Summer 2008

I find it interesting to compare my expectations of the things I looked forward to all year and my thoughts after I actually got to experience them.

This year I was really looking forward to several movies.

The Happening -

Before: This looked like an intriguing mystery with a thought-provoking premise.

After: This movie is crap, and is easily M. Night Shaymalan's second worst film ever. The #1 in crapulence is, of course, and always will be the unwatchable "Unbreakable." The actors were underutilized for this snoozefest. We don't need any more movies telling us human beings how horrible we are being to the planet, we just don't. And we don't need any more MNS movies without any basis in possibility. From square one, the plot was a dud and it had me wondering if anyone is out there keeping these goofy writers in check anymore. The production values were non-existent. There were two scenes where the boom microphone is clearly visible hanging over the characters' heads like it was meant to be in the scene or something. Just poor work all around. Everyone involved ought to be embarrassed.

Prince Caspian -

Before: Although the BBC version was sufficiently interesting, I always wanted to see Reepicheep portrayed a little more realistically.

After: I've pretty much already gone over this one, but it was disappointing enough that I'm not really planning on buying the Blu-ray when it comes out. The writers should have realized from the success of the books and the first movie that there is no need to shoehorn in entirely new and crappy storylines in order to make the pacing of the movie fit into the "Three Acts" mold. Reep was pretty sweet though.

Speed Racer -

Before: The Wachowski brothers have been a big let-down since the first Matrix film. And although I wasn't really acquainted with the original television series, it didn't seem to be all that interesting. I had heard about the oddball cameras they were using to obtain eye-popping visual effects, and that was pretty much all I was looking forward to.

After: Not only was the movie thoroughly fun, but it was bright colorful interesting and fairly long (I hate 90 minute movies - it makes me feel like I'm getting ripped off). The racing sequences reminded me of one of my favorite video game franchises - F-Zero. Despite the kiddy dialogue (which I rather enjoyed) the plot is fairly complex, filled with secrets and double-crosses. The characters, while incredibly stereotypical and over-the-top dramatic, are very well developed. I'll definitely be buying this when it comes out.

The Dark Crystal (Yes the one from the 80's) -

Before: I had seen posters, and rental boxes for this movies for most of my childhood. It kept getting re-released, so I figured it must be interesting enough to compare with something like Labyrinth.

After: I know I don't technically pay to watch these movies when I get them from Netflix, but I still want my money back. This movie must have been a blight on Jim Henson's career, and looks more like a cry for help from a band of hopelessly chained drug addicts than anything approaching cinema. I suspect that altered states of consciousness are required to derive the implicit metaphysical meaning that just isn't there. One might argue that it's a kid's movie, but that's hardly a worthwhile defense since exposing children to such dribble is probably considered child abuse in most municipalities. The plot was straightforward and insipid. The protagonist was hideous, the pacing was terrible, and the cinematography had all of the hallmarks of being done by a blind man. And that's all I have to say about that.

The Incredible Hulk -

Before: My first thought was that there ought to be a law preventing a franchise from being "reinvented" more than once in the same decade. We just got a modern-special-effects Hulk movie back in 2003 so what gives? But at the same time, it does have Ed Norton, so it can't be bad, can it? Sure, it's got Liv Tyler of my-only-acting-ability-is-crying-scenes fame, but that can't drag it down too much can it?

After: I was very surprised by the quality of storytelling. Ed Norton makes a great Bruce Banner. Liv got her pouty-crying scene that she gets in every movie she's ever in, but it was ignorable (maybe I'm finally developing an immunity to her evil powers!). The special effects were interesting, not over-the-top or stupid like in the 2003 movie. And the little tie-in at the end of the movie caused more excitement than I would have expected.

Iron Man -

Before: I didn't really know much about Iron Man at all. I'd seen the comic illustrations and heard people talking about this movie for years, but it was just another in a long line of Marvel super heroes that were probably cool, but whatever. When I heard Robert Downey Jr. was going to be playing Iron Man, I thought someone got a wire crossed, but like a train wreck, I wanted to see what the hell that could be like.

