Movie Review: Prometheus (2012)

Ridley Scott's ALIEN films have been a grand source of entertainment for me, exposing me to the interesting works of Swiss artist H.R. Giger.  It was his art that inspired the shape of the Xenomorph, the primary antagonist of the ALIEN franchise.  Science fiction writer Dan O'Bannon provided the screenplay, allowing for the atmosphere and many of the thrills, mystery and suspense of the film.  Later writers (namely the franchise's proper writers David Giller and Walter Hill) and directors (The Avengers' Joss Whedon, Titanic's James Cameron) left their mark on the franchise, with a mixed bag of results.  Mr. Scott's latest outing with the ALIEN franchise, Prometheus touches on the background story of a very important but little-explored race of extraterrestrials who are intertwined with the Xenomorph: their indirect creators.

These indirect creators are referred to as "Engineers" by Drs. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), archaeologists that find connections between several ancient cultures on Earth that all point to a grouping of stars in the heavens.  They have interpreted it to be the location of the homeworld of mankind's creators--their Engineers.  They soon pack their bags and join a crew for an interstellar flight on the starship "Prometheus" to the location indicated, funded by Weyland Industries (precursor to Weyland-Yutani Industries in the later ALIEN films) under the instruction of the hologram of the late Charles Weyland (Guy Pierce) and mission director Meridith Vickers (Charlize Theron).  They find a planet with a moon, marked as LV-223, in 2096 and land to investigate the strange structures found on long-range scans.  Their findings reveal that the structures are ancient and abandoned alien spacecraft, and that something that left behind a litter of alien humanoid corpses and several cylinders filled with an animate black liquid.  A sensible group of people would simply walk away and fly back home, but David (Michael Fassbender)--an android--has been secretly tasked to retrieve samples or a live specimen.  In his attempts to achieve his goals, hijinks ensue.

Strangers in the niiiight...exchanging glances....

It's safe to say that Mr. Fassbender steals the show even in light of Idris Elba's performance as Janek, captain of the "Prometheus".  Much of that has to do with the marketing campaign for the movie, which featured a character profile on the android.  It showed how complex of a creation he was, from interpreting different genres of art to complex mathematical and spatial computations.  When it came to concepts that would generally make a person sad (i.e., murder), David offered tears of sadness; when it came to accomplishing a task that his human counterparts would find unethical (ex.: violating a person's physical being in some manner) to achieve a goal, David stated that he would not have a problem doing such things.  These two examples of an incongruous and conflicting thought process along with a face devoid of emotion really sold the idea of Mr. Fassbender's android character.  Not bad for an 8th-generation Weyland Industries android fresh out of the box.

The film was sufficiently suspenseful, and entertaining as an exercise of human frailty and folly when faced with one of the most dangerous things in the cosmos: desire.

Cordoba Chronicles I: A Forward

This bit is to let you all know that the novella "Cordoba Chronicles IV: the Necromancer's Fury" was not written in a vacuum, and not without prior setup.

I created the fantasy world of Cordoba from 1994 to 1997 while attending high school at Design and Architecture Senior High, a magnet art school in Miami, FL.  It was in response to a lack of cool fantasy stories accessible to the mainstream audience.  I made a point to make something I wanted to see, and I figured that the big thing missing from the stories I liked and knew were the fact that there were no popular leading Black or dark-skinned characters.  They had popular Black supporting characters (sidekicks, rivals, mentors, love interests, etc.) but none that the average viewer would want to emulate, due to the lack of a leading role. These Black characters are not the center of a universe, and no story is told or experienced through their eyes. I decided to change that.

The story has a great number of influences. Cartoons, comics, science fiction, video games and action films were a big portion of my life prior to writing the Cordoba Chronicles, so a great deal of influence comes from them.

The short list reads like this:

• The graphic novels TITANS: Scissors, Paper, Stone, Ninja High School and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Book II
• the DC comic book Legionnaires (formerly Legion of Superheroes, rebooted after Zero Hour in 1994)
• CAPCOM's "Mega Man 2" and "Street Fighter 2010: the Final Fight"
• "Black Magic: M-66", "Bubblegum Crisis", "Appleseed", "AKIRA", and other Japanese animation films
• the American cartoons "Galaxy High School", "Beverly Hills Teens", "Jem", "Centurions: Power X-Treme", "Thundercats", Silverhawks", "Tigersharks", "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe", "Bravestarr", "Bionic Six", "Shirt Tales", "Dinosaucers", "The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers",
• the British cartoon "DangerMouse",
• the French cartoons "Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea" (AKA "Les Mondes Engloutis") and "Ulysses 31"
• Live action shows like "Ultraman", "Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future", and of course "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers"
• the Universal Pictures' "Action Pack" movie "Hercules and the Circle of Fire" starring Kevin Sorbo and the follow-up TV series "Hercules: the Legendary Journeys"
• the "Star Trek" TV series (TOS, TNG, DS9 and Voyager) and the original "Star Wars" trilogy (A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi)
• the movie "Conan the Destroyer"
• the 1980 movie "Flash Gordon"
• the movie "Passenger 57"
• the Japanese animation imports "Voltron: Defender of the Universe", "Transformers", "Robotech", "Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs", and "Mysterious Cities of Gold"

