The new designs for Tron: Legacy are extremely beautiful

So, I don’t feel it’s necessary to say too much about Tron: Legacy. It’s beautiful, mellow, and contemplative. The original Tron, if you will remember, was not an action movie. Neither is Tron: Legacy.

But it’s gorgeous, and it’s interesting enough, though the script (admittedly better here than in the original) could use a little more… pizazz. They have the seeds of some interesting ideas carried through from the original, including the exploration of the intersection between religion and technology. But these seeds barely sprout, or the code doesn’t branch, or something.

I get the feeling that given some time, the mythos of Tron is going to flesh itself out with fan speculation. Perhaps I’ll find some line of fanboy logic that satisfies my desire to chew on the Tron universe better than Tron: Legacy itself does.

Tron: Legacy

With talk that includes comparisons to James Cameron’s Avatar, Disney’s Tron Legacy is getting some incredible hype as it leads up to its release next week. Leading the surge of Tron preview media content was the release of the original score, created by French-electronica-legends Daft Punk.

I’ve been listening to it a bunch since its release, and I have to to say that it’s top notch. I was surprised by the traditional orchestral elements, but Daft Punk definitely showed off their compositional chops, delivering a score that has the subtle emotion necessary for a film, and a dance beat oscilloscopic enough to satisfy anybody’s head bopping needs. The track “End of Line” is particularly good at tapping into the shared cultural rhythms of the techno-lifestyle, and I can’t help but think that its constituent parts are the sounds of some far future interface, remixed for the here-and-now.

“Arena” does something similar, mixing a futuristic dial-tone with the pulsing beat of a shamanistic drum. The intersection of tech and tribe is reminiscent of the ever present fact that /humans/ are at the other end of our connections. It’s an important reminder that at its core, the Internet is just another update to banging on a drum.

All in all, the soundtrack has made me even more excited to see the movie. If the film can match the pace of the music, we are in for an epic ride indeed.

So, is it good? Maybe. I certainly enjoyed myself. But I couldn’t help but feel that Scott Pilgrim succeeded in all of the ways that I expected it to fail, and failed in all of the ways that I expected it to succeed.

To start, Scott Pilgrim vs The World is an embarrassingly shallow movie. Every character, save Scott’s gay roommate Wallace Wells (played by Kieran Culkin), is almost completely unlikable on their own. On more than one occasion, I asked myself, “Why am I rooting for these characters?” There seemed to be an expectation from the film makers that I should blindly empathize with Scott Pilgrim simply because he was the story’s protagonist. But Scott is often morally reprehensible, and he experiences few moments of personal growth, and none that are anything but self-aggrandizing moments of “learning the power of self-respect.”

So why did I like him anyway? Was it because I’d read the graphic novels, and knew that there was more to him than that? No, not that. Was it because Scott himself is funny and often confused? No, it’s not that either. The fact is, I was completely drawn in by what the film does well. Scott Pilgrim vs The World is designed as a mechanism to elicit a very specific Pavlovian response in video gamers. When a film opens with a pixel-art Universal logo and an 8-bit rendition of the Universal fanfare, and the first shot of the film is scored with a piece of music from The Legend of Zelda, how else can a gamer respond? As characters are introduced, VH1-esque pop-up boxes appear, detailing their “stats”. Game sound effects permeate the soundtrack. Basic character activities like changing clothes are time compressed within scenes, giving the impression that Scott has gone into the menu, equipped some new items, and jumped back in without a pause in the action. Every comically violent death is accompanied by a shower of coins and a reward of points. The story structure itself is a giant homage to fighting games, comprising mainly of boss fights punctuated by cut-scenes that exist only to move things forward to the next battle sequence.

As a gamer, I loved it all. I laughed at every joke, I made little “squee!” noises at every reference, and I relished the fact that someone had finally made a film that spoke to the shared cultural memory of my people. It made us Heroes. But what I hate is that it attempted to honor us with a story and characters that mimic only the most facile and simplistic game experiences. All of the beautiful complexity and unique philosophical depth that I know that games are capable of was left by the wayside. And while I know this was a conscious decision to keep the film accessible (far more people have played the classic, yet simplistic, games referenced in Scott Pilgrim), I can’t help but be disappointed by the fact that gamers will be identified with such a weak film.

