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Futurama Episode 9

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Hell is Other Robots

“Do I Preach to You When You’re Lying Stoned in the Gutter?”

Title Screen

Recap

Hell is Other Robots starts with Fry, Leela and Bender attending a Beastie Boys concert where Bender sees an old friend who takes him back stage to meet the band, and party with some other robots.  There Bender “Jacks On”, plugging himself in and getting too much electricity, and being Bender becomes immediately hooked on what is essentially robot drugs.  When the electricity bills go through the roof, everyone but Fry suspects Bender.  After a quick trip to Sicily 7, the mob planet, Bender detours the ship through an electrical disturbance to get high.  The crew stages an intervention in order to get Bender to change his ways, and while he is contemplating what they said, he uses the sign for the Church of Robotology for his next fix.  This leads to Bender joining said church, much to the bewilderment of the rest of the cast.  Bewilderment and annoyance, as the crew finds Benders new morals just as his old lack thereof.  They soon grow fed up enough with Bender’s newfound piousness that they take him to Atlantic City to reacquaint him with his sleazy side.  The plan is almost immediately successful and Bender goes on a depraved romp through the city.  But by the terms of his Baptism he is now doomed to robot hell so the Robot Devil comes to collect him.  Fry and Leela mount a rescue while the Robot Devil performs a rousing musical number.  After a brief fiddle contest, the episode ends with the crews escape and Bender learning not to be too good or too evil

Analysis

This is one of Futurama’s stock episodes; take Bender and put him into a crazy situation.  This, like most episodes in the first season, is like the first test of an idea that the show will do better in later episode.  Fortunately, for Hell is Other Robots it has a song, which elevates it from a mediocre to a good episode.  One thing that is really great about this episode is how quickly they get from point to point, even glossing over what could have an entire episode.  Each of the vignettes that make up this episode, Bender on drugs, Bender is religious and the Beastie Boys concert, could have been stretched to fill an episode.  Instead, they are distilled into small enough chunks to fit them into one episode.  And the trip to the mob planet is bypassed.  It sounds like it could have been an interesting episode, but by leaving it as just an idea, the joke is still there without getting old.  The same is true of the parts that are there.  By keeping each piece short, it includes only the best jokes and does not allow the episode to feel stale.  They do go a little too fast that each part is not quite long enough.  That balance is better in later Bender episodes, like Bend Her, Bender Should Not Be Allowed on Television.  The animation continues to improve, and the writers seem to be settling in with the characters.  Fry tells one of his long and pointless stories that has little to do with his point.  Leela continues to be levelheaded but occasionally more interested in expedience over what is right.  And it ends with a song.  Every episode that features a song is better because of it.  The Robot Devil is little used, but he is fun when he shows up.  Hell is Other Robots seems like something of a prototype for better episodes, but it is not bad, just not quite as good a Futurama eventually got.

Great (bumped from Good due to song)

Reading Some Comics: JSA 52-53

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If you read my Top 5 DC Comics heroes piece, then you know that I love Wildcat and Power Girl.  So it should come as no surprise that a story that has those two great heroes turn up would be one of my favorites.  The story in question takes place in JSA issues 52-53, written by Geoff Johns and drawn by Don Kramer, and is nearly as good as it should be.  So when these two illustrious Superheroes team up you get action, mystery and romance.
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Futurama Episode 8

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A Big Piece of Garbage


A Big Piece of Garbage is the first of Futurama’s “issue” episode’s, and unlike most shows that do issue shows Futurama’s are actually funny.  It’s also the first Professor focused episode.  Which means we get to meet another great returning character: Wernstrom, the “evil” version of the Professor, unless the Professor is the evil one.  We also get to see that Farnsworth is even a geezer by the standards of other geezers.  Plus, he comes up with not one but two crazy inventions, the death clock that never shows up again and the oft-reappearing smell-o-scope.

The symposium scene shows us that Farnsworth is what an old Fry will look like.  In addition, the great slight that the Professor perpetrated on Dr. Wernstrom was an A- due to poor penmanship.  Bender, who really does not have a lot to do in this episode, does get to were a top hat again.  It sure is entertaining to watch the hat roll jauntily around his antennae.  After Farnsworth’s embarrassment at the symposium, we get the real meat of the episode: the garbage ball.  The video about the garbage ball is the first example of the great propaganda videos that appear from time to time to provide cheap exposition.  Fry shows off knowledge of 19th century technology and his lack of knowledge period before we move on the next part.

