Aquaman - Problems, Questions and Concerns

I never much fancied watching Warner Bros/DC's Aquaman when it had its cinematic release. Lack of time and apathy conspired to rob me of the opportunity. So it was with some interest that I was loaned the DVD by my friend Eddie. That interest died a small death when he commented that it was one of the worst superhero films he'd ever watched and made Green Lantern look average. Oh hell. But, in the interest of fairness, and being suitably forewarned, my good lady and I settled down last night to watch it. We are never getting those two hours back. Ever.

Let's start with the problems. The film begins by describing how Arthur Curry's (Aquaman) parents met. Played by Temuera Morrison and Nicole Kidman, this is a brief intro, and the filmmakers have used digital de-ageing techniques to make them look younger. This has some pedigree in superhero movies as the MCU has used the technique a few times, most notably (and brilliantly) on Samuel L Jackson in Captain Marvel. Here, however, the effect is terrible. I have seen more realistic CGI character in videogames and at best, it looks weird. At worst, it's scary. Bad stuff happens and the movie moves on.

Then the film cuts to Arthur as a child and a school trip to an aquarium, where he gets to demonstrate his communication abilities with sea life. Then it cuts to the present day. That's it. No further explanation or examination of the consequences of this. Nothing.

Now we have the introduction of the adult Aquaman, and an action sequence set on a Russian submarine. Decent enough, but the film clearly has no idea how submarines work (ballast and floating are an issue) and when you see the submarine in action a bit later, they've forgotten that there was a massive explosion in the torpedo room (from which it is firing torpedoes!) and it sank due to having several holes in it (ballast tanks, the hatch through which Aquaman entered and left, etc).

I could go on, but nah, I really can't be bothered to go into that much detail, so here are the high (low)-lights:

• The music - a cheesy Vangelis-style rip off that really doesn't much suit the tone of the film.
• The tone of the film - is it heavyweight drama, or a Flash Gordon style adventure?
• If it is a Flash Gordon style adventure, and that's the tone of it for much of the time, Flash Gordon did it much, much better.
• CGI - aside from the de-aging already mentioned, let's bring up the sets. It's pretty obvious where they used green screen for some outdoor scenes and by god does it show! It's pretty common now and even the rather good Black Panther suffered a fair bit from this. The overall effect looks cheap.
• Physical sets - the Sicilian village looks like it's been stolen from Mamma Mia 2.
• The fight in Sicily - Black Manta's costume and dialogue, as well as the fight scene itself, would make the Power Rangers TV show blush in embarrassment. He looks terrible. 
• The drumming octopus(!)
• The Karathen - they couldn't seem to get the rights to use the word Kraken. WTF?
• The final battle - a CGI mess (to be fair, most of the "underwater" bits are decent enough). The final battle though, is just terrible. And they stole from pretty much every Godzilla movie with the use of the Karathen in actions and sound effects.
• Aquaman's intelligence - is he clever? Stupid? Playing dumb? And he ends up being King Arthur. They stole from Arthurian legend. There is not an original idea in here.

In fairness, most of the cast do well with what they've got, and Jason Momoa is fun on-screen, but every time I see Amber Heard and that god-awful wig, I just think they really wanted Scarlett Johansson and couldn't get her due to Marvel commitments.

Questions: Why? What was the point of this movie? Why did it make $ 1 billion plus at the box office? What the hell were they all thinking? (Naturally, with that billion comes the promise of a sequel and a spin off).

Concerns: If this is the future of the DC cinematic universe, count me out. I liked the Nolan "Dark Knight" series, despite their logic gaps, and I wanted to like the rebooted version of Bat-fleck, but after wasting time with Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad, I am not sure I want to keep up with it. True, Wonder Woman was brilliant but the sequel sounds a bit iffy. I have never seen Man of Steel (not that big a Superman fan, he's just too... boring). I have no interest in Justice League, and Shazam, well, meh!

