The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

If I learnt anything from my abandoned posts last year, it was that films I didn't feel strongly about were the ones that tended to get left on the shelf. I could already see this film fitting into the same sort of category and I knew if I didn't do something with it soon, it would probably end up in next years wrap up post.

I guess I'm finding it difficult to bring anything to the table that hasn't been said already. I didn't see the HFR version so I can't comment on that (even though as a gamer and someone generally interested in tech, I was quite intrigued to see it for myself). I've also not read the book for a long time, so I don't really have any insights on how well it's been translated or if it justifies a trilogy. And Devin Faraci already summed up my feelings on it pretty well - The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is perfectly okay, which isn't exactly a great starting point.

With that said, while the film gets a lot of criticism for how long it takes to get started, I did enjoy the very first scenes giving a history of the Dwarven stronghold under the Lonely Mountain. It was a good idea to give you an idea of what the Dwarves were fighting for from the beginning as opposed to just seeing everything from Bilbo's point of view as he's dragged along. I've also been a fan of the Dwarven architecture and design throughout the Lord of the Rings series, so it was nice to finally see some of it in all of its geometric glory while it was still in its prime as opposed to mere glimpses of long abandoned structures like the mines of Moria.

Sadly straight after this is where the film really puts on the brakes and spends an unnecessarily long time getting up to speed again. I found myself thinking "Yeah, I get it, this scene is directly before the start of Fellowship of the Ring, get on with it". I'd much rather we'd got to Martin Freeman's Bilbo quicker, even if the final transition between the two was nice. But once it got this out of the way there is something incredibly comforting about settling back into the world of Middle Earth - something that I probably wouldn't have felt if I had to wear uncomfortable 3D glasses for 3 hours.

Despite most of it feeling fairly familiar, the company of dwarves helped to give the film a slightly different character from the Lord of the Rings series. It's nigh on impossible to remember all of their names but there was fun to be had as they ate Bilbo out of house and home, with a slightly out of place musical number rounding it off. I also liked how "Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold" became the main theme of the film, although neither the vocal or orchestral version had quite as much impact as the blend of both that was used in the trailer.

I'm finding it hard to place the films events in order and a lot of them didn't really have any impact on me. I enjoyed Sylvester McCoy's madcap Radaghast, though he was involved in some of the worst looking CGI in the film as he attempted to provide a diversion that the dwarves completely squandered. The fighting mountain giants was something else that left me cold, especially given how much it had been built up in some reviews as being inspired by Shadow of the Colossus. The scenes with Gollum I couldn't really complain about, they looked great and were pretty much spot on from what I remember of the book.

Sadly I found that it was starting to drag soon after this, as I had no idea where it was going to end and so found myself wishing that it would. I think I remember the 'out of the frying pan into the fire' nature of the book after Gollum and the Goblins and obviously the separated factions needed to join up again but I really needed a break by this point. Perhaps it needed a pre-defined goal for this individual film so that it didn't feel like it had no idea when it was going but then in the Fellowship of the Ring I didn't really know where it would end either. The end of Fellowship at least felt like the distinct end of an act, whereas in this I would say that getting the ring and escaping the Goblins felt like a natural end, so to continue on from there made it drag a little.

The whole trilogy might come together as something that will be an event to sit down and watch at home, with the ability to take breaks and still see it all in close proximity. But right now, without the rest of the films it was very clearly only part of a story and left you feeling that it had taken so long to get nowhere in particular. I think people will forever wonder what Guilermo del Toro would have come up with and could he have created a tight one film adaptation.

The Perils of Nostalgia

If you'd told me 5 years ago that there'd be new versions of Transformers, ThunderCats and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I'd probably have rolled my eyes in disbelief. If you'd then gone on to say that they'd almost all be miles ahead of their rubbish originals I'd probably have punched you. But one by one these have come to pass and I've slowly been forced to accept it (I'm of course thinking of Transformers: Animated when I write this, not the feature films).

