Avengers Reviewed!

So Unnecessary...or is it?

Nerdview: A good review is hard to find. A good review--that is, a quality review, not a positive review--seems to be even more rare amongst professionals and dedicated reviewers. Fortunately, the nerdery is helmed by a literary nut. Each review, whether it is a game, movie, book, or television series, will have the four elements: bias, appreciation, personal enjoyment, and general enjoyment. Put in food terms, these are odor, beef, gravy, and cheese.

By now you should know my general opinion of last year's epic Avengers. I'd had a couple of posts in anticipation of it and I believe I've referred to it as sublime since then. It's true. I love it. But you should know from my stance on review rigor that I won't leave it at that and I hope you wouldn't accept such an unarticulated review from me, either.

But it came out so long ago. Why bother?

First of all, don't be a brat. Secondly, while the review of this movie in particular may be way past timely, there is another Marvel movie coming out this weekend which I also hope to be reviewing. So to help better explain my anticipation of Iron Man 3, and to give you a clearer definition of my Marvel fanboy mania, this review should go a long way to tide you over until you get the Iron Man 3 review.

Which is so definitely going to get posted this weekend. No promises here, just facts.

Oh, and as a tertiary reason for why this review might be helpful for you, at the end I'll tack on my opinion of the special edition Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase One set that came out this past month. You guys really are benefiting from my blogger's guilt today, aren't you?

(Minor spoilers shall flow, but you've already seen this movie ten times or more, right?)

Expectations 'Odor': So obviously, I had long been expecting great things from this movie. I mean, I remember talking about The Avengers while waiting for the first Iron Man movie's midnight showing to start. Before that, I read the first two volumes of Ultimates dying to see it realized in a big, live action movie. Heck, I nerded out over the two Ultimate Avengers animated movies, analyzing them to death as I tried to use them as a reference point for anticipating the live action adaptation. Plus, I'm a dyed-and-true browncoat and a big fan of the early seasons of Buffy, not to mention Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog. And Joss Whedon's work on the X-men comics showed how adroitly he grasped these characters and the fans who love them. So Whedon's credentials added to the fiery anticipation as I devoured every little development update.

But I did have concerns. Whedon loves warrior women. And while that can be a fun asset in certain genres and certain films, the only warrior woman in the Avengers lineup for the film would be Black Widow. And in a roster containing Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America, he'd have to pull some pretty unbelievable feldercarb to make Black Widow as dominating a presence as, say, River or Buffy. And I'd be downright pissed if Black Widow got godpowers to stand shoulder to shoulder with Thor and stand over him like Echo, for instance.

"...I've referred to it as sublime since then. It's true. I love it."

The single biggest expectation I had, though, was for party conflict. The Avengers have always been about party conflict. They're a team of the most domineering personalities and power levels thrown together specifically for high-stress and high-risk threats. Of course they're going to butt heads with each other...and possibly level some real estate in the process. And as a director, Joss Whedon excels at depicting party conflict. The crew of the Serenity is at its most gripping and engaging when they're fighting over what step to take next. Buffy and her cheer squad were at their best when they were trying each other, reminding one another of their faults, and still working together to kill the unholies. The Avengers movie would have to be full of the very best action and inter-personal drama, and Whedon would deliver. The only question is how inordinately large a part Black Widow might play in the movie.

Appreciation 'Beef': And boy, did Whedon pull it off. Action more complex and gratifying than anything in the superhero genre. Conflicting angles from all sides. One-liners galore. Maria Hill introduced and given a fair amount of face time. Just the right amount of Black Widow. In a dress. And actually playing the Russian angle.

Yes yes.

"Of course they're going to butt heads with each other...and possibly level some real estate in the process."

And the writing. Oh, the writing. The Avengers has one of the best and most under-appreciated scripts in television. Characters are summed up well in quick, catchy comments that capture the terse eloquence of the very best comics. When Captain America tells Black Widow "There's only one God, ma'am. And I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that," he's speaking volumes about his character. Whedon is affirming that Steve Rogers is still a God-fearing American traditionalist: respectful of women, and most importantly never cowed by the apparent power of his enemies. Captain America's most defining trait shines through in this movie at least as well in The Avengers as it did in Captain America: The First Avenger: a fight worth fighting is not diminished by your own odds of prevailing. For Cap, the decision he makes on a regular basis is that if a fight is worth fighting, it's worth facing certain defeat. And that is what makes him my favorite hero.

It gives me sissy goosebumps just to type it.

But the best highlight of the superb writing of The Avengers is the way misunderstandings between characters are rendered in such a believable manner. When Tony Stark tells Steve Rogers "Everything special about you came out of a bottle" you get at once the supreme arrogance of Tony Stark--who's implying that he's the worthiest hero because he's "self-made"--and you also recognize that his disconnect with Steve Rogers is that he doesn't understand what makes Captain America a hero. Captain America isn't special because of what he can do or how he can do it, but because of his innate identity--what he chooses to do. The fact that the writers couched the disagreement in these terms, though, shows that they understand both characters and how a believable dramatization of their biases would lead to a misunderstanding of each other. And of course, Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. recognize this as actors and do a great job of stubbornly holding their ground in their scenes together.

But an even better misunderstanding between characters can be seen in the absolutely delicious interplay between a captive Loki and Black Widow. It's the only significant interaction between Scarlett Johansson's femme fatale and Tom Hiddleston's emo maximus, but it is superbly written and played. At the climax of their little verbal joust, Loki tries to dig up emotional and psychological leverage from Black Widow, who is ostensibly bargaining for Hawkeye's free will:

Loki: Your world in the balance and you bargain for one life?

Widow: Regimes fall every day. I tend not to weep over that--I'm Russian...or I was.

Loki: And what are you now?

Widow: It's really not that complicated. I've got red in my ledger, I'd like to wipe it out.

