Streaming some DC Animated Movies

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Recently added to Netflix, or at least recently noticed by me, were a trio of animated movies based on DC comics. In the past these animated movies have been very good. They in large part retained the tone of the DC animated shows of the 90’s and early 00’s, but often retold stories based on some great comics. Most of the first dozen or so were very good. Things changed at about the same time that DC realized they could only sell movies with Batman or Justice League in the title. The three that appeared on Netflix, Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox, Justice League War and Son of Batman, were collectively very disappointing. Some of the problem comes from adapting inferior material, but there is something missing from these movies.

Flashpoint the comic was already a strained read. It seemed to be a story that started as merely a big Flash story that morphed into a line-wide crossover that then became the story wherein DC buried the real DC Universe and gave birth to the Nu52. But the story itself was not responsible for that. It is just a not too unusual alternate reality story. While the movie makes a few improvements, including removing Zoom as the killer of Barry’s Mom, it doesn’t stand up to any sort of scrutiny. The Flashpoint Universe combines some genuinely interesting ideas, like the Superman test subject and Batman as Thomas Wayne, but the central conflict between Wonder Woman and Aquaman fails on every level in both versions of the story. It has to change the Amazons into murderous savages and makes Atlantis much more powerful and warlike than they were before. Also, it requires believing that Wonder Woman wouldn’t wipe the floor with Aquaman in a fight. The big problem is that all of these changes supposedly stem from Flash saving him Mom something like 20 years in the past. That just doesn’t work. Those are all story problems, the animation and character designs are likewise awkward. Things just don’t look good; it looks cheap and off model. On top of those complaints are the just absurd levels of violence. Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox takes a bad story and somehow makes it even worse.

Justice League War does the opposite; it takes a terrible story and greatly improves it. Still, that doesn’t actually make it any good. I still have complaints about the look of the movie, though it doesn’t look as cheap as Flashpoint. But it makes some effective changes to the original story, which is easily the worst thing Geoff Johns has ever written, which turns the story into something that is not completely embarrassing. Still, the biggest fault of the original is still there; in attempting to write the Justice League as young they end up coming off as unlikeable assholes. That characterization works for Green Lantern, but it doesn’t for Superman or Wonder Woman. It quickly becomes a showcase for superpowered violence with nothing of the story or characters worth caring about. The few moments of delight that exist are more than drowned out by the garish and the stupid.

If the first two movies were damned by their inferior source material, then the third should have bucked that trend. Son of Batman is based on the first part of Grant Morrison’s epic Batman arc and is easily the best of the three movies, but it still isn’t any more than simply good. The adaptation strays pretty far from the source, in events if not in the emotional context. Some of it would need to be elided from Morrison’s sprawling story, but losing large parts of the Batman family from the story really hurts it. Replacing Tim with Dick makes a certain amount of sense knowing what is coming next, but it mostly just shrinks the world. The bigger problem is how it opens with an action sequence with the League of Assassins that merely gives an extended and uninteresting fight scene and keeps Batman off the screen for an extended time. I don’t know that it looks much better than the others, this time adopting a style that I would call “straight up anime.” It works for the story. Actually, the more I think on it, the less I am disappointed with Son of Batman. It loses a lot in the adaptation, but that feels inevitable with the sort of story it is based one. Similar things happened with All-Star Superman, though that movie did a better job maintaining the heart of the original.

The problems with the first two do mostly lie at the feet of the material. Flashpoint and that Justice League stories are just not very good. No matter how much they work them up, they remain not very good. Son of Batman, though, highlights the greater problem. The Morrison Batman run strongly embraced the more fun or weird parts of Batman’s history, and the adaptation scrubs that out to realign it with the usual grim take on the character. The disappointment with Son of Batman is more mourning a missed opportunity. Together, these three movies sapped a good portion of my goodwill toward DC’s animated movies. It has been a long slow fall from the heights of the DC animated universe to these tepid New 52 adaptations and I’m no longer interested. It looks like they have a Justice League Vs Teen Titans movie coming up, which doesn’t appear to be based on any story I know and then they get to scrape the bottom of the barrel to do The Killing Joke. There was a time I was eager to see what new animated movie they had coming out, but now realize that I no longer care.

Justice League The Flashpoint Paradox **

Justice League War **

Son of Batman ***

Fire Emblem Fates Birthright

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When faced with the poorly explained choice between Fire Emblem Fates’ Birthright or Conquest versions, I went with Birthright. Given how the differences were explained, Conquest is that game the more closely fit with how I’ve played the series. I am just about as much of an old fan of Fire Emblem as exists in North America. I started with Sacred Stones, but quickly went back to play the first two GBA games, the fist using a translation patch and emulator, the only time I’ve actually completed a game that way. I’ve stuck with the series since, only failing to really enjoy the DS game. I liked Awakening, but I felt like it changed a little too much of the series core in an effort to expand the series fan base.