Turtles has been the most recent revelation, as I've been quite enjoying the new computer animated show on Nickelodeon. This new series has been accompanied by a wave of nostalgia for the original series and a box set of the first two seasons was among my Christmas presents. To be honest I was stunned at how bad they were.

In my mind, The Shredder had always been an intimidating, badass villain but in the original series he's reduced to an incompetent villain of the week. Plus it's really hard to not hear Uncle Phil in his voice now. The Turtles themselves have very little consistent characterisation, Splinter is largely useless and the writers might as well have been flipping a coin to decide who wins each battle.

People always say that kids are pretty sharp and won't be fooled by rubbish products but in this case I think we were. The Turtles mania at the time was insane and we probably latched onto the design of the characters more than anything else. We would have made up our own stories and had fun with the toys while being drip fed an episode a week, with perhaps just a few people aware of their true comic book origins in those pre-internet days.

I'll accept that there have probably already been better versions since the original series but there just seems to be something special about this new series. I don't remember watching the mid-2000's cartoon as I would have just finished University and while the CG movie from a couple of years ago was okay, it's not really stuck with me. Here the character of each turtle is defined so well, especially when you compare it to the shallowness of the original series.

I'd always been a Donatello person in the past, with him basically being a geek like me but he now gets uncomfortably close to some of my own personality traits. Raphael's hot headed personality seems much better balanced than other incarnations so that he's still likeable and even Michaelangelo's goofy charm seems to work well here. Leonardo would probably come across as a bit of a dick if it wasn't for the fact that his whole inspiration is a Captain Kirk type figure from his favourite TV show. And perhaps most importantly of all, Splinter comes across as a true martial arts master, who wouldn't be out of place in a Kung fu film or Kill Bill Vol. 2.

The new ThunderCats has been an even harder pill to swallow as I was a huge fan of the original and learning later on that those involved with it went on to form Studio Ghibli, it had a pretty good pedigree when you think about it. I'd watched the entire thing again about a year before the announcement of a new series and it still felt like it held up reasonably well (though there were a few cracks). Similar to TMNT, they had a very scatter shot history and a lot of the characters didn't really have many defining traits.

When I saw the new series I had to gradually accept that this was a much better realisation of these characters, with a cohesive whole to its world that made a lot more sense. Oh and Snarf was sooo much better without a voice. I saw the show in fits and starts thanks to Cartoon Network's irregular schedule but it became very compelling and I saved a lot of the later episodes so that they could be watched in order. I really enjoyed how they pulled in other familiar characters and I was pretty satisfied with how the whole series ended.

I think in a sense it's logical for kids TV shows with a toy line to try and appeal to adults too, as they are the ones controlling the purse strings. I bet I must have pestered my parents for toys back in the day but if they sat down to watch the associated shows they would probably think "this is garbage" and they'd be right. It's surely an easier sell if everyone can find some enjoyment in the series toys are based on - heck, my wife keeps asking me if I want the new figures after hearing I led a deprived childhood of knock off Turtle toys.

It makes me wonder whether those making the shows look at it in this cynical kind of way or if there's just been a concious effort to make better shows. Either way I've learnt not to look back at childhood cartoons with rose tinted glasses, so I won't be instantly dismissive of the next reboot to come along. Unless it's Bucky O'Hare of course - that was legitimately awesome.

In My Humble Opinion

IMHO. It's an acronym I've used for years and for almost as long as I've been aware of it I've heard people say that it's a redundant expression, because obviously if you're writing something it's your own opinion. I've always seen it as more of a courtesy though, something you add after a potentially controversial statement to show that you're being polite. Especially on message boards and forums you never really know who'll have a reasonable discussion with you and who'll descend into a gibbering moron.

But after reading an article recently on how to edit your own writing, I've started to think about its final piece of advice more and more. I've sometimes read through my work and it's felt like quite a slog but I wasn't quite sure why. I now realise just how often I repeat unsure sounding phrases like "I think", "I believe", "It seems like" etc. I guess I've always put them in because I thought I would sound arrogant otherwise but especially on a blog it starts to seem pointless, as if you can't express your honest opinions there then where can you?

