Beenox clearly understands Spider-Man's spectacular style as the character moves quickly in combat, but the Webhead doesn't perform these actions because the player makes him--he moves this way because simply pressing one button will launch the character into a dynamic finisher involving web shots and a beatdown that the player can watch without touching his/her controller. This problem occurs most glaringly in boss battles when Spidey leaps over giant robotic limbs and kicks the crap out of weak points, all with the press of a button.

Yes, you eventually fight it. Or, rather, game kind of does it for you, but it still counts, right?

Now, gamers are not strangers to quick time events, but we usually weaken the boss first with a (hopefully) intricate and intuitive combat system. Most of the boss fights here, at least the larger ones, employ a "strike here" type of gameplay where you web rush to a certain point on the enemy, watch the attack action, and retreat. Lather, rinse, repeat. Spider-Man performs wildly acrobatic and impressive moves without requiring complex inputs, thus negating satisfying feedback to the player. As a result, I never felt like I could control Spider-Man. I felt like a mediator between the onscreen Spider-Man character model and the internal systems of the game that make him move. It feels like Spider-Man lite, not a Spider-Man experience.

These issues appear in the locomotion of the character as well. Simply holding the web swing button down allows for what appears as radical flips and gravity-defying feats. As I mentioned, web rush moves look impressive, but for the player, it can also feel cheap. I wanted to be able to place the webs on the buildings with a mechanic similar to Activision's Spider-Man 2. (Note: I will never understand why a developer cannot keep the swing mechanics from Spider Man 2 in tact and build an open world game with an original story from there) I wanted to save Spider-Man at the last millisecond of free fall with a flick of his wrist right before he becomes a red and blue on the city street. But it's hard to feel satisfied with a quick save when the underlying architecture removes fall damage from the game. This twisted Manhattan--where potential death at the hands of physics is no cause for alarm--undercuts the importance of Spider-Man's sacrifice for the city and its citizens because in a world without danger, being a superhero is profoundly less super. An invincible hero, after all, is a boring hero...or Superman (I'm kidding, kinda).

I can honestly say that there are parts of the game I enjoy. I love swinging, and the combat works fairly well. For Spider-Man fans, it's worth playing. But I have my reservations about the way Beenox insists that this game provides an authentic Spider-Man experience when it removes complexity and nuance from the controls. Unfortunately, this move is indicative of the current state of video game development that infantilizes the individual with the controller in his/her hand. So seldom do games trust the player enough to find his/her own way in the game's system or take time to learn complex controls that, when it happens, it becomes novelty or niche (i.e. Dark/Demon's Souls). In order for the game to teach the player a satisfying input system, the developers need to trust the player to fail and to use that failure to learn. The Amazing Spider-Man swings along at great height and top speed, but it does so with a safety web the player does not need nor should want. We're all still waiting for a great caliber Spider-Man game, and this one is far from that ideal. Maybe the figure on the screen can do whatever a spider can, but he does so without much help from the player, which makes me wonder whether I actually played the game at all.

Cheers,

--David

Gaming the West in Red Dead Redemption

Likely the most instantly recognizable genre in any form, the Western has endured through the 20th century by undergoing transformations as varied as the stories told around campfires built in the moonlit night of the American frontier. From the gratuitous spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone to the revisionist novels of Cormac McCarthy, the genre shifts and bends according to the person behind the camera or the pen, but the fixed archetypal elements remain present enough for the viewer/reader to understand the work's function in its generic history. The Man With No Name trilogy gave Hollywood Clint Eastwood's iconic portrayal of the titular hero (aka "Blondie"), the quintessential "drifter" character living outside the law. McCarthy's Blood Meridian depicts the West as a place steeped in myth and blood. Due to the versatility of its elements, it amazes me how seldom they are used in video games.

The first Western-themed game I played was LucasArts' Outlaws (1997), a first-person shooter in which a retired U.S. Marshal hunts down the evil railroad baron who killed his wife and kidnapped his daughter. Though I never really liked the in-game cartoonish graphics (this was before cel shading solved the problem of placing cartoons in a 3D envioronment), the cutscenes made the atmosphere come alive. Outlaws spins a good yarn, and would be my favorite traditional Western game until 2010, when Rockstar released Red Dead Redemption, an award-winning game that I'm sure everyone who is reading this has played. Finally, a developer nailed the genre in look, atmosphere, and overall feel. The writing, the voice work, the mechanics, all of them crystallized in a near pitch-perfect work of genre fiction that paid homage to its inspirations while carving out a new niche for games in the Western genre. John Marston's journey toward redemption seems like standard fare for the Western genre, but Rockstar gave us a way to pick apart a genre the only way an open world video game can: we control how John Marston lives.