Loki: Can you? Can you wipe out that much red? Drakov's daughter, Sao Paulo, the hospital fire?... Barton told me everything. Your ledger is dripping, it's gushing red, and you think saving a man no more virtuous than yourself will change anything? This is the basest sentimentality. This is a child at prayer... pathetic! You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers. You pretend to be separate, to have your own code, something that makes up for the horrors. But they are a part of you, and they will never go away... I won't touch Barton. Not until I make him kill you! Slowly, intimately, in every way he knows you fear! And then he'll wake just long enough to see his good work, and when he screams, I'll split his skull! This is my bargain, you mewling quim!

First of all, I love the profane insult of mewling quim. It's archaic and disgusting, and if people in general had better vocabulary, it'd probably be an r-rated curse. Plus I never thought two years ago when I started this blog and committed to keeping my language PG that I'd have occasion to use the phrase mewling quim. Multiple times, even. Mewling. Quim.

But seriously, this exchange is great because the point in the scene where Loki gets excited, when he starts his evil rant, when he truly and passionately believes he's dressed down this mere woman, is all based on his own misunderstanding. Natasha makes a reference to a modern western convention, "red in my ledger", which refers to the practice of noting down debt in red, but with only a shallow understanding of modern western culture, Loki leaps upon red as the frail woman feeling guilty over shed blood. And so his diatribe begins, prematurely exultant of his social victory, building upon the allusion to blood with dripping, gushing, and violent threats. But what Loki doesn't understand is that his simple misunderstanding of the significance of red leads him to make the exact wrong conclusion. He thinks Natasha is a frail woman feeling guilty over her sins, but in reality the cold killer woman is doing the opposite--she turns killing into a sterile set of numbers in an imaginary book, some of which are red and need to be repaid, others of which must be black and no need to recompense. It's a beautiful scene in which Black Widow establishes that her true deadly arts have nothing to do with stopping beating hearts: it's about the game of outwitting one's opponent and getting them to do the work for you. And, since Loki is undone by a shallow appreciation of verbiage, it's ultimately a victory by English Major.

Boo yah. That's good writing.

Personal Enjoyment 'Gravy': I loved every moment of The Avengers. From the first viewing to the umpteen times I've watched it at work (on my lunch break, of course), it remains a spiritual experience for me on a nerd level. Now, the big taglines I needed in this movie were masterfully accomplished: Captain America being awesome even as he struggles to find relevance in the modern world; Iron Man trying to find the balance between his ego and his personal insecurities; Black Widow being more Russian, using her Widow's Bite gauntlets and still receding into the background when the action gets too big. Hawkeye gets a wonderful amount of coverage too, for being a mere cameo character in Thor previously. And Tom Hiddleston as Loki is a fun villain that chews up the scenery and plays well opposite every character in the film.

"It gives me sissy goosebumps just to type it."

The one grit in my love for this movie--the one thing I would have done differently--is the treatment of Hulk. And bear in mind that I'm being tremendously niggly on this issue just so I can pretend to wipe away my frothing fanboy lather to look sane for a moment or two. I felt that the justification for Hulk to be under control at the climax was necessary, and while I think they gave a valid excuse for Bruce being in touch with his violent, angry side, I just wish the rampage would've either been more horrific, or bled over into more collateral destruction during the climax. Now, given how real and devastating the battle of New York was, I could understand if the creators were afraid of making Hulk add to the wanton carnage and destruction. And, to be fair, Hulk does leave a lot of unnecessary damage in his wake--plowing through an office building to fishhook a flying Chitauri leviathan definitely isn't covered by standard insurance, you know. But the moment that makes me feel just the tiniest bit...snerky is that moment when Hulk backhands Black Widow on the helicarrier and she doesn't even get knocked unconscious, let alone pulped. In fact, she comes back after a little quivering to whup Hawkeye, who probably could've won under some circumstances but definitely should have when Natasha was hot off of getting Abyss-slapped by the jade giant. Chalk this up to Hulk's rage usually getting slightly nerfed and Whedon's love of warrior women, because I still love it.

And of course, Captain America is awesome throughout the movie, but especially in the climax of the film. Seeing him mount a car in the middle of the chaos and assert himself as the inspirational hero everyone needs gives me the willies every time. And as the fight drags on and things look grimmer for New York's defenders, it's Chris Evans' portrayal of Steve Rogers that sells the grim determination and utter fatigue the heroes are feeling. Captain America, like the people he represents, shows the ragged edges even while soldiering on to prevail. Oh my, how I love this movie.

General Enjoyment 'Cheese': This movie is perhaps the ultimate in the genre, and as such people who aren't interested in superhero action are going to find it hard to sit still. And while I'd tend to say screw 'em and move on, there are a few things to watch for those not wooed by colorful characters and bold blasts of action. The script is interesting and engaging throughout, and it's crafted better than most movies with such a large cast of heavy principal characters. There's a decent amount of wry humor that is Whedon's signature, too. But in the end, probably the most compelling thing about The Avengers to those too cynical for superheroes is that it embodies a combination of the greatest aspirations and deepest flaws of idealized America. These heroes have problems, and much of the time wasted bickering adds to the villain's power and increases the final body count. But in the end, they're still willing to put themselves between innocent civilians and death. It's made all the more cogent by the brilliant holocaust reference in the first half of the movie, and I think should make for a fun objective analysis.

For the rest of us who can't be objective, though, for those of us champing at the bit to see high-flying combat and expensive battle sequences, The Avengers pays off in a big way. Fans of comics and the genre will be coming back to this movie for more for many years, and Marvel has probably set the bar too high for DC to attempt a Justice League movie this decade. Yeah, that's right. I said it.



Now for a review of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase One set. This appropriately long title describes a huge blu-ray boxed set containing Iron Man, Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America, and The Avengers all in one set. They also include the 3D versions of Thor, Captain America, and The Avengers, as the other movies were released before every big-budget movie had to have 3D features. There's also a tenth disc called the SHIELD Initiative that contains features relating to the other movies as a whole. Finally, there are a number of fun physical components to this set--a small intel folder on the principal characters from the movies. There's Black Widow's report on Tony's potential for Avenger membership, Captain America's World War Two era documents including three of his trading cards, and even a light-up cosmic cube. All of this is contained in a small plastic briefcase with the SHIELD logo on it, making for a fantastic presentation.