It goes without saying that I have a long-standing flirtation with Dungeons & Dragons (both the game and the cartoon), regardless of what people say.  I think I've said enough; I hope you enjoy Cordoba Chronicles I. Enjoy!

-swatson

Movie Review - Cherry 2000 (1987)

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Video Game Review - Crimson Tears (2004 - Sony Playstation2)

I am a big fan of the stuff that CAPCOM puts out. They have captured my attention since the days of Mega Man and Street Fighter 2010. I love their ideas and while I know that they only tolerate new ideas from the general poulace when making a new Mega Man villain, I'd still like to give them an idea or two. Here's my idea: make an action game in the vein of SEGA's Phantasy Star Online, but without the online part or the create-a-character part. It'd generally be a dungeon crawl, but without the crappiness of PK or online fees! It'd be brilliant!
Oh wait, they did that already? Crimson Tears? Never heard of it. Got to play it, and here's the review.

Set in futuristic cyberpunk Tokyo, three battle androids have escaped from a high-security facility because they stumbled on to some strange plot concocted by the evil corporation called ARMA. ARMA makes bio-weapons for the military, but something is amiss. The three rogue androids are out to put a stop to it, but they need to be stronger to do so. They set up camp in the city and traverse many levels to fight insane bosses to free not only themselves, but the entire city.
The three previously mentioned androids are Amber the ninja, Kadie the heavy blader and Tokio the gun master. Amber has dual melee weapon skills with swords and knives, but has poor hand-to-hand skills. Tokio can only use a few melee weapons, but he can use two guns at once a la Chow Yun-Fat. Despite Kadie's petite frame, she's the only one who can wield a buster sword. Their weapons, skills and combos can be upgraded to higher and higher levels and, in the case of weaponry, imbued with status effects or elemental effects. All of this is great and everything, but to give you just that would make the game far too easy to play. That's why the game designers decided to introduce the Heat Gauge.
The Heat Gauge measures how hot your android gets as it progresses through the game. When the gauge reaches maximum, the screen turns red and several things happen to your android. Your android can do max damage with every strike and runs twice as fast. While suffering from the status of being overheated(much different from the status effect "Overheat", which can be cured with "Overheat Cure" but not with "Coolant", which lowers your Heat Gauge and stops overheating), you take twice as much damage and your energy dwindles down to very little. If you're not careful, overheating can kill you. if you happen to survive a bout of overheating, your Heat Gauge will rest, but your HP meter will dwindle to 10% of max. It can be a bitch to keep your Heat Gauge down and your HP up and STILL have enough to deal with the enemies throughout the stages.

The enemies are where Crimson Tears really shines for me. I never thought that I would play a game where I'd fight not just ninjas and zombies, but zombie ninjas on top of that! Additionally, the enemies also level up along with you as the levels progress and eventually begin to use the same weapons you do. So, that scrubby soldier or robot you fought on stage 1 will be waiting for you on stage 4 and it'll have the strength to exact payback. And if you think that's tough, wait until you fight the Agent Smith-like "techno vampires" and the infamous "Mr. Black".
Bosses are strange and varied, and that's a good thing. From liquid ninjas to time-warping grim reapers, to the prerequisite evil characters with Biblical names [ex.: Abel and Eden] that are so common in Japanese sci-fi action, they all rock. That and they'll also mop the floor with you.
While quite entertaining when the enemy gets the drop on you, to the chore of getting every last item needed to create your ultimate weapon, Crimson Tears is not a game for the Madden and NBA Street set. Oddly, it CAN work for the Tekken set. Button-typing combos abound from this game, totally unrelated to the Konami game Crimson Sea or the Cliffhanger Comics title Crimson, but indirectly related to both Phantasy Star Online and the Ehrgeiz mini-game "The Forsaken Dungeon."


RATING: 8/10