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It makes sense that when Nintendo explained what the differences between the two versions were that I would go with Conquest. Birthright was supposed to be more like Awakening; Conquest was the throwback to the early games in the series. There was one big change that I really wanted to keep, though: the world map. I started with Sacred Stones, the first game to try an Awakening like pivot for the series, but it was too rushed and too easy to have the impact that Awakening did. Still, a lot of the changes to Awakening were tried out for the first time in Sacred Stones. While I would agree that Sacred Stones is far from the best game in the series, its changes to the series’ structure were good. As much as I want an experience like Path of Radiance, I’d rather have some of the niceties of the modern games. Still, the choice for which one to buy (first, since I am going to be playing Conquest as soon as I finish with Birthright) came down to the fact that I prefer Birthright’s White and Red color scheme to Conquest’s Black and Purple.

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Honestly, I was pleasantly surprised by the game. Even Birthright pulls back from the cakewalk that Awakening was. There are some big changes to the pair up mechanic that stop it from completely wrecking the game’s difficulty curve. Now combo attacks always happen unless characters are paired up. Pairing up is now a defensive maneuver. It blocks enemy combo attacks and occasionally blocks main attacks. In Awakening there was no reason not to pair up, in Fates it is a situational tool. Not pairing up allows the player to combo and press the attack, pairing stops the enemy from doing the same. It turns a broken mechanic into an interesting one.

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The other big change to the formula is that they removed weapon durability. At first I thought this would simplify the game too much; judicious use of powerful weapons was an integral part of the series. The change was worked into the game perfectly. Now even the best weapons can have significant downsides and super powerful weapons are harder to find. It makes for fewer decisions for the player, but more important ones. The new weapon system really won me over by about the midpoint of the game.

It does continue the series strong focus on characters. The plot never moves past generic fantasy fluff, but the real draw is in the support conversations between the characters that make up your army. The start in out in pretty stereotypical roles, but the strong localization work really helps flesh out the collection of stock characters. The furor over this game’s localization is equal parts annoying and amusing to me. It is annoying because people who have done excellent work are getting yelled at by idiots; it is amusing because of how impotent those idiots have proven to be. Fire Emblem Fates looked like Nintendo taking a hard turn into some otaku jerkoff bullshit and the NA version deftly smoothed out the roughest, grossest parts of it, causing a teapot tempest of man-baby outrage. When the dust settled, intelligence won out and FE Fates was the best-selling game in the series in its first month. It is always good to see good work rewarded. Far from being a problem with the game the quality of the Fire Emblem Fates localization, like with nearly every game Nintendo’s Treehouse group translates, is one of its strongest features.

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I will always miss the incredibly charming sprites from the GBA games, but Birthright is one of the strongest games in the series to date. Now it’s time to find out if its supposedly more difficult counterpart is just as good.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Review

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My expectations may have been too high going into Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. Those high hopes came from how much I’ve enjoyed previous Tina Fey/Robert Carlock collaborations. 30 Rock is one of the all-time great TV comedies and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is easily the best Netflix Original show so far. The hopes of a movie of similar quality were enough to get me excited about the movie. In the end, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot disappointed, but only slightly. It is too funny to be really serious and too respectful to be as funny as it could have been. WFT is a mildly funny, somewhat thoughtful film that treads fairly familiar ground.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot stars Tina Fey as Kim Baker, a fictionalized version of Kim Barker upon whose memoir this movie is based, a news journalist who takes a job as a war correspondent in Afghanistan. As she spends a few years reporting on the war she grows more and more acclimatized to the strange reality of living in a foreign war zone, especially one that becomes somewhat forgotten with the Iraq War going on at the same time. She meets and befriends British reported Tanya Vanderpoel (Margot Robbie) and Scottish photographer Ian McKelpie (Martin Freeman) who share her experiences.

The movie doesn’t stay with any of its myriad ideas long enough to explore them fully. Kim deals with an ostentatiously corrupt official, played by Alfred Molina, but the film doesn’t really dig into him any more than that. The same goes for gruff marine General Holanek (Billy Bob Thornton) with whom Kim is embedded. When the film is flitting from focus to focus is captures some of the manic energy of 30 Rock but that doesn’t pair well with the more serious thoughtful scenes, making for an uneven experience. There are glimpses of a great film here, both an uproarious comedy and somber drama, but mostly the movie is just okay.

