I love cats. I also love plays. So of course it's a no-brainer that one of my favorite plays is Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Cats".
I saw the musical “Cats” at TPAC when I was 13 or 14, and loved it so much I bought the soundtrack. I’ve only seen it on stage the one time, but I’ve watched the play on home video many times. I have large portions of the soundtrack memorized. It remains one of my favorite plays to this day. So when I heard they were making a theatrical version, it piqued my interest. Well, the trailer for the Cats movie dropped earlier this week, and the internet isn’t happy.
You know, I agreed about Sonic being a terrible character design. I see their point about the new Lion King looking flat and emotionless compared to the original. While I liked Green Lantern more than most people, they did keep getting Ryan’s head the wrong size. And Wil Smith’s Genie did look a bit goofy in his blue form. But I have to draw the line here.
Yes, the cats look kind of creepy, and border on the Uncanny Valley. Their insertion into the oversized backgrounds looks sort of off, and the whole thing just makes you feel slightly uneasy. Some of the shots look a little unfinished, so hopefully they’re still tweaking it. But let’s be honest, the makeup in the original play was a bit strange itself. When I saw the play back in the 80s, I heard a few adults talk about how creepy the makeup was. Beautiful, sure, but it still straddled that Uncanny Valley. To me, the film’s design looks like the natural progression of the stage version’s makeup. It looks like what the stage make-up artists would like to have done if it were possible.
In my opinion, Cats was always supposed to feel weird and disorienting. The oversized props in the stage play aren’t just to make the cast look smaller, they also serve to make the audience feel smaller as well. As if the cats have used magic to shrink you down, translate their language, and make their faces just human enough for you to identify with them, all so you can finally understand the world from their point of view. If they’d wanted them to look more catlike, they could have just thrown cats masks on them and called it a day. But I think they wanted them to have human-like faces and expressions so the audience could empathize with them. And yeah, the film version is a little reminiscent of “Seaman” for the Dreamcast, but at least it’s eye-catching.
This is not a straightforward story like Sweeney Todd or Les Miserables, and should not be compared to those. Cats is more like a feature length music video, comparable to The Who’s “Tommy” or “Pink Floyd: The Wall”. Can you honestly say this movie looks freakier than, say, the video for “Black Hole Sun”? Kids these days have no tolerance for the surreal. Get off my lawn, ya unimaginative little toddlers who need reality spoon fed to you. After Lion King and Sonic, it’s like the internet is just looking for special effects to hate. I pity any special effects artist who tries to do anything actually creative over the next few years.
People are asking, why not just keep the original makeup? I agree, the stage makeup was great, and is perfectly filmworthy. But you do realize, you can already buy a filmed version of the stage musical on DVD? Honestly, what would even be the point of giving it a movie budget, if it wasn’t going to do something original with it? And as odd as the new movie looks, I bet that within ten minutes you get used to it.
I love going to plays, but it’s definitely a rich person’s hobby. I hope Cats does well in theaters, because I want them to make more theatrical versions of stage plays. Cats is being released on the same day as Star Wars IX, so I don’t expect it to break any box office records. Actually, I expect it’s going to bomb pretty hard. But I hope not. Sidetrack: My favorite part of seeing musicals in the theater is seeing how many people leave once they realize it’s a musical. I witnessed it during “Sweeney Todd” and “Into The Woods”, and I wonder if it will happen here. I mean, the trailer makes it look pretty obvious that it's a musical, but so did some of the other musicals.
Anyway, the Uncanny Valley can be a disorienting place, but that doesn’t mean it’s always bad. A lot of movies have intentionally set up camp in that valley, and still turned out pretty well. Heck, I heard mentions of the Uncanny Valley when Avatar was released, and look how much money that made.
A while back I talked about how I like a lot of movies other people hate, and vice versa. I also posted about “Introspection Illusion”, where people don’t seem to understand the real reasons they don’t like certain movies. Both those concepts are in full play today, as I blabber about why I like “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” better than “Logan”.
Yes, I know. For most people, it’s the other way around. I don’t understand why, but people just hated Origins. Maybe it didn’t fit with their favorite comic book version of his origin story, I don’t know. I’m sure his origin has been retconned 30 times by now. At one point in the comics, I think they even planned for him to be an actual super-evolved wolverine. But I digress.
