I liked The Avengers. I can say that with certainty. Joss Whedon’s take on the sprawling Marvel Cinematic Universe has left quite an impression on the summer tentpole landscape, especially in a time when summer blockbusters are either quickly evaporating, mindless affair (Battleship) or just another unnecessary sequel (Men In Black 3, G.I. Joe: Retaliation). Instead, The Avengers represents that special breed of unobjectionable, well-intentioned summer popcorn flicks like Star Trek or Harry Potter before it: nice, sprightly, bright, and enjoyable for consumption en masse. After much hype and mind-boggling dollars put into the largest cinema gimmick in history (releasing franchise films for the exclusive purpose of a crossover monolith), Whedon’s directorial ingenuity transforms bourgeois hegemony into an entertaining product for the masses. Such universal appeal and grand scale theatrics seems unbefitting to a director typically decried as a cynical and nerdy screenwriter for cult classic, niche television. Nevertheless, Whedon transcends his narrative praxis to deliver a paradox of a blockbuster film. For a movie concerned with the most overblown team ever assembled in the cinema, Whedon dissects the individuality of his characters while providing the blockbuster action and charisma necessary to keep such a monstrous behemoth afloat.
Extensive discussion online already exists that lists off what makes The Avengers so entertaining; simply scour any old review or entertainment blog elsewhere, and you’re likely to find something of that sort. Rather, this essay aims to deconstruct how and why Joss Whedon succeeds in chiseling such an extravagant blockbuster movie to triumph. The screenwriter turned filmmaker has always been particularly brilliant in sharp and focused screenwriting with a slight edge of pleasing cynicism behind it, finding a niche audience with his numerous television hits. Distinguished primarily for this small screen market, titles like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel cater to a devoted crowd expecting supernatural mythology with down-to-earth, suburban (with the exception of Angel’s L.A.) sensibilities while even his flops like Firefly (and its subsequent film companion piece, Serenity) and Dollhouse have strong fan bases that keep its appeal alive. Whedon’s task of realizing the most anticipated superhero film adaptation in history unfolds with surprisingly airtight execution, depicting a tableaux of monumental heroes in their own right that builds to a booming final crescendo. Gone is the blatantly small screen construction of traditional Whedon, instead succinctly conveying the emotional breadth of five blockbuster films in the space of two and a half hours. Even more refreshing is the lack of cynical distancing usually associated with Whedon’s screenwriting, as the filmmaker himself wholeheartedly embraces the nerdy lore of the comics and the big screen theatrics of popcorn, slightly populist, heroism.
After the erasure of the fondly remembered Firefly and Dollhouse from network television, the decision to have The Avengers helmed by the cult classic filmmaker represents a kind of ultimate redemption story for every nerd’s secret idol. With this newfound mass appeal, Whedon plays around with the already built-up backstories of his characters, crafting a brisk and entertaining film that doesn’t just deliver perfunctory explosive action. Instead, Whedon also infuses his own stylistic screenwriting touch and well fleshed-out characters in a film with wide breathing room. This possibility for wide expansion of already firmly established characters lends The Avengers a richly engrossing atmosphere of pop art unashamed of its overblown setup, even unabashedly including its ridiculous flying aircraft carrier. A film like Battleship earns laughing derision for its similar flying nautical vessels, but The Avengers’ acknowledgement of its imaginative fantasy invites audiences in on the joke rather than distancing them away. Nevertheless, some fragments of Whedon’s television screenwriting career seep through during the first act, as the laboriously paced exposition that brings each hero together lacks the concise parameters of cinematic storytelling. The biggest, most pleasurable surprise occurs when the film eventually gains footing: The Avengers gets better and better with each passing scene.
The arduous slow burn of the exposition individually singles out each of the heroes that comprise Earth’s mightiest heroes: Tony “Iron Man” Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), Steve “Captain America” Rogers (Chris Evans), Natasha “Black Widow” Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), Clint “Hawkeye” Barton (Jeremy Renner), Thor Odinson (Chris Hemsworth), and Bruce “Hulk” Banner (Mark “rhymes with buffalo” Ruffalo, replacing Edward Norton). The opening act remains a fairly disjointed affair because Whedon makes the mistake of foregrounding a fairly bland conflict involving the Tesseract, the film’s MacGuffin which was so prominently featured in the previous Captain America film. When Loki (Tom Hiddleston) strikes a deal with the mysterious “Other,” the leader of an alien race called the Chitauri, and returns to Earth to immediately wreak havoc on a S.H.I.E.L.D. base, the conflict feels featureless and mechanical. However, once the cyclopean Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) assembles the Avengers team together, the conflict shifts to the Avengers themselves, each of whom harbors their own self-interests and methodologies.
The film spends a great deal of time on the trivial squabbling of such monolithic figures rather than naively expecting the assemblage to unquestioningly cooperate. Each and every hero finds adequate screen time to develop their characters even further, leaving no individual irrelevant, even secondary players like newcomer S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) and the always-entertaining agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg). I’ve grown to like this latter character with each passing movie and Marvel One-Shot short film because of Gregg’s superbly dry delivery and comically down-to-earth awareness. Even an unlikely character like Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) doesn’t get completely marginalized, instead serving as a kind of Astrid to her Walter Bishop (Fringe fans) for Tony Stark. And although there are one too many superheroes to find sufficient room for Stellan Skarsgård’s supporting scientist character Erik Selvig and the fact that satisfying characters from the likes of Natalie Portman, Kat Dennings, and Don Cheadle are absent in The Avengers, Whedon definitely makes good use of the numerous talents on hand. Organic development of familiar characters apart from their individual films defines Whedon’s approach to the portrayal of his heroes, and the director shrewdly knows to drop his self-seriousness once the action begins, delivering only the essentials: the egomaniacal genius-playboy-billionaire-philanthropist, the slightly out-of-touch idealist in Old Glory, the giant green rage monster that likes to smash, and so on. Finally, Whedon understands the fundamental philosophy that runs through a film like The Avengers: the main conflict shouldn’t lead to emotional catharsis defined by a fight sequence or final set-piece, but rather, the simple notion of disparate characters standing united. This triumph represents exactly the kind of fantasy wish fulfillment that modern America yearns for in a time of insurmountable partisan division and political turbulence, and perhaps even explains the film’s near universal appeal.
Captain America: The First Avenger was the last film released before this one, ending on a fantastic cliffhanger that finds the star-spangled hero out of place and out of time. Chris Evans’ Captain America represents the most carefully constructed of the Avengers heroes, as the man rides a fine line between respectable cool vs. cheesy and stuffy beyond repair. Joss Whedon understands exactly what Captain America director Joe Johnston also understood: that the big screen version of the superhero should be emblematic of an overlooked brand of classic American charm rather than representing patriotism on partisan or exceptionalist lines. Chris Evans simply sells his role as a man out of his time while radiating an unobjectionable do-gooder everyman charm, all of which is backed up by Joss Whedon’s sharp dialogue that portrays him as struggling to keep up with the modern team (such as becoming noticeably attentive when someone drops a pop culture reference he doesn’t understand). Even the Captain’s sense of idealist optimism feels grounded in believability because of Whedon’s ability to write good-humored, anodyne characters and Evans’ sense of unyielding earnestness behind every action.
Arguably the lead of the film itself, Tony Stark retains his bankable spontaneity and witty charisma, but Whedon develops the character beyond a simple rehashing of the same material. The screenwriter’s penchant for writing snarky sarcasm and deeply flawed but resonant characters works perfectly for Stark, transforming the airheaded egomaniac into an obnoxious, sometimes detestable figure when squaring off with characters we’ve already come to like (i.e. Captain America or Thor). Iron Man 2’s lazy carbon copy of a cocky, impulsive Stark riding on the coattails of its superior predecessor vanishes with The Avengers because the director makes the vital corrective of displaying a different side to his charisma. When Iron Man makes his grand entry during Loki’s initial public appearance, Whedon’s decision to recycle AC/DC’s “Shoot to Thrill” (the de facto theme band after Iron Man 2’s AC/DC soundtrack tie-in) for entrance music portrays the hero becoming a mere gimmick or a product. He’s simply trying too hard to sell his Stark persona because of his insatiable egomania, but the character easily finds audience sympathy once he acknowledges his unbearable individualism when he should be a team player. Watching his friendship with Bruce Banner evolve from teasing out his more sinister side to mutual fellowship at the end of the film conveys a refreshing sense of humanity from a character seemingly doomed for one-liners in director Jon Favreau’s hands.
Of course, the big question inherent within any Joss Whedon work lies in his choices for portraying female characters in a career defined by a destabilization of conventional gender representation. As one of the least developed characters under Jon Favreau’s direction in Iron Man 2, Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow ends up becoming The Avengers’ greatest character triumph, entering with zero complexity only to finish as one of Whedon’s most well-defined characters in the film. Certainly, he takes his time fleshing out a seemingly one-dimensional character into a non-superpower augmented Avenger with her own set of ideologies and guilt-ridden backstory, giving the Black Widow the third most screen time behind the two aforementioned superheroes. And Whedon uses this precious time for plenty of dialogue with which to explicate her much-troubled persona, providing her with both playful scenes (an early fight sequence that finds her tied to a chair, outnumbered, and talking on a phone all at the same time) and moments in which to deliver a full range of emotions (a conversation with a tormented Hawkeye following his stint under Loki’s mind control). Furthermore, Black Widow’s relationship with Hawkeye focuses on more minute details including dramatics, mutual respect, and hidden regret, all of which are miracles by today’s summer blockbuster standards of obligatory romance between the leads. Both are clearly in love but simply refuse to ostensibly make their relationship so clear-cut, instead grounding their romance with a shady past that hints at remorse, even denial. As compared to the rest of the bickering Avengers, the Black Widow never dissolves into hysteria as the supposed “leaders” do (Iron Man, Captain America, Thor), instead unearthing significant information from a caged Loki in one of the best psychological games of wits in a superhero adaptation ever filmed. Joss Whedon cedes plenty of typically male roles to Black Widow, transforming her characterization beyond a one-dimensional sexy/kick-ass heroine (the norm for female action roles) to a figure with genuine human emotions and a compelling background. Thus, the character stands on her own with some of the best scenes in the film and an emotional weightiness that humanizes the picture, all of which also happens to feature (what do you know?) a sexy and kick-ass Avenger.
The typically marginalized Hulk also benefits from Whedon’s effective screenwriting, dropping the failed pseudo-intellectual internal Jekyll/Hyde conflict that Edward Norton tried in The Incredible Hulk in favor of Mark Ruffalo simply being “angry all the time.” Once the Hulk unleashes, Ruffalo makes no attempt to subdue his other side, allowing for extremely crowd-pleasing results like the triumphant moment when he finally gets his hands on Loki. Of course, Ruffalo also flexes his acting chops in his human form Bruce Banner, delivering a soft-spoken, deliberate speech as if embarrassed about his powers. Often seen beating around the bush when slowly mentioning his “other side” and sheepishly asking others if they know about the Hulk, Ruffalo carries a shy and resigned air that even carries over to the Hulk itself through sad and remorseful eyes on the monstrous green rage monster.