It's important to emphasize that since the constituent movies have all had multi-disc sets released in the past, the discs included in this set don't include every feature that has yet been released. So, unfortunately, this is not technically an exhaustive set. Rather, it's more the coup de grace for obsessive fans like myself or for those who held out to get all the movies for one combined price. The SHIELD Initiative disc, however, does offer some deleted scenes from several movies that you can't get anywhere else and features introductions to each movie by Agent Phil Coulson. The Coulson intros are a nice boon to those of us who couldn't put our entire day on hold to see the many all-day marathons of the movies theaters showed on Avengers' opening day. The physical components are a lot of fun and feel legit--Tony's folder contains a coffee-stained napkin with an informal memo to Pepper that they were going to stop selling weapons, for instance. One notable exception is the Cosmic Cube--it lights up, but it's a deeper blue than in the movie and it's a flat, featureless cube and features none of the ornate etching in the movie. That's disappointing to some, apparently, but made no difference to my son, who temper-tantrumed over it for hours. Another impressive bit of detail in this set is that each of the disc envelopes are emblazoned with bold, iconic art of their characters in almost cubist silhouettes.

Overall, I'd say that what makes this mega-sized boxed set worthwhile are the physical novelties and collector's factor. Don't take that as a lukewarm diagnosis, though. I love this set and I couldn't imagine my Marvel movie collection complete--or even adequate--without it.



Well, that's it for the next six or seven hours at least. I'm going to try to put up a slightly more succinct Iron Man 3 review immediately after the midnight showing. We'll see how that works out. Filmatleven...fifty-nine.

Blog of the Dead

There are basically two types of blogs*: blogs that get updated regularly, creating a steadily growing pool of content that gains a popular life of its own such that it gets regular traffic even with less frequent updates, and blogs that stagnate, creating an embarrassing void conspicuous to the new reader that fails to impress that this blog is worth regularly following. Ben's Nerdery has always aimed to be the former.

So, what's been going on? Well, most recently, my family went up to the Fire and Ice Convention in Manitowoc Wisconsin for our second annual family outing there. Less recently than that, I had the bliss of wrangling a 23 month-old in an airplane for a 5 hour flight to LAX.

Woo.

Hoo.

Least recently of all--as in, last frakking October--I became a handynerd (one standard of deviation away from being a handyman) and had a zombie birthday party. Zombies, I tell you! It was a low-key, smallish party--mostly because the official invites went out late and people are turds--but we had a lot of fun. The party invites were themed to look like an emergency evacuation notice, and we made treat 'bags' that were themed after Left 4 Dead medkits.

A quickly thrown-together invite made during a lunch break or two.

  

Feel free to use this for your own zombie parties and games, writing in scrawled personal details in the blank space. I put in the party specifics in those spaces, using a font to make it look a bit like hasty handwriting. The medkits were simply boxes of folded cardstock, with a few themed treats inside. Everyone got a P-38 can opener, as well as: a tube of M&M Mini's labeled Phalanx--the zombieism placebo from World War Z; breathsavers with a wrap to look like shotgun shells; Tic-Tacs labeled 'Pills here!' with the Left 4 Dead logo; road flare Rolos; Fruit by the Foot bandages. It made for neat things to give out to guests that didn't really require too much work to do individually but definitely made the party theme come out. Everyone at the party except my beloved waifu dressed up as either a zombie or a survivor. I dressed up as a zombie, with moderately successful effect. 

Check out my friggin' Skeletor hand

Alright, so I feel a little lame that A) my costume was done about 15 minutes after the last minute; and B) it incorporated none of the crafty self-made ideas I'd been pondering over the previous weeks. However, it was a quick mess to slop on and fairly easy to get off, and was moderately cool-looking for the minimal hassle, in my opinion. The neck-bite kit's latex was a little fiddly and didn't feel too secure even after waiting the recommended 10 minutes. Then again, I'd hardly want to spirit gum my neck. The other big feature of my outfit was the teeth--hard plastic denture thingies as opposed to the cheaper flexible kind. Great googaly-moogaly they were uncomfortable. In addition to rubbing a sore against my upper left gums, the inside of the dentures kept pooling with saliva, leaving me in a state of partially drowning in my own fluids. This may be good for establishing the torment of the living dead, but I think I'll pass on it in the future.

Of course, that didn't stop me from saving them--just in case.

Little Shawn was too tired for photos that day

My son, dressed up as a certain zombie-smashing protagonist who's got red on him. I'm a big fan of Shaun of the Dead, and I wanted to see my little blond-haired boy running around thumping zombies with a mini cricket bat. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a safe cricket bat to buy for him, and I didn't have time to make one, so he went without. The little guy really impressed me with his development, though, displaying hyper-advanced cognitive functions by frakking narcing on me.

See, I was the one in charge of his costume, so before I zombified myself I threw some fake blood in his shirt pocket. As soon as my plucky electronic store clerk saw the thick red stain start to seep through his shirt, he began to mutter and moan. I dabbed it around into an ever-increasing mar on his white shirt, and accordingly the pint-sized party-goer began to sputter and pout, face wrinkling as he let me know that he thought the situation stunk. Once I'd finished and I suggested he go show his mother, he pounded on the bathroom door until she came, stamped his feet, and angrily accused "Da!" as he displayed his ruined shirt. Ah, memories.

(By the way, narcing is an example of advanced cognitive function because it established a layered taxonomy of thought, ethics, recourse, and guilt. He recognized I was changing his shirt in a lasting way, decided that it was not the way it should be, told an authority figure, and then proceeded to assign blame to the guilty party--me. That's m'boy!)

Now, there's a question that I've probably been asked a couple of times a year for nearly a decade now:

What's it with you and zombies?