Scott Pilgrim vs The World is cute references and funny in-jokes held together with a duct-tape and chewed gum plot. It’s enjoyable fan-service, but this formula does not a compelling movie make. Don’t expect very many positive reviews of outside of gaming culture. Scott Pilgrim won’t win the mainstream over.

A note, as mentioning this did not really fit within my review: I’m curious as to how many other critics notice what I think is one of the most interesting “torch-passing” scenes I’ve ever seen. In a certain scene in the film, game tropes are put on the backburner, and television sitcom references (especially Seinfeld) take the center stage. It seemed so out of place, until I realized that it’s there as a cultural key. “Look at this scene,” the director seems to say, “If you don’t understand what we’re doing here, look at this scene. Now do you understand?” I thought it was interesting.

It’s easy to pull apart and examine films that aren’t great. How to Train Your Dragon, for example, was a decent, though not spectacular, family-oriented animated romp. Its visuals were great, though lacking the polish of a Pixar film, and its story was cute enough, but it dragged somewhat to start and could’ve had a stronger script. C+, B- is its final score, in my opinion.

See? Easy.

On the other hand, approaching a film like Kick-Ass, a film so superbly crafted, so incredibly choreographed and so wittily incisive, is a tall order. Where do I start? Do I focus on its excitement, its beautifully bad-ass fight scenes that pit interesting, flawed, yet relatable heroes against shrewd enemies? Should I instead choose to focus on its commentary, the brainy aspects behind its perfected pugilism, and laud the fact that it examines and challenges the idea of vigilante justice in a similar way as Watchmen? Or maybe I should begin by talking about its quasi-realistic, Tarantino-esque style that intermixes images of brutal violence with the fantasy of superheroism?

I suppose that the most succinct way for me to communicate how I felt about Kick-Ass is to say that I’ve seen it three times, and believe that it was well worth it. It takes what I thought were the most interesting parts of Watchmen, namely the critical examination of normal people acting as a vigilante, costumed superheroes, and throws away all of the “inside baseball” type comic industry and culture trappings that make Watchmen somewhat difficult for non-fans to understand and take seriously. If you have any interest in watching an exciting action movie with interesting characters, you should definitely check it out.

In an entirely unrelated observation, anthypophora is so useful, rhetorically.

My addition to the cultural dialog:

If a bunch of people can get together with a stage, a set, a director, some lights, a script, and some imagination and make art, then why is it’s art-ness suddenly nullified when the director invites every member of the audience to play the starring role?

Here’s a photo gallery of the first 10 people that popped into my head when I thought of gaming’s auteurs.

For each of these men and women, I can say, without a doubt, that I interpret the world differently after having interacted with their work.

And for that, I thank them.

I had had a bad dream, one of those vivid ones that so impresses itself upon your mind that they are impossible to forget. Usually, for me, they have to do with some sort of tragedy that affects and injures me directly; I become paralyzed, people in my family are tortured and killed, or other such personal tribulations.

Last night, however, I had a nightmare of philosophy, of an abstract idea, and it chilled me to the bone.

It might seem at first blush that my dream was more similar to nightmares of personal pain, for I dreamt that a friend of mine from high school had died in a freak car accident. And while it is true that this concept scared and saddened me, what I found more affecting, and what my brain decided to focus on as I slept, was the idea that with her death, the world had lost an artistic genius.

I was forced by my dream to reflect upon the idea that I had directly experienced and been touched by the sort of person whose talent and work are truly exceptional. I had seen and talked and hugged and laughed and argued with a person whose ability is so great and yet seems so natural that it can make others certain of the existence of god, for it seems inconceivable to some that a person could have been the driving force behind what they had done.

Just as I felt honored and excited by the idea that I had been exposed to someone so rare and so precious, my brain brought me crashing back into pain and sorrow by reminding me that genius is just as fragile, if not more so, than the mediocre.

I woke up wishing that I didn’t have to live in a world where those who are of greater mind than I can perish, where with a single accident or poor choice the world loses not only a life that is precious in and of itself, but also a cornucopia of potential works of genius.

My brain showed me the nightmare image of a body, and every potential work of genius that it could create, being consumed by flame.