The decision to carry over Loki from Kenneth Branagh’s Thor as the leading villain works phenomenally well under Joss Whedon’s hands for the very same reason why nearly every other character triumphs: solid, moody writing. The loquacious Tom Hiddleston commands the screen as he rambles on narcissistic monologues that top even Branagh’s Shakespearian soliloquies, especially considering Whedon’s expert skill in writing villainous argot. While the overall getup of Loki with his curling horn helmet looks quite ridiculous, Hiddleston’s physical features including his smug, Cheshire cat rictus of a grin, his locks of black hair, and his baby blue eyes make him a memorable villain that manifests a compelling adversary worthy to match the Avengers. His brother Thor doesn’t fare as well as the other characters, as the goofy charm that made him so likable in his titular film remains largely deemphasized and marginalized here amidst all the other big names. Nevertheless, he, like Loki, Iron Man, and Captain America, has his moments. A pregaming brawl midway through the film witnesses Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America thrashing about like a comic book nerd’s wet dream of life-size action figures ramming into one another for sheer thrills. Loki serves as a kind of stand-in for Joss Whedon himself in the scene, looking on from above with satisfaction as his Avengers fight before him.
Naturally, this early brawl only hints at the full-scale action to come, and Joss Whedon surprisingly delivers quite a finale despite his relative inexperience in directing action sequences for the cinema. A CGI-rendered “single take” camera shot that surveys each and every Avenger as they fight against the invading Chitauri aliens clearly locates each figure in diegetic space, thus allowing even frenetic action to become comprehensible. In this final New York City set piece, Whedon allows the superhuman elements of his film to completely take over, leaving the civilian characters as faceless, generic extras while the more interesting heroes tirelessly subdue the endless swarms of enemies. Yet unlike other summer blockbuster directors such as Michael Bay, Whedon never fetishizes the explosive carnage, instead quickly trying to contain it instead of letting his action expand to uncontrollable mindlessness. He’s clearing having fun with his special effects rather than simply being smug about it, infusing his characters into the action with 3D effects that allows viewers to pick apart the individual Avengers in a deeper spatial plane. The Avengers makes great use of its 3D effects, preferring to employ the technology to create a sense of negative space (three-dimensionality that retreats into the picture) rather than positive space (the gimmicky in-your-face 3D), thus continuing the efforts of other great 3D films before it like Hugo, Pina, or Avatar to convey a more realistic sense of depth like a photorealistic painting. One scene in which Whedon places his camera inside a destroyed car looking through the shattered windshield of the back would lose its impact in 2D, as the technology separates the characters’ positions on screen relative to the spatial location of the car. However, The Avengers never fully realizes the potentials of the technology because the film was only converted to 3D in post-production, but the merits of the photography definitely work in its favor.
More than anything, The Avengers represents the perfect kind of escapist popcorn fantasy for those air-conditioned summer movie houses while people enjoy vacation and leisure. In a time of heated partisan politics leading up to election season this fall, Joss Whedon’s big screen behemoth ultimately caters to modern needs of wish fulfillment America where corporate billionaires want nothing else but to help the masses, slyly devious government organizations like S.H.I.E.L.D. do more good than harm, and widely divergent people can stand tall against any obstacle. These proclamations of idealist optimism seem less the naïve understandings of the real world than the fantasies of an unstable American sociopolitical zeitgeist. Unlike Christopher Nolan’s expectedly dark and depressive affair in the conclusion to his Batman trilogy, The Avengers provides a bright and likeable big-budget summer flick without the feeling of being condescended to. While the film may not be the zenith of storytelling dexterity, Whedon’s attention to details concerning human drama, clever humor, and compelling narrative arcs are unexpected marvels to a season of mind-numbing blockbuster affair. For a complete cinematic experience that is The Avengers, Joss Whedon’s final post-credits scene (not during the credits, but after) feels apt: a laid-back and mundane conclusion to compliment such a gargantuan film.
And lo, this review begins like so many others, with the obligatory and somewhat tiring comparison to the reviewee’s predecessor, in this case, the original Max Payne. Max Payne was a game that threatened to be interesting quite often, thanks to its noir style and usage of bullet time before it became a cliché. That said, the original Max Payne was incredibly inconsistent in tone, bouncing back and forth between overwrought noir melodrama and mafia fiction so ridiculous it resembled parody more than actual drama. And that, along with the dodgy controls of the Xbox port I played, made me less than enthused about the series as a whole. So, approaching Max Payne 3, I was not among the legions of fans who thought the change in setting and developer was a bad thing. And upon completing the game, that is a position I stand by. Max Payne 3 takes itself far more seriously than its predecessors, telling a dark, often disturbing tale that isn’t quite as needlessly confusing as its predecessors. That story is backed by some of the finest third person shooting gameplay I’ve seen in this generation, gorgeous graphics, and excellent sound design, all of which makes Max Payne 3 an astounding interactive experience.
The game opens years after the Max Payne’s “fall,” and opens in São Paulo, Brazil, where Max is now running protection detail for the extremely wealthy Branco family. The family consists of Rodrigo, Max’s main employer and the actual owner of the family business; Fabiana, Rodrigo’s airhead wife; Marcelo, a crackhead “Ricky Martin lookalike” that Max can’t stand; and Victor, a local politician. Max works alongside his only friend, an ex-cop named Raul Passos. Max has grown very cynical in his older age, and has become an alcoholic and addicted to painkillers. He finds himself disgusted by the Brancos, and really the wealthy in general, as he witnesses their parties and idiotic antics from the Brancos’ penthouse, which overlooks the extreme poverty of the city’s favela. Regardless, he does his job, risking life and limb for these people he can’t stand out of his desire, it seems , to find some small purpose to earn a feeling of self-worth. During a trip to a local nightclub, Fabiana is kidnapped, and Max is tasked with getting her back. As is par for the course with stories like this, nothing is as it seems, and Max finds himself in the middle of a war between gangs, paramilitary groups, and police as he struggles to save his employers.
The strength and driving core of the story are found in Max himself; the angry, depressed American who has traveled by choice to a foreign land that hates him just as much as he hates it. Max is still voiced by James McCaffrey, who turns in a mostly great performance as he delivers both Max’s spoken lines and his signature noir narration. While he McCaffrey captures the anger and cynicism in most of his lines perfectly, selling Max Payne as a real human character for the first time in the series. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Max’s character, however, is the way that his actions and his words do not mix. Max’s narration often deals subtly in moral and existential nihilism, and when he turns the subject of his internal monologues to himself he is decidedly negative. He often speaks of his failures, his worthlessness, lack of morals, and his inability to anything else besides kill. And while it is true that he is an angry killer, the audience witnesses over and over his choice to direct his rage at those who are truly deserving of it. He uses his situation to find meaning, regardless of whether he admits it or not.
Admittedly, the plot points themselves aren’t quite as interesting as the character at the center of them all. The conspiracy plot is a tad tired, though one disturbing revelation late in the game does breathe a certain amount of life into the proceedings. The sheer number of factions makes it a little hard to follow who exactly Max is shooting at sometimes, but oddly this helps the player connect with Max, who mentions multiple times that he doesn’t understand everything, but understands enough to know who to kill. The writing is mostly quite strong, with a few exceptions (e.g. Max looking over a dead nerd and saying “No one’s going to reboot his hard drive”). The supporting cast is fine overall, though none of the other characters come close to being as interesting or complex as Max. Still, the supporting characters aren’t caricatures in the same way as the supporting casts in Rockstar’s previous games, even if a few of the villains are a tad archetypal.
The gameplay in Max Payne 3 shines just as brightly as the story, if not more so. The gameplay is still emphasizes using bullet time and diving dramatically to take down enemies with a variety of firearms, but the system has been refined in a few smart ways. There are three aiming styles, a lock on that stays on an enemy, a lock on that jumps to an enemy’s initial position than loses him (think Call of Duty’s snap targeting), and free aim. In addition, an absolutely brilliant addition is the kill notifier; a little “x” that appears on the reticle when an enemy is killed. Knowing exactly when to move from one enemy to another is vital to successfully navigating the shootouts in Max Payne 3, and the kill notifier is a most excellent tool for acquiring such knowledge. The most significant addition is that of a cover system, which combined with the other various changes made to the combat, makes Max Payne 3 a much smarter game than its predecessors. Max is frailer than he’s been in the past, and when he shootdodges, it takes him more time to rise to his feet, especially if he rams into a wall. The latter few of these changes force the player to be more cautious than they had to be in the first two games. However, the bullet time mechanics are still incredibly handy, and they give the player an offensive edge that is not normally present in third person shooters, but they require timing and skill to be truly useful. This forces the player to assess any firefight they enter, pick off enemies until they can potentially gain the upper hand, then activate bullet time and go to town. The thought and timing required to survive in Max Payne makes successfully surviving a firefight incredibly satisfying. Max will also occasionally enter scripted slow motion sequences that are just sparse enough to stay cool throughout the entire game. It helps that the level design is excellent, with plenty of cover, some of which can be picked a part by gunfire, and plenty of places that can be leapt over in bullet time for some phenomenally satisfying kills. It’s also worth noting that the violence has real impact, thanks in large part to the game’s graphical fidelity. Bullets leave visible holes in Max and his foes, with wounds that spurt blood everywhere. It’s over the top, but just restrained enough to be wince-inducingly realistic.
Max Payne 3’s presentation is absolutely phenomenal. The animation is stunning, from top to bottom. Enemies crumble appropriately when shot, Max’s walking animation changes appropriately when he climbs stairs, Max’s acrobatic moves look perfect, etc. The animation gives the movements a great feeling of momentum, as Max’s actions all blend perfectly together. Some little touches like Max positioning his gun above low cover while on the ground and the way he curls his head in when he impacts an object mid-shootdodge real makes the player feel as though Max is interacting with and adjusting to the environment. My personal favorite aspect of the animation, though is the way Max carries any rifle he isn’t using in his hand, and shoves it under his arm while reloading his pistol. It’s a great touch that elevates the sense of realism. Almost every other aspect of the visuals is superb; the graphics are top notch technically, the character models are detailed, and the locales are varied enough to be interesting, even though they tread no real new ground. The aforementioned bullet holes are impressive, and little details like watching sweat drip down Max’s face during cutscenes are welcome additions to the visual suite. What really keeps the game aesthetically interesting is the color separation effect present during the cutscenes, and occasionally during gameplay. If I interpreted them correctly, the effect is meant to be a visual representation of Max’s constant inebriated state during the game, and as such, is a brilliant way to put the player in the mind of the character. On the other side of the visuals coin, there are some minor clipping and framerate issues, but these rear their ugly heads very rarely.
And last there are the extras to discuss; the arcade mode and the multiplayer. There is a single phrase in the English language that, I believe, perfectly encapsulates the quality of these two: “perfectly fine.” There is a score attack and a time attack mode for the single-player campaign. These are challenging enough to be interesting, if a tad unremarkable. You can choose from any Max Payne character model, including recreations of Max from Max Payne 1 and 2, which can lead to some goofy fun. The multiplayer is enjoyable, though the lack of emphasis on slow motion makes it seem like a separate entity from the single player. The slow motion ability is there, and it works well enough, but it isn’t a central gameplay facet because of the nature of having multiple players fighting in real time. It’s not an issue per se, but the juxtaposition of the multiplayer and single player gameplay is odd. It speaks volumes that Max Payne feels incredibly out of place as the multiplayer announcer. The modes consist of deathmatch, team deathmatch, a juggernaut mode, with big team and hardcore variants. The single exciting mode called “Gang War,” which is a collection of team based territory capture and capture the flag modes that builds toward a final deathmatch, with both teams getting a handicap based on the modes they previously won. The rounds are framed around some larger conflict between the two factions the teams represent, and that feeling that the overall game is representative of a drawn out conflict makes Gang War more exciting than the other pedestrian modes. In addition, players can customize their faction avatars and can make custom loadouts, just like every other multiplayer shooter these days. IN both the single and multiplayer modes there are “grinds,” which are little bonus objectives tied to in game rewards and achievements/trophies.