I am fairly sure that this episode also contains the first appearance of Mayor C. Randall Poopenmeyer.  Outside of his name, he is one of the least memorable returning characters, but it just takes one good episode of him to make me love him.  He calls in Wernstrom, even though Farnsworth is right there, and they come up with a plan to kill the crew while destroying the ball.  Of course, since the theme of the show is the Professor is old and forgetful he makes a mistake in the construction of his bomb.  Once on the garbage ball, fry wallows in nostalgia for a few moments before they fail to blow it up.  Back on earth, Wernstrom shows why he is the evil Doctor in this episode, by getting his instead of trying to save the city.  In addition, Fry is disgusting.  The plan of defeating garbage with garbage is similar to many such plots on Futurama, and it humorously undercuts the pollution is bad message (which is not really a message anyone needs to hear, it should be obvious).  We end with a Farnsworth is senile joke, a Fry is dumb joke and Leela emphasizing that people never change.

This is a pretty good episode.  It is not exactly an essential one, but there is no reason to skip over it.  This is what I tuned in every week to see: zany Sci-Fi humor.  It is a great episode for Professor Farnsworth lovers or big fans of Doctor Wernstrom and while it is not my favorite episode, I do like it.  Great

Just short: Robin Hood

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Robin Hood, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett, is nearly a great movie.  Scott and Crowe came close to recapturing the magic that made Gladiator so great.  Unfortunately some tonal inconsistencies mar this epic just enough to make it slightly disappointing.  Most of the Robin Hood is similar in tone to Gladiator, somber and serious with majesty and grandeur, but it also has some moments that come off as goofy.  The movie is humorous in between the serious parts, which is not a problem on its own, but it does not in smoothly with the rest of the film.

One thing I liked about the film is the portrayal of Robin and his merry men.  In the few scenes in which they act as a team are truly delightful.  Robin, Little John, Will Scarlett and Allan A’Dayle go about their wayfaring exuberantly and it makes for some enjoyable scenes.  Too bad such scenes were few and far between.  Blanchett as Maid Marian was also very good, as was Friar Tuck.  Easily the best parts of the film were the parts that focused on the traditional Robin Hood myths.

Then there were the historical parts, which were not quite as good.  Kings Richard and John were great.  Richard the Lionheart was well loved, but he did not actually care too much about governing his kingdom.  And John was all hubris and arrogance he meant well, but he was not actually that good at being king.  He was the King who ended up signing the Magna Carta, so having that be Robin’s focus rather than having him playing a waiting game while they hoped for Richard’s return from the Crusades was an  interesting change.  But there were also some quite strange things.  Like Robin being a commoner who assumed the name of a dead noble.  That itself is an interesting twist, but the fact that the father of the noble he impersonates just happened to know his real father strain credulity.  That his real father just happened to be an integral part of the group that wrote the first attempt at a Magna Carta is unbelievable.  The whole real father reveals were just confounding and disappointing.  As was how people suddenly knew was an imposter at the end.  The were also other strange bits, most notably Marian leading an army of orphans into the battle at the end.

Robin Hood is and enjoyable movie, but the little things that do not quite match the tone of the rest keep it from being great.  A possible sequel, as the ending suggests and practically begs for would probably improve upon this one, with Robin and his merry men hopefully acting as outlaws more than in this film.  But Robin Hood, in the end, is an almost great movie.

25 Years of NES Part 3: Mega Man 2

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So Yeah I’ve been gone a while.  I guess a month of not posting is not the ideal way to start a blog.  But between my new job and increased time being spent on my side job I have had little time for writing lately.  So instead of posting maybe once a week I’ve been saving them to get a few post ready so I can provide a continuous stream of content.

Next up in 25 Years of NES is that classic of classics Mega Man 2.

The biggest character to come out of the NES is undeniably Mario.  25 years later, he is still going strong with the recently released masterpiece Super Mario Galaxy 2.  But on the NES, the greatest star was Capcom’s Mega Man.  Mario had 3 great NES games, all of which will be covered in my NES celebration, Mega Man had 2 great games and 4 that were not quite as great but were still very good.  After the NES Mario continued to shine and has never stopped shining.  Mega Man, however, faltered.  There was the Mega Man X series that started great but quickly faded.  There was the GBA Zero series that had its heart in the right place but was more frustrating than fun.  Also on the GBA was the Mega Man Battle Network series, originally a fun Pokemon flavored action RPG but soon degenerated into soulless cash cowing.  On the PS1, there was the truly delightful Legends series.  It had three great games that, while extremely good especially for their system, but were more Zelda than Mega Man.  But despite his troubles after the fall of the NES, on it the pudgy little robot was king.

