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.

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...

Old Creative Writing - Out of Control

Another piece from my school days, a few years on from the last one and I think it formed part of my GCSE coursework. It's titled Out of Control and again it's presented with original spelling mistakes and teachers comments/corrections in red...

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It's a well-known fact that when someone has a good idea someone else will eventually copy it. Take the Roboticops of 2147 for example.

opening has impact

In January of 2147 the police of America finally decided that putting officers on the beat was now too dangerous. Instead, they created the Roboticops programmed to stop crimes, protect innocent people and generally keep the peace.

↓ effective sentencing

People laughed at them first, claiming that they looked like floating dustbins; the laughter stopped abruptly however when they found out how the Roboticops kept the peace. Anyone seen committing a crime was shot. Almost immediately after the Roboticops came into service people complained that people who had a criminal record were getting away with the punishment so they re-called all of them and their programming was changed to include anyone with a criminal record. A lot of people died in those first few weeks but people started to accept them and any programming bugs were reasonably quickly ironed out. Soon the police force was almost completely robotic which also got rid of the problem of officers being bribed.

In the February of the same year cyborgs started to commit crimes just about the same time that lots of homeless people began to disappear. The homeless people were the least of the police's problems as they were having a tough time stopping any of these cyborgs and those that they did manage to stop seemed to automatically self destruct. Organised crime was now robotic.

English Literature and creative writing

When I was younger, I used to quite enjoy writing stories at school. It wasn't something that came up particularly often though and as time went on I found that English moved further and further away from being one of my favourite subjects. As I moved through secondary school and 'English' became 'English Literature', it felt like there was less of a creative focus and I can hardly think of any pieces of literature we covered that really grabbed me. Even if some of them were legitimate classics, I think the way we were taught to analyse them could probably destroy anyone's interest in them. Books would be picked apart in mind numbing detail, full of analysis like "the blue curtains represent the depressed mood of this character" when it hardly seemed likely to have crossed the writers mind in the first place. Most of the time I didn't really feel like I was writing what I thought of the literature, just parroting the teachers opinions.

What I would have liked to learn more about are things like the fundamentals of writing stories, character motivations etc. which I feel like I've only really picked up pieces of via some unlikely internet sources. It seems pretty funny that I've been most inspired recently by a fictional perverted old man and a 10 foot tall green rage monster... I didn't get the option of taking a subject like Media Studies or something similar when I was at school but I think that would be a subject I would have really appreciated. Hearing from a friend who now teaches and had the freedom to base work around aspects of Attack the Block for example - I would love to cover something like that and I'm sure it appeals to a lot of kids too. Though no matter what the subject, I'm sure the way a teacher approaches it is just as important.

So when I recently had to sort through a huge amount of my old school work (strangely those folders and folders full of Maths and Physics notes didn't seem so important anymore), I was surprised by how little English work I'd kept. I'm not even sure what this short story was - it doesn't have a name, just a heading of "Task 5C" and I think it's the earliest bit of creative writing I have, being from when I must have been about 13 or so. It's presented below as originally written, with all original spelling mistakes intact and teachers comments in red...

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"Thats another dead one." said the young assistant "Perhaps we're doing something wrong?"
"Maybe," said the older scientist. "But we've got more than enough of these stupid mice and rats to find the right formula. Once we've found it we can test in on something bigger like the dogs and cats. We will make millions from doing this my boy, I promise you!"

Good start

The members of A.L.F. crouded into the room. There was about thirty of them and they met once a week to discuss important issues. The leader Frank Adams called everyone around the table and counted how many where there.
"Has anyone seen Mark Mc. Nabb?" enquired Frank without much hope of an answer. Mc. Nabb was always late. He was the rebel in the group but a lot of people liked him which annoyed Frank greatly.
He snapped back to the present when he heard someone thumping loudly on the outside door. He went to open it. As he slowly opened it to see who it was he was greeted by a familiar voice.
"Let me in you fool! Its freezing out here!" It was Mc. Nabb. "You're late again Mc. Nabb!" shouted Frank "And don't call me a fool!"
"Ach, who cares if Im late and if you're not a fool you're an idiot."
Mc. Nabb walked casualy to his seat leaving Frank fuming mad at the door. He tried to calm down and walked slowly back to his seat.
"Okay." said Frank "Has anyone got anything important they want to say?"
One hand was cautiously raised. "Ah Graham! What have you got to say?"
A small man with glasses stood up and looked nevously around him before starting to speak.
"Well you know the laboratory we got shut down because it was testing on animals?"
"Hmm." remarked Frank
"Well its still being used but only at night."
"What!!" came Mc Nabbs voice from the other side of the room.
"This is terrible! We have to tell the police!" cried Frank "Ach, Ya wimp!" Shouted Mc Nabb "Don't go the police, we can trash the place ourselves."
"Don't be such an Idiot!!"
"Eh? What ye sayn?" Mc Nabbs Scottish accent showed through more when he got irritable.
"If you'd have thought at all you would have noticed that you are more likely to be arrested than the actual criminals!"
"Well we've gotta do somethin. We can't just leave em!"
"Okay then!! I'm going to the police!" Shouted Frank before storming out of the room, slamming the door behind him. The room was silent for a few seconds before Mc. Nabb spoke up.
"So who wants to come with me?"

A good idea, Matthew.

 Excellent use of conversation - in

 fact, there is too much of this

 in comparison to description.

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Looking back on that is in some ways slightly embarrassing (you have no idea how hard it is to not correct mistakes and tweak a few things) but at the same time feels like it was written by a completely different person. Someone who obviously had pretty strong feelings on animal testing. I still kind of like the detached attitude of the scientists in the opening - when I first picked this up again I thought it would make a good description of 'expendable' human subjects in some kind of lab test, I guess I hadn't got that dark yet.

It's also interesting that other than spelling, my biggest concerns are with cutting stuff out. Redundant sentences like "He went to open it" and extra words like "fuming mad", would be where I'd start culling. But I think school work tends to build up the importance of word count over being conservative with what you're trying to say. I read an article soon after I started writing again, which illustrated this idea very well - ruthlessly cutting down first drafts into the bare minimum of information required. This is something I'm still trying to apply to my own writing and it can be surprisingly difficult to let go of anything you've written sometimes. Of course there is a place for detailed descriptive prose but most of the time you are trying to create something that is easy for people to read and understand.

I did find some kind of plan for a whole story at the back of the exercise book this was written in. I'm not sure why it was cut short, whether the exercise was only to do so many pages or if I just ran out of steam. The group would go on to raid this lab and attempt to release the animals (though most were in too bad of a state to escape) and one of the activists (I assume Mc Nabb) ends up killing one of the scientists there. I didn't seem to have an idea for an ending or a larger point, so in a way I think it's better that it just became a short segment of a larger imagined story, with the last line hinting that people were obviously ready to follow Mc Nabb (not sure if I subconsciously nicked that last line from Van Damme in the Street Fighter movie).

I've always felt slightly apprehensive about writing fiction again and especially about sharing it with the world via the internet. But if I'm happy to share and critique the ramblings of my teenage self, how much worse could my current work be? Hopefully someday soon I'll feel like taking up the challenge of writing something other than criticism.