I think it says something about Max Payne 3 that the primary thing distracting me from reviewing it has been the compulsion to play it. The gameplay is almost unnaturally satisfying, perfectly balancing challenge and fun; the enemies are a clear and present threat, but the player never feels that they are truly weak and outmatched. Add onto that one of the best stories Rockstar has ever told (only outmatched by Red Dead Redemption), probably the best protagonist from any of their games, and you’ve got an incredibly engaging experience. Mix in the incredible technical prowess of the graphics and the surprisingly competent multiplayer component, and the end result is a game that is, I daresay, an early candidate for game of the year.
Jennifer Lawrence located herself on the Hollywood map with 2010’s Winter’s Bone, instantly launching herself as one of the most bankable young figures working today. Along the meandering path that would become her career following her breakout 2010 role, she has tapped into the mass movie-going consciousness in the hugely successful X-Men: First Class and proved indie credibility with secondary roles in The Beaver and Like Crazy. The screen adaptation of the first of Suzanne Collins’ breakout young adult novel series The Hunger Games finally witnesses Lawrence steering her first leading role in a big budget film as the watchful sister turned survivalist gladiator Katniss Everdeen. Ross’ translation of the text to the big screen provides a fine example of blockbuster excitement and emotion interlaced, resulting in a well paced and narratively gripping film despite its lengthy runtime and extended exposition. Holistically, The Hunger Games elegantly unfolds its sci-fi survival story with a dexterous touch for expressing Collins’ compelling totalitarian world and even more compelling lead character. Nevertheless, the ideologies inherent within the narrative remain problematic when filmed on camera. The Hunger Games’ preoccupation with scornfully critiquing spectacle culture reads better on paper than on screen simply because the film conflictingly invites us in on the critique and actually cheers on the very events that Collins aims to reject. This representation of arena violence on film conveys something enthralling rather than revolting because Ross makes the mistake of detaching audiences from the expressive carnage he presents. Instead, the film aligns audiences with the fictional spectators of the Hunger Games, thus relegating moviegoing audiences complicit in the very activities it loathes.
The overarching “bread and circus” analysis of a totalitarian universe begins with its basic premise. Gary Ross realizes Collins’ dystopian world of Panem, the remnants of North America following the collapse of civilization itself, with a flurry of contrasts. The thirteen laboring districts carry an aura of dilapidated, gloomy isolation compared to the richly colorful, ominously fascist aesthetics of the Capitol. Each year, one boy and one girl from each district are randomly chosen (in an event called “The Reaping”) to participate in the titular reality television show, a perverse duel-to-the-death format akin to The Running Man or Battle Royale. Numerous critics have parroted this film’s similarities to the aforementioned two, but many have overlooked its even closer comparison to Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor’s abysmal yet slightly intriguing 2009 film Gamer. Both films feature an emphasis on exaggerated pop culture kitsch borne out of our current society’s obsession with Project Runway or literally any reality TV show on TLC, commenting on the rapidly declining nature of mass culture. Neveldine and Taylor also immerse the film in a dystopian setup with a populace totally desensitized to violence thanks to a similar (albeit with guns and grenades) gladiatorial television show, but Gamer ultimately squanders its big, even Orwellian ideas in a poorly constructed package.
The Hunger Games, on the other hand, is far more expertly assembled. The naturalist tones of the first half hour recall the Ozarks-set Winter’s Bone or the melancholically sylvan Martha Marcy May Marlene, conveying the stark visuals of photographer Dorothea Lange’s vision of the Great Depression in rural America. This early utilitarian aesthetic starkly juxtaposes the tinge of dystopian sci-fi visuals that follow, featuring uniformed guards and giant flying aircraft that look eerily out of place. Children of Men comes to mind when viewing this raw, dirtied outlook on the future where widely diverging social classes exist that pit the haves against the have-nots. The visuals itself look excellent, channeling a grizzled frontier country with characters in Depression era dress that could be lifted out of a period piece itself. Nevertheless, the editing and framing techniques that Ross employs squanders the power of the images with his nauseating, at times nearly unwatchable shakycam handhelds. For a viewer who enjoyed even Matt Reeves’ hyperactive, aggressively shot Cloverfield, the first half hour of The Hunger Games with its foolhardy combination of incessant close-ups and a chaotic maelstrom of visuals obnoxiously frames even the most mundane of shots in a tight, wobbly squeeze. Ross appears to be stabbing at a taste of “raw” and “primal” naturalism akin to Winter’s Bone or even Deliverance, but these camera techniques only serve to remind audiences of the fabricated nature of this strained approach to gritty realism.
The failed attempt to expose the “rawness” of the moving image thankfully dissipates when the district’s tributes ultimately board the train to their future fates. Ross transforms his approach to framing and mise-en-scène in the Capitol, delivering more composed medium and long shots that take full advantage of the widescreen format. The probing eye of the camera lingers over the decadence and luxuries onboard the train, from the lavishly decorated pastries (a surprisingly disconcerting shift from the plain loaves of bread in the district) to the plastered make-up and apparel of an unrecognizable Elizabeth Banks as Capitol representative Effie Trinket. Once these static, more elegantly poised shots comprise this stretch of film, The Hunger Games finally finds ground rather than distracting itself with the exposition. Thus, the film thankfully connects with Collins’ smart and engaging narrative, emphasizing a resilient leading character at its core. When Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) steps up to replace her already selected 12-year-old sister Prim (Willow Shields) for the annual Hunger Games, the film presents a nonconventional heroine. Driven neither by enthusiasm or personal vendetta, Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen functions as a character pushed by a duty to care for her sole sibling because of her physically absent father and mentally absent mother. In the novel, the protracted length of the narrative in prose lets such a grisly sacrifice sink in more profoundly than the generously long but breezy two and half hours of film, but Ross makes good use of his phenomenal casting, expressive Appalachia locales (with some scenes sharing the same landmarks from Michael Mann’s North Carolina-shot The Last of the Mohicans), and Collins’ easily captivating storyline.
Jennifer Lawrence channels the self-sufficient survivalist Ree Dolly from Sundance favorite Winter’s Bone, caring for a catatonic mother and sibling while the father remains absent from the picture. Certainly, Lawrence ushers in the weary determination necessary for The Hunger Games’ woodland hunter, gritting her teeth in the face of adversaries, deadening her eyes to steel, and even roasting a squirrel in what could even be a knowing reference to Winter’s Bone. And despite the awful filming techniques of the first half hour, Ross manages to convey the impoverished backwoods setup of the coal-mining District 12 to fairly realist lengths. For those who’ve read the novel, District 12 exists in the vestiges of the Appalachian Mountains, and the Capitol government’s deliberate neglect of the people there and the occasional backwoods joke by Capitol talk show host Caesar Flickerman (expertly played by Stanley Tucci) mirrors our own society’s marginalization of impoverished rural communities in the very same locations. Nevertheless, Katniss prevails as an underdog fighter and one of the most well rounded female characters in recent mainstream film history. The aforementioned lack of parental figures force her to take on the roles of both father and mother, seen hunting, bartering for goods, caring for Prim, and ultimately laying down her life for a greater good. The character represents a smartly played out deconstruction of traditional gender representation that leaves plenty of gray areas for stereotypically simplistic demarcation points for the role of a cinematic female character.
Katniss ultimately overshadows both fellow male tribute Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) and longtime friend Gale Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth), despite the fact that both actors do fairly good jobs for their roles. When she eventually arrives at the Capitol with Peeta and Haymitch Abernathy (a welcome Woody Harrelson) in tow, she immediately sets an impression on the citizens, and in turn, on the audiences. Part of the competition is acquiring sponsors that can potentially send in necessary supplies for survival during the Hunger Games, and Katniss quickly demonstrates her autonomous, proactive nature even before the games begin. When Katniss initially meets her Capitol stylist Cinna (a surprisingly decent Lenny Kravitz), she initially snubs him of simply being there to “make me look pretty.” When he corrects her and asserts that his job is to make an impression, the film thus sets out to highlight the compelling protagonist inherent at its core. Nicknamed after an illusory pyrotechnic fashion piece, Katniss becomes “the girl who was on fire,” thus aligning the character with one other recent mainstream heroine, Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher’s adaptation of the Millennium series, dubbed “The Girl Who Played with Fire” in its second book. Furthermore, one can’t help but associate both Katniss and Lisbeth with its obvious allusions to the story of Prometheus, portraying both characters as tampering with things that could push the stability of power relations over the edge. Both stories deal with civil change: in The Hunger Games, this transpires in a burgeoning class uprising against the Capitol; in the Millennium series, change occurs on political and institutional levels in contemporary Sweden. And both stories contain uniquely compelling, steely female protagonists that slowly destabilize patriarchal power structures built into their diegetic worlds. Katniss Everdeen concerns herself with all these issues, resulting in one of the most absorbing up-and-coming leading protagonists in recent times. She is Robin Hood, Ellen Ripley, Joan of Arc, Che Guevara, and Bear Grylls all in one, and Lawrence’s ability to sell such a multidimensional character makes clear the actress’ flourishing talents.
Apart from Katniss Everdeen, childhood friend and companion hunter Gale radiates a sense of earnestness about him even as he ruminates in a conflicted and solitary manner when Katniss becomes a lamb to the slaughter during The Reaping. Katniss’ fellow District 12 representative Peeta is immediately likable as a flawed character suffering from a layer of guilt due to his higher social class in comparison to the rougher, less etiquette-bound Katniss. Nevertheless, once the two selected representatives arrive at the Capitol, everything becomes a fabrication ready for consumption by the city’s campy, exaggeratedly caricatured bourgeois leisure class. Katniss initially feels disgusted by such weighty emphasis on mentoring in terms of fashion, personality, and public image, but Haymitch always quickly reminds her, “It’s television!” Thus, Ross finally grounds the film in a decent attempt at social commentary via a satirical take on our society’s predilection for reality television. Pop culture and politics go hand-in-hand in Collins’/Ross’ world, portraying gamemaker Seneca Crane (Wes Bentley) and the Capitol President Coriolanus Snow (Donald Sutherland) dealing backroom politics to continue using the games to keep the masses docile amidst totalitarian rule. It’s Katniss and Peeta’s gradual destabilization of the televised order that power structures begin to change: viewers are influenced by their humanist, slightly populist stance towards the rights of the districts, persuading them to break free from apathy and incite anger against the Capitol like a mad as hell Howard Beale in Network. But rather than voice their concerns with politics and society, Katniss and Peeta rebel through their actions during the games as a means to “show them that they don’t own me.”