The strongest thread in the film is how it treats the warzone like an addiction. In order to continue to get her pieces on the air back in America, Kim has to keep getting closer and closer to the danger. They explicitly say she needs another hit. That, with the party atmosphere in the house where all the foreign correspondents stay, doesn’t seem too off base. Eventually, seeing the toll this life takes on a person she is forced to make a decision. That is definitely stronger than the romance between Kim and Ian, which almost works mostly thanks to Martin Freeman’s innate charm.

While it doesn’t quite succeed, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is still an entertaining movie. It is well intentioned, if a bit clumsy; it is competent. That is not the adjective that any film wants, competent, but it is more than many achieve.

***

What I Read February 2016

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I got a lot of reading done in February, but I doubt I’ll manage a similar feat in March. It was mostly fantasy, a genre I’ve always loved but have drifted away from somewhat in the last few years. Drifted away from reading, but not so much from acquiring. I’ve ended up with quite the stack of unread fantasy doorstops, so I’ve started wading through them. Actually, most of those I read this month were either recent purchases or digital books. Still, I cut down my reading list quite a bit.

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Glamour in Glass

Mary Robinette Kowall

I read the first book in this series a couple of years ago and found I liked it better in theory than in practice. I liked the concept of a fantasy novel that is set up like a classical romance. Really, I like everything about it but that romance. Something about it didn’t ring true to me; I’m having trouble recalling at this point. I liked this sequel a lot more. It continues the story, but here I can just accept the central couple.

This is set in the 18th century (maybe early 19th) and Jane and Vincent take a trip to Europe to study Glamour, their shared passion. While there they make some progress with research about how to trap the illusion of Glamour so it can be moved. However, they are stopped when Jane becomes pregnant and can’t do Glamour any more. While that strains her relationship with Vincent, it is nothing on the encroaching return of Napoleon to France. This is not a particularly long book, but its two central characters are very well drawn. And it feels to come more naturally from the characters than the first book did. It also sets up more for the series going forward than the largely stand-alone first book did. This was a very good read.

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The Glass Magician

Charlie N Holmberg

The problem I had with the first book in this series, The Paper Magician, was that it seemed to move a little too fast to its climax. It didn’t give the reader enough time to get to know its central characters before expecting an emotional connection for the big finale. Basically, my problem was that the book was too short, which isn’t the worst problem to have. I enjoyed reading it very much even if it didn’t leave me fully satisfied. The sequel mostly fixes the first book’s problem by not having to introduce all the characters. I ended up liking this one quite a bit more than the first and I’m eager to get to the third one.

In this one, Ceony and Emery have to deal with an even greater threat than last time, this time focused on Ceony instead of Emery. While the elder magicians work to keep her safe, Ceony blunders into trouble that makes things worse. You know, basically how every Harry Potter book goes. Not that this book owes much more to that series other than the concept of a magic school, it certainly does its own thing. Ceony ends up uncovering information that could change everything people understand about magic. The Glass Magician is an improvement on its predecessor, though I would still like a bit more.

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The Bands of Mourning

Brandon Sanderson

There is a lot about this book that I like. I like how it gets out of Elendel and how it expands the Mistborn world. Unfortunately, those things happen in a book with some incredibly obvious plotting and one of the most painful supposedly comedic scenes I’ve ever encountered.

The plotting is the bigger problem. Every twist in this book isn’t so much foreshadowed as they are immediately obvious. It plays out exactly how you’d expect. I expect more from Sanderson, this book is just limp. The bad comedy scene is a bad comedy scene. It was reminiscent of his attempts to write Mat in his first book of the Wheel of Time series. That was a character known for being funny and Sanderson failed completely to get that across. Most of the character work in this book is good, but it still left me pretty disappointed. That said, I am still eager to get the final part of this trilogy. This is the first book by Sanderson that I would call a miss, but it wasn’t a bad miss.

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Striding Folly

Dorothy Sayers

This short story collection contains the last of Dorothy Sayer’s Peter Wimsey stories. There are still plenty that I haven’t read, but these are chronologically the last ones. It’s just three short stories, but they are interesting ones. The first is just the usual murder mystery, starting with the set-up and a brief investigation before Wimsey wanders in and solves the mystery. The next one is more involved, with Lord Peter leaving the hospital after the birth of his first child and he happens across a bemused police officer. He has witnessed what he thought was a murder. The two of them get drunk and he explains what he saw, which is enough information for Lord Peter to get to the bottom of things. The last story is only barely a mystery, being set several years later and it deals mostly with Lord Peter and his oldest child. There is a mystery, but it is about as low stakes as possible. Still it is an entertaining read.

The most interesting thing about this collection is that two of the three stories don’t have crimes at the center of them. This is going to spoil both stories, by the way. The first is more a prank than anything else, though a convincing one that gets a hapless police officer in trouble. The second is mostly about how Lord Peter disciplines his children.