Well, as grammatically suspect as that question is, it's one I'm fully prepared to answer. I've been enamored with the walking dead ever since I first played Myth in 1997 and saw a cut-scene featuring a mob of undead Thrall lurking at the bottom of a river, waiting to surface and overwhelm a nearby town. That visceral image is ever-present in my appreciation for the genre, and it is emblematic of the themes of the genre that grab me and never let go. Now, I also happen to be a zombie snob, and that goes to the point that there is one 'true' type of zombie and everything else--while it could very well be enjoyable--are deviations from the master zombie. This master zombie is a biologically and irrepressibly infectious creature that is devoid of a traditional human metabolism except for dependence on a central nervous system, possessed only by the urge to spread itself, which appears to be through cannibalistic attacks. So it's the World War Z zombie that I'm talking about here. The book, not the disrespectful absurdist movie (expect more rants on the movie in the future). These shambling zombies have no reliance on blood, tissues, or organs other than the brain, they desire to infect the living purely for the sake of viral reproduction, and they are limited by the rigamortis of their dead hosts. I'll doubtless go into the logistics and storytelling rationale of the superiority of this zombie iteration later, but for now I'll just gloss over the definition and skip to the essence of the question: why I like zombies.

I'm not a fan of gore for it's own sake. Sure, I've watched every episode of Deadliest Warrior wide-eyed several times, but it's not the visceral violent spectacle that draws me to the zombie genre. It's that zombies are an indictment of human frivolity--or at least modern frivolity. Zombies are the sort of enemy that a rational and stoic human should be able to handle, whether in a modern or primitive setting. But yet the zombie--even if slow and simple-minded--manages to plod onwards and devour the resourceful but terminally-flawed humans.

As Simon Pegg said in an old article from 2008, zombies are supposed to be a manifestation of death itself: plodding, slow, unsophisticated, and only slowed or delayed by technology--never completely vanquished by it. But a good zombie yarn also condemns its characters to a degree, because after the initial outbreaks victims to zombie attacks almost always deserve their deaths. They die for curiosity, overconfidence, lack of cooperation with their fellows, or a general unwillingness to live in the post-modern world. That last part is a critical component of the survival aspect of most zombie stories since their 80s resurgence, because modern leisure has divorced most of us from useful, practical skill sets. And as such the struggle to become self-reliant and useful is a fixture in stories that have protagonists that are shop clerks (as in Shawn of the Dead), bike messengers (28 Days Later), Best Buy associates (Dawn of the Dead remake), game-playing shut-ins (Zombieland), and so forth. All of these characters need to learn hard, fast lessons and reform their character to survive. Static characters don't fare well in these movies: one gets torn apart and pot-lucked in Shawn of the Dead, another served up as an a-la-car zombie-snack  in 28 Days Later, one shrill one gets chainsawed in half for no frakkin' reason in Dawn of the Dead, and finally a famous one is shot in the chest for surprising an unassuming loser in Zombieland. In the novel World War Z, this point is especially elaborated in one chapter in the post-zombie West Coast of America. In it formerly rich white folks in America sit down and learn gardening and cooking raw ingredients from people who used to be their landscapers and maids. It's a fabulous message that gets lost as zombies become a faster, sillier threat.

Now you'll notice that all of my examples except Shawn of the Dead feature fast zombies (or 'infected' in 28 Days Later's case). This is deliberate, as these movies' focus strays toward gunplay, simple-minded action, or purely human threats. The dilution of the zombie's identity as a slow-but-hard-to-kill threat makes it less nuanced and requires you to move away from them as the focus of your story. People are more likely to die for reasons outside their own control and culpability, and the zombies themselves make less sense. I think it's pretty well-represented by the zombie evolution you see in the Romero remakes, where zombies are not only fast but become smarter over time to the point that they have individuals and leaders in Land of the Dead. And they keep waffling between alien, supernatural, and biological explanations as none of them are satisfactory ways to justify having fundamentally super-powered zombies that are fast, smart, and resilient to the loss of all but one organ. And most of all, these stories have to cheat to establish the initial world-wide infection levels needed to make a good zombie story. People just wake up one day and they're everywhere. How? With zombies that fast, that obvious, and infection turnover in terms of minutes or seconds, how could a zombie even get aboard a plane, let alone make it to cross an ocean from one continent to another? The transmission of a disease takes time, and the longer an infected host can move freely about a population, the more likely it is that the disease is going to spread. Fast zombies just aren't effective as a contagion because they are too deadly a threat as individuals--which also means that fast zombies are more likely to destroy a victim rather than let a wounded victim escape to infect more friendlies.

And there you go. A long, long overdue post that combined a few crafty ideas and a long-winded ramble on my stance on the zombie issue. And it took only...4 months? Don't worry, though, as my love for zombies extends to this deadly quiet blog, and I've got quite a few special things in store for you over the coming days.

*As much as any dichotomy can be true, that is. In algebraic terms, you can only say there are two types of things: A and not-A. More specific dichotomies are usually either simply false or misleading simplifications.

Don't Be That Guy: Joyeux Nouvel An

("Happy New Year" in the Black Tongue)

I'll make this quick. France is nuts.

How nuts is it?

So nuts that when French youths get all bothered and snockered with New Year's festivities, it boils over in a rash of frakkin' setting cars on fire. According to French officials, nearly 1200 cars and motorcycles were burned in France this past Tuesday, making the country the most ridiculous country in the world for at least a day.

Seriously, I guess I must be an impotent nerd, because I don't understand the leap from having a happy to lighting it on fire. Though according to paranoid studies, I intake enough violent entertainment to be entitled to at least a couple of acts of random arson a year. Maybe I should clear my schedule for some car-burning after The Desolation of Smaug is released next December.

Now, there's an estimated 31 million cars in France (based on Nationmaster.com's cars stats), so that means the odds of waking up on New Year's Day to find your car torched are about one in thirty thousand. Not bad odds by Lotto standards, but pretty sucktastic when you're a poor Franc planning on driving anywhere ever again. The mass arson is at least partly gang related, as French gangs and blocks compete to burn the most cars and brag about it via social networking.

Merci, Facebook.