I recognize the movie had flaws. It had bad special effects (especially the claws, for which there was no excuse), a terrible version of Deadpool (total waste of a great character), and some minor continuity errors pop up when you try to work it in with the rest of the movies. I personally dislike the “laser guided amnesia” trope, with Wolverine having his memories erased by a bullet. I don’t mind that it worked, I mind the fact that Stryker knew it would work.
But none of those flaws really add up to a bad movie to me. It still had a lot of great action scenes, decent pacing, and all the flash and flair that makes these movies fun. It wasn’t Shakespeare, nor should it have been. I still walked out thinking, “I want to see that again.” I know it wasn’t one of the best X-Men films, but I don’t see why it gets all the hate it gets. Meanwhile, “Logan” was apparently loved by everyone who saw it.
I hated Logan. It was dull, boring, long, and depressing. Two hours of a whiny geriatric Xavier arguing with a depowered Wolverine in the desert. It had a few good action scenes, and I really liked Laura/X-23. I wouldn’t have minded seeing a sequel about her, but that’s off the table now. I just can’t understand is why Logan’s so popular. And that’s where Introspection Illusion comes in. Because the plot holes seem bigger in movies I hate. I can forgive the amnesia bullet in Origins, but I can’t forgive the tree branch going through Wolverine’s adamantium spine in Logan.
Yes, that’s right. They establish that his powers are weaker, but his skeleton is still fully adamantium. In fact, that’s relevant to the plot, since the adamantium is poisoning him. So when he’s thrown against the log at the end, and the branch pokes through the center of his chest, I was a bit annoyed. Even if it went slightly to the side of the spine, it still should have been blocked by his rib cage.
I don’t care that they killed off the character; he’s not one of my favorite X-Men. I care more about all the X-Men who are killed off-screen before the movie started. And maybe that’s another reason I judge the movie so harshly. I don’t care about Wolverine, so I can’t accept him in a more dramatic role. I watch the X-Men movies so I can be awed by all the super powers and special effects, and so I can catch all the references to the comics and cartoons. One of the reasons Origins worked for me is because of all the cameos of other X-Men characters. “The Wolverine” was less fun, partly because it had fewer cameos. “Logan” was worst of all, because not only were most of the X-Men dead from the start, but even the living ones had fewer powers.
But that’s all just rationalization. The truth is, I liked Origins because ooh shiny, and hated Logan because zzzzzz. It’s a gut reaction, and all the flaws in the world can’t ruin a movie if it keeps me entertained.
It’s not just a movie being more (or less) than the sum of its parts, it’s more like a movie being almost completely unrelated to its parts. That’s the paradox – all the flaws in “Origins” add up to an entertaining movie, while all the serious drama in “Logan” add up to a snoozefest.
In the 90s, Capcom was the king of fighting games. Whether it was the tournament style fighting of Street Fighter II, or the street brawling of Final Fight and its sequels/spin-offs, Capcom was the go-to company for digital pugilism.
This bundle includes the following classic arcade games: Final Fight (1989), Captain Commando (1991), The King of Dragons (1991), Knights of the Round (1991), Warriors of Fate (1992), Armored Warriors (1994), and Battle Circuit (1997).
When you get down to it, these are all basically the same game with different skins. That said, some are more fun than others. I’ve played a little of each so far, and here are my initial impressions:
Final Fight (1989) – When Final Fight was released in 1989, it immediately dethroned Taito’s Double Dragon as the ultimate multiplayer beat-em-up. After the success of Final Fight, Capcom spent the next few years pumping out similar games, some better than others. I still find this one the easiest to enjoy in this collection, but I don’t know if that’s due to the familiarity or because it’s the least complicated to pick up and play.
Playing it again after all these years brought back all sorts of nostalgia, and longing for the days of hanging out in arcades with my friends. Despite being the oldest game in this collection, it still holds up pretty well.
Captain Commando (1991) – This game is basically a sci-fi sequel to Final Fight. It’s still set in Metro City, but in the faaaarrrr off future of 2026, a time when living mummies will wield sonic knives and mechs will be driven by superintelligent infants. Wow, a lot’s going to change in the next seven years. I can’t wait.