The primary act of rebellion inherent within The Hunger Games to topple entire power structures is the fabrication of a star-crossed romance. Initially an attempt by Haymitch to calculatedly attract audiences to the representatives of District 12, Katniss and Peeta begin to believe the fabrication as reality. Comparable to George Orwell’s own 1984, a moment in which Peeta clasps Katniss’ hand carries not only a romantic connotation, but also complex political and symbolical implications as efforts to rise above the system that controls the masses. Finding a sense of humanity and purpose beyond mere survival amidst the death and slaughter surrounding the games ends up becoming the filmmaker’s ultimate intention. So even though Katniss and Peeta fall for their own fabrication meant to garner attention from the Capitol sponsors, The Hunger Games reveals the omnipresent power of television to totally influence emotional responses: to create love, to incite anger, to unite districts, even to destabilize governments. The scenes that find Katniss and Peeta together ultimately reveal Ross’ (and of course, Collins’) final thesis: that inside each of these obedient killing machines beats a human heart.
Nevertheless, the one issue that needs to be analyzed still remains open: the games itself. Therein lies the most problematic aspect of The Hunger Games, an issue that was mentioned briefly but must now be fully fleshed out. While watching Ross pit his young hunters against each other before us, the distancing, voyeuristic aspect of the cinema complicates the original intention to criticize these barbaric spectator sports. Audiences become involved in the activity because the film focalizes its narrative to Katniss herself, thus resulting in audiences unintentionally participating as Capitol-like citizens entertained by the desultory slaughter onscreen. Like any fiction, audiences will gravitate towards its main character because they are sources of sympathy and connection, but Ross’ deliberate decisions in filmmaking undermine Collins’ original themes. Rather than focus on the more interesting, yet mundane (Hollywood translation: boring) aspects of survival as the novel does – gathering food, finding water, beating the heat, making shelter, starting a fire – Ross focuses the action on grander battle scenes as expected for a summer tentpole film, thus hypocritically aligning the filmmakers with the gamemakers. Ross and his diabolical gamemaker Crane provide their respected audiences with the spectacle they long to see, manipulating aspects of the action to influence the viewing experience. Naturally, the most important aspect of a film regarding teenagers slaughtering others for sport is the violence.
Like Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, the film cuts away at the precise moment during a killing scene, thus blatantly reminding viewers that the film is a PG-13 fabrication. These aren’t stylistic flourishes that heighten tension, but rather an example of filmmakers forced to adhere to standards and expectations brought upon by its demographics. Viewers of this film are most likely going to fall between the 12-18 range, the intended audience for the young adult teen series. Because of Ross’ decision to limit his violence onscreen to adhere to suitable ratings, the games’ depiction of violence does not deliver the shock necessary to make an appropriate statement. The overall premise of teens killing their peers onscreen should be a big enough shock, but Ross elides the carnage via whooshing camera movements away from the act itself, thus robbing the actions of their necessary emotional weight. Of course, if the camera were to revel in the blood and gore of a murdered child, the film would suffer as a repellent example of violence as entertainment once again, thus mirroring the Capitol audiences within the film cheering on such gruesome spectacle. Ross rides a thin line between violence carrying emotional impact and violence for the sake of violence, and thus the filmmaker decides to take the easy route and keep its onscreen gore at a minimum. The consequences of such an action have increased ticket sales from younger adolescents, but this avoidance of taking chances divorces the violence from its meaning.
Kinji Fukasaku’s 2000 film Battle Royale serves as the corrective counterexample in terms of its approach to adolescent violence, giving audiences an unflinching crystalline presentation of the butchery. The entire purpose of both The Hunger Games and Battle Royale is to portray kid-on-kid violence as repulsive, and straightforwardly depicting such appalling spectacle works in Battle Royale’s favor. Gary Ross’ preferred filmmaking modus operandi never delivers anything remotely unsettling, instead offering the typical action film theatrics with flashes of blood and gore for effect. Of course, simply displaying expressionless violence doesn’t necessarily equate to a profound message; a sense of emotional power must go hand-in-hand with the visuals. Perhaps one of the most successful instances of a film containing minimum blood and gore while maintaining a profound solemnity to the visuals was the conclusion to the Harry Potter series, witnessing solemn mourning among the remaining characters after their grandiose last stand with a profound emotive quality. There are moments to Ross’ film that nearly match such weightiness, including a number of intercut shots of spectators watching the games meant for stark contrast. A number of shots mid-game show the bloodthirsty mob of Capitol spectators enthralled by the violence, but a cut to the districts finds a silent crowd of onlookers gathered only by an obligatory sense to watch their children’s final moments. These instances are laced with a hauntingly quiet atmosphere that resonates more powerfully than any of Ross’ adolescent violence.
Early on in the film, Gale remarks to Katniss that “If no one watches, they [the Capitol] don’t have a game.” This early suggestion of an inherent teenage rebelliousness against the bread and circus government initially comes off as impossible in Collins’ dystopian world. What The Hunger Games seems to propose, however, is that we are already living in a post-collapse society. In an age of Kardashians and Project Runways, perhaps our image-obsessed world isn’t too far off from the pop culture saturated Capitol. The games itself may already be slowly coming to fruition given our intense fascination with violence in visual media, the pervasiveness of reality television, and pop culture’s bizarre fixation with celebritizing younger and younger stars (Bieber, Gomez, the Smith kids, and now even Lawrence herself). And finally, take the film’s ultimate taunt. When one steps back and actually witnesses any filmgoing audience watching the film, how close do these crowds approximate to the gawking Capitol spectators viewing the games on their own giant screens, sitting in a restless state until the champion finally emerges? Do we already resemble the society that Suzanne Collins has proposed and just haven’t noticed it yet?
The zeitgeist for French director Michel Hazanavicius’s The Artist has all but dissipated after the close of the 2011 awards season, and critical debate on it has slowly worn out. This revisitation of The Artist while the rest of cinema looks towards the bountiful lands of 2012 thus consigns the film within a new cultural context in which to frame it. The Artist, while not the most insightfully profound of movies released last year, definitely exists as one of the most important titles of the past decade not just as a work of art but also as an event. The film’s seemingly pretentious gimmick – a 21st century black and white “silent film” about sound films – proves to be an attractive veneer with which Hazanavicius crystallizes the mood of the 1920s-30s for a modern film simply out of its time. In a year where 3-D innovation and monolith IMAX productions have already been cemented as the go-to ploys for mass appeal, The Artist delivers a bold ambition and infectious enthusiasm for the past. On the surface, Hazanavicius wants nothing more than to impart his zest for classic Hollywood filmmaking to the audience through the irresistible charm of the film’s leads, but The Artist contains more than this momentary charisma. By framing the narrative as an exploration into the transition from silent films to talkies, The Artist recreates the atmosphere of a period of filmmaking while simultaneously serving as one of those enduring movies – not particularly intuitive, stylish, crafty, or weighty, but untiringly entertaining.
As a film preoccupied with the transition to the talkies, one can’t help but associate The Artist with its masterful 1952 precursor, Singin’ in the Rain. Hazanavicius uses the film as a jumping off point with which to familiarize his narrative, yet the movie leaps into divergent territories. Shades of A Star Is Born emerge through the visuals and celebrity culture storyline as well as the silent antics of Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights. And despite the evocations of amiable, satisfying romance of F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise, Hazanavicius is also interested in man’s descent into madness in the manner of Citizen Kane. The film recreates the exterior feel of these and many other classics at their heyday only to redefine the structure and narrative of classic Hollywood through he lens of the new millennium. Certain elements of silent and classic filmmaking embedded within our collective consciousness arise in The Artist as points of familiarity – shoddy intertitles that don’t adequately match the words onscreen, stationary cameras that produce extremely flat shots, artificially quick movements as if captured by a hand-cranked camera, and jazzy, nostalgic dance numbers with choreography instantly recalling anything from Gold Diggers of 1933 to the aforementioned Singin’ in the Rain.
That a French director remains enmeshed in distinctly American productions seems fairly ironic, especially given the context of a French film’s win in the typically American-dominated Academy Awards. Yet France has always been historically captivated by American cinema following World War II, only to closely examine, deconstruct, and redefine what makes classical Hollywood so great in the first place. This unique brand of French cinema under the banner of such renowned cinema names as Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Éric Rohmer, etc. transcends the typical Hollywood norms that hold back true artistry. Of course, The Artist isn’t a creation of the now departed French New Wave, but it does memorialize classical Hollywood cinema given nearly a decade of movie history. Hazanavicius constructs a happy-go-lucky universe that nonetheless feels slightly detached considering the other great “nostalgia” film of the year – Martin Scorsese’s more grounded Hugo. Nevertheless, The Artist’s vision of bygone cinema takes on a curious approach, casting two relatively unknown names for a story preoccupied with celebrity recognition. Jean Dujardin plays silent film heartthrob Georges Valentin, an apparent stand-in for the real-life actor Douglas Fairbanks whose stardom rapidly declined with the advent of sound cinema. One can’t help but notice a Gene Kelly in disguise as Dujardin channels an infectious charm with his silent wit, his sly spring in his step, and his occasional flashing of that million dollar smile straight out of the Golden Age of cinema itself. Given the lack of dialogue he faces throughout the film, Dujardin conveys the self-assuredness of celebrity stardom naturally, letting sheer facial expressions and body language emote for him.
Counterpoint to Valentin’s established silent film renown is the ingénue Peppy Miller (Bérénice Béjo), a pretty young flapper harboring a secret crush for the actor. When the two accidentally run across each other during Valentin’s premiere of A Russian Affair (a tongue-in-cheek reference to Hazanavicius’ own OSS 117 spy comedy series, also starring Dujardin), Peppy has a meteoric Tinseltown rise as the new “it girl” at the forefront of everyone’s minds. Béjo herself possesses the right flapper allure to succeed as a Hollywood celebrity if she actually had the luck to find herself living in the talkie age, radiating a youthful exuberance more in touch with the wildly schizophrenic tastes of the paparazzi media. Unlike the old-fashioned charm of Dujardin’s Valentin, Béjo conveys expressions completely different from his silent film emotional contrivances. Instead, she reminds us of her deeper classical influences beneath her flapper façade, casting shades of Clara Bow or Josephine Baker as she effortlessly wins over Al Zimmer (a seemingly out-of-place but surprisingly good John Goodman), head of the fictional Kinograph Studios. Thus, The Artist plays out dual careers: Valentin’s steady descent into madness as his hopelessly extravagant silent films deteriorate amidst the growing popularity of talkies and Peppy’s spectacular rise to a household name as she slowly grows distant from the actor she admired so much to begin with.
Problematically, The Artist’s decision to shift from a silent cinema love letter to an embittered, cynical analysis of the era as a Darwinian take on the economics of film presents a dodgy, unfitting tone to a film set out to entertain. This tonal shift is abrupt, but Dujardin manages to salvage true artistry with his portrayal of defeat, looking visibly shaken up with disheveled hair and fits of solitary drinking. A scene in which a melancholic Valentin revisits his flops from the back of his home theater vividly contrasts his goofy charm witnessed at the beginning of the film, and The Artist boldly takes an even darker turn with an unsettling suicide attempt. Yet despite these unforeseen moments of depression, The Artist’s de facto mascot, the impossible-to-hate Jack the dog (winner of the Palm Dog Award at the Cannes Film Festival), always reappears as a harbinger of pleasurable, classic comic relief. Even more enthralling is the dog’s fruition as a crucial character during an Inglourious Basterds-esque nitrate fire, witnessing the dog emerge from the ashes transcending the superficially cute pretensions of including loyal pets as main characters in a film.