Add to that lameness the fact that French officials seem to think that this trend of car arson is a throw back to the mass riots of 2005, and we have one distinct image of the modern Frenchman:

France: home of the rage zombie infected

Apparently those plucky infected Brits made it into France in 2007 after all. Because that's all I can come up with to explain to French authorities the epidemic suckage of their populace. I mean really, the best guess they have is that the masses got 'hooked' on the wanton destruction of the 2005 protests? That's like saying your people found that acting like rugensteins worked out so well in the past, so why not keep doing it?

I'm not exactly champing at the bit to visit France--you'll note I refer to their native language as the Black Tongue above. But I would like to tour some of the historic battlefields of Europe at some point in the future.

Maybe I'll make it a walking tour if I hit France, though.

(These are 28 Weeks Later references, people)

2013: Now with 50% less fail!

So it's a new year, and I refuse to start it off with apologies about the long gaps between posts.

I refuse.

Instead, I'll give a quick sketch of the next year's nerd events and my own forecast on them. Now, this doesn't mean I'm going to ignore the laundry list of to-blogs from the past year: I'll still be writing on the backlog of 2012 content if I have even the slightest opportunity. In particular The Avengers, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Dark Knight Rises, and The Amazing Spider-Man demand my reviewer's attention, not to mention I feel like another Mass Effect 3 rant is bubbling beneath the surface of my writer's block (just kidding--don't change the browser!).

Movies of 2013

Iron Man 3

Coming out May 3, 2013

I'm a fan of all of the latest crop of true Marvel movies. True Marvel movies being the ones directly produced by Marvel, not the latest Spider-Man and X-Men cinematic properties--obviously. But I really love the realization of Marvel's staple characters on the big screen, including Iron Man and Iron Man 2. Movie Tony has developed a very particular style and presence thanks to Robert Downey Jr.'s inimitable panache and great directing in the past, and so I'm eager to see more of the well-realized character's heroic journey. The film's trailers make it look like Iron Man 3 is going to delve into the darker aspects of Tony Stark's heroic identity and feature a lot of Benjamin Kingsley mustache-twirling as the Mandarin, one of Iron Man's most formidable and enduring foes. I like this. There also looks to be a realistic treatment of the frailty of the hero's private life, also an element I like to see explored in a reasonably consistent hero story. So bring it on.

However, (you knew that was coming, right?) I have never been a fan of the Extremis plot of the comics. As a kid, I always found the limitations of Iron Man's armor to be the most charming part. Sure, Iron Man might be a world-class super when he has time to put on the right variation of his armor, but if he's surprised while out of costume he's at a huge disadvantage. The Extremis plot (in the comics, hopefully they'll change it in the movie) makes Tony's armor into a nanite-fueled power that he can summon at will and which compresses into his bones when unneeded, defusing the character and grit of the traditional armor-donning we've seen in the movies. Not to mention that the Extremis plot involved a variation of psychotic rage zombie that was a more dramatic than action-packed threat to the invincible Iron Man. But even with some minor reservations, I am so going to see this movie on opening day.

Thor: The Dark World

Coming out November 8, 2013

The next movie of the Asgardian Thunderer's exploits is coming out in the final quarter of the year, and verily I am excited to see this movie. Which you doubtless could have surmised from my review of the first movie. Doubly excited are my humors at the prospect of seeing Christopher Eccleston cast as the dark elf Malekith. The vengeful schemer is a worthy antagonist in his own right, but the promise of Malekith's plot pertains more to Asgard than Midgard, and so verily I adjudge more battles celestial to feature in this film, giving more glorious action to the Warriors Three and fair Sif. The return of the entire many-starred cast from the premier saga is encouraging and promising as well. And while I'm vexed that Darcy Lewis is ordained to be still relevant to the plot, I can forgive the gratuitous presence of Kat Dennings in another Thor film.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Coming out December 13, 2013

Again nerds can look forward to closing out the year with a journey to cinematic Middle Earth. While there were some definite faults with the first part of the new trilogy, I enjoyed it immensely and the well-selected and well-led cast will be a powerful draw for this next film. With Smaug comes some of the most iconic moments of the book, which I hope they will handle with accuracy and consistency (the first movie screwed me out of "fifteen birds in five fir trees!"). There's the promise of some incredible visuals, but also a compelling dramatic dynamic in this part of Bilbo's adventures as well, as Thorin's dark side and obsession come to the fore. Yes, The Desolation of Smaug is going to be well worth the wait and a worthy bookend to the year.

Games of 2013
Aliens: Colonial Marines
Coming out February 12, 2013
Yes, this one was in my previous post for nerd features of 2012, too. And after being so long delayed, there's definitely a justifiable fear that this game might go the way of Duke Nukem Forever--postponed so long that the game becomes an unplayable boondoggle, the dross of a revolving door of half-committed teams. I don't think we'll be stuck with that same fate, though. Unlike DNF, Aliens: Colonial Marines has shown more of its cinematic story in the past weeks, and the gameplay--which had always been a promising combination of first-person defensive tactics and Left 4 Dead--now looks like it will be supplemented with a fun, tense campaign narrative.

Indie Games--the Kickstarter role-call
Coming out throughout 2013
Kickstarter has seen some great games getting approved within the past year, and many of those promising projects are going to get generally released in the coming months. There's the old-school tactical RPG with rotoscoped art and Norse-inspired themes of Banner Saga, which looks painfully beautiful and features head-smackingly challenging tactical gameplay that demands you stay one step ahead of your opponent and yourself. The Canucks at Sauropod Studios are refining their already fun prototype build of Castle Story, making a dynamic resource and strategy game that will be the best thing to happen to voxels since Minecraft. Star Command, a tactical crew command game where you move your redshirts and officers around the stations of your own upgradeable starship, fighting other ships and repelling boarders in Trek-influenced fare, should be released within the next couple of months. Polish-made M.O.R.E. promises to revive the underwhelming 4X genre of PC games with a space empire-building game that takes a lot of cues from Master of Orion II, arguably the best game in the genre. And by arguably I mean you're dumb if you think otherwise. And there's Dead State, a zombie survival tactical RPG where choices are supposed to matter on a group survival basis--so like Walking Dead plus Mass Effect plus mechanically deep gameplay. Coolio.