It was nice to finally play this one. I remember Captain Commando being Capcom’s mascot in the 80’s, and I always thought it was strange that he didn’t have a game of his own. When this game finally came out in ’91, I heard about it but I never got a chance to play it. I like this one, and will probably play it again.
The King of Dragons (1991) – I like the fantasy theme of this one. It feels a lot like Golden Axe. I like the characters, it’s your basic D&D party. I wish it had a female character, but I’ll whine more about that below. It felt weird to get experience points and gain levels in this type of game. But it works. I will probably play more of this one.
Knights of the Round (1991) – At first glance this looks similar to King of Dragons, but it feels a lot different. King of Dragons has sort of a D&D theme, while Knights has more of a King Arthur theme. It makes knights feel a little more down-to-Earth, like Warriors of Fate. I might come back to this one, but only after I’ve played through King of Dragons. Just looking at the title gets a Monty Python song stuck in my head.
Warriors of Fate (1992) – This was probably my least favorite game in the collection, though it’s hard to say why. It’s basically the same game as the others, but I found the theme less interesting. The Japanese version is sort-of based on the historical novel “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” (which has actually inspired dozens of video games), but the American version simplified things by making it a more generic story. That was probably a good move, but it’s still not my cup of tea.
Armored Warriors (1994) - Of all the games in this collection, this one feels the most different. While is still has basically the same controls as the other games in the collection, the fact that your character is a mech gives the whole game a different feel. It’s still a beat-em-up, but at times it almost feels like a shooter. I don’t know if I’ll come back to this one or not.
Battle Circuit (1997) – I really like the characters in this one. They’re creative and strange, and there were at least three I’d use consistently. It’s definitely the flashiest of the bunch, and the first one I decided to play all the way through (not counting Final Fight, which I beat many times when I was a teenager). Thumbs up.
Extras - You can change the borders, and there's some options for how the games display on your screen. The collection also includes a gallery of artwork for each game.
A minor gripe; I wish there were more female characters in this collection. Out of seven games, only the last two have playable female characters in them. This is surprising, given that each game has three to five characters to choose from. Now of course you could say that was normal at the time, since video games were considered more of a male pastime back then. But Gauntlet came out in 1985 (four characters, one female), Quartet came out in 1986 (four characters, one female), and Rampage also came out in 1986 (three characters, one female).
So while there might not have been a lot of female characters in single-player games, it was quite normal for multiplayer games to have at least one token female. I’ll forgive Knights of the Round (since the characters are based on knights from Arthurian legend) and Warriors of Fate (since it’s based on historical figures). But the rest have no excuse. The King of Dragons has five D&D-esque characters; they could have at least made the archer female.
But that’s not a criticism against this collection, it’s a criticism against five 30 year old games. And I do have one theory: I seem to remember there being a controversy when Final Fight was released, regarding the female enemies (Poison and Roxy). Capcom was worried there might be complaints about violence against women, so they changed Poison and Roxy to male characters in the SNES version. It also caused Capcom to declare that the character Poison was transgender. They even went as far as to say that she was pre-op in the Japanese version, but post-op in the American version.
Just another example of how trans people aren’t taken seriously. I could easily fly off the handle at this one, but there are enough current examples of transphobia in the news every day. I really don’t need to go back and yell at a thirty year old video game. But just to make my position clear: Violence against transwomen is still violence against women.
But in any case, maybe that’s why they put off adding more women to their beat-em-ups; they were afraid of controversy. And to be fair, I understand the conundrum. Is it more sexist to exclude women from these games completely, or to include them and get yelled at when they get punched in the face? It's one of those cases where you can't please everyone.
Personally, I think inclusion would have been better, but I've never had to deal with that sort of backlash. I suppose I can't fault them for being cautious. They must have gotten over it eventually, because Final Fight 2 (1993) had the female martial artist Maki in it. But these beat-em-ups from 1989-1992 were devoid of playable female characters.
So, are these games still fun today? Well, games have come a long way, and these old school beat 'em ups seem pretty repetitive now. Still, it’s a lot of fun letting off steam by beating up on wave after wave of enemies. Especially after a stressful day.