Regardless of the surprisingly darker tone of The Artist at times, the film still delivers with scenes of pure elation. Valentin and Peppy’s playful flirting on the set of A German Affair leads to countless outtakes that initially seem like good-humored banter on set, but soon turns out to be a deeper affection as Valentin and Peppy fix their gaze on one another in mutual regard. Such absorbing exchanges of love are disarming to watch, such as an early dance-off between the two while blocked off by a set piece or Pepper embracing a suit jacket hanging on a coatrack by smoothly threading her arm through a sleeve. This latter image easily lingers in the mind as one of the more memorable, brief performances that carries a tender, intimate quality amidst the more grandiose dance sequences that populate the film. Nevertheless, Hazanavicius still delivers with his very Hollywood finale of a dance sequence between the two leads, emitting a sprightly quality that all but witnesses the grim aspects of the film evaporate as Valentin’s winning smile returns and Peppy’s allure enraptures us once again in a flurry of a dance number.
Underneath all this charm and fun lies Hazanavicius’ deeper commentary on film, namely the aforementioned shift from silent to sound cinema. The director’s playful handling of this topic manifests itself with the film’s silent stratagem, moving in and out of sound when necessary. The initial absence of sound during Valentin’s premiere of A Russian Affair exists as a breathtaking deconstruction of silent cinema. Hazanavicius toys with audience perception conditioned by a lifetime of watching movies, portraying the actor smiling right when his movie premiere concludes, thus allowing audiences to assume that applause is heard. As if on cue, the film cuts to a shot of the crowd applauding, reaffirming silent cinema’s power in storytelling based on what an audience can infer from its visuals. Furthermore, the film plays with an audience’s relation of silence and visuals via the snatches of rapid-fire dialogue that the filmmaker chooses not to compliment with intertitles at all, instead relying on audiences to imagine what’s being said simply based on context clues and habituated lip-reading. These experiments in toying with how audiences perceive silence are merely warm-ups, however. The really ambitious undertakings occur when sound finally arrives in The Artist, a noticeable paradigm shift that transpires during a remarkable nightmare sequence in which horrifyingly audible ambient noises surround a mute Valentin. The initial recognition of sound’s arrival when Valentin places a glass on a wooden table playfully teases our expectations of the film, completely destabilizing any preconception of The Artist’s “silent” film setup.
Hazanavicius is mischievous in his directorial choices, even borrowing a musical piece from a talkie in his soundtrack, namely Bernard Herrmann’s “Scene d’Amour” from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Yet it’s the very end of the film where The Artist lays its final, most attention-grabbing transformation. Following the aforementioned concluding dance sequence, Hazanavicius pulls back his camera to reveal filmmakers finishing the scene like the last shot of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona. This choice represents a sly piece of meta-film that closes The Artist by foregrounding the filmmaking process, making no attempt to hide the purpose of the film any longer – its role as cinema about cinema. Many critics have noted The Artist’s nostalgic indulgence for a bygone era but have forgotten to contextualize the film in an age of 3-D, IMAX, and other big-budgeted technical landmarks. Simply put, The Artist represents a vital act of defiance, proving that an unassuming black and white pseudo-silent film can still enthrall audiences with its genuine human charm and dismissal of the latest marketable technical conceit. Thus, Hazanavicius completely reconsiders his own narrative’s preoccupation with the Darwinian nature of technological progress. Valentin may surrender silent film to the latest advances in sound, but Hazanavicius appreciates the pure, instinctive quality of the moving image divorced from any technical ploy. He understands that even as modern cinema heads towards bigger, louder IMAX theaters and the aggressively in-your-face 3-D visuals, all that glitters isn’t gold. This conclusion stems from a silent black and white protest, revealing that even as The Artist borrows from the past, it has its eyes fixed firmly on the future.
Well-crafted is one way to describe Steven Soderbergh’s latest flick, the exquisitely polished and action-packed Haywire. Another way to describe this globetrotting, vengeance-filled action movie is breezy, as its brisk running time of 93 minutes lets the story zoom by like a Ferrari speeding through a side street. In fact, the comparison to the foreign supercar company feels apt because Haywire embodies everything one would expect from one of these Italian cars: sophisticated style, an economical leanness, and an undying momentum that propels it from start to finish leaving anyone in its wake completely staggered. At twenty minutes into the film, Haywire already has two intricately choreographed hand-to-hand fight sequences under its belt with barely a trace of slogging exhaustion. Instead, Soderbergh directs his film tightly and efficiently, transcending the easy route of merely realizing yet another Bourne-esque copycat, instead infusing an infectious 1960s New Wave aesthetic atop his action sequences like a James Bond movie envisioned by Jean-Luc Godard.
Already his third film in two years following 2010’s And Everything Is Going Fine and 2011’s Contagion, Steven Soderbergh continues his trend of releasing palatable mainstream fare that feels light and breezy only because the director and fellow screenwriter Lem Dobbs (The Limey, Kafka) supply the film with technical dexterity and masterfully crafted elliptical storytelling. Haywire begins near the middle, allowing the movie’s plethora of A-list celebrities to converse, fight, and scramble with one another throughout the rest of its runtime to fill in the gaping holes of narrative that Soderbergh establishes early on in his film. Featuring retired MMA fighter Gina Carano as Mallory Kane, the main focal point to ground the action together, the film begins in an unassuming diner in upstate New York. Always on edge and ready to spring to action, Gina Carano represents yet another non-professional actor that Soderbergh fixes as his leading character following former pornstar Sasha Grey’s stint in 2009’s The Girlfriend Experience. Although Carano delivers a smidgeon of wooden exchanges from time to time, the fighter-turned-actress settles in nicely given her martial arts experience. Within minutes of the initial expository opening, Carano puts her talents to the test against Aaron (the massively built Channing Tatum), after an unsettling chat on a prior mission in Barcelona. Amidst the diner’s onlookers, a visceral hand-to-hand fight ensues in blink-of-an-eye rapidity as bodies are thrown, limbs thrash and entangle, rounds fire from a gun, and tableware clangs against the ground. When Mallory manages to flee with the help of bystander Scott (Michael Angarano), Haywire begins its journey deconstructing genre conventions and unfolding its narrative through flashbacks that reveal how she found herself there in the first place and the direction in which the film will barrel forward.
Gina Carano’s expertise in mixed martial arts gives her the fluidity in movement and the savagery in her fight to pull off impressive action pieces framed in claustrophobic locations without the need for a stunt double. The film slowly discloses her as a seasoned ex-Marine turned private agent for specialized black ops missions, only to find herself set up and betrayed. The film’s time-jumping flashback structure frames the narrative to give context for her current mission to clear her name, outwitting a surplus of male aggressors (Channing Tatum, Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, and Antonio Banderas) trying to keep up. Soderbergh’s decision to encircle a central female character amidst countless male protagonists simply begs for an analysis of gender issues and destabilization of female identity. Gina Carano certainly adds to the welcome revitalization of credible female representation championed by current names like Rooney Mara, Elizabeth Olsen, Jennifer Lawrence, Charlize Theron, Noomi Rapace, and so on. Unlike Hollywood’s trend to marginalize women in the cinema as either the masculinized heroine (Michelle Rodriguez in The Fast and the Furious series) or lavishly sexualized for the male gaze (Emily Browning in Sucker Punch), Carano serves as a vital corrective as a grounded and composed protagonist. She prefers to outsmart and overcome her assailants with instantaneous decision-making and ruthless close-quarters combat with bare hands and legs. Naturally, all fight scenes avoid the switch from actress to stunt double because Gina Carano performs all action feats herself, taking the punches and crashing through set pieces smoothly without gratuitous post-production editing. Soderbergh takes full advantage of this organic feel to the action, filming his fight scenes in long shots that provide an unobstructed, largely uncut view of kinetic energy that does not misrepresent time and space in spastic editing. Not only does this attention to realism leave the fight scenes plausible, it also appreciates the artistry of tightly choreographed physical action that modern films tend to distort with excessive cutting.
Yet despite all this encomia to Gina Carano’s physical dexterity, her character nevertheless remains basic and underdeveloped. This attribute likely derives from a combination of forces including Soderbergh choosing to provide an uncomplicated character for someone lacking serious acting experience, Carano being overshadowed by the more familiar faces of the ensemble, and even the film’s nonlinear structure preferring more questions than solid answers. However, this decision results in a slightly uneven character construction, but Haywire never gravely falters from this setback. Carano makes up for her inexperience by playing a ubiquitous calm and cool as she evades her pursuers and uncovers even more sinister antagonists pulling the strings of the narrative. Steven Soderbergh delivers much with a fairly meek budget of $23 million, serving as cinematographer and editor under trademark alias. He reinforces his role as auteur once again in Haywire, displaying an unhindered artistic vision with his eye-catching mise-en-scène and globetrotting locales reminiscent of Ocean’s Twelve or Contagion. Soderbergh also reveals his technical astuteness with his editing techniques that relay elaborate machinations intercut with flashbacks à la Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Frequent jump cuts and unconventional decisions in framing and close-ups only allude to the movie’s French New Wave influences and elliptical storytelling techniques.
All these scenes are arranged to a buoyantly jazzy score by Soderbergh’s frequent collaborator David Holmes, recalling the lively music from the Ocean’s Eleven series (particularly the bongo drum-heavy Ocean’s Twelve). This stylistic choice frequently undermines the tone of the film, imbuing austere and desperate sequences with a zippy, spirited feel. Holmes’ score compliments the schizophrenic atmosphere of Soderbergh’s deconstruction of the action/spy/thriller genre, recalling the aesthetics of obscure 1960s-70s spy films with a retro indebtedness. Soderbergh not only likens Haywire to dated action titles in terms of style, but also through its narrative, cynically portraying his agents as private contractors induced by money than government agents simply doing their jobs. This subverting of genre tropes leads to plot twists as characters turn on each other such as the shadowy government official Coblenz (Michael Douglas) in a world of unfettered black ops assignments. Ultimately, these double-crossings lead to an imbroglio of a conclusion as pieces fall into place only for Mallory to exact absolute retaliation and tie up all loose ends.
Haywire signifies yet another solid title to add to Steven Soderbergh’s exponentially growing filmography, further substantiating the weathered auteur’s ability to effortlessly move in and out of mainstream and indie cinema. Comparable to the Ocean’s Eleven franchise, Soderbergh maintains his chic and breezy stylistic and editing continuity, breathing life into what in the hands of a less capable director would be a soulless, cumbersome action flick. Haywire avoids the tropes that tax many other mainstream action films, subverting and experimenting with the familiar styles to generate something entirely fresh, spry, and engaging. And the greatest feat of it all is the way in which Soderbergh makes his craft appear so easy; his technical know-how and flexibility in filmmaking makes all other action flicks look strained and clumsy by comparison.