I've noticed an immediate difference in my writing by homing in on these wishy-washy opinion highlighters and just cutting them out. Things seem to flow better and it's less of an effort to read back, which is really the desired end result for people reading your blog too. I've also found it an easy place to start when editing, as it can sometimes be difficult to figure out the simplest form a sentence can take. Pulling out the "I think"s makes you examine what remains and ask whether it still reads correctly or if any other parts of the sentence are unnecessary.

Maybe it will make me sound arrogant in the long run but at the moment I'm a lot happier with my writing after being completely ruthless about these phrases. I think that in a sense it's not about being arrogant, it's about standing by what you believe in and showing that you care about your subject matter.

A 2012 Wrap up

My friend Stu recently posted a very honest look at his abandoned game projects of 2012. For one reason or another, I seem to have ended up with a lot of unfinished draft posts over this year - not exactly the same thing but I thought it would be interesting to take a look at what I haven't published and look at why I didn't feel like they made the cut. Hopefully it will also allow me to feel like I've aired my thoughts on these subjects, so that I can let go of the half finished versions cluttering up my post history. So without further ado...

This Means War

I saw this film quite early in the year and I think at the time, I was perhaps ready to give it an easy ride. It made me chuckle a couple of times and I wasn't quite sure how to criticise a comedy that's at least done its job once. Looking back on it after seeing more comedies this year, it pales into non-existence when you can count the funny moments on one hand.

In the end I think I didn't publish this because the film felt so slight overall. It didn't feel like something I could totally tear apart (though I did think they were lazy with Tom Hardy's character in the end) and there wasn't a huge amount to recommend about it either (Tom Hardy's paintball scenes were a clear highlight and the main part that made my wife and I laugh). A middle of the road film lead to a middle of the road write up and I guess I just didn't see the point of sharing it.

21 Jump Street

This was a film I really enjoyed at the time and was leagues ahead of This Means War in the laugh stakes alone. I kind of wasn't expecting to like it, situations where characters spend most of their time narrowly avoiding being found out more often than not just make me cringe. The way the film mocks the premise of adults pretending to be high school students perhaps helped to make it more palatable (and in a way is also making fun of so many actors playing characters much younger than themselves *cough* Amazing Spider-man *cough*).

I guess I got a bit hung up on what I didn't like when writing about it though, which seemed like very minor niggles. Firstly that the film couldn't seem to decide if it was trying to mock hollywood cliches and show that they're just not true in the real world or to completely live up to them. It spends a lot of time trying to set up the idea that it is set in reality and that ludicrous action scenes don't really happen and then forgets about it as the film goes on. You could say 'that's the joke' but it just felt a little lazy to throw away the real world consequences of these crazy actions when the repercussions could have been funny too.

It also seemed to have mixed messages about drug use - the whole premise of the film is that there are negative consequences to them but after setting things in motion they are never shown in a bad light again. The hilarious but ultimately tragic youtube video that introduces you to the effects of this new synthetic drug was constantly revisited for comedic effect, which felt slightly... disrespectful, even though it wasn't real. The film also seemed like it was building towards someone else suffering similar consequences from taking the drug but the situation never materialised. I couldn't decide if it was trying to make some kind of point about the drugs themselves not being intrinsically bad but that their illegality has more of a negative impact due to the people involved in their trade. I imagine I'm over thinking things there though and it was just done for what was funny.

Again, these all seem like minor issues and there was a lot to like in the film, including a surprising performance from Channing Tatum. But I just felt like these minor things detracted from the film as a whole, when it could have been more focussed and turned it into a really memorable film. Just perhaps not worth a whole blog post to whine about them.

Bridesmaids

I didn't actually start to write anything about this but it's been on my mind to mention it in relation to this years comedies. Obviously it's not from this year but it's certainly the funniest film I've seen all year. On top of that I just couldn't really find fault with it - working well as a cohesive whole and not overstaying its welcome. I have come across a few people who don't care for it but it seems to be an almost universally liked film and I feel slightly disappointed that I can't bring to mind much more detail to support why I thought it was so good.