Is this collection worth it? There’s some good nostalgic action in this set. I really wish it had included Capcom’s “Alien vs Predator” arcade game, but maybe that will make into a future collection. I’ll probably only play about three of the games in this collection for any length of time, but I still think it’s worth the money. Seven games for $20 is a decent value, even if they are pretty similar. I wouldn’t blame you for waiting until it’s on sale, though.
I really enjoyed the humor, the special effects, and all the action. It's doesn't come close to Endgame in order of magnitude, but that's a good thing. After the heaviness of the last two Avengers movies, we all needed a light-hearted romp.
And that's about all I can really say without MAJOR SPOILERS. So read further at your own risk.
First things first: Of course Mysterio turns out to be a bad guy. I don't think anyone expected differently. I know a few people speculated that he was going to be good throughout this movie, only to turn evil in the end credits to set up a sequel (like Sinestro in Green Lantern, which also wasn't much of a secret). But nope, he shows his true colors halfway through the movie.
And that's cool. This movie isn't serious enough to have a lot of layers. Jake Gyllenhaal does a decent job playing both (false) friend and villain. The scene that reveals his treachery to the audience is over-the-top and very comic bookish, which I thought was awesome.
My wife didn't like Spidey's first fight with Mysterio, where he's stuck in multiple layers of illusion. She thought it was too overdone, but personally I loved it. It reminded me of something out of the cartoons. I really loved the final fight against the drones creating the illusion. That was some crazy action and beautiful SFX.
I didn't really care for any of Spidey's outfits in the movie, but I loved the "passing the torch" scene where Peter uses Tony's tech to design the outfit. The stealth suit was just boring, barely even a Spider-Man suit. The one Peter designs is just his normal suit with black replacing the blue. I hate to say it, but Spider-Man's suit is one of the few super hero outfits that looks worse when you darken it. Spidey needs to be colorful, yo.
Okay, so we have to talk about the credits scenes. Mid-credits we have Spidey being framed for Mysterio's crimes, and the world finding out he's Peter Parker. I have no idea where they're going to go with this, though similar events have happened in the comics. I wonder if they're going to just keep his identity public (let's face it, most of the MCU heroes don't even have secret identities), or if they'll magic that knowledge away somehow (paging Doctor Strange).
Of course the biggest bombshell dropped at the ass end of the credits. Nick Fury is a skrull. How long has this been true? When was the switch? I'm sure fans are going to be debating this one for a long time.
My wife thinks it was between Winter Soldier and Age of Ultron, during the time he faked his death. Or possibly very recently, around Endgame. That could make sense, since Captain Marvel was back on Earth at the time. She might have brought Talos with her.
But I have a feeling they're saying he's been a skrull since Captain Marvel. If this is true, then Talos!Fury is the Fury we've known throughout most of the series. This means there's nothing to really get mad about. Fury is still the same guy we've always known and loved, it's just that he was actually a friendly alien shapeshifter (in every movie except for Captain Marvel, of course). We lose nothing, really.
So I don't mind if it turns out he's been Talos since the 90s. I also don't mind if it turns out they switched at the end of Endgame (probably before Tony's funeral, since Talos!Fury mentions he saw Peter at the funeral). But I hope it doesn't turn out they switched halfway through the series. I don't like the idea that the first ten movies was one Fury, and the rest of them were a different Fury. That just bothers me, because it interrupts the continuity of the character.
Again, great movie. I enjoyed the hell out of it. I currently have it at #9 on my ranked list of MCU movies.
I'm going to close this blog with a video of Beach Buggy Racing. I know that has nothing to do with Spider-Man, but my wife and I spend the video discussing the movie.
I really wanted to like the Crash Team Racing remake. It’s got great graphics, tight controls (for the most part), a large selection of courses and characters, and tons of unlockables to assure replay value. Unfortunately, a handful of minor flaws – which probably won’t even bother most people – keep it from being a hit in my household.
First things first: The default control scheme is terrible. Seriously, who makes a racing game and doesn’t make the trigger button the gas? You can argue that these games originally came out on the PS1, and they’re just replicating the original experience, but I’ll gently remind you that the PS1 also had shoulder buttons. Just because it’s a really old mistake doesn’t mean it’s not a mistake.