With so many “movie of the moment” flicks come and gone these last few years (Up In the Air, The Company Men, and now the Occupy-tinged, allegorizing Coriolanus), the arrival of Jeff Nichols’ Take Shelter exercises a completely divergent take on the emotional zeitgeist of the ongoing economic downturn. An anticipatory, observant drama, Take Shelter harbors an emotional complexity difficult to put into words but profound when actually felt – the film is nothing short of an independent American masterwork. From the surface, the film appears as a gripping psychological thriller about a family man experiencing regular visions of some kind of impending catastrophe. Whether or not he’s prophesizing a doomsday scenario or simply losing his grip on reality isn’t the source of tension, however. In fact, Take Shelter is in many ways not quite the movie you’d expect upon first glance. Instead, Jeff Nichols crafts a class-conscious, sobering warning on the everyday fallout from the economic crisis under guise of doomsday parable and psychological thriller. Nichols scatters real world concerns throughout his film, and his ill-omened bourgeois foresight slowly picks apart at the now comfortable American middle-class domesticity before slowly ripping this illusion at the seams, transforming mundane suburbia into a nightmare world à la David Lynch (Twin Peaks) or Peter Weir (The Last Wave). Nevertheless, the director plays out his menacing allegory with enough intelligence and polish to filter its commentary into a challenging cipher of a tale, blurring lines between delirium and reality amidst a gripping narrative of obsession and love.
As with Nichols’ debut feature Shotgun Stories in 2007, Take Shelter unfolds with a classic approach to storytelling in which every single action and piece of dialogue is meticulously constructed and instilled with narrative importance. Nichols patiently unravels the daily rhythms and nuances of his characters in order to establish the film’s eventual points of contention. Curtis LaForche (Michael Shannon) earns a living as a construction worker to scrape by enough money to take care of his family: his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain), who sells homemade crafts for extra money, and their deaf daughter Hannah (Tova Stewart). The couple hopes that health insurance will cover Hannah’s cochlear-implant surgery for her hearing and that they’ll raise enough money for their annual beach vacation. The film presents a recognizable suburban setup with the all-too-familiar fears of financial shortcomings and a worsening economic backdrop. Curtis’ story ultimately transforms into a tragic portrait of a man desperately trying to look out for his family, thus casting shades of a love story about faith and trust under duress. The catalyst for such a trial emerges from Curtis’ hallucinatory visions depicted by Nichols as metaphorical and literal apocalyptic breakdowns. These intense dreams turn out to be horrific implications that coincide with an authentic collapse of internal psyche, the family unit, employment, and to an extension, the American economy itself. Essentially, the filmmaker concludes that if this economy continues on its relentless downward spiral, we’ll have a storm on our hands, and he presents just that.
Beginning with an illusory vision of funneling storm clouds emanating straight out of a biblical cataclysm, the film jumps into surreal territory as the plain-looking, naturalist digital cinematography blends real storm footage with CGI. These hallucinations of a looming storm carry a prophetic quality as Curtis seems the only person to witness these grand events. Birds fall out of the sky; lightning strikes menacingly before us; crazed, shadowy figures abduct Hannah; a swarm of birds flutter in formation like the locusts from Days of Heaven. Curtis takes all this in with his stoic, haggard frame with a face that expresses a growing wariness to the events that unfold before his eyes. He has a schizophrenic mother in assisted living, and he considers the possibility of a corrupted psychological state passed down through genetics as the culprit for his hallucinations. Nevertheless, he moves this consideration to the back of his mind in order to directly combat potential forces against his family with a herculean strength, concluding, “Something might be coming, something that’s not right.” His genuine regard for his family gives him a sudden need to nurture, a sentiment that he radiates through deliberate actions after withdrawing into a shell of unpredictability stemming from a growing uneasiness. Curtis soon envisions his dog and the people he keeps closest hurting him, and his visions become disturbingly urgent as the storm and faceless aggressors literally burst into his comfortable life. These events coincide with an oddly beautiful score either encompassing a light ringing that prompts a sense of wide-eyed wonder amidst inevitable ruin (a feeling not unlike that from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia) or a foreboding, spine-tingling drone. Nichols constructs these series of nightmares as a point of ambiguity, leaving a singular question up in the air: what does it all mean?
Take Shelter is a cipher of a film, drawing audiences in from its very onset. From a broader interpretation, one can look past the psychological thriller setup and the apocalypse premonitions and unearth Jeff Nichols’ commentary on the emotional state of American society. The film is deeply embedded in an ongoing discourse on the contemporary American economic crisis, transmitting societal worries exacerbated by news media and doomsday prophecy. Curtis LaForche decides to build a tornado shelter in his backyard as if foreseeing not only the shrinking middle class, but also this whole way of living literally wiped off the face of the Earth – or at least, forced underground. When best friend and coworker Dewart (Shea Whigham) remarks, “You’ve got a good life, Curtis. I think that’s the best compliment you can give a man: take a look at his life and say, ‘That’s good,’” he might as well be giving a sly reference to Curtis’ unpredictable financial state given the context of a real-life sinking economy. Indeed, the film is structured around meticulously recorded financial purchases - $6,875 for costs of storm shelter improvements, $178 each for gasmasks, $8 profit for a pillow at a flea market (making these prior costs seem unattainable), etc. – to cast a despairing light on the LaForche financial state. Constant worries on finances abound throughout the film, though Nichols keeps these reservations clandestine under his psychological thriller pretense.
The entire sequence of Curtis purchasing various goods for his storm shelter and finding the capital necessary for his project astutely critiques the entire American economic system. The film presents the difficulties with taking out a loan “at this time” and the real-life fear of unemployment, a sudden reality check that has tremendously disastrous effects on an entire way of living. Nichols even takes stabs at the American healthcare system, depicting Curtis spending a bulk of his time and efforts merely trying to find proper, affordable psychiatric care only to ultimately settle on a cheaper, local therapist. Eventually, Curtis devolves into an unyielding figure jeopardizing his family’s own economic livelihood with the initial intention to protect his family from would-be harm. Nichols directs this collapse of marriage and the family unit itself as Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain fight a fierce battle of mutual trust as reality dissolves and reconfigures in Take Shelter’s complete revision of the domestic family drama. The real moment, however, arrives during an actual storm when Curtis has his family sheltered in his underground refuge. When the storm eventually passes, an unearthly pause emerges, drawing out an agonizing tension as Curtis remains indecisive over whether or not to let his family back into the real world. An internal, subconscious turmoil subsists throughout the scene as an extended dialogue between Shannon and Chastain offers a persistent push-pull: he struggles to face the danger just outside the shelter’s doors; she tries to stay rooted in reality amidst this chaos.
Take Shelter’s conflicting forces and deft storytelling are bolstered by two of the most transcendent forces working today: the emotionally wrought Michael Shannon and the masterful Jessica Chastain. The former conveys a very human quality in his need to nurture and save his family, though his descent into irrationality has tinges of an emotionally scarred figure given various insinuations of a dark family backstory and his worsening dreams. Shannon brings a level of stoicism to his role that makes his ultimate downfall into ostensible trembling and perpetual worry carry a genuinely fractured quality of a tragic hero. The cathartic climax of his story arrives at a church dinner scene in which his overwrought, yet earnest psyche all but explodes in a flurry of emotion that feels shattering, real, and terrifying, leaving time at a total standstill. Strawberry blond Jessica Chastain maintains her high standard of acting established in earlier, equally substantial roles in films like The Tree of Life and The Help. Here, she maintains a look of hurt as a conflicted wife continually trying to find new sources of strength to support her family and a husband sinking deeper into perplexity. During a scene in which Curtis confesses to his wife the price (figuratively and literally here) he had to pay for the shelter, Jessica Chastain conveys an earnest sense of frustration, fear, concern, and love all in one as she upholds the strained bond between the two. Take Shelter is part love story, but it’s also concerned with its characters individually as monoliths in and of themselves, each and together striving for harmony amidst growing discord.
American director Jeff Nichols builds his tension through a constant ambiguity that lies inherent throughout Take Shelter, constructing surreal imagery that finally concludes in a revelatory ending that won’t be spoiled here but will be praised for its enigmas as yet another example of obscurity in an already distorted narrative. The electrifying final shots simply collapses the entire film under its weight, expressing a profound conclusion beneath it all that speaks to the unstable state of a comfortable existence in an unpredictable world. It’s yet another standstill moment in a film that seeks to capture an essence before an impending storm, asserting the precariousness of humanity through the LaForche family as metaphor. Just when Nichols seems to be reaching a resolution after the storm shelter sequence, this final moment of initial clarity and a sinking confusion triggers a growing ambiguity once more. The most difficult emotions occur right here, just before the credits roll – a suppressed tempest of fervor ready to burst forth.
In Guy Ritchie’s follow up to his 2009 blockbusterized action adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic literary series, Robert Downey Jr.’s near superhuman mastermind finds himself against a rogue assassin out to kill the Gypsy fortuneteller Simza (Noomi Rapace). Sherlock Holmes’s herculean intellectual prowess gives him the ability to plan out his course of action step by step by forecasting every single move against him. It’s a moment of Zack Snyder-esque slow-motion effects that the film already presented within the first few minutes of film and even in Ritchie’s first Sherlock Holmes, and as such, it feels all too familiar. Yet Ritchie recycles this gimmicky style, employing a clever bit of monologue that likens the impending fight sequence to cooking a spot of breakfast. Downey’s Holmes describes the violence with all his wit and charm, explaining, “First, pillage the nest. Clip wings. Now, blunt his beak. Crack eggs. Scramble. Pinch of salt. Touch of pepper. Split the omelet. Additional seasoning required. Breakfast is served.” The succor provided by this witty piece of narration can only last for so long, however. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is in fact, a game in and of itself. The game in question involves whether or not Ritchie’s sequel will present the same old tricks and ultimately fall into a sophomore slump in originality, and the likable yet all-too-familiar ploy witnessed in this scene is suspended in time as yet another element of the movie’s duplicating act.
Nevertheless, Guy Ritchie does flesh out his style in A Game of Shadows in regards to the slo-mo sequences, often accompanying each moment of clairvoyance with a cleverly written piece of dialogue. Still, these bits are still obviously just for show, and explaining in detail to the audience what’s about to happen and then quickly reproducing the action becomes a tedious affair after viewing it so many times. The rapid-fire Downey wisecracks, the outrageous disguises, the repetitive bare-knuckled pugilism are all evidence of a series already resorting to duplicating a past success reminiscent of The Hangover: Part II, or as an even more apt comparison, the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Like Pirates, Ritchie’s Sherlock Homes rides primarily on the imaginative performance of an amusing, always entertaining leading man given very clever dialogue. Robert Downey Jr.’s rendition of Holmes does echo Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow in terms of a resourceful, sometimes ungainly protagonist with a peculiar modus operandi. And Guy Ritchie presents Doyle’s character on a large-scale production, reinterpreting the literary character through the filmmaker’s hyperactive imagination. In neat blockbusterized fashion, this big-budget British action feature has an American star at his shining core, presenting a new kind of Holmes that remains a far cry from the typical conception of the famous detective.