On the larger-but-still-indie side of things, Planetary Annihilation looks to be ready to give the RTS genre a well-deserved kick in the pants. It comes from some of the creators of Total Annihilation, one of the absolute best real-time strategy games of all time. The rock-paper-scissors and same-old gameplay of Blizzard's latest regurgitation of Starcraft just goes to show that the genre needs new blood, so Planetary Annihilation's developer, Uber Entertainment, is going to provide that in a game where conquering the map becomes conquering the planet becomes smashing other worlds with asteroids in a bid to take over whole star systems, all in one seamless real-time experience. Can't wait.

Similarly, there's a number of great tabletop games coming out this year. Shadows of Esteren, a French-made medieval horror RPG taking a lot of inspiration from Welsh and Celtic culture and myth, has made a successful translation over to America and is one of the most beautifully rendered RPG projects I've ever seen. Dreadball, by Mantic Games, is going to be a miniatures-based sci-fi sports game in the same vein as Games Workshop's long-neglected fantasy game Blood Bowl. And more plastic addictions are currently waiting in the wings, as well, so look for even more hyper-nerdery in the new year.

Blog Posts of 2013
Now, in addition to the stuff listed above (and the listings of past promises), I'm looking ahead to set-piece articles in the next year. My family is definitely going to the Fire and Ice Game Convention again, and this time I'll be leading a game or two, so you can expect coverage of the game preparation and planning process before the con and then an after-action report afterwards as well.

Also, I've fallen into the Star Citizen fanboy pit (thanks to my Kickstarter addiction), so you can bet you'll get at least a couple of articles about it before Nerd Year 2014. I plan on some commentary, nostalgia, and at least one or two articles leading up to the unveiling of some serious awesome towards the end of the year.

Don't be that Guy: Ray Muzyka Retreats

So I shared a freezer-burned post with you just a few days ago that acerbically responded to a blog post of BioWare's General Manager, Ray Muzyka. Well, now, it turns out that Ray is leaving the Mass Effect franchise, his company, and the entire frakkin' gaming industry behind. He's going into charity social entrepreneurship, whatever that means. Well, I'll tell you what that means, he's beating a hasty retreat in response to the tide of nerd-hate falling down around his ears. There's no other explanation for it. If you had just taken your own company's flagship product and dropped a lazy dump on its very existence and internal consistency, and then lied through your teeth to fans about being directly responsible and cognizant about its unpopularity, wouldn't you run with your tail between your legs?

Now, this will always be speculation, because as long as Mass Effect is a vibrant franchise, it's exceptionally unlikely anyone will confirm a correlation between Mass Effect 3's lousy resolution and Muzyka leaving, probably saying that Ray had been planning this for sometime, that he's wanting to branch out, help the poor social networking sites...blah blah blah. Mass Effect 3 was a huge financial success, he'd had the most direct creative influence over it, and it was clearly supposed to pave the way for even more in-universe games to branch out--probably to other genres and platforms. Who walks away in the middle of all that, except for someone who's either ashamed or being asked by EA to resign in order to ameliorate relations with Mass Effect fans.

I wish I could take some responsibility for this turn of events. If I'd been a good blogger and posted my previous article 5 months ago as intended, perhaps I could happily delude myself with the assurance that I had helped punish the man who dealt Commander Shepard the unkindest cut of all--a stupid ending. Instead, I'm happy with the fact that I'm convinced that the disgruntled collective of Mass Effect fans have responded with enough clamor that someone--either Ray himself or someone at EA--decided that he was no longer good for the franchise. In either case, I feel like this change can only be good for Dragon Age 3, which is in development and hopefully will be purged of any of Ray Muzyka's nutty ideas.

A Letter to Dr. Ray Muzyka, from some Mass Effect 3 Players

In mid-March, Ray Muzyka, the co-founder and GM of BioWare, used his own blog to reply to some of the overwhelming fan dismay at the ending of Mass Effect 3. This post, which will be spoilerific (unlike my spoiler-free Mass Effect 3 review), is a response to Dr. Muzyka and the rest of the creative team responsible for Mass Effect 3 and any upcoming changes to the game.

No really, the spoilers shall flow.

First of all, Ray, that blog post sends irate fans like me a mixed message. I understand that you're obliged to save a certain amount of face with this sort of public appeal. You can't outright apologize for a product you're selling. I get that. A lot of fans get that. But opening and closing a letter meant to assuage wounded fans with attestations to the critical receipt of the product is self-defeating, incendiary, and vain.  It's like book-ending an apology to your girlfriend with "I was right, and you were wrong. And simple-minded." We know Mass effect 3 is a mechanically beautiful game. The combat is crisp and precise, but the combat isn't what drives the hardcore Mass Effect fan. We thrive on the story, and that's imperiled by a sloppy ending that flies in the face of narrative elegance, ethics, and logic.

To recap, Mass Effect 3's final moments begin with Shepard and two squadmates charging towards a supply beacon in war-torn London. The beacon will beam Shepard into the heart of the ancient structure called the Citadel, where he hopes to activate a mysterious super-weapon called the Crucible to defeat the Reapers once and for all. The Crucible is based on the compounded designs of previous ages' greatest species, each of whom added to the concept of this anti-Reaper weapon before being extinguished by the race of genocidal machines. Under Shepard's banner, an alliance of all races have assembled a massive fleet and pooled their resources to finish the designs and construct this weapon without knowing anything about its function other than it needs to link to the Citadel to work. And so Shepard charges that one final hill in a mad foot-chase to destroy the enemies of all organic life--of all life, really, since they seem to be poised to destroy or enslave the robotic geth as well.

"It's like book-ending an apology to your girlfriend with 'I was right, and you were wrong. And simple-minded.'"