While the first Mega Man game was good, Mega Man 2 took all that was good about 1 perfected it and expanded upon it and became one of the best games on the system.  The controls are perfect.  Perfect.  There is no possible improvement for them.  The way Mega Man handles is the best ever on the NES.  All other games must be compared to it and all are found wanting.  Much of this has to do with the simple move list: jump and shoot.  Later games added stuff like the charge shot or the slide that marred Mega Man 2’s perfection.  Graphically MM2 is why people remember 8-bit graphics fondly; the graphics here are simple and colorful but clear.  The music is unparalleled.  Some of the best chip tunes.  Mega Man 2 is the NES.

Wood Man's Leafy Stage

So starting with that great base MM2 only gets better.  The best thing about MM1 was the ability to choose the order in which the 6 levels are played.  MM2 kept the choice but gave 8 initial levels instead of 6.  From each of the Master Robots, as the bosses are called, defeated the player receives a new power.  Each of the powers is useful against another one of the bosses.  Half of the fun of the game is trying to find the “correct” order in which to beat the levels and get the power-ups.  Unlike most of the later games, in MM2 the weapons are actually useful in the levels and not just against the bosses.  In the case of the Metal Blades, they are overpowered.  But you gain one for each level; the player gets more and more powerful.  Parts of the game at the beginning that were unbeatably hard become trivial.  Not the any Mega Man game is actually that hard.  They are unforgiving and force the player to play its rules, but once the player submits and lets the game shape the way they play then the games become easy.  The weapons are what makes Mega Man great.  Though Mega Man can only jump and shoot, the differing shooting abilities makes Mega Man a formidable force by the time the player hits Wily’s Castle, the 4 level gauntlet that ends the game.  The feeling you get at the end of the game of having become so much more powerful is one of the greatest feelings in any game and it is particularly great in Mega Man.

Mega Man getting equipped

One of the last great things about this game is the eight master robots:  Quick Man, Flash Man, Wood Man, Air Man, Crash Man, Heat Man, Metal Man, and Bubble Man.  Each one has a good design and the levels fit what each boss is supposed to be.  You can tell which one is weak to which without resorting to trial and error.  Flash Man’s time stopping power is obviously the weapon to use against the speedy Quick Man.  Heat Man decimates Wood Man, etc.  Each Master Robot has a themed level that is wildly different from the others.  Bubble Man’s underwater level makes the player adjust to the different physics of jumping underwater.  Flash Man’s ice level forces the player to carefully control their movements.  Quick Man’s stage’s killer bars keep the player on their toes. (I for one have never beaten it with out the Time Stopper) The levels have a perfect amount of variety and challenge.  And then there is the true test of the game:  Wily’s Castle.  First of all Music.  These stages force the player to use all of the techniques they have learned throughout the game in increasingly difficult challenges.  The game ends with the one bad thing about Mega Man 2, the final boss.  To beat it the player must use the most useless weapon, the Bubble Lead (Pronounced leed not led) to take one bar of life away from the boss until it dies.  It is not actually that hard, just tedious.  And if you die, then you have to spend ten minutes or so farming the weak enemies outside the boss room to get enough weapon energy to defeat him.

The Source of all hate

Despite that one complaint, Mega Man 2 is one of the best games on the system, which is not true of all the games I will be reviewing.  The ability to choose your starting level means that not matter how hard you find the game you can still see the majority of the levels.  But it also keeps the game from being to hard, because any level could be the first level none are that difficult.  Mind you that is not that difficult for an NES game, those weaned on the mollycoddling of newer video games will probably still have some trouble.  But even for them there is an easy mode.  The great graphics, music ,and stellar game-play makes Mega Man 2 one of the greatest games ever, let alone just on the NES. The Blue Bomber shines as brightly here as he ever did.

The end of the fight for everlasting peace?

Iron Man 2

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So I’ve been away for a while, but I plan to get back to posting regularly real soon.  I had to go to a wedding and I started a new job, but I will soon have a least 3 posts a week going again.  For now, here is a review of Iron Man 2, which I saw this afternoon.