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Red Seas Under Red Skies

Scott Lynch

I really enjoyed the first book in this series, but this one does not quite live up to it. It is two different books mashed together, with the connecting tissue between them not being exactly strong. It starts well, picking up some time after the first book, The Lies of Locke Lamora, with Locke and Jean in a new city running a new con. As they painstakingly set up their heist, their past catches up with them and they are forced to work for the cities Archon against his enemies. It sets up a good struggle, with the protagonists trying to free themselves from his control while not messing up their other scheme. Then the Archon decides that he needs to send the two of them out to be pirates, despite them not being trained as seamen. What follows is a sequence with them acting as pirates. It’s not bad, but it does take Locke and Jean far away from their more interesting other plots. It all comes together for an ending that doesn’t serve either side particularly well.

I still enjoyed the book quite a bit. While it strays from the books strengths, the best new characters appear in that pirate portion. At times it is a lot of fun even if it feels pointless. And Locke and Jean remain an excellent pair of rogues. I received both this book and its sequel for Christmas and I will be getting to that sequel sooner rather than later.

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The Complete Peanuts Volume 3

Charles Schulz

This was part of a Christmas gift, where I got volumes 3 through 6. This is still early Peanuts, but it is just about perfect. It nails that Peanuts tone of somewhat mopey nostalgia; combining silly animal jokes with some dark existential fretting. It’s really good, but you know that. I don’t know how much else I have to add. I guess it’s worth noting that these collections from Fantagraphics are really nice. The books feel good and they come in nice slipcases. The outsides are as nice as the insides.

Now Playing in February 2016

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I spent a lot of time with my 3DS in February, but not so much with either of my home consoles. It looks to be the same for the next few months with the wealth of 3DS rpgs hitting now or in the near future. I am also happily surprised with myself that I am staying on top of my SNES deep dive.

Beaten

Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam – see here.

The Death and Return of Superman – see here.

Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninjas – see here.

Prince of Persia –

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I initially intended to have a full post about this game, but in the end I don’t think I actually had that much to say about the game. I wanted to like it, but it has some pretty glaring flaws. Like how the story ends completely unresolved. It actually ends up being something of a shaggy dog story, albeit one that is fun to play. Fun, but far from perfect. For about the first half of the game I thought it was suffering from some bad input lag, and then I learned how the game worked. It isn’t really an action game; it is more of a rhythm game. There are only four possible actions to take and the intricate looking platforming is just recognizing which button you need to press. The game will play out that action when it is necessary, which isn’t always immediately. Until how it works clicks it can be frustrating. When things are going well it looks great, but it really isn’t that engaging to play. It just sort of goes with minimal player input. Maybe the old Prince of Persia games were the same, but this one was somehow everything I wanted and still largely unsatisfying.

Ongoing

Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright –

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I don’t want to go on too long about this game, since I am currently writing up a full blog post about it, but there are some things worth mentioning. In that post I’ll go on longer about how excellent the localization is. The fact that Treehouse’s work here has come under fire is frankly ridiculous. Nintendo excising some embarrassing otaku wankbait from their own game is not censorship, and by all reputable accounts they have done a marvelous job polishing a pretty pedestrian story. Also, there was some struggle for me to decide with version to buy, because I thought it made more sense to start with the easier game and learn this entry’s particulars than to do that with the hard one. I was always going to play both or all three, I guess. Lastly, this game is really good. The disappointing DS game seems so long ago now.

Codename STEAM – see here. This one is likely going on the shelf for a while, because my 3DS looks to be pretty busy for the next few months.

Final Fantasy Explorers –

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This has all the ingredients of something I would really like. I’m a big fan of Monster Hunter and of the Crystal Chronicles games, both of which have similarities to this. And while I didn’t play this enough to give it a fair and complete judgement, through the first three hours it just feels sloppy. The Final Fantasy nostalgia does not appear to have been applied with much though, it’s just kind of there. It’s got the names and the look, but not the feel of Final Fantasy. The gameplay is structured like MH, but it is loose and unsatisfying. The bosses don’t feel like dangerous obstacles to overcome, but inert damage sponges that just take way too long to kill. I might have more to say if I ever find more time to play this, but it has been put at the bottom of a very long list.

Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations – I played through the first two cases of this Phoenix Wright finale. It has just as much verve and energy as I remembered. I really need to go reread what I said about the first two games, but this one really starts with a bang. The first case is especially tight, introducing this game’s central players while also quickly teaching new players how to play the game. I’ve actually forgotten most of the details of these cases, so it is almost like experiencing them for the first time again. On an unrelated note, I hope a miracle occurs and we get the Sherlock Ace Attorney game. It seems unlikely, but a man can dream.

