The Deadspace video game may not have had an instant classic in terms of story, but overall it was executed pretty well with some good dialogue. The recordings sounded like genuinely freaked out people in the midst of a disaster, some of them a bit disturbing, and by the end of the game they have some classical psychological stuff going on as you realize the game has been messing with you a bit. Even outside of the recordings, the dialogue between the characters was real, and while some of it was cheesy it was overall pretty decent.

Doesn’t exactly hold the same for the animated feature.

Of course, it is also pretty apparent that the animated feature isn’t even written by the same guys. They likely wrote the outline, but they didn’t write the script. If they did, then they cared little for consistency. There are a couple of scenes in Downfall that you get to see in the game, only they occur differently. Often enough, the scene in the animated feature is much more dramatic. For example, the captain seems to be going completely paranoid and insane in the film, whereas in the game he seems much more cool and calm. He is simply too obsessed with what he feels is his duty to do what is right for the crew.

The entire film also seems to move way too quick compared to how events seem to have played out according to the game. Listening to the audio logs from the ship’s crew, it sounds as if the alien infection spread much more slowly than a couple of hours. There were crew members reporting odd growth in certain sections of the ship, the doctors having to take care of many injured from both the colony and the ship, crew trying to send a signal out for help but getting cut off by the captain, and even crew capable of fighting back. The movie, meanwhile, would have you believe the crew got taken by surprise and fell immediately, going down in just a couple of hours.

One of my biggest issues with Deadspace: Downfall is the writing. In a lot of ways it could be pretty decent, but for some reason they just insist on using foul language to a ridiculous extent. Now, I’m no prude. I love Quentin Tarantino movies just as much as anyone, but there’s some point where swearing so much just begins to sound fake and forced. It could be the writing, it could be the voice acting, it could be both. However, they simply used a lot of foul language for the sake of using foul language. Same goes with the gore content. There are some shots that seem as if they were used because hey, blood is cool, right? They go so far as to have a scene in a locker room just to show a bunch of people get killed. They are not important characters at all, and only appeared for the sake of dying. It didn’t even reveal anything new about the alien monsters to anyone not yet familiar with the game. It had absolutely no purpose.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that the animated movie is bad. If you have played Dead Space, I would say give it a watch. I would not advise watching it beforehand, though, as it will give you a false impression of how certain things work or went down in the game. Still, it is interesting to see elements from the game used in the film, as well as provide some extra fluff and understanding. However, a second viewing simply makes all of the film’s flaws much more obvious.

If that wasn’t enough of a reason to give it a rent, the DVD is also incredibly poor. The only special features are some trailers for the game and the DVD itself. There is nothing on the making of the film, working on adapting elements of the game into the film, or of the Dead Space universe. It is a cheap DVD that should be in the $6.99 bin at Wal-Mart.

Play Deadspace, and if you want give it a rent. Just don’t spend any real money on it.

By now you should be aware that Robotech is one of them things I be lovin’. While at this stage I would never choose to watch it over the original Macross television show, it still holds a fond place in my heart. When I was a young’un, I knew all about violence and death, and could easily spot when a television show was trying to fool us kids with parachutes and friendly terms like “send you to another dimension”. Yet Robotech was the first show that didn’t play around. Parachutes weren’t launched as a plane blew up. People died every episode, and they made sure you knew.

It treated me as an intelligent human being, not a dumb little twat wanting an animated toy commercial.

So along comes Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles, Harmony Gold’s attempt to cash in on its twenty-to-thirty-something year old fanbase by providing an “ending” to the show and some blood and foul language to match the age of the audience.

Somehow they took the unique feeling of Robotech, which didn’t feel like “just another anime”, and made it “just another anime…in space”.

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I have left my blog malnourished long enough, but I hope to keep it well fed in the coming weeks as plenty of games are releasing, meaning there is plenty to discuss.

For now, though, I want to talk about Heroes. The first season caught me by surprise and instantly turned me into a fan. It was a well written show, had plenty of interesting characters (though some less interesting ones as well), and I found the story and plot twists to be well done and thought out (even if you could tell halfway through that they needed to run some plot-hole damage control).

The second season started up, and everyone expected big things. Instead, they got a similar plot to save the future, as well as thirteen episodes of not much happening. Overall, it was supposed to be similar to the first half of season one, where not much happens until all Hell breaks loose, and then once more building up into one climax. People weren’t happy with this, and it has created quite a negative effect on season three.

This is why I hate people. I blame them for all the problems with Halo 2 and 3, as well as the existence of Alien vs. Predator 2 (not the game, but the movie. The game was awesome).

To summarize for those not keeping up, or yet caught up, season three moves pretty fast. Too fast, in fact. Each episode seems to have at least one plot twist, just about each one unnecessary. The characters do not develop in a natural manner, but instead shift in ways that makes them seem contradictory. In fact, if you were to put the second and third seasons back to back, many of the actions of the characters would make no sense. This is nothing to say of the characters that have suddenly vanished off the map from previous seasons.

The very plot twists themselves are absolutely ridiculous, almost taking on a Lost quality. While plenty of them are predictable, they are only so because of how absurd or soap opera they are.

The biggest disappointment of this all is that the season’s premise is actually a good one. While the first two seasons had a major focus on how there is a hero inside everyone, even the most unlikely, the third season tackles with the idea that there is a villain within everyone as well. Turning some characters into villains would create a lot of interesting conflict, development and make you eager to see what might happen.

Yet it is executed poorly. The writers handled the issue irresponsibly, by randomly choosing characters to flip-flop instead of gradually building them into their new role as a villain, and with good reason.

Beneath the cut, I will go into further detail, but to those that haven’t caught up, be warned of plot spoilers.