Iron Man 2

First let me say that Robert Downey, JR. continues to be a perfect Tony Stark.  He seems to be having so much fun that is is hard to not have fun with him.  The rest of the cast is really good as well.  Favreau gives himself plenty of time as Happy, but he was enjoyable.  Scarlett Johansson is hot but kind of pointless as the Black Widow, but I assume she will be given more to do in either the sequel or the Avengers movie.  Sam Rockwell and Mickey Rourke play some pretty forgetful villains, but that is more an effect of the script than any shortcoming on their part.  Don Cheadle is a big improvement over Howard as James Rhodes.  The actors were all more than adequate.

The plot was sort of meandering and bloated, not really much worse than the first Iron Man and not really enough to be detrimental.  Tony makes Pepper CEO of Stark Enterprises but that doesn’t really go anywhere, the Black Widow is there but is mostly pointless, as is Sam Jackson’s Nick Fury.  The first half of the movie builds up a Tony is dying plot that is solved, but never really addressed by anyone.  When it is dealt with it is dealt with quickly and forgotten.  I know I’m mentioning a lot of things I did not like, but I really liked the movie.  Iron Man 2 has some of the Spiderman 3 syndrome, in that there is a lot of stuff there that does not really need to be there.  Still the movie is stylish and fun and shallow.  The fight scenes are well done, although I do not buy Vanko as a credible threat to Tony in their first encounter.

Fun is the most important thing to remember when watching Iron Man 2.  Some of the plot is weak, but the actors, especially Downey, Jr. and Rockwell, are a joy to watch.  It is not a movie with any motive or message other than fun.  And that is enough for me.  If you want a Superhero movie that tries to do more watch the Watchmen, which is not very good, or Superman Returns, which is a complex mixture of terrific and terrible, but for pure enjoyment Iron Man 2 is as good as it gets.

The Losers Review And More

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So I went and saw The Losers a few days ago.  I liked it, a lot.  It is not a great movie, but it is the best kind of goofy fun.  The Losers follows a squad of ex-CIA operatives on their quest out get revenge on the man who betrayed and tried to kill them.  They could have played the revenge story perfectly straight and had a mediocre movie with no reason to recommend it over any other such spy/revenge movie.  Instead, The Losers plays it about a third part to comedy.  It is a big action packed 80’s movie that is aware of how ridiculous everything that going on is.  They don’t exactly wink at the camera, but they still have a lot of fun with the whole thing.  It helps that the movie is very well acted.  They got some really good guys that I don’t think are that well known.  Playing the two central characters, Roque and Clay, are Idris Elba and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who should be household names, and their performances are worth the ticket price alone.  Jason Patric, who plays the villainous Max, plays up his role to absurdly dastardly heights.  He is ridiculous, but he has an air of menace about him that makes him a viable antagonist.   The rest of the cast is almost as good.  Despite the comic nature of the bulk of the movie, the action and personal moments actually work well too.  The jokes come not from usually from the situations, but from the dialogue.   The characters talk and joke like old friends and it really works.  It is both a quality action movie and a comedy, but unlike most action comedies, neither part overwhelms or hinders the other.  The Losers provides more than enough laughs and more than enough explosions, and that seems to be exactly what the movie set out to do.  As pure fun entertainment I can’t recommend The Losers enough.  B+
I also saw Balls of Fury on TV.  I had passed on this when it came out because it frankly did not look to be very good.  I’m not sure I was wrong, because this should be a terrible movie, but somehow instead of being awful it is really funny.  It is not a comedy with tons of hilarious moment, but it maintains a steady flow of humor throughout.  It is never great, but it also never fails to entertain.  It is also less a sports movie pastiche, like Will Ferrell has been making with increasingly diminishing returns, but a kung-fu movie disguised as a sports movie.  Ping-Pong has replaced martial arts as the focus, but it is a kung-fu movie, which I am less familiar with than sports movies, but it somehow works.  The makers seemed to recognize the stupidity of everything in this movie and turned it from a weakness to a strength.  Christopher Walken plays it as though his character only barely wants to be involved, and the protagonist Randy Daytona never stops being an over the hill loser.  Even George Lopez turns in an entertaining performance.  In no way is this a great movie, but its worth watching on a slow Saturday.  B-

25 Years of NES Part 2: Life Force

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Life Force


The second game in my 25-part retrospective on the Nintendo Entertainment System is about Life Force. I expect everyone recognized the game covered in the first part, but Life Force is much more obscure. Despite is lack of notoriety this is one of the great games on the NES. Life Force is a scrolling shooter, a spin-off of the much more well-know Gradius series that features both horizontal and vertical stages. Among the many things Life Force takes from Gradius is the use of the Vic Viper, the ship that is always used in Gradius and the same upgrade system. Also like Gradius Life Force is awesome.