Only now is the child finally divested of all that he has been.
His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again
in all the world's turning will there be terrains so wild and barbarous
to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to
man's will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay.
--Blood Meridian

Red Dead Redemption's New Austin is violent...extremely violent. When the player first control Marston, the character is already wounded and bloody, barely a survivor of his first encounter with Bill Williamson. Even the household chores, as anyone who grew up on a farm (myself included) can attest, involve a fair degree of violence as you shoot vermin to protect crops or livestock. Violence in the frontier is unavoidable. Through these simple gameplay elements, the game invests meaning in the most mundane daily activities. Roping and breaking broncos, driving cattle, hunting, they all involve violence or danger in some form or fashion, and it is in these situations where the video game breaks from the Western film genre and becomes more novelesque.

I think that Red Dead Redemption owes just as much influence to Cormac McCarthy as it does John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. In his Western novels (particularly his Border Trilogy), McCarthy finds significance in almost every aspects of daily life in the American West. For instance, this passage from All the Pretty Horses shows how the protagonist, John Grady Cole comes to a deep, metaphysical understanding of pain and existence simply by listening to the horse eat:

He lay listening to the horse crop the grass at his stakerope and he listened
to the wind in the emptiness and watched stars trace the arc of the hemisphere and
die in the darkness at the edge of the world as he lay there the agony in his heart
was like a stake. He imagined the pain of the world to be like some formless parasitic being
seeking out the warmth of human souls wherein to incubate and he thought he knew
what made one liable to its visitations. What he had not known was that it was mindless
and so had no way to know the limits of those souls and what he feared was that there might be no limits.
--All the Pretty Horses

McCarthy's language is elegaic, tragic, and hauntingly beautiful. But the language of Red Dead Redemption (and video games at large) functions much more differently, namely through gameplay. Every task that Marston performs raises questions about control and motivation. The men forcing Marston to hunt down his former gang members are metonymous for the player's physically controlling Marston. The person with the controller is, of course, just as culpable as Edgar Ross in Marston's torment. We make John Marston kill, we make him hunt, we make him go to missions in Mexico and New Austin. Marston, as he gets pulled into the Mexican Revolution, even admits to Abraham Reyes, "I'm a semi-literate farmer. I ain't in the power game," a meta-narrative comment that, by no coincidence, calls attention to his position as a character in a game. Yet we, too, are limited by the game's scope in what we can do. In these moments of the game, we can pause to enjoy a Western sunset or have drink at the local bar because the game allows us certain freedoms, but those freedoms are bound to the system of the game just as Marston is bound to Edgar Ross. Thus, performing the mundane task of shooting rabbits gains significance about what constitutes gameplay. Can chores be made fun if they're performed in virtual space? The game asks these questions, if tacitly, through its gameplay and mission structure.

The similarities between McCarthy's Border Trilogy and Rockstar's Western do not end in the world of the mundane--these texts are elegies for the American West. In All the Pretty Horses, for example, John Grady Cole, a young man who grew up on his grandfather's ranch until his grandfather's death in 1949, elects to, rather than to live in town after the ranch's closing, to leave his home on horseback in search of work on a ranch in Mexico. Cole begins his journey as a romantic believer in the ethos of the Old West, but he finds the same inescapable truth that Marston does--that the West was settled through blood and political corruption rather than through ideals of American exceptionalism. McCarthy explores this concept broadly in Blood Meridian as well, setting the novel in pre-Civil War America where the West becomes a place of unfathomable horror and grotesque cruelty.

He can neither read nor write and in him already there broods a taste for mindless violence.
All history present in that visage, the child the father of the man.
--Blood Meridian

It's easy to see Red Dead Redemption as a spaghetti Western, but I find the powerful narrative and gameplay work to create something more powerful than films or (most) novels are capable of manufacturing. The game does not just question Marston's actions or the actions of his enemies. It makes us participants in the founding of a virtual Modern America, working for or against the closing of the frontier and inhabiting the American West during its twilight years. In my very first post, I used Marston's story as an example of ludonarrative dissonance. Yes, he can tie a nun and leave her on a railroad track, and the game still tells you that you are a tragic hero and bandit-turned-family-man. But perhaps that's why the game is something special. It gives you the story structure and shootout gameplay of a Sergio Leone movie as well as the contemplative depth of a Cormac McCarthy novel. Red Dead Redemption casts a long shadow over the genre of Western fiction, and I don't see any text coming out of the dust to challenge its place anytime soon.

Cheers,

--David

Why I'm Looking forward to Beenox's Amazing Spider-Man (and a note on adaptation)

In a recent conversation I had with an adviser, the topic of adaptation came up (he did not like the Coen Brothers' adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, and it's one of my favorite movies). Weeks later during my qualifying field exams, he asked me a question about adaption and how it should be approached. Therefore, I quickly through together a theory of adaptation, explaining how a writer should go about adapting a written work to a film. Here's where I differ from a lot of my colleagues: as much time as I spend among books, I don't really think anything is so sacred that it can't be adapted into another medium (books into movies, movies into plays, plays into poems, poems into paintings, etc.). As long as the artists keeps two very important things in mind:

1. The "spirit" of the original must be kept in tact. If the book is written to be experimental, plays with perspective, is linguistically complex, it's accompanying film should do the same to its genre. Plots should change (hence the "adapt" in "adaptation") if the original impetus can remain noticeably in tact.