It’s an idea that will haunt me to my last.

Because of the principle of risk vis a vis reward, great tribulation and sacrifice necessarily incur a greater likelihood of earthly reward. Those who donate a substantial sum to a charity are likely to receive immense social benefits. But to endure an annoyance where there is no benefit is a genuine indicator of strength and lack of moral turpitude.

Though I believe not in heaven nor hell nor grand judgment, I am moved by this philosophy to try to work through life’s annoyances with grace and humility. For just as the annoyances ostensibly offer the greatest personal reward, so too can they eat away at us and cause the greatest personal emotional destruction. So take this and be refreshed with a sense of perspective. We could all stand to relax and not sweat the small stuff.

I became, through no fault of my own, a Carny.

I suppose that it was inevitable; my parents collected and researched the history of antique carousels. My nursery room wallpaper was carousel patterned. Our house was packed to the rafters with carousel memorabilia, , pictures, posters, models, and even a number of actual antique wooden carousel animals. It seems fitting that I should have one day taken a job as a carousel operator at a local zoo.

By accepting that job, I was unwittingly joining the hundred year old fraternity of the gap-toothed and bitter Masters of Amusement. And though it is strange for me to be a part of a group wherein, by virtue of simply having all of my teeth, limbs, and digits, I am considered one of the more attractive of the bunch. I took to the responsibilities of my order like a duck to water by nearly immediately becoming a depressed shell of my former self. Admittedly, this was not hard. What I thought were vast reservoirs of happiness in my soul were in actuality shallow pools of self-hate and the perverse pleasure of the knowledge that I had been severely overvalued as I was growing up. This is what the internal emotional landscape of all young thespians like me looks like. Therefore I say, “Actors, beware!”

All entertainers must wage a continuous war on the despair and malaise that accompanies amusement, the sadness that necessarily arises from continuous exposure to joy. Like the navigators in the sci-fi novel Dune who are submerged to deformity in the drug that enables interstellar travel, so too are entertainers twisted by their submersion in amusement. Some, like actors, are rewarded handsomely for their self-flagellation. Others, like myself, must search for their own meaning and treasure in their trials.

At least, I can say, I am not a juggler.

My job is a rarity in this day and age in the fact that it has remained unchanged for nearly a hundred years. Carousel operators at the turn of the last century dealt with just as many crying children and idiotic adults as I do. The only difference, that I can perceive is that they would have seen significantly more hats and ties than I do, and considerably fewer examples of clothing from Baby Gap.

Their misery must have been the same as mine, arising as it does from the repetitive, monotonous work, the numbing music, and the exposure to the worst of the pleasure-seeking public. But I like to imagine that they found their moments of joy in the same place that I do, in those few gems of personal interaction where people are at their most good. They are rare indeed, but that makes it all the sweeter when someone looks you in the eye and says, “Thank you for helping me to have such a wonderful time with my child.” To see a child pet and kiss a wooden horse is to be reminded of the possibilities of childhood, the simplicity of enjoyment and the willingness to pretend. And to see a grandparent reminisce about the carousel of their youth, and to share those memories with their grandchildren, can warm even the darkest heart.

And though I struggle day by day through the boredom and depressing introspection of my job, I am kept motivated by these small moments of happiness. No one forgets their carousel, the good times they have as a child with their favorite horse, with Mom and with Dad, and with Grandma and Grandpa. It is my job to help make those memories happen, to disappear into the background, a stagehand for the cherished moments of their life.

Everyone remembers their carousel.

Maybe someone will remember me.

My reaction to this is one of irrational anger. The question seems to me to make some faulty assumptions, most heinous of which is the assumption that the people who came up with the damned idea for the company in the first place never asked themselves that very question.

The fact of the matter is is that if a technology or service is good enough, someone will pay for it. Armchair business managing is pointless- you have no real perspective on what it takes for any business that you perceive as “set for failure” to actually do so.

I’m reminded of the start of the radio broadcasting industry; people then asked, “Who will pay for a message to no one in particular?”

Ultimately, what we as users of cool technology should do is just that: use them. Who cares if I have no clue how they’re generating revenue? They have a lot more at stake than I do; they’ll figure it out.