Just short of the objective, Shepard is hit by a secondary blast from a Reaper weapon, leaving him a bloodied, shuffling mess as he plods into the beam--apparently the only survivor of his part of the assault wave. This is where things start to go sideways, plot-wise, but nothing too bad. He finds himself transported into the heart of the Citadel, where he meets up with former CO, mentor, and all-round old-school butt-kicker David Anderson (voiced by Keith David), who is being held at gunpoint by the Illusive Man (Martin Sheen), the Benedict Arnold of the future. Though a cybernetic and psychic puppet of the Reapers, the alleged big bad guy still tries to convince Shepard how his plan to control the Reapers is feasible and imminent, now that he has access to the Crucible. The conversation is well-played between the three characters, but we're stepping on some old ground here--this is pretty similar to talks with Saren in the first game in this trilogy. And, as with Saren, it even comes down to you either shooting the Illusive Man yourself or talking him into committing suicide to snub the Reapers' control. Talking a bad guy into offing himself is a pretty cool proposition, but it shouldn't be made stale by getting repeat performances.

Still, the ending is decent-but-depressing at this point. And quite railroaded, too. But it's only after Shepard and Anderson sit down to bleed to death together that the plot nose-dives into something off of an inebrious cocktail napkin. Shepard is upraised on a lift to another chamber and greeted by a ghostly, child-like apparition. The apparition gives Shepard very little chance to get a word in edge-wise, but he has a lot to say though it makes little sense. The boy/ghost-thingie is the Catalyst--the last part needed to activate the Crucible. He's also the creator and controller of the Reapers, whom he created millions of years prior as a mechanism to manage organic-synthetic conflict. Apparently, little boy Catalyst decided that the best way to prevent the violent cycle of organics making synthetics and then killing each other is to make the biggest, baddest synthetic race imaginable--the Reapers--and set them loose on the galaxy, periodically wiping out all organic life when it gets too advanced. How does that end the cycle of violence? Furthermore, he goes on to offer 'options' which revolve around the concept of synthesis--a third faction, completely separate and superior to the synthetic/organic divide. Which makes no sense. Also, all of his choices amount to personal suicide for you and social suicide for all civilization in the galaxy, since it involves the exhaustive destruction of the interstellar transit network called mass relays.

The dumb and the stupid just pile up on each other faster than red hatchbacks piling up in the middle of a Wisconsin death-fog in late winter. There's no punch-line, no recognition of how bad the plot has turned. Just a blind careening of blanket, unfeasible statements and wild philosophical tripe.

Now, the Mass Effect series has more than enough homages to indicate that at least a handful of you guys are Serenity fans. So let me spell things out for you. If we apply the same principles of storytelling used in Mass Effect 3 to the climax of Serenity, this might have been what dedicated browncoats would have gotten in theater years ago:

I mean, really look at the elements. They're all there--all pure Mass Effect 3 in both the beautiful, heart-rending, ball-grabbingly awesome setup and the teeth-kicking so-called payoff. And the inclusion of the Catalyst boy is just as jarring as taking the worst element from another sci-fi property and shoe-horning it into the most emotionally charged part of the story.

Now, I originally wrote this article at the end of March, but I'd held onto it because Bioware had promised to release an 'extended ending' DLC to address fans' concerns with the crap ending. So I waited to see what the DLC's ending was, whether it at least shone some light on the rationale of the twist or revealed a bit more clarity on behalf of the writers when it comes to the odious implications of their opus' closing note. It didn't.

As you can imagine, I have more I could say on this topic. But, in the interest of diluting the nerd-rage, I'll save that for later. Right now, I'm going to watch The Avengers or maybe console myself with a ninety-ninth viewing of Firefly.

Almost 6 months!? OMGWTFBBQ!!!

Alright, this is not even funny anymore.

Nothing since April, really?

That's just wrong on so many levels.

So as you well know, I haven't posted on the blog here in nigh-on six months. Flippin' ridiculous. I haven't even logged on to Blogger in like four months, so early this morning I found a couple of comments with three inches of dust on them, still patiently awaiting approval. That ain't right, folks, that ain't right. Let's run down a few of the essential nerd-rants you've missed out on over the past 180 days or so.

A follow up on the Fire and Ice Convention. Geez, pal, go for the balls why don't ya? This was one of those 'next week' promises that I made that is now officially closer to 'next year' than 'next week'. And what hurts most is that I loved the con and want to be a cheerleader for it in the future.

About 30+ Movie Web Monday installments. Alright, if we want to get technical, those had lapsed from being a weekly feature long before the Great Gap of 2012. And for that, I blame Morgan Freeman. Enough said, for now.

Reviews of Snow White and the Huntsman, Underwhelming Spider-Man, and the Dark Knight Rises Falls Rises Falls, nope definitely Rises. I have a bit to say about these films. I saw them all on either the midnight showing or within the first weekend, and I can just kick myself for missing the opportunity to scam a few hits by dropping the names of more blockbusters on my poor, neglected blog.

Myth holidays. Apparently, I'm not the only one with a little enthusiasm for Bungie's long-past impeccable entry into the fantasy genre. People like that stuff, and by golly I've passed on the opportunity to cover the summer Myth holidays and their early harvest ones as well.

Kickstarter promotions. I've been bitten by the Kickstarter bug. Then it burrowed its head beneath my skin and wormed a long proboscis into my marrow, suffusing my entire being with a constant need to keep abreast of cool projects being presented directly to us, the nerd public. I wanted to talk about a couple of different Kickstarter projects that really got me excited, maybe getting you revved for them too while generating some slim cross-traffic. Well, there will always be more, but the ones that have already gone through weigh heavily on my blog-conscience.

So that's the butcher's bill. Pretty dang infuriating, isn't it? Ok, well, let's put things in proper order. This is the apology post, where I lay out excuses for those past lapses of blog activity and make a case for why you should have faith that this will be the last 30+ day delay in updates. But I'm not going to do that, because I'm cool, proud, and totally original that way.