I get what DC are trying to do, and that is to equal Marvel and Disney with their slate of films - but the issue here is that Marvel planned their course carefully: standalone titles followed by team ups and a strong continuing story, culminating in Avengers: Endgame that looks, at the time of writing, of hitting the frankly ludicrous goal of an opening weekend of $1 billion worldwide. Extreme, I know, but there has been a lot of hard work (and 21 previous films in the series) to get to that point, and that is something the DC tried to circumvent and boy, have they been burned because of it.

So, my recommendation: avoid like the plague. I hear Eddie is trading his copy in at CEX...

Hey! Listen! - A Book Review

As you may know, the history of computing and video games is one of my things. I have a decent, if not complete, collection of books on the topic and whenever a new title is announced, it gets my attention pretty quickly. And so it was when "Hey! Listen!" was released earlier this week. I picked up a copy at Waterstones in short order and read it within a couple of days.

A bit of background here: Steve McNeil is definitely a video game fan. The blurb on the back tells you this but having seen him in the TV show "Dara O Briain's Go 8 Bit" which lasted 27 episodes over three series on Dave (a show he created off-screen before the on-screen shenanigans) he does know his stuff. His natural enthusiasm for games, both playing them, and their history, translates very well into this book.

Now the author admits that there are more detailed and in-depth books out there on the subject, and he provides an excellent bibliography at the back of "Hey! Listen!" to prove that, but that cannot be taken as a negative point about this book. McNeil sets out his aim in the introduction: this will cover the industry from the date of his earliest experiences with it to the release of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (where the title of the book also comes from). And what a journey it is.

This is a history of computing and video gaming, from the background given about Space War and the founding of Atari, to the bitter court fights between Sega and Nintendo in the early '90's but told through the eyes of a slightly hyperactive man child - and that's not a criticism. In fact, it makes for a very well written and easy to read book. McNeil's voice is clarity itself through the writing and he peppers almost every page with footnotes as well. I must admit that when I started having to look at these, I found it a bit tiresome - I am a believer that footnotes should be used sparingly as they can take you out of the narrative very quickly, but with "Hey! Listen!", they do exactly the opposite. McNeil uses these for comic anecdotes, remarks and just plain fooling about, whilst also keeping on topic. By the half way point of the book, I was looking forward to these to see what gems he had added. And this is the thing that makes "Hey! Listen!" such a good book: it gives you a very readable account of the industry's history whilst making you laugh (at times out loud). I have even recommended it to my wife, not because she is a video game history nerd like me, but that she'd find the book itself a funny read. That she'll learn about the video game crash of '83 is just an added bonus!

If there are any negatives, it must be that it ends where it does. There are twenty years of gaming to write about after the scope of the book ends but, and I say this with a hint of sadness, there might not be the variety that made video gaming up to 1998 so interesting in those years. True, we had Microsoft enter the hardware field after Sega left it, but to me, at least, the industry matured and became more money focused, and that took a bit of the excitement and personality away. McNeil points this out too when mentioning the likes of Activision and Electronic Arts - two companies founded because of the way corporate behaviour was treating developers in the early days. They have become what they strove to avoid. I can only hope though, that the author gets round to another book on the topic, because I'll grab a copy of that one too!

Anyhoo, back to "Hey! Listen!". My recommendation: buy it! You'll have a laugh anyway and you'll maybe learn some things you didn't already know.

Call of Cthulhu - Lovecraftian Lollygagging

I have always had a bit of a liking for HP Lovecraft's work. Not really his writing style, which can be verbose and turgid, but the ideas and the mythology that he created and has been built up since then. I even have a copy of his complete works that I am slowly making my way through. Not only have his works inspired others to write similar tales, but there have also been numerous films, board games and video games that both directly and indirectly follow his path.