Lufia and the Fortress of Doom – The more I play this the less I feel like it was something I missed back in the day. I don’t want to damn it, especially when I am only through the first quarter or so of the game, but so far there is little here to recommend this game over any of the classic SNES JRPGs. It seems to be the very definition of a by the books jrpg, like a Dragon Quest game with the charm drained out of it. It still isn’t quite bad, but spectacularly unspectacular.

Yakuza 5 – I’ve barely scratched the surface here, but already system improvements from the previous PS3 games are evident. It also does the smart thing and starts the player as Kazuma. I like splitting the game up among a handful of protagonists, but Yakuza 4 kept Kazuma out of it for way too long. I’ve barely played this enough to get a handle on the what the game is going to be about, but this series never disappoints.

Upcoming

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD – I’ve got this on preorder, but I just played the game last year, so I might not be that quick to jump into it. Damn that amazon prime preorder discount. Still, I am pretty excited to argue with people about Zelda after this release and some games’ reputations shift. (I’ll still be repping Skyward Sword as one of the top games in the series) The WiiU has quietly become quite the Zelda playing machine. If only it had downloadable versions of the DS games.

Return to Popolocrois – Again with the Amazon Prime discount. I played through most of the PSP Popolocrois game and found it charming if dated. This one, which is a Harvest Moon Story of Seasons crossover game, looks to keep the charm and hopefully lose some of the oldness. It does have the misfortune to come out in the midst of a deluge of 3DS RPGs of sorts, having to compete with the likes of FE Fates, Bravely Second, Mario & Luigi Paper Jam and Hyrule Warriors. Not all of those are straight RPGs (and it’s probably really stretching to include Hyrule Warriors) but it does make for some pretty crowded territory for Popolocrois. I hope it finds an audience.

Fire Emblem Fates Conquest & Revelations – There are two more paths in this game. The first one already took me about 40 hours to beat; I can’t wait to spend another 80 with it. I took the easy path first, which was good because it took me a long time to grasp the changed pair up mechanic.

Mega Man Legacy Collection – I’m not intending to spend a lot of time playing this, I mostly bought to support a worthy venture. This is how more people should do classic game compilations. I am happy to have a near pixel perfect version of some of the best games ever to play on the go.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West – I picked this up on a PSN sale. It looks great. I don’t know if I’ll actually have time to get to it, but hope springs eternal.

Super Mario RPG – This is the next game for my SNES project, after I finish with Lufia. Then I’ll be forced to get into the shooters before coming back for some more RPGs. This is probably the most well-known game I’m playing for this SNES celebration, but somehow I’ve never found the time to put much time into it.

What I Watched in February 2016

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Movies

Jane Eyre – This is a good adaptation of one of my favorite classic novels. Fassbender and Wasikowski give really good performances as the lead characters and it is moody without being completely oppressive. Like all adaptations, it is missing some things from the book that I love, but it is still a very good version of this story that retains the core. ****

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – review here. **1/2

Hail, Caesar! – review here. ****1/2

Zoolander 2 – review here. **1/2

Snowpiercer – This is an amazing film. The world it presents is just so weird and awful that it is hard not to get caught up in the protagonists’ quest. It’s got some really great action scenes and Tilda Swinton is perfectly awful as the villain early in the film. You should see this movie. ****1/2

Man of Steel – I rewatched this because with Batman v Superman coming up people are letting fly remembering how shitty it was, which didn’t match my recollection. While I have some fundamental problems with this version of Superman, this is still a largely enjoyable movie. If it weren’t for the pointlessly destructive fight at the end and the worst possible Pa Kent, I would call it damn good. ***1/2

Deadpool – review here. **1/2

The Wolverine – This movie oscillates between being a somewhat thoughtful, interesting superhero adventure and the goddamned dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. It comes really close to being the Wolverine solo movie that everyone has wanted since the first X-Men movie, but the last big action scene is just painfully bad and stupid. The rest is too somber for a the campy action movie it is and too stupid for the mournful action drama it wants to be. I might be tickled to see Wolverine give himself open heart surgery while people swordfight on top of him, but it is really, really dumb. ***

The Punisher (2004) – It is a bloody, violent cartoon. It is set up much like a call back to revenge movies of the 70s and 80s, but it also has a lot of Western overtones. But it is just too stupid to really pull it off. The darkness of it is constantly offset by stupid one liners and clownish characters. Not much to recommend here. *1/2

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny – see review here.  ***

TV

Marco Polo – This show has a lot going for it, from a great concept to really high production levels, but it just isn’t that good. The protagonist doesn’t quite sell the emotion and the show takes way too long to establish its characters. It sort of meanders through some vaguely interesting scenarios without ever really giving anything any personal stakes. I think Netflix renewed it for a second season, I hope they work out some of the kinks.