Life Force began as a Japanese Arcade game called Salamander that when it came time to bring it over to the US they changed it considerable, making it about flying through a giant monster. They also changed the name to Life Force. Then when is cam time to release it for the Famicom, the Japanese equivalent of the NES, they based it on a mix of Life Force and Salamander calling it Salamander. Then it came back over as NES game the name was again Life Force. Outside of its convoluted origins, Life Force has some notable elements. One of the most important parts of a shmup, as these scrolling shooters are called, is the power up system. Life Force uses the Gradius power-up system, where the player collects power-ups and uses them on the ability needed. First is speed up, which makes the ship move faster and is essential to avoiding some of the obstacles. The next slot is missile. That causes missiles to fire from the top and bottom of the ship that hit hard to get too enemies. The next is pulse, which changes the normal shot to a wavy beam. After that is laser, which makes the shot a powerful beam. The last is option. Option gives the player a little drone that fires along with the player. Also, you can have a pair of them and catch them when you die. This power-up system is pretty great because turn the once vulnerable ship into an unstoppable little God. The only problem is that if you die you lose all of those powers and have to collect all of the power-ups again.  Which after the early parts of a level is almost impossible to do.

And die you will, at least at first.  This game is difficult.  Difficult in ways that are not in vogue in the current video game market.  It is not the players twitch skills that need to be honed to beat this game, but the player needs to memorize enemy patterns and level layouts.  In places, if the player does not already know what is coming then there is no way to avoid death.  And once one death hits, due to the building nature of power-ups, more will follow.  There is a reason that that sort of false challenge has been weeded out of gaming; it’s just not fun.  But it is not intolerable in Life Force.  Twitch skills can take you fairly far in this game and just paying attention is all the memorization necessary.  With a few hours of practice, the average player should be able to clear at least the first two levels fairly easily.  The difficulty of also offset by the use of the famous Konami code to give the player thirty lives.  This is also a great tool for learning the stages so you can beat the game legitimately.  One important thing does not contribute to the difficulty: the controls.  The ship feels sluggish at first, but with a few speed-ups, you’ll be zipping around the screen like a pro, then a couple more and you‘ll zip into a wall.

The levels display what is the best part of Life Force:  the crazy stage subjects.  In what only makes since in the context of NES games, and in fact is one the best things about the NES, the player will fly all over the place with no real sense of connection between the stages.  One level looks like the insides of some giant monster, the next you are shooting giant jumping Moai heads.  It’s the brilliant surrealism that made the NES great.  The first stage in this game looks very much like a living creature.  The stage walls and the enemies all seem very organic.  The enemies look like blood cells and the boss is a giant brain.  After that, you go to a simple canyon, now scrolling vertically instead of horizontally, into a military installation of sorts with s robot/flying machine boss.  The third stage is a sun or some such thing, with fire and flaming birds and dragons all over the place.  Then its through a body again, but this time vertically. Then horizontally through some canyons and pyramids with Pharaoh head boss.  The last boss appears to be a planet with  a giant snake curling around it.  All of this rendered in beautiful 8-bits.  The sheer insane variety of stages and enemies is one of the best parts of the game.

Most important to the greatness of Life Force is that it is just plain fun.  You die not being angry that you were killed, but wanting to make another attempt.  Before you know it, you’ve wasted five hours and the game is still a joy to play.  It is pure gaming that can only be found on the NES.

pictures from vgmuseum

Top 5 Friday #1

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Top 5 Friday is a new feature of my fledgling blog. Every Friday, hopefully, I will post a list of my top 5 favorite or least favorite somethings.  The subject is very much going to change around.  Today I am doing my 5 favorite DC superheroes, because I’ve mostly dome Futurama on this blog so far and I want to do some thing about superheroes.  Next week I might do my 5 favorite Marvel Superheroes, but not necessarily.  And that list would be pretty boring with 4 entries about Thor and 1 about Beta Ray Bill (Space Thor) I might do my 5 least favorite athletes ever or 5 favorite movies, who knows.  But I plan to have a top 5 up every week.

My Top 5 Favorite DC Superheroes

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