After: This was actually one of the best comic book to movie adaptations I've seen since the X-Men trilogy, and Robert Downey Jr. was brilliant. I can't comment on whether the personality matches the comic book version, but it was definitely interesting enough to make me a fan.


I also had a chance to play a number of Video Games this year.

Metal Gear Solid 4 -

Before: I've been mildly interested in the Metal Gear universe since the first game debuted on the NES. Admittedly I still haven't figured out how to get past the first stage in that game. But when Metal Gear Solid came out for the PS1, I was instantly hooked on its interesting gameplay and intriguing plot. My enthusiasm for the series took a sharp dive when the majority of MGS2 was taken up with the whiny unlikable character "Raiden", and a plot that didn't make sense by itself. A lot of people lost faith in the series at that point. When MGS3 came out, there was barely any fanfare. My personal supreme disappointment with MGS3 was the fact that despite being technically sophisticated, Hideo Kojima had not seen fit to include a widescreen mode. I barely played more than a couple of hours before losing interest. Because of my mixed experiences with the first three games, I figured 4 would be a crap-shoot. It was hard to tell if it would be any good.

After: I haven't finished the game yet, but after pouring nearly 20 hours into it, I'm ready to cast my vote to nominate it for the award for "coolest thing ever". This game is singularly the greatest foray into interactive entertainment I've ever taken. It seems like all of the action games I've ever played up to this point were just practice. MGS4 takes an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach that could have just as easily ended up being a messy frustration and blends it into a seamless action story, with some of the prettiest graphics I've ever seen. The controls are so natural and responsive, I never find myself fighting against them to get the game to do what I want. The story, which largely seeks to tie up all of the loose plot threads from the other games, features some of the scariest social commentaries I've ever seen. I find myself wishing that everyone was a gamer so that they could experience the beauty of it.

Haze -

Before: I had just finished playing some very solid FPS games like Killzone, Half Life 2: Episode 2, and Halo 3, and just finished the marvelous Ubisoft game, Assassin's Creed when I saw the trailers for Haze on PSN. The trailers were very pretty High-Definition and easily out-shined everything out there in terms of realism. I started drooling over this game back in September. It was supposed to be released in November. The game was delayed numerous times to "make sure they got it right." I remember thinking to myself how that was a good thing because the game should be even better than what was in the trailer.

After: Haze originally retailed for $59.99. Less than three weeks later it was marked down to $39.99. That's about matches the disparity between my expectations and what I got instead. The game wasn't in HD so most of the text was blurry from the upscaling effects. The frame rate still sucked, despite the sacrifices in the level of detail made to help the game run smoother. The arsenal was tiny, and the NPC dialogue was repetitive and annoying. This game is quite a bit worse than the tralier that drew me in for it several months ago.

Devil May Cry 4 -

Before: I have always been a fan of the DMC series because it borrows so heavily from the gothic themes in Castlevania Symphony of the Night. Much like the Metal Gear Solid games, 1 was awesome, 2 was horrible, 3 was passable but I lost interest because it wasn't in widescreen. Knowing that 4 would be widescreen and high-definition, I figured it would be awesome. Despite some bad experiences with PS3 games, I decided to go with the PS3 version over the XBOX360 version because I thought the limited edition packaging looked cooler on the PS3 and Capcom swore blind that the games were identical on both systems.

After: I shouldn't have trusted Capcom when they said that both games were identical. The XBOX360 version of the game was slightly superior in terms of graphics - the PS3 version was full of "jaggies", and the PS3 game featured a 30 minute-long forced Hard Drive installation (because Capcom is too lazy to figure out how to use the Blu-ray drive properly). If that wasn't bad enough, the installation process has an undocumented flaw that caused me no end of frustration for the first four hours that I attempted to play the game. If you are downloading demos or videos from PSN while installing, the Hard Drive will interleave the data to speed up write speed. 99% of programs in existence wouldn't even notice this, but for some reason DMC4 absolutely has to be installed contiguously (ie. not interleaved) or the game will randomly crash. So stop your downloads before you install, thanks for the heads up, Capcom:P Anyway, the game itself was the testosterone-laden, demon-killing, sword-swinging, heavy-metal playing romp that I expected it to be and I thoroughly enjoyed it.