Downey captures the full range of the Sherlock Holmes character, conveying an assortment of unique characteristics including a near matchless wit, a broad spectrum of knowledge, cunning powers of deduction (during the few times he actually shows off this essential trait), street fighting techniques (an actual talent from Doyle’s novels), etc. The actor crafts a likable, charming protagonist like Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow, instilling within his character a sense of charisma and even a slight shade of an underdog beneath his visage. Yet the character does lack one vital quality that most blockbuster characters of this caliber overlook – flaws. Throughout Ritchie’s two Sherlock Holmes features, there exists no element of a human struggle, instead presenting Holmes as a near superhuman hero too infallible in every single way. In Doyle’s novels, Holmes faces many trials and tribulations that make him the character he is known today, but Ritchie jumps straight into the action with a character seemingly untouchable by the forces that be. Never is there a moment when Holmes seems unlikely to solve the case and not get the upper hand on any adversary because Ritchie simply gives us no doubt whatsoever that Holmes will triumph at the end. Rater than measuring out a degree of doubt as to whether or not Holmes will crack the case, Guy Ritchie removes all suspense in favor of a surefire hero, thus providing this “shadowy game” with not a whole lot of uncertainty afoot.
However, Ritchie does provide a few, if fleeting, qualities to his characters including Watson’s gambling problem (which comes to fruition here), tension between Holmes and Watson’s new fiancée Mary Morstan-Watson (Kelly Reilly), the rivalry between master detective and beginner, etc. – but all these elements vanish amidst the grand scale action. Beneath the blockbusterized gloss rests a promise of rooted three-dimensionality, and Ritchie at least delivers one fairly well developed narrative tension. This tension is that between Holmes and Watson with a homoerotic undertone, and this complex relationship has been established in Ritchie’s 2009 film as well as Doyle’s own novels. The question over Holmes’ homosexuality has been an interest in Doyle’s original novels because the time period it was written (late 1800s to the turn of the century) simply could not allow for an outright addressing of the issue. In Ritchie’s 2011 film, the homoerotic relationship between Holmes and Watson has never been more apparent. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law snipe at each other to no end, consummating their allure to one another with ceaseless banter full of sexual innuendo. There’s great chemistry between the two like an Apatowesque bromance, but Holmes and Watson share a relationship more than a simple camaraderie. One can witness the odd couple’s mutual affection for one another during Watson’s frequent reminders to Holmes of his preparations to leave his life of adventure behind in order to embark on a normal, married livelihood. The eventual wedding witnesses Holmes slowly walking away during the ceremony, a scene that seems to suggest a level of tragedy of a broken bond between the two men.
Guy Ritchie’s decision to water down this conflicted relationship with the presence of a female romantic interest to Holmes in the form of Irene Alder (Rachel McAdams) only speaks to the commercialized filtering at work in the film. Nonetheless, her character has always been a strong one in the Sherlock Holmes franchise, serving as one of the few characters who can successfully match wits with the titular figure. However, Ritchie has little time for the character in this film, instead limiting her screen time to the first half and focusing specifically on the film’s new villain, Professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris), the story’s own Joker to its Batman. Moriarty has always been the insurmountable villain of the Holmes lore, an equally smart (if not smarter) foe and able fighter with that same uncanny ability to foresee/anticipate another’s actions. British actor Jared Harris (Mad Men, Fringe) outdoes even the proficient Mark Strong in his rendition of villainy, opting to serve as an intellectual equal to Holmes rather than an overly imposing megalomaniac or a simple cockney thug. The best scenes in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows witness Holmes and Moriarty merely conversing in mutual admiration, fighting a game of wits and underhanded verbal contrivances meant to undermine the other.
The film does contain its moments of large-scale action sequences amidst its lightning pace and sparse plot detailing Moriarty detonating bombs in order to trigger a world war, particularly a well-executed sequence on a train and a stylish slow-motion escape through a forest. The train sequence is simply a well-shot, rapidly paced moment that envisions characters exploring both the interiors and exteriors of the locomotive while dodging machine gun bullets and finally concluding in an explosive finish. Also worthy to note is the forest escape sequence with the director employing his Zack Snyder-esque slow-motion/sped-up technique as mortar blasts splinter trees into airborne 3-D projectiles and pure disarray transpires before an audience. There’s a sense of briskness to the film’s over two hour running time that keeps Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows enjoyable to sit through and absorb, but this breezy atmosphere ultimately squanders the roles of newcomers Stephen Fry and Noomi Rapace in the film. Stephen Fry as Holmes’ brother Mycroft ends up with little to do besides the occasional moment of comic relief; the film simply wastes the talents of Noomi Rapace as the aforementioned gypsy fortuneteller by limiting her role to a minor level before disappearing when she should excel. Nevertheless, the enjoyable banter and camaraderie of Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law propel this film forward, leaving the trip lighthearted and pleasurable well enough until the very end.
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows bypasses the grimy depiction of Victorian England in the first (and far superior) Sherlock Holmes, choosing instead locales from sunny countryside valleys outside the rainy, polluted, slightly steampunk-inspired London. This sidestepping of its predecessor’s aesthetic only speaks to Ritchie’s decision to craft a standalone film in his franchise in order to avoid the typical “bigger, louder” sequel contrivances, though A Game of Shadows somehow manages to affix itself in its predecessor’s faults nonetheless – namely, to present a hero with faultless intelligence and wits to leave its enigmatic plot unworthy of our time to investigate further. Simply put, the film is too unambitious and not daring enough to toy with audience expectations, unlike Downey’s other moneymaking franchise, Iron Man. In that film, his character is the definition of flawed – egotistical to a fault, a drunkard, arrogant, lumbering at times, and vain, thus giving him nowhere to go but up. In A Game of Shadows, Holmes cannot grow as a character because Ritchie has presented an unfaultable figure untouched by the conflict that surrounds him. Still, there are expertly crafted sequences here that make this film a genuinely fun ride and a blast to experience, providing that ephemeral jolt to the senses and giving that gratifying momentary rush from start to finish.
At last, it is complete! Our videogame awards are certainly late, and I take full responsibility for that. Now, it has not all been for nothing, since my tardiness has given me time to catch up on games I missed last year, and expand my top 5 list into a top ten. 2011 was yet another strong year for gaming, with plenty of new IPs to balance out the numerous threequels that were released late in the year. I have taken the time to name my definitive top ten games of last year. Now, with everyone’s eyes focused on 2012, I ask only that we look back to 2011 one last time and observe some true excellence.
10. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim does exactly one thing very well: it creates a visually interesting world with a lot of places to explore and impressive sights to see. From a purely superficial perspective, the world appears organic and alive, and is large enough to make any player lose themselves in it for hours on end. This is the big draw to Skyrim, and everyone knows it. I figure that most would say I’m commiting some sort of blasphemy by having Skyrim as low as it could possibly be on my humble top ten list. But the fact is, damn near everything else besides the physical realm of Skyrim in the game is sub-par. The animations are poor, the voice acting ranges from bareable to terrible, the quests are all fairly lackluster, and the melee combat is absolutely awful. But, in a weird twist, I am perfectly happy to look past all of these shortcomings and just walk around and take in the majesty of the fully-explorable world. I’ve been blown away by this game’s beauty, but there are a lot of flaws to look past.
9. Rayman: Origins
Rayman: Origins is a game that makes me nostalgic for the days when I didn’t own a console or a decent computer, and the only way I could play videogames was to go over to a friend’s house. Why is that? Because the games I would play with my friends were platformers a lot like this one: cartoonish and oozing with charm. Rayman: Origins just puts the player in a great mood as they play it. That’s not to say the game gets by on mood and style alone. The art and energy would be nothing without the great platforming found at the game’s core. The level design is fantastic, with levels that allow for entertaining and fast paced platforming. It also provides just enough a challenge through its secondary objectives (finding hidden cages and collecting lums) to keep it interesting without getting frustrating.
8.Batman: Arkham City
Arkham City comes from the “Why don’t we make it bigger?” school of sequel development. By crafting the open world of Arkham City, a giant prison in the middle of Gotham, Rocksteady showed that their desire in this sequel was to expand on the scale of their take on the Dark Knight’s universe. Arkham City goes even further into the Batman lore, with side missions that give plenty of minor villains a chance to leave their mark on the series. But beyond the side missions, Riddler trophies, and various challenges, the core story is the main draw. Unraveling the meaning behind Dr. Strange’s plot is turns out to be an exciting endevour that allows for more of the same opportunities to partake in the great stealth and combat from the previous title, Arkham Asylum. Batman has gained a few new abilities, but the thrills of the original are essentially the same thrills on offer here. The great gliding and batclawing allows for some great traversal, which keeps the open world from feeling like too much of a hassle to explore. There is more enemy variety in Arkham City, which adds a fair bit of challenge, but takes away from some of the simplistic, rythmic fun of the combat system. Regardless, Arkham City is a hell of a great time, thanks to the preservation of its predecessor’s core mechanics. Oh, and the story is pretty great, too.
7. Portal 2
There’s no way Portal 2 will ever be more “classic” than Portal. I find this extremely unfortunate, considering Portal 2 is better in almost every way. Portal 2 attended the same “Why don’t we make it bigger?” class as Arkham City, and it certainly works in the series’ favor. Portal 2 shows us all how big and crazy Aperture really is by presenting the player larger, more impressive venues, a significantly longer campaign, and a more fleshed out story. Valve somehow managed to make Aperture more unsettling and, simultaneously, more goofy. The run-down aesthetic of the levels is made all the more effective thanks to some great moody lighting and larger scale. All the while, this feeling of loneliness is balanced by better, funnier script, which features some great lines from JK Simmons and Stephen Merchant. Not all of the jokes are winners, but there are enough solid lines to keep the player entertained. To top it all off, the end boss encounter is absolutely fantastic, thanks to the superb killing blow Chell gives. The coop is pretty decent, too.
6. Bastion
Bastion follows a silent protagonist known only as “The Kid” after he wakes up after apparently sleeping through the end of the world, or, at least, the end of the society in the sky that he was a part of. As far the gaming press was concerned, Bastion was 2011’s mainstream art game of the year, and it’s quite easy to understand why. The much adored soundtrack, narration, and visual style are fully deserving of the massive amounts of praise they’ve recieved. The game itself plays like an oldschool Zelda-esque action rpg that is played while listening to a book on tape. Almost all of the context, development of characters, and emotional heavy lifting is handled via the narration, but the narration is synced well enough with the gameplay and images seen on the screen for it to feel like a clever storytelling device, rather than a crutch the developers leaned on. But the narration would be nothing were it not for the great art and soundtrack. Each area the player explores is unique, each beautiful in their own way, while still evoking differing emotions of sorrow, comfort, dread, etc. The soundtrack is absolutely phenomenal in its own right, and the way a few of the songs are used in the game is absolutely genius (the introduction of Zia in particular). The gameplay is fairly simple, and the game constantly doles out new weapons and abilities, adding a nice level of variety. But the draw is the story, the art, and all those nice little touches that define the mainstream indie games we’ve seen over the last few years.