A review of games reviews in the 90's

A trip home to pick up any remaining childhood belongings lead to me finding a large stack of old gaming magazines, mostly Sega Power and PC Zone. After reading though a few, I had the idea of writing about them in the same style - firstly attempting to create a mandatory 'hilarious' intro. I thought that I was trying too hard and that it wasn't really funny, though in a sense that may have been the perfect tribute.

I don't know that I had any great insights on what they included in reviews back then, they often seemed very vague and didn't really get across what made games fun. I also noted that 'those programmers' would always be the ones to be criticised for failings or praised for good features. This was probably not far from the truth back then but it did stand out in statements like "that animation must have taken some clever programming".

I was also surprised by how biased some of it seemed, with the hobbled Mega Drive version of Street Fighter 2 still scoring 94% and the future of 'full motion video' gaining Night Trap 84%. It's funny to look back on those 'photorealistic' games that had everyone so excited, when more average scoring games late in the system's history are the nuggets we'd remember today and almost anything on the Mega CD now looks like garbage. I was also going to question how much games journalism has changed in terms of heavily biased scores, with the events of last year proving 'not much at all'.

One Album Wonders

This was an idea for a regular feature so to speak, where I could go back and listen to records by bands who only ever made one album - or who only had one that was good at least. I suppose it's something I could still do, though I really don't get around to listening to music in depth anymore. You could also perhaps say that Jon Croshaw kind of stole my thunder, with his website Keep or Cull covering quite a similar idea with less of a narrow focus.

It was prompted by wanting to listen to One Love by Delakota again but when I finally got around to it, I found it a much less impressive record than I remembered. My youthful inexperience of Hip-Hop had perhaps left me with fonder memories than it deserved, with most of the album resembling a jam session over chunky beats. However 'The Rock', which was the song that brought them to my attention in the first place, still seemed as good as it ever was. I also discovered that their drummer now plays with the live incarnation of Gorillaz, which seemed kind of appropriate.

Expendables 2

Looking back I wrote more than I thought on this. I'm not sure if I didn't think what I was writing was good, if I felt like I'd missed the right moment to post about it or again if I just didn't care enough about it to finish it off.

I did feel a little out of step with critics though, with most suggesting that this was moving in the right direction compared to the first film. There's not much in it but personally I liked the first film just a little more - despite its rather slow and serious feel, when something did happen it seemed to stand out more. I think there was a better sense of cause and effect, with most of its little plotlines leading to a satisfying conclusion, whereas the sequel just felt like a bunch of stuff that happened.

Okay, so I suppose the death of Chris Hemsworth's character was supposed to be the main motivating factor in everything that followed but it was so blatantly telegraphed he might as well have had "Shoot Me" stuck on his back. This was kind of like the first film's Oscar reaching, tear jerking performance from Mickey Rourke, where it was trying to build up this big emotional involvement that it didn't really need. I can understand they wanted to show that Jean-Claude Van Damme was a right evil bastard but they should have had the balls to kill off someone in the main team who would have been unexpected (again, they wussed out on killing off Dolph Lundgren's character in the first one).

I'll always look back to Commando as the perfect 80's action film, how it manages to have constant action and quips throughout but still build up to an even more explosive ending. Expendables got the ending right and the sequel had more action throughout but it was definitely flagging by the end. Hearing that there wasn't originally going to be a final fight between Van Damme and Stallone seemed ridiculous, even Van Damme himself realised that getting blown up on an escaping helicopter wouldn't be a satisfying conclusion. As it stands, their fight wasn't bad but it certainly felt limited by what they could both do physically and didn't feel like Stallone got the upper hand fairly.

All of this lead to me being a bit disappointed by Van Damme's role, having had it built up to near legendary status beforehand. There's no doubt he was the best thing about the movie but he just wasn't in it enough, seeming to disappear for huge chunk of the movie. Maybe I'd appreciate his role more on a second viewing but I'm not exactly champing at the bit to see it again, nor am I holding my breath for Expendables 3. If I'm ever craving a classic action film then there's already plenty in my library.