Mad Men S7 Part 2 – If I didn’t know that everything I would want to write about this show has already been written I would try to examine this show in depth. It is worth it, but it has also been done and by better writers than me. This last batch of episodes is an odd yet oddly perfect ending to the show. It gives the characters an ending without actually making it an ending because life goes on. I like to think that Don has found some peace by the end of the series, after spending the whole show avoiding the lie that has defined his life. Great, great stuff.

Poirot S7-9 – This show gets a lot stronger when the episode length gets trimmed by about ten minutes here. It just feels snappier. I don’t know that I have much more to say about this show. Its good.

Broadchurch S1 – It plays out its mystery slowly, really letting the viewer come to know each character and formulate theories about who the killer is. Broadchurch succeeds more on the quality of its performers than anything else, though. It probably didn’t help my enjoyment that I saw the somewhat mediocre American remake first, but I liked this well enough that I’ll be back for what I’ve heard is the disappointing second series.

Fuller House – Terrible, corny schmaltz. It isn’t even on the level of the original series, which was never good but did occasionally provide some corny entertainment. This is incredibly badly, lazily written. The bones are here for a moderately good show and all the adult stars are capable, but the material and the children really let them down. Those with fond memories of the show should likely check out the first episode, but know that miserable half hour is the pinnacle of the series.

Supergirl – This show isn’t quite Flash good, but it is charming and Melissa Benoist is amazing. The first episode after the initial 13 order felt like a little bit of a realignment, which I think this show needs. It has a few too many characters that aren’t really connected.

The Flash – Hoo boy, this months’ worth of episodes were something else. While the Zoom story in this season is turning out to be an inferior retread of last season’s Reverse Flash, the individual episodes have been largely very good. Take the most recent one, where the Flash faced off with King Shark. It was amazing to see King Shark on TV, but it was also just another monster of the week episode. The Earth 2 episodes, though, were great. I can’t wait to see this one come down the home stretch.

Arrow – This is turning into a bounce back season after the disappointing last season, but it still isn’t on the level of The Flash. The Vixen episode was pretty good, but the quality of this season is going to hinge on how well the central arc with Damian Darhk is tied up by the end. I do have to say that the flashbacks have become incredibly pointless and disconnected from everything else. I hope they drop them entirely next season.

Agent Carter – I missed the last two episodes, but the rest of this mini-series has been excellent. I don’t know that I like it as much as Supergirl, but it is more focused and it is certainly better than Agents of SHIELD.

DC Legends of Tomorrow – This show is not good in any real sense. It provides remarkable action on a TV show budget and has a handful of performers who are just a blast to watch, but it doesn’t really feel like doing anything with all of its characters. It has lots of action and brings in an absolutely absurd number of great concepts, but a lot of the plotting feels like unfocused wheel spinning. Really, it is the TV equivalent of a middle of the road crossover event. While I acknowledge its flaws, I am still enjoying the crap out of this show. It is some great cheesey entertainment.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny

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Another sequel to a fifteen year old movie, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny is a pale shadow of the original. But the original was a pretty great movie, leaving a lot of space for this one to be a pretty good follow up. Again, it has to do with the sword Green Destiny and the attempts of various people to gain control of this powerful sword. The only returning character from the first movie is Michelle Yeoh’s Yu Shu Lien and the rest are new, though many of them have connections to characters from the first movie. Sword of Destiny lacks much of the previous film’s complexity, being a much more straightforward melodrama. The finely choreographed fights and some beautiful scenery help to buoy somewhat leaden dialogue. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny is weightless but attractive.

Released via Netflix on February 26th, Sword of Destiny continues the story of the Green Sword. After its protector dies, Yu Shu Lien comes to pay her respects to an old friend. While there, an attempt is made to steal the sword. Two thieves, Snow Vase and Wei-Fang, fight over the sword and end up captured. He is sent to a cage and she begs Shu Lien to train her. Finding out that the evil Hades Dai is after the sword, Shu Lien’s presumed dead, by the hand of Hades Dai no less, ex-lover Silent Wolf recruits a group of warriors to help protect the sword.

The story is melodrama and not especially deft melodrama, but it is reasonably effective. Sword of Destiny is at its worst when it is deliberately echoing the first film, since it can only suffer from direct comparison. However, it soars when it steps out of the first movies shadow. The scene where Silent Wolf goes looking for recruits is a highlight, playing out with a more comedic bent as it introduces a quintet of idiosyncratic martial arts masters. It turns into something like a riff on Seven Samurai. However, the repeated tale of thwarted love feels lacking. The same goes for the recitation of the younger protagonists’ tragic pasts. That Sword of Destiny coalesces into a more straightforward action story, while slightly disappointing, is to its benefit because it succeeds on those terms quite well.