2.The adapted product should be able to stand on its own, working within the confines of its medium. In other words, you should be able to enjoy each in its own right, without having to engage with its counterpart. Don't make a film too much like a novel or vice versa--let the medium work on its own terms.

Video games are no different. They have also had a cliched checkered past with problems in the adaptation area. Superhero games and IP's established outside of the gaming world have not historically fared well. Recently, Rocksteady upset this balance by releasing it's wildly successful Batman: Arkham series, and, what do you know it, they adhered to the two rules I hold quite dear to adaptation. The Arkham universe is fully Batman, but the developers' changes in character design, art direction, and overall plot made for two utterly engrossing gaming experiences. They can stand alone or be complemented by the comics and stories from which they draw inspiration, and, above all else, the game just plain works. This type of consideration is what I'm hoping for in Beenox's upcoming The Amazing Spider-Man, and from the looks of gameplay footage, they may actually deliver.

In a recent interview with Game Informer, Ken Levine (of Bioshock fame) had this to say about the webhead:

"I’ll always be a Spider-Man guy. I grew up reading comics, and he’s every nerd. He’s how we all view ourselves as outsiders, and he does it with humor and self deprecation. To me, there’s every other superhero, and then there’s Spider-Man."

Yes. Yes I did. 

I, and so many other people, feel similarly about the character. Though I'm first and foremost a Batman guy, Spider-Man will always be my second. Always. There is something about the nerdy guy balancing his unexpected powers, his increasingly complex social life, and his overall compulsion to be the hero New York needs that speaks to damn near every young boy to ever pick up a comic book. Peter Parker isn't the guy his fans strive to be: he's the guy his fans are--he just happens to have the super powers. For us (or at least for me), Peter Parker's social awkwardness rang so much truer to me than Wolverine's standoffishness, Superman's altruism, or Batman's tormented psyche. He's a very specific type of "everyman," meant for broad appeal to be sure, but there's enough in there that's resonates more strongly with a very specific type of introverted person. For much of my life in my early teenage years and younger, I happened to be that type...and I guess I still am.

It's such a shame, then, that Spidey hasn't been a video game superstar. In the early side-scrolling arcade beat-em-ups Spider-Man made numerous appearances, but as much as Maximum Carnage (1994) is, Spider-Man doesn't seem like Spider Man. It wasn't until I played Neversoft's Spider-Man (2000) that I actually felt like I was controlling Spider-Man, and even then it was only in the levels that had the wall crawler web-jetting his way across the Manhattan skyline. The combat, the writing, and all the other aspects of the game seemed only tangentially important. It was the swinging that hooked me.

The Spider-Man swing reached its zenith in 2004, when Activision's movie tie-in Spider-Man 2 was released. All other Spider-Man games--indeed, all other super hero or licensed games--were eclipsed by the virtual playground that was Spider-Man 2's Manhattan. Sure, I loved the films, but nothing about reading or watching the web head fight crime could compare to the feeling of actually directing the character around his city. Here, the spirit of the franchise I so loved absolutely soared. This is what being the Web Head should feel like. The motion of the gameplay of Spider-Man 2 still holds up to this day.

The game was far from perfect, as the issues that so often plague movie games flare up so generously in this title--wooden acting, an awkwardly expanded story, overall lack of texture polish, etc. But the physics of the web swinging was spot on, and I lost myself for hours on end swinging from one side of the island to the next, solving one mundane repeated crime after another. Much like Batman needs Gotham, Spider-Man needs his city. He needs the slingshot kinesis of web mobility, deftly darting between skyscrapers and free falling from ledges, only to be caught at the last split second by a flick of the wrist. Anything less shortchanges our hero drastically. That is why the last two games that Beenox released felt lacking. Shattered Dimensions and Edge of Time both took Spidey away from the city he needs, and as a result, this player never felt like he was controlling Spider-Man. It was just a guy (or rather multiple guys) with similar powers in weird situations. The games were pantomimes instead of the real deal because they lost the spirit I felt so prevalent in the franchise. (Note: I did not care for Shattered Dimensions, so I never played Edge of Time. If the reviews are to be believed, I dodged a bullet.)

That's what I'm for with The Amazing Spider-Man: the real deal. Based on the gameplay we have seen and the live interview at E3, Beenox promises to deliver a game that, in the words of IGN's Greg Miller, "doesn't suck." I like the zoomed in camera that focuses on the physical movement. I like how the hand-to-hand combat takes a page from the Batman: Arkham series handbook. I like the shiny new graphics. But more than anything I like the movement:

Spider-Man swings like Spider-Man, the one thing unique to the character's power. Other heroes have projectiles, super strength and mobility, and some can even cling to stuff. But only Spider-Man has the web swing through Manhattan. If Beenox delivers that, we may see another franchise that could stand next to the Arkham franchise as another game to break the curse that follows superhero franchise games. Beenox doesn't have the perfect track record, of course, but my interest is piqued. The team at Beenox has a culturally powerful IP on their hands, and, as we've all heard--ad nauseum--with great power comes great responsibility.

Cheers,

--David