Sinbad

This was a TV show that showed some initial promise but then went downhill really quickly. It's difficult to explain why I stuck with it to the end, I'm not sure if it was to see if it could redeem itself or if my wife and I were stuck in a chicken kind of situation, with neither of us wanting to speak up in case the other was committed to seeing it through.

The first warning signs came in an episode that tried to cram in backstory for every crew member at once. It made for a very confusing and unfocused story when a simpler concept was just screaming to be used - maybe it just needed to bump up the running time. There were a lot more episodes after this that had no clear purpose.

My biggest issue with it was that it did everything it needed to do, saw Sinbad go through a character arc of redemption and come to a dramatic series finale... but then just carried on going. The rest of the episodes felt pointless and lead to Sinbad going back on what he'd learned as the series continued. The actual end of the series should have been somewhere in the middle, as he should have come to terms with the death of his brother before he could even consider forgiving the man who killed him and in turn taking responsibility for the wrong he'd done.

Of course I don't think he had really done any wrong in the first place, with the mysterious Taryn (played by Orla Brady) hinted to be responsible for everything. There were plenty of occasions where her acting seemed to be totally abysmal but her bizarre shifts in character probably didn't help matters. By the end of the series she'd stacked up a fairly impressive body count but you were still expected to feel for her because she'd done it all in the name of returning her daughter from the land of the dead. Other characters would have been well within their rights to kill her earlier on in the series and it would have saved them an awful lot of trouble later on.

I feel bad to pick her out specifically though as in general none of the regular cast were anything to write home about, with their wildly varying accents not given a second thought. Even Timothy Spall guest starring as Death himself seemed to get dragged down into their milieu of bad acting. I'm not sure if it will get a second series but I certainly won't be watching.

Final Thoughts

At least a few of these posts I never quite finished because I felt like I'd waited too long after the event, which I've already decided I'm going to try and cut out from now on. Others I perhaps thought didn't quite warrant a full blog post and were only for my own satisfaction, so from now on I think those kind of things will either be scribbled in a notebook or on 750words.com. That way if I do think they're worth sharing I can retrieve them but otherwise they're effectively thrown into the Abyss. Hopefully some of that might have been of interest to someone and at least there probably won't be another one next year...

Doctor Who: The Snowmen (2012)

As I started thinking about writing something on this, I found it hard to recall much about it plotwise and on the whole it felt pretty simple. But I knew that I found it enjoyable and it somehow gave me more hope about future episodes than anything so far this season. It was full of great moments that would make you chuckle but didn't exactly stick with me (though others remembered more than me, I was later reminded of such great lines as "If you try to escape I will obliterate you - may I take your coat?").

We initially find the Doctor withdrawn from the world and vowing to never help people again after the loss of Amy Pond. I never really bought this idea but in a sense you just had to treat it as a starting point and go with it. And you could say that while the Doctor has lost companions before, Matt Smith's incarnation has always had Amy, so who knows how he would respond this time. If this little mini-arc was already planned out then it also perhaps explains the overly tragic nature of the previous episode.

It's actually probably a good thing that there was plenty of preview footage around to make you aware of this episode's focus (including the 'minisode' shown during Children In Need), otherwise I might have spent more time questioning it. If you saw the Children In Need segment, Jenna-Louise Coleman's matter of fact 'Yes' response to Matt Smith's question of whether he would save the day made me laugh as we all knew it would be true.

The episode as a whole wasn't completely predictable though, as it gradually gave out hints about Jenna's recurring role in the series. For a little while it seemed that she could be a completely different character to the one seen in 'Asylum of the Daleks', a little like Freema Agyeman's first role in 'Army of Ghosts'. The gradual hints of her former self were well placed and added some intrigue to the proceedings. As it progressed I started to wonder whether she would survive the episode and I'm still wondering whether she will ever survive one.

I thought that she worked well as a counterpoint to the Doctor, with some good lines that marked her out as unique among companions (her dragging him around and asking unexpected questions when the Tardis is finally revealed). Much of the episode focussed around her since the Doctor was unwilling to interfere and I would agree with some people's suggestion that the Doctor should have almost been absent from it entirely, only making an appearance near the end.