Call of Cthulhu is one such game and was released on X-Box One, PlayStation 4 and PC last October. A survival horror game (come on, a Cthulhu title is never going to be a cuddly platformer, is it???), Call of Cthulhu puts you in the shoes of Great War veteran Edward Pierce. Now a struggling private detective in 1924 Boston, he is tasked to find out what happened to the Hawkins family, who passed away in a suspicious house fire on the little known island of Darkwater, just off the coast of Boston. That's the set up and what follows is a decent role playing title, heavy on the horror and psychological terror. Add some decent, is slightly annoying stealth sequences and what you have is a solid stab at the genre. The story does get a little confusing but is engrossing, and Edward's descent in to madness (or is it) is handled well.

Not a triple-A title by any means, Call of Cthulhu looks ok, though everything seems to have been given a filmic grain that works in some chapters but not in others, sometimes hiding key details that the plot relies upon. The facial animations on some of the secondary characters is a bit rough and you are definitely in the uncanny valley as far as their eyes go. At times, that's creepier than the game itself. The voice acting is decent and I have certainly heard much worse, though the UK-based actors does sometimes veer back to their own accents rather than the New England one they are trying to master. All in all though, it's atmospheric and even I fell for a couple of the jump scares.

It's not a long game, by any means, and your first play through should last about eight hours. I say first, as there are four endings and at to see at least two of them, you'll need to change your style of play considerably. As a full priced title, it's just about worth it, but if you can get it for about £20 to £30 and you're a fan of the genre or the Cthulhu mythology, you could do far worse than this game.

The Expanse - Season 3

A few weeks ago, Amazon dropped season three of The Expanse (alongside the first two having gained the UK rights from Netflix last year) and although it took a while to catch up, I've finally finished all thirteen episodes. And what episodes they are.
One of the things that I really like about The Expanse is that it combines personal stories from excellently well defined and acted characters with grand scale sci-fi, big ideas and a good dose of realism. True, the first season took a while to get going but with the third run, they drop the viewer right back into the action that season two ended with and you get much time to breathe. This show does exactly the opposite of many short run series, packing in more than enough for the compact 40 minute episodes and ensuring that the pace never slackens. Whereas I found watching pretty much every Marvel TV show a slog as they seemed to have eight episodes of story for a thirteen episode season, The Expanse is almost the opposite, and while they never feel rushed, you get the impression that there is much more they could put on screen. No, the writing and direction of the show is taut and lean to the point of bare bones - and this is not a bad thing.
The season itself is divided into two parts story-wise, with the conclusion of the Prax story as he searches for his daughter taking up the first six episodes, whilst the remaining seven deal with the "Ring". It's a roller coaster ride to be sure. 
Standouts for the season - Shawn Doyle as the reptilian Errinwright - there is a man you'd love to hate. Pretty much all of the regulars are also at the top of their game and even the child actors get by without being annoying. Tonally, there is no black and white to the story or the characters and their actions, and it is this contrast that old-school Trek (amongst others) really misses out on.
Of course, combining small and large scale does put pressure on the shows budget and it is telling at a few points that the vision exceeded the money. Not by much, and what you get on screen is uniformly good and in places excellent, but hopefully Amazon will through a little more dough on screen for season four. Having said that, I still think they have the scale of the crew wrong when you see them on the exterior of their ship, the Rocinante but maybe that's just me.
Having mentioned Trek, I must admit I am watching and immensely enjoying ST Discovery. With one episode to go of the current season, it pretty much surpasses any other sci-fi on TV at the moment, except maybe The Expanse, especially as my good lady and I are slowly getting through season one of Star Trek Deep Space 9. I know, DS9 is 25 years old, but it feels much, much older, not just in style, but in pacing and story telling. I am told it does get better, but by God, the 45 minutes in DS9 feels like hours compared to The Expanse and Disco. Out of the 19 episodes in season one, only one, The Duet, really stands out. And the semi-regular heavy focus on Jake Sisko and Nog make it almost a children's show at times. Anyhoo, we'll get to season two shortly and see if it improves.
Once again, The Expanse is a highly rated show and if you don't have an Amazon Prime account, seasons one and two are available on DVD and Blu-Ray.