I could blame the fact that my job in an unspecified tech field involving 3D printing has been progressively more draining on my creativity reserves, but that's BS--my creativity burns with the fire of a thousand suns with Joanne Whalley hues of auburn red hair and pouty lips...hmmm Sorsha...where was I? Oh, right, I'm an unflappable nerd. Seriously, I'm so nerdy that I've used it as a personal virtue in my last two jobs' interview processes. And even though my unspecified contract position is ramping up into an actual, in-company ID salaried job, there's no way it can be blamed for the malaise that has nuked this blogroll for the past half-year.

I could blame it on the house--since, you know, living in even a modest home like ours is a cursed burden on the owner in terms of housework, yard work, and generally deleterious ability to walk away from a problem project for months at a time without looking at it. But that's a load: I've been using my computer everyday for non-bloggy activities in the interim.

I could blame it on family--both immediate and extended. I've taken a trip to Canada, attended four weddings in this posting gap, and my wife and son don't exactly sit me in front of the computer to type a new blog post when I come home from work, now do they? But I'm not blaming them, because all of that stuff was awesome, fun, or eminently necessary. Or, in the case of my first visit to the socialist north, at least novelly eye-opening and a fun opportunity to share my unimpeachable Gollum impression with distantly related in-laws.

Or, if we wanted to look at really negative impulses from the past year, we could blame it on Mass Effect 3. I've been sitting on a 90% completed article about how much Bioware narratively junk-punched its fan-base over 6 months ago now. At first I was waiting for a token update after Bioware's release of the 'extended ending' of the game, which then turned out to be a much more dastardly and nuanced betrayal of the fans with a big obvious middle finger to critical gamers as the jerk-off cherry on top of one of the most half-assed game moments in industry history. But I won't blame them, because being pissed off can, in fact, be a great motivator for writing. As you will see in the future.

But I will level the blame somewhere this time. Really. I blame it on The Avengers. Because, as the polar opposite of Mass Effect 3, The Avengers was a pristine, polished, thoroughly researched and realized culmination of a fantastic series of movies. Sublime, in every glistening nerd-drooling moment. And I blame my long absence from blogging on it for being far and away the best movie in the genre and truly a great movie by any standard. So why blame it? Because The Avengers, hot on the heels on the loin-girding disappointment of Mass Effect 3, was the irresistible nerd-enthusiasm hitting my immovable nerd-rage. And it resulted in a full stop of my ability to rant (usually the outpouring of nerd-rage) or rave (the precipitant of nerd-enthusiasm) on my usual blog topics.

So then, what tipped the scale back towards writing on this blog? Guilt, of course. Guilt, which--like a social diarrhea--is the truest human motivator, that which separates us from the animals. Just last night I was at wedding number four of the year and speaking with family. Because my son was off running around and couldn't be my social shield at the time. Now, I'd just told my wife and my father (who feels it is his mission to serve as a human shot-clock for my blog updates) that I worried that people were still discovering my blog during my absence--that I was failing to hook new readers with fresh content while I dallied in the quandary of opposing forces of nerd motivators. Not ten minutes later, one of my aunts and a cousin began talking to me about my blog, and I felt the urge to purge myself of that guilt.

"...what tipped the scale back towards writing on this blog? Guilt, of course."

So here you have it: a fresh, toasty blog post, leavened with a triple-helping of guilt and left to warm itself on a slab of overly wordy dissertation. In pledge of new and exciting content, here's an overview of things I've done over the past six months that will be appearing in future posts.

Crying way too many nerd-tears and gnashing teeth in nerd-rage over Mass Effect 3. Over the past half-year, I've learned that I can't complain enough about Mass Effect 3's wretched plot turn. In addition to having a nearly prepared post on my first thoughts on the topic, I've been plotting a more thorough deconstruction that involves a complete critical rubric of the abject denouement to the sci-fi epic.

Watching a butt-load of Avengers. First I had three in-theater viewings of the movie over the course of its blockbuster release. Then I've also watched it about eight times on blu-ray since it has come out, including several partial viewings at work while pulling late night hours. And now my boy has gotten addicted to the cartoon version of The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, to the point that when he woke up this morning he ran over to the Xbox, turned it on, and started chanting "I'n Man! I'n Man!" I'll definitely be posting a proper odor-beef-gravy-cheese review of The Avengers.

Playing in a frakkin' Tesla pod, tools! During an out-of-state wedding for one of my wife's cousins, I got to make an epic update on my bucket list by gaming in a Mechwarrior Tesla Pod. That's huge nerd points added to my lifetime total, and ended up being a sweet chance to share the moment with eight or nine family members, too.

http://getinthepods.com/pilot-experience/

Being immensely proud of my son for leaping years ahead in his development of advanced warfare skills. This is another one that is going to get a full breakdown later on, so look forward to an awestruck daddy post in the near future. But the skinny is that my son established a counter-intelligence routine to setup an ambush from an entrenched position and overcome superior opposition through guerrilla tactics, shock and awe, and biological warfare. Daddy so proud.

Actually shooting zombies. That's actually shooting, as in using live-fire weapons, not shooting actual zombies, which, you know, is impossible outside of the Chinese rural countryside. Just last weekend I knocked off another item from my bucket list by schlepping out to a shooting range in central Illinois and firing some real-life guns. Not too nerdy, you say? Well what if I told you it was a zombie-themed event in which I ran four courses firing at zombie-styled targets to help prepare me for holding off hordes of the undead? Yes, that's what I thought. Some cool video of one of the courses below:

Planning on throwing a slammin' Outbreak Party. With our first house bought and moved into, Missus Nerdery and I are planning a zombie-themed costume party at the end of this month. It's going to be an awesome time, and I'll probably post an article about some of the ideas, games, and prep before the party as well as some after-party coverage, as well.

Well, that's it for now. I'd like to get another post up and scheduled for sometime over the next couple of days, so please watch. Oh, and don't be shy about commenting. Getting comment notifications congratulating me on my wit and awesome is a great way to leverage both pride and guilt to keep me blogging faithfully. Filmatleven.

At least I didn't give any excuses, right?