5. Modern Warfare 3
And behold! The second blasphemy of my list: the inclusion of a Call of Duty title, at number 5, no less! I’ll preface my pick by conceding this: Modern Warfare 3 does, in fact, bring very little that is “new” to the world of gaming. But to me, that doesn’t matter simply because MW3 is just so refined. This final game in the Modern Warfare trilogy is an absolutely stellar conclusion, providing real closure to the story and some of the most exciting sequences ever seen in a linear FPS. MW3 is just linear shooting done right. It provides plenty of scripted, rollercoaster thrills, and sees fit to let the player participate in a few large scale battles that dwarf anything previously seen in the Call of Duty games. The graphics engine definitely shows its age in this go-round, but the game still looks damned impressive at times. The story is intriguing, and thanks to the stellar voice acting, I found myself really enthralled with Price and Soap’s final missions together. And god, that ending…
4. Gears of War 3
Gears of War 3 finds itself on my top ten list for much the same reason as Modern Warfare 3. This threequel doesn’t bring anything particularly new to the gaming front (though probably more than MW3), but it just does so much right. Third person cover-based shooting is rapidly becoming the most stale genre of this generation, with these games rapidly becoming more and more formulaic and slow. Leave it to Epic, the studio who popularized the genre, to be the one who shows the entire industry how it’s done. Gears of War 3 defies the current standards of the genre by being fast paced, intense, and encouraging movement and aggression from the player, rather than demanding that he/she stays in one spot and slowly picking off enemies. It helps that Gears 3 is shockingly gorgeous, with plenty of color and genuinely gorgeous landscapes. The story is easily the best of the series, with some solid character development, well-executed humor, moments that pack a genuine emotional punch, and a nice sense of closure. It doesn’t answer all the questions that have been posed since the series got its start in 2006, but it is still a strong finish to a series that started with very little narrative at all. A near-perfection of its genre, Gears of War 3 is fully deserving of recognition.
3. LA Noire
A lot of work went into LA Noire. If that wasn’t evident from the exquisite recreation of 1940s Los Angeles, the fact that the final product is the result of 7 years of brutal working conditions should be proof enough. But as much as I empathize with the plight of Team Bondi, I feel the need to ignore the negative stigma now associated with the game and appreciate the end result of their strife: a truly excellent open world/adventure title. The episodic adventures of Cole Phelps as he solves crimes ranging from fraud to homicide provide a nice mix of adventure and open-world action gameplay, as the player goes back and forth between investigating crimes and engaging in violent chases and shootouts with suspects. LA Noire follows all of the tropes of noir fiction: adultery, corruption, rainy nights in a big city, suits, fedoras, and hardened detectives. But this is the first time these elements have been transfered so masterfully into an interactive medium. The gameplay in LA Noire is relatively competent on its own, but the game’s true strength is its devotion to crafting a fantastic noir experience, with a focus on creating a detailed rendition of LA from a past era, and on bringing characters to life through great performances and the stunning face-capture technology. It certainly isn’t perfect, but the pure effort and ambition on display is enough to elevate LA Noire far above its flaws and let it acheive the status of third best game of the year.
2. To The Moon
The level that Kan Gao’s To the Moon affected me is nothing if not a shock. The game is a very simple point and click adventure, whose levels consist of little more than clicking through dialogue and scanning the screen for objects, with the occassional mini game or tile puzzle thrown in. There is even a rather poor late game dual-joystickesque shooting portion. But the lack of quality of that particular section is really all that is stopping me from declaring To the Moon the finest gaming experience of the year. Everything else about it is simply immaculate: the simple beauty of the 16 bit graphics, the exquisite soundtrack, the excellent humor and drama found in the writing, the flawless development of the characters, and the legitimately touching story at the heart of it all. The premise is that two scientists are hired to travel back through a dying man’s memories, starting with his older self, essentially watching his life unravel in reverse. And as they travel, they witness the individual moments of happiness and hardship that made him who he is. The purpose of traveling through these memories is so that they can link the desires of the elder person with that of his younger self. But in order to do so, they must travel through his memories by discovering mementos and memory links. When they complete the process of working through his life, the two can implant the unfilfilled desire of the dying man into his childhood memories, rewriting his entire life’s memories so that he believes he led his perfect life. This process goes slightly awry, and the two scientists have to play detective in order to discover why. Even though there is no voice acting, Neil Watts, Eva Rosalene, Johnny, and River worked their way into my heart, with their genuinely excellent banter and a soundtrack that enhances whatever mood the scene is trying to convey. The game is just a joy to experience.
1. Catherine
My first end of the year “best of” list is certainly something of an oddity, because I firmly believe that more people will find LA Noire or To the Moon far more enjoyable, interesting, and engaging works of interactive fiction than my number 1 pick, Atlus’ Catherine. But, I say to our readers (all 4 of you) that no other game resonated with me more this year. And, honestly, its only mattered more and more to me as the year has progressed. The story (which is a psycho-sexual thriller in videogame form) follows Vincent Brooks, a thirty something who is facing issues with his long term girlfriend, Katherine. She is noticing that all of her friends have all gotten married, had kids, and have generally taken on all of the normal “adult” responsibilities. Vincent and Katherine, on the other hand, haven’t even moved in together. But as your typical commitment-phobic guy, Vincent is satisfied with their relationship. This changes when Vincent meets a different girl, the titular Catherine, in his local hangout. She seems to be an answer of sorts to all of Vincent’s worries: she disapproves of marriage, just wants to focus on having a good time, and finds Vincent very attractive. Vincent cheats with this new girl, and has to choose between these two girls and cope with the guilt he feels for cheating. All the while, men are mysteriously dying, apprently as a result of the collective dream they have every night, in which they all must climb a collapsing wall of blocks and avoid being killed by falling to their death or by a manifestation of their fears. Vincent interacts with the other men faced with this turmoil in both the dreams and real life, learning about their problems and leading them through every hellish night.
The gameplay is solid, with very challenging block puzzles that stay interesting for the duration of the game. But admittedly, the gameplay is not the main draw; the story is. The topics of sex, romance, fear, love, and depression are something anyone can relate to on some level. It is also particularly refreshing to see a game with a hero that is not headstrong, confident, or remarkable in any particular way. Vincent is one of the more organic characters I’ve seen in a videogame, and his presence as the hero makes the story that much stronger. This is a game built on characters. The empathy I feel for the protagonists of the game is unmatched: I identify to some degree with all of these world-weary, broken men, some of which have completely lost their will to live (one of whom is named Justin, funnily enough). These are men obsessed with their own flaws, who just needed someone to believe in them, to teach them how to move forward in the face of uncertainty and fear; to see the good in themselves and embrace it. But it would all be for naught without the excellent craftsmenship exhibited by all involved. The excellent voice acting from Troy Baker and company, the addicting puzzle gameplay, the cohisiveness of Atlus’ anime style, and the strong writing all come together to create a wondrous experience unmatched by any other game of 2011.
Before I get down to business and share my thoughts on what were the absolute best interactive experiences, I first wanted to follow in my partner’s footsteps and provide a few random thoughts on the games of last year. I’ve chosen to do this through a few awards of my own creation; some serious, others less so. Without further ado, here are my brief, Random Videogame Awards of 2011.
SERIOUS AWARDS:
Best Score
Winner: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Other Nominees:LA Noire, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, To the Moon, Bastion
I’m no music critic, but I feel as though the musical scores for these games can be judged by how much they enhanced the experience. And Skyrim’s score hits the ‘epic’ and ‘beautiful’ notes just right, making a fight with a dragon all the more intense, or making a long walk to a quest destination seem like an important journey.
Best Character
Winner: Cole Phelps (LA Noire)
Other Nominees: Vincent Brooks (Catherine), Stefan Bekowksy (LA Noire), Herschel Biggs (LA Noire), Neil Watts (To the Moon), Johnny (To the Moon), Captain Price (Modern Warfare 3), Cave Johnson (Portal 2)
LA Noire’s Cole Phelps is a conflicted, complicated man. Given a medal he didn’t earn and a promotion he didn’t deserve in World War II command his life at home, where he struggles to find acceptance and redeem himself through honorable police work. As we slowly learn of his infidelity and witness his fall from grace on the police force, we are simultaneously treated to his many failings as a soldier. His quest for redemption is a tragic one, and it is rooted in a harsh reality that many fictional stories like to forget: Total redemption is almost never possible. Cole’s embodiment of this truth (along with Aaron Stanton’s excellent performance) makes Cole the best character of the year.
Best Performance
Winner: Aaron Stanton (Cole Phelps from LA Noire)
Other Nominees: Troy Baker (Vincent Brooks from Catherine), Billy Murray (Captain Price from Modern Warfare 3), Logan Cunningham (Rucks from Bastion)
One of the LA Noire actors almost has to win this by default, since there performances went beyond voice acting and motion capture (which are still admirable skills, mind). But all of LA Noire’s fancy technology would have been useless if the actors couldn’t deliver, and they do, the lead most of all. Stanton’s performance as the as the (mostly) stalwart cop Cole Phelps is a large part of what makes the character so memorable.
Best World
Winner: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Other Nominees: Batman: Arkham City, LA Noire, Bastion
One of the most unique things about games, when comparing them to other artistic media, is their ability to immerse a person in a crafted world. And no game crafted a more complete, interesting world than Skyrim. Even though it is filled to the brim with generic fantasy tropes, it provides enough spins on those tropes in its huge world to make it exciting to explore, and the incentives for exploring are high. It’s just a joy to roam around the province of Skyrim, and it’s what keeps me playing for hours at a time.
LESS SERIOUS AWARDS:
The Johnny Depp Award For Saving an Otherwise Unimpressive Experience
Winner: Adam Jensen
You know how Johnny Depp can save a mediocre movie and make it watchable? Well, I experienced a similar phenomenon this year while playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Adam Jensen is the only well-acted character in the entire game, and he single-handedly made slogging through HR’s unremarkable story bearable. In fact, his excellent narration over the game’s multiple endings almost makes you forget how pointless they are.
The 3D Realms Award for Underachievement in Game Development
Winner: Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Deus Ex: Human Revolution was posed to change the way we looked at games. The phenomenal trailer promised us an insightful, character driven story that would analyze what it really means to be human in a world driven by technology. The pedigree of the original Deus Ex also led us to believe that there would be a great amount of choice in how situations could be tackled. What we got was a mediocre story with rushed character development and gameplay that essentially forced stealth, except for a few god awful boss battles. The gameplay was still fun and the game had a great look, but it could have been so much more than it was.
The Dangers’ “I Like the Way You Look, But I Don’t Like You” Award
Winner:Crysis 2
Not much to explain here. Crysis 2 is a phenomenal looking game that is betrayed by its stealth mechanics. Listen to the song the award is named for here.
Teh Interwebz’ Best Game-Related Meme
Winner: Battlefield 3 Trailer Works With Anything
Just watch, this, this, and this, and tell me this isn’t awesome. Or at least better than the “arrow to the knee” jokes.
The Malcolm Tucker Award for the Game That Makes Me Want to Swear Angrily Because I Hate It With a Fiery Fucking Passion
Winner: Duke Nukem Forever
Fuck this game. FUCK THIS GAME. In all seriousness, I loathe Duke Nukem Forever, and any time someone mentions it I start a very angry rant, and of they have a computer, I direct them here.
The Alejandro Jodorowsky “What the Fuck Am I Watching” Award
Winner: El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron
Seriously, El Shaddai is mad trippy. And that’s why it wins the award.
The ‘6/5’ Most Overrated Game Award
Winner: Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Named for the idiocy that is Yahoo’s Batman: Arkham City review, this award goes to the game that flat-out did not deserve the praise it got. There are plenty of games that came out this year that I think are “overrated,” but some of them I liked less than everyone else because of bizarre personal tastes (Portal 2), and some had one great quality that allowed people to overlook the other, awful aspects (Battlefield 3). But Deus Ex: Human Revolution has none of those qualities. The things it was praised for (the story, the choices the player can make) simply don’t hold up to scrutiny.