Sword of Destiny smartly keeps the action coming quickly, spacing out some of the limp drama with very well-choreographed fights. The aforementioned recruitment scene is a highlight, as is a three way fight on a frozen lake that sees all combatants sliding around on the ice. Again, I don’t know that the fights are quite as good as the first movie (I can’t say for sure because it’s been a decade since I’ve seen it), they are all highly entertaining.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny seems stuck in a miserable place. It likely only got made because of its connection to the highly successful Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but what is most damaging to this movie is the inevitable comparisons to the easily superior original. It will be judged against that movie and be found wanting. Judged on its own merits, it is still not spectacular, but it is a fun, lightweight movie. I don’t know, I know it is an inferior movie, but I am having a hard time separating that fact from how much I actually enjoyed watching this.

***

25 SNES #5: The Death and Return of Superman

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The plan was for the next entry in this series to be an RPG, either the fairly lengthy one I am no halfway through (Lufia) or the relatively brief one I’ve queued up next (Super Mario RPG), but by the two thirds point of the month it was clear that wasn’t going to work out, so instead I switched to another brief game; The Death and Return of Superman. 

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When I went searching for some SNES deep cuts to help get me to twenty-five games for the year, the one really surprising game I occasionally saw on best of lists was The Death and Return of Superman.  Most of the others I was familiar with even if I hadn’t had the chance to play them. This was a licensed title that had completely slipped past me. Usually that sort of thing does bode well, but Death and Return of Superman is a perfectly fine game.  It is very much of a product of the 90’s and hasn’t aged particularly well, but there is plenty of interest here and the game plays just fine.

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Like the majority of licensed games in this era, Death and Return of Superman is a beat-em-up. Superman goes left to right and punches dudes until he gets to a boss; repeat as necessary. It has some of the usual flaws with this sort of game.  The levels aren’t particularly interesting and there simply aren’t enough enemy types.  It eventually gets old traveling through similar looking enemies punching the same 5 guys in the face.  Still, there is something satisfying about it as well. The best sorts of beat-em-ups don’t overstay their welcome, being both fairly brief and fast paced.  The Death and Return of Superman’s levels tend to go on a little too long, but the game itself is about the right length.

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In some ways it feels designed with home consoles in mind, in some ways it feels like the worst sort of quarter munching arcade game. One point against it is that it is single player only.   Likely a concession to making it play well on the SNES.  There isn’t much slowdown and the sprites look good. As I said earlier, the game could do with more enemy types, but the ones here look pretty nice.  The game also has five different playable characters, giving some variety to the game.  Unfortunately, the different characters all play just about the same.  They have the same basic set of moves and there doesn’t appear to be any difference in their strength or speed.  It mostly just ends up being different sprites.  Another problem is just how repetitive the bosses can be.  They can level the player in a few hits and don’t really do anything interesting.

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Still, it is an enjoyable experience if a flawed on.  I really liked how the game actually tried to tell a story.  In fact, I prefer this telling to the comics.  While the comic story this is based on is a famous one, it is not a very good one.  It is a better idea for a story than an actual story.  That is why the player changes character so frequently.  You start as Superman, who runs through a couple of levels before fighting Doomsday and dying.  Then four replacement Supermen show up to try to take his place: Cyborg Superman, Superboy, The Eradicator and Steel.  The comic played it as a mystery of just who was the real Superman, only for none of them to turn out to be.  The game runs through the plot in a handful of levels, with the player taking the role over whatever Superman is necessary at the time.  It works, and makes for an interesting set up.  It also helps that Superman feels like Superman. He may go down like a chump to the bosses, but he flies and punches with power and has his heat vision.

It is a good game.  A run through of takes no more than an hour and a half to two hours and it is decently entertaining the whole time.  It could really do with a two player mode, but I don’t have a second player to play with anyway.  It might be the best Superman game, but that says more about the other games to bear his name than anything about this one.  The Death and Return of Superman is a serviceable beat-em-up that at least appears to be trying to do something interesting even if it doesn’t completely succeed.

Deadpool Review

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Deadpool released to acclaim and massive success, I assume surprising anyone who watched any of its dire trailers. The reception is a bit mystifying to me. Deadpool isn’t a bad film, but it really does nothing that viewers haven’t seen before. Maybe that isn’t quite true; viewers haven’t seen a superhero movie that quite earns an R rating like this one, other than maybe Watchmen. The rest follows familiar threads with a star that is somewhat more violent and interested in telling jokes before.