The good news is the controls are easily changed. We had a little difficulty finding the option when we played, because we were livestreaming at the time and our heads covered up the “options menu” part of the screen. Oops, how embarrassing. However, even after changing it to the much superior “Alternate” control scheme, we still had a problem in that it only changed it for player one. I don’t know if it’s a glitch or what, but we couldn’t figure out how to change it for player two.
And while trying to fix it, I somehow managed to lock out player one’s controls completely and turned player two’s controller into player one. Maybe we just missed something again, or maybe the programmers are so used to people playing online, that they didn’t playtest properly for split screen. If it is a glitch, hopefully it will be fixed in a patch.
Second gripe: Most of the unlockables are only unlocked through playing single player. I might be wrong about this, but going by my own experience this weekend, combined with the Cheat FAQs I read online, it appears to be the case. Kart racers are generally more fun with more players, and therefore all your unlockables should be obtainable without even touching single player mode. Ideally each unlockable should have two ways to be unlocked (I’ve seen some fighting games do this), so that you can get everything whether you’re a complete loner or a party animal.
Third gripe: The unlockables you can access seem to be based on player one. What I mean is, let’s say Bob plays single player for a while and unlocks items A, B, and C. Then Sarah plays single player for a while and unlocks items X, Y, and Z. Then they both log on and play two player mode, with Bob as player one. Both players are able to access items A, B, and C, but neither can access X, Y, and Z. It’s not the first time I’ve seen a game handle unlockables this way, but it always irks me. If I unlock a really cool kart, I should be allowed to show it off regardless of whether I’m player one or two.
Gripe #4: Power sliding. This is an important technique that you must master to get around corners in some tracks. I’m sure I could get a handle on it with practice, but I don’t wanna. I don’t want to learn a lot of new gimmicks for each different kart racing game. To me, this is a party game, and as such I just want to pick up the controls and play. Sure, have some secret techniques that let some players master the game, but don’t design the tracks around them, and don’t make those tricks required to beat the enemy AI. Which brings us to gripe #5…
Gripe #5: Difficulty. Admittedly I only rented the game over the weekend, so I didn’t have time to get good. That said, I couldn’t manage to beat the third track on single player. I attempted it five times, and while I did manage to come in third place a couple of times, apparently you have to come in first to beat the track. When playing with my wife, we kept coming in seventh and eighth (out of eight racers) consistently. Look, I don’t expect to master these games on my first try. But I am pretty good at kart racers, so I should at least be able to master the early tracks in just a few tries. Blame my aging reflexes if you want, but I own the road on Mario Kart 8 and Beach Buggy Racing.
Gripe #6: The Flavor. Okay, I’m not a huge fan of the Crash Bandicoot universe. Sorry, but to me, he’s the epitome of the 90s trend of “Radical” animal mascots. But I can’t hold that against the game; I shouldn’t have even rented it if that was going to be a problem. (“When you play Chutes and Ladders, do you complain about all the chutes and all the ladders?” – Sheldon Cooper.) But even within the Crash universe, I had a hard time finding characters I liked enough to use. I kept playing as the tiger kitten simply because I didn’t like any of the other characters better. This one might be more related to having too many unlockables. I like being able to unlock lots of characters, but in this case not enough of them were unlocked from the beginning.
I also thought some of the weapons were boring. The "bowling bomb" was neat, though hard to aim. But there were too many crates and beakers. I hardly ever picked up anything else.
And the way the single player mode uses a "Diddy Kong Racing" aesthetic. I hated Diddy Kong Racing. I don't want to have to drive to my next race. Just give me some menus, and let me select the next challenge from there. Every time someone turns a series into open world experience (See: SSX3, Burnout Paradise), I end up hating it.
Final Gripe: That certain undefinable thing. This is the biggest one, and I can't even put it into words. Racing games just have to feel a certain way, or it doesn't actually feel like a vehicle to me. A while back we rented "All Star Fruit Racing", and it was beautiful. I loved the graphics and the characters, but... it just didn't feel like driving. My wife and I both recognized it after one race. The carts just felt sort of sluggish, IMO.
Beach Buggy Racing has great controls, and it's only $10. Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled almost nails it, but it still feels just shy of actual driving to me.