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It came as a surprise to me how many of my friends at school haven’t seen the original Alien film. To me, it is simply a classic. It is a perfect representation of what a horror film should be, focusing more on the psychological than on gruesome shots of blood and cheap thrills to get girls to jump out of their seats shrieking like banshees. Clearly plenty of folks out there agree, as every other year there is a new film claiming to be “the scariest since Alien”.

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For years I’ve been told I need to read Watchmen, and when I saw the trailer earlier this summer I told myself “I need to read Watchmen”. This week I grabbed myself the graphic novel collection, read it, and loved it. It is the first piece by Alan Moore (what a hairy bastard) I’ve ever read, and it has urged me to go out and grab a copy of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as soon as I could. It’s such a great and well executed graphic novel, and there’s so much to say and discuss about it. I guess DC comics really does have more than Batman going up their sleeve, it’s just not in their mainstream super hero department.

However, since the trailer I’ve been hearing quite a bit of discussion and negative views on how well the graphic novel could transfer to film form, or people nitpicking over certain photos released (particularly seen on their Flickr account), etc. Now, I think this movie could do a fantastic job going from comic to movie, but then again, nothing has truly jaded me since I read The Lost World and then saw “David Koepp has some dinosaurs on a jungle and then a T-Rex in San Francisco and Steven Spielberg thinks it’s an awesome idea”.

To those who haven’t yet read Watchmen, note that there will be spoilers beyond this point, so I suggest you don’t read them unless you don’t care about that sort of thing.

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A pair of my friends had told me that this film was, apparently, bad. I had liked the look of the trailer, though the name did not seem quite fitting, and was a bit disappointed to hear this. Then another friend of mine claimed it was amazing, and that people simply have no taste these days. During my trip home last week I managed to see it with my family, and I feel both parties are honestly wrong.

There Will Be Blood was certainly not a bad movie, but it’s also not for everyone. It isn’t going to follow the typical “rising action” rules and such that just about every film is going to follow. It’s told in a biographical manner, simply retelling events in a story until they lead up to the end of how things happened. In this case, it’s about how a man named Plainview was informed that this small, insignificant town was sitting on an oil well, and how he had wisely taken the proper measures to build a success on it. It also shows how the precursors of the televangelists were also assholes, just as they are today. Good to know some things don’t change.

The character of Daniel Plainview is honestly not very likeable. On the one hand, you can tell he’s a pretty smart guy, raised to rely on no one but himself. On the other, he makes some pretty dick moves, and in the end wonder just how much of a nutcase he really is. Even so, you don’t hate the guy. He’s likeable enough to keep the movie interesting.

Now, the real problem with the film is the music, and this can truly break it for people. You see, it always sounds as if there is some uneasy tension going on, or something terrible and dramatic is occuring. It doesn’t at all fit the tone of, say, a man and his son browsing a section of the mountains, shooting birds, until they find a spot of surface oil. Really there are only a few moments where the music fits, and it is these scenes, and the ones without any music, that pull you in the best. However, most other scenes with music just create a mismatched atmosphere, leaving you…well, in my case a bit irritated.

It’s not a movie I would see a second time, I’ll be honest, and it wasn’t done well enough to earn high praise. It certainly wasn’t the worst film ever, but if you’re only interested in the same cookie cutter scripts going around with the Marvel films and Indiana Jones, then this is certainly not for you. For anyone wanting something a bit different out of Hollywood than the typical summer blockbusters, though, give it a try.

Still don’t know why they named it “There Will Be Blood”, though.

This past weekend I got to see The Forbidden Kingdom at the cheapo theater, and the weekend before that I got to see the Incredible Hulk. Both of them were entertaining enough movies, but nothing stellar. I can certainly say the Hulk isn’t a bad film to drop a full price ticket on, but I’m glad I waited for the cheapo theater to see The Forbidden Kingdom. It turned out to be something different than expected, than they even bothered to advertise.

Firstly, The Incredible Hulk. Edward Norton is a fantastic Bruce Banner, playing the character perfectly. In fact, all of the actors do a pretty good job, with the exception of Liv Tyler. I don’t know if it was the character, the directing or her, but I just couldn’t have cared less for her character. I’m beginning to think maybe it’s the actress herself, and not just Peter Jackson writing her into parts of Lord of the Rings where she didn’t belong.

The story is pretty straight forward. Bruce doesn’t want to be found, the military keeps going after him, Rosencran-er, I mean, Tim Roth, becomes obsessed with fighting it and eventually turns into the Abomination, and the two fight it out. You can piece it together from the previews. Still, it’s written in an entertaining enough manner to keep you interested, and the film is paced just right. You never get bored of the story, and the action never seems to take forever.  All in all, a pretty good film.

Now, as for The Forbidden Kingdom, only see it if you dig the Kung Fu. If you’re not much a fan of Kung Fu films, then the story is going to have you running for the nearest toilet and spewing your insides. You see, this geeky kid from Boston that loves Kung Fu films gets caught up with some punk kids that force him to do something he doesn’t want to, and this all gets him magically teleported to Ancient China. Yes, it’s really one of those stories. While such a tale can still be good if executed well, it just felt ridiculous here.

However, this film has Jacki Chan and Jet Li. While all other exposition in the film is boring, the writing and acting between these two is just as much as you’d want it to be. They give you plenty of laughs, and the fight between the two of them is everything I would hope such a fight would be. In fact, that’s pretty much the top reason to pay to see this film: seeing Jacki Chan and Jet Li fight each other.

Ultimately, the dialogue is poor, one of the characters can’t stop speaking in the third person, and the short story segments are mostly uninteresting, though there are also some humorous moments. What you are really watching here is a decent Kung Fu flick with some good fighting. It’s not the most amazing, but if you’d like to see Jacki Chan fight Jet Li, give it a rent. If you don’t care about that and plot is always important to you, then steer clear.