So on the whole it was a slightly strange episode that feels hard to justify liking. It's ending wasn't exactly what you'd expect from a Christmas special but it turned a tragic situation into something positive. Even the fact that the ending came about almost totally by accident couldn't put a dampener on it for me. A new Tardis design, Richard E Grant, killer snowmen and a fun cast of aliens - what else could you ask for an enjoyable post-Turkey distraction?

The Unexpected Benefits of Blogging

Given that my previous experience of blogging was a rather embarrassing livejournal of personal moans and groans, this has still felt like my first attempt at it, or at least the first time it's been less influenced by real life drama. One year on, I felt like looking back at how it's gone and my thoughts for the future. I didn't really have any expectations of it to begin with, other than a place to put my thoughts. I know I had a lot of fear about somehow receiving the wrath of the internet but that hasn't really materialised. I'm now always happy to get a notification of a new comment since they come so infrequently.

The closest I've got to an argument was in the comments for Fixing the Star Wars prequels, where I broke my promise of responding to every comment when someone stated they'd 'read' the Red Letter Media reviews. Ironically this has turned out to be my most viewed post overall this year, with a total of 188 views. Given that it was only some basic thoughts on a news article I'm not quite sure why it keeps bringing more people to it, other than "how to fix the star wars prequels" being a rather popular google search it seems.

Despite having low personal expectations, I think that writing has brought a lot of unexpected benefits. I would never have imagined I could be featured on another website at the start of the year but a friend suggested I submit something to Art Fist and I've been very humbled to be featured there. People have been very complementary about my writing on a personal level too and it's lead to me getting more involved in writing pieces for work. And a comment on On Writing Criticism from someone who I've learnt a lot about writing was a definite personal highlight.

If I was potentially starting to think a bit much of myself I have also received some helpful criticism recently, which showed some areas that need work. Despite reading about how to edit and make your writing concise, it's something I haven't always done and I felt really lazy when someone went over my review of Dust: An Elysian Tail, pointing out things that were unnecessary. This reminds me that there is more to writing than just letting your thoughts spill out onto the page and then publishing them, so until that kind of concise writing comes naturally it will occasionally feel like work.

More and more I'm recognising the importance of writing ideas down when they first come to me. That nagging feeling of an idea buzzing around your head is so often replaced with frustration when you feel you had more to say if you wait too long. I've had a notebook for a while but have only recently started to use it frequently (before now, my review of Looper was the only piece I roughed out on paper before typing up). Another good piece of advice I haven't taken was to use some form of voice recorder to quickly note down your thoughts, which almost everyone with a smartphone can easily do now. Eventually the desperation to record a thought might override my dislike of hearing my own voice.

I know that my pace has slowed down a little towards the end of the year but I'm hoping that I won't lose the writing bug. Although I've tried to avoid bringing up personal information, there are perhaps some real life reasons for this, as I've moved jobs back into the games industry and I'm also going to be a father in a few months. Combined with the fact that I've missed a ton of big cinema releases, while making very slow progress through the one big game I've bought recently, there hasn't been as much to write about. I have endeavoured to keep writing though and have found a site called 750words to be pretty useful for keeping at it daily, as well as for keeping a play diary of sorts for games that take a long time to finish. Sometimes I can feel this imaginary pressure to post something about games or films soon after their release date but I keep trying to ignore that and go at my own pace.

To finish on one last unexpected benefit, I would say that sometimes I've been surprised at how writing has helped re-connect with friends in a different way. I ended up having some good discussions on Facebook after writing about Attack the Block, with people who I perhaps wouldn't have expected to talk about it otherwise. So often I think you can get into a pattern of nostalgia when talking to old school friends and the like, so it was different to discuss another topic and also learn about what they're doing now that I might not have asked directly. I've also found friends who I share interests with that I hadn't realised before, which on a personal level is probably more rewarding than 4500 page views (a lot of which seemed to be Russian scamsters by my reckoning).