Bottom Line: Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled is a terrific game. I really appreciate all the work that went into it, and the sheer number of tracks and characters. The customization is fantastic, with all the kart colors and characters skins. I want to like this game. But this is one of those times when minor flaws add up to a lot. Hopefully some of the issues will be solved in a future patch, but some of my gripes are intrinsic parts of the game. It's a great game, but I don't think it's for me.
I know I've talked about this in past blogs, but some of it bears repeating. I wish I liked so-called “Star Wars fans” as much as I like Star Wars. I’ve said this many times, but once again:
The difference between a Star Wars fan and a normal person is that a normal person likes Star Wars.
The first Star Wars film was released on May 25, 1977. I was three-and-a-half years old at the time, and it’s the first movie I really remember seeing in the theaters. Okay, I have a few random flashes of various Disney movies, but I have no idea when or where I saw them. With Star Wars, I have solid memories of seeing it multiple times, both at the drive-in and in traditional theaters.
When Empire came out in 1980 (I was 6), I noticed the title was actually “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back”. The title made me realize that Star Wars was both the title of the series and the title of the first movie. Well, that just wouldn’t do. I made it my mission to find out what the “real” name of the first Star Wars movie was.
When Star Wars was re-released in theaters in 1981, they added “A New Hope” to the opening crawl. Apparently George Lucas had wanted the original 1977 release to have the subtitle, but Fox wouldn’t let him because they thought it would be too confusing. My friends and I called it “A New Hope” from that point on. It was just clearer. You didn’t have to wonder if the other person was talking about the series or that specific movie.
These days, there’s a lot of debate over what makes someone a “true Star Wars” fan. I detest this sort of gatekeeping. I’ll admit, I’ve had gatekeeper attitudes of my own in the past, but I was wrong to do so. You are a Star Wars fan if you say you’re a Star Wars fan, end of story.
These gatekeepers say things like, “You’re not a true Star Wars fan if you like the prequels.” They don't like the newest movies because they "pander to the Social Justice Warriors", what with having main characters who aren't white males. The nerve. Some "true Star Wars fans" even hate Return of the Jedi, because it has Ewoks in it. Liking something cute threatens their masculinity.
Apparently a true Star Wars fan only likes two of the (currently 10-ish) movies. Can you think of any other franchise on the planet where you’re only allowed to like 20% of the series to be a true fan? Protip: A so-called “true fan” of anything probably enjoys more than 20% of the content.
Of course, "true Star Wars fans" also can’t like the Special Editions, either. Which is crazy, because you can’t even buy the original editions any more. Think about that for a moment. These toxic fanboys, the ones who consider themselves the only true fans of the Star Wars Franchise, only like two of the movies, and the two movies they like aren’t even available to buy. What a sure fire way to keep new people from joining the fandom. Sure, I wish they’d release the original versions on blu-ray just as much as anyone, but I’m not going to use it as an excuse to ostracize potential fans.
But the one that really sticks in my craw is the idea that real Star Wars fans never call the first one “A New Hope.” For some reason, they associate the subtitle with the Special Editions and the Prequels, despite it being the official subtitle since 1981. These so-called “true fans” apparently never noticed the subtitle until then. I’m sorry, but again, I saw the original in theaters, and I’ve been calling it by its true name since 1981. Are you really going to say I’m not a real Star Wars fan?
I repeat, a bunch of seven-year-olds knew it was called "A New Hope" waaay back in 1981. If you don't think it's called "A New Hope", you're dumber than a seven year old.
So, I’m going to make my own list of what makes a real Star Wars fan:
1. A true Star Wars fan doesn’t accuse others of not being a real Star Wars fan.
2. If you say you’re a real Star Wars fan, you’re a real Star Wars fan. Unless you violate Rule #1, in which case you’re just a jerk.
3. You can like the unpopular Star Wars movies and still be a true Star Wars fan.
4. You don’t have to have memorized every line to be a real Star Wars fan.
5. You don’t have to have seen the original movie in the theater to be a real Star Wars fan.
6. You don’t have to have read all the comics, played every video game, or know obscure bits of trivia to be a true Star Wars fan.
7. This should go without saying, but you can be any age, race, or sex and still be a real Star Wars fan.
8. You can like Ewoks, Porgs, Rose Tico, and yes, even Jar Jar Binks and still be a real Star Wars fan.
Always remember, being a fan is about liking things, not disliking things.