Aside from all the foul language, blood and some nudity, this is essentially the same superhero origin movie you’ve seen a dozen times before. While they attempt to disguise it with some flashbacks, this is the same plot as Batman Begins and Iron Man, among others. Wade Wilson is a former Special Forces operative who is diagnosed with cancer. To spare his girlfriend having to watch him waste away, he joins up with a group that claims they can cure his cancer and give him superpowers. When they unsurprisingly turn out to be bad guys, Wade engineers an escape and sets out for revenge. It executes that plot well, but it is a tired one. It also tries to hang its hat on Deadpool’s jokes, which isn’t that novel either. Being a joker is pretty much Iron Man’s whole shtick. Deadpool’s sense of humor tends to be more of the Family Guy non sequitur variety, but it is the same dynamic at play. It is significantly more bloody and violent than other superhero movies, which I guess could move the needle for some people.

Where the movie succeeds is with Reynolds take on the titular character. The material occasionally fails him, but he delivers his lines with some great comic rhythm and timing. The movie is at its best in the action scenes, with Deadpool in costume living up to his reputation as the “merc with a mouth.” Unfortunately, that takes up a surprisingly small amount of the runtime. Much more time is wasted on showing who he was before he became Deadpool, an unoriginal and uninteresting story. Still, the fighting is largely very good. The only real part where the fighting falters is with the fact that the important combatants are basically invincible. Deadpool, the villains Angel and Ajax, and the X-Man Colossus all wail on each other to little effect until the plot calls for it.

Colossus is another point of contention. He looks terrible, and the part they have him play isn’t much better. The special effects are mostly unobtrusive, except for one big silver cartoon on the screen. They really could have pulled any X-Man out of a hat to play that role, which is just to be the butt of some of Deadpool’s jokes, and they really should have chosen one that wouldn’t have looked so cheap and just plain bad on the screen.

Still, Deadpool kind of works. Most of that is due to Reynolds, but it delivers enough laughs and excitement to not be a complete waste. The fawning reactions it has garnered will continue to baffle me, but I can’t say it is completely undeserving.

**1/2

Codename STEAM

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I don’t think I could love the setting and look of a game more than I love that of Codename STEAM. Set in an alternate 19th century, it stars a variety of characters from tall tales and literature, who team up using steampunk weapons to fight cthulhu monsters. All led by Abraham Lincoln and his Lincoln mech. The characters designs are reminiscent of Jack Kirby (actually, it might be more like Mike Mignola) comics and the graphics are some fine cell shaded goodness. It is such a shame that the game is chore to play.

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Really, it comes absurdly close to being excellent. There are just a few problems that derail the whole experience. In theory the game plays much like Sega’s PS3 masterpiece Valkyria Chronicles. It is a strategy game where each character’s turn plays out a little more like a shooter. It doesn’t translate perfectly to the 3DS’s one stick set up (I don’t have a New 3DS, which might alleviate this small problem) but using the touch screen for aiming is functional. The first big problem is that the game features no map. In Valkyria Chronicles the game gives the player a map of which to formulate strategies. Even Intelligent Systems’s, the developer of Codename STEAM, other strategy game Fire Emblem let’s players see the whole map before making their moves. Codename STEAM only lets the player see from each unit’s perspective in a tight over the shoulder view. It makes it all but impossible to determine the best course of action.

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That is a small problem and one that can be overcome with just a little bit of annoyance. The real problem is with the game’s turn system. It is set off of each party member carrying a steam tank on their back. They can store and use only so much Steam. This means that the player has to balance moving and attacking and storing up steam for counterattacks or the next turn. The only problem is that holding enough steam for counterattacks means barely moving on your turn. Enemies seem to be able to move much farther and attack more often than the player. To have any chance, the player has to plan around counter attacks, which slows the game to an intolerable crawl. This is made worse on maps with the little drone enemies that call in mortar attacks on squad members close enough to attract their attention. That means moving as far as possible, which means no counterattacks.

When the system works, it works really well. There are maps where it just clicks and provides a tense, strategic experience. Each character is unique enough that knowing them and their individual strengths helps to inform the player’s strategies. For example Lion, the Cowardly Lion from Oz, can perform a jumping attack that gets him around certain obstacles. That allows for pincer attacks and the like. Tom Sawyer can fire his weapon many times, though it only does a little damage. That makes him great for scouting and stunning enemies. Too bad things do not work smoothly all that often. Often situations spiral out of control with little the player can do to stop them. It ceases being about making good tactical decision and becomes about already knowing what is coming next.

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Despite all of its flaws, I still think I kind of like this game. I am putting it away for now, a little over halfway through, but I expect to come back to it after the spring rush of 3DS RPGs is over. It is a noble experiment for Nintendo to invest in a new property, too bad it didn’t work out as well as Splatoon did. It seems unlikely, but I would meet a sequel to this game with open arms. The problems with this game could easily be fixed with just a few tweaks and then Nintendo would have another strategy series to set next to Fire Emblem and Advance Wars.