I am a writer. I am a dreamer. Humanity may be its own worst enemy, but I believe in something better. Maybe I am naive. Maybe I am delusional. Maybe Carlin was right, and we are just playing out the string. But I believe that something greater is still within our grasp. And it is for that that I am working to make this world a better place, even if all I will ever be able to do is spit in the wind.
I meant to talk about this months ago, but I am finally getting around to it, because there is a lot to unpack. Here’s the thing about probably 95% of superhero games – they suck, or are really mediocre. Especially the ones licensed to films. Licensed games are the worst thing under the sun. After the SNES and Sega Genesis, they were all nothing but crap. So when I heard that Insomniac is making a Spider-Man game that is officially licensed by Marvel, I was groaning. I mean, Insomniac games are awesome. They made the Ratchet and Clank games, which are awesome. But a superhero game to come directly from Marvel? This has bad idea written all over it. This year at E3, however, they released a gameplay trailer that has taken all my skepticism and destroyed it. It looks awesome, so let’s take a look at it now.
Right out of the game, the visuals for this game are amazing. The level of detail is just perfect. It’s pretty standard, for a modern console game, but you know what, it’s great. Definitely hoping we can either customize or get new suits for the web-slinger, but I do like this suit. Not too worried about that. Switchable suits has been a standard for Spider-Man games since their inception, so it’s all good.
The control scheme for this game looks pretty simple. I can clearly tell that almost all of it will be about staying above your targets. The stealth elements look absolutely phenomenal. One of the things I always thought was kinda dumb about Spider-Man games is that they don’t take advantage of the elements of getting enemies from above. Sure, his suit ain’t exactly made to sneak, but you can still hit an enemy from above without them seeing you coming. Since Spider-Man never kills his foes, we don’t have to worry about non-lethal runs of the game. Exciting stuff. The controls for getting back up to beams or on top of objects are taken right out of the Arkham games. No problem with that whatsoever. It’s totally fitting for our friendly neighborhood hero.
We also get to see some potential gadget stuff in this game. Another thing I am digging that seems to have come straight out of the Arkham games. Desperately hoping that they don’t just copy that formula beat-for-beat though and give you some freedom to customize the stuff you use and be able to craft specialty stuff. Really wondering how the leveling up system is going to work. You also can use the environment to fuck up enemies! That’s awesome! I love it. Later on we get to see that done even in combat scenarios. Manipulating the environment in active combat and not just for stealth is a break from the mold they clearly are going off of, and I think that’s a great one. But the stealth aspect of this game is really something. Not gonna lie, the more potential I have to be stealthy, the happier I’ll be. It’s my favorite way to play a game, and it looks like I get to scratch my itch here.
Then we get our first peek into the combat. Now here’s something where I want to elaborate on how this game is using the Arkham formula. A lot of people are saying that that’s unoriginal, but you know what, I think it’s goddamn brilliant. There’s a reason why. When you fight, it’s clear that you are using the same kind of system they used in Arkham to dodge enemy attacks before they happen. To me, this formula makes even more sense for Spider-Man than it did for Batman. Why? Because of the Spider Sense. That talent gives him the ability to see what’s about to happen when danger is close. He gets an almost perfect ability to perceive incoming problems and react to them. So the indicator system from the aforementioned series is perfect for that! It also lets you dodge machine gun fire, which, for those who read the comics, is something that Spider-Man could do when he’s at his best. Since this game isn’t attached to any film or thing like that, keeping it true to the comics is kind of awesome.
From there we get some stuff with a helicopter that shows this game is also taking cues from the old God of War games with quicktime events. Not gonna complain about that either. Clearly they are doing the concept right. Kinda curious to see what all this “HEX” stuff in that clearly is some kind of energy. This should be interesting.
This game went from being something I figured wouldn’t be worth my time, to one of my most-anticipated games of 2018. That’s pretty awesome. Let me know what you all think down below.
I find myself in a very strange position – having a game where there is nothing wrong with it in terms of appearance, gameplay, or performance, and yet I was totally and completely bored by. This is a game that has nothing fundamentally wrong with it. I just got so bored playing it. How is that possible? Maybe it’s just not the kind of game for me? I honestly don’t know. There could be a lot of self-reflection in my future as I think about this game and what it represents to me. This review may end up with me just stroking my own dick as I think about why I didn’t really enjoy this game as much as the Steam community seems to, but so be it. I do want to talk about it.
The story goes that you’re in a 1980’s style dystopian future horror movie. Everything about the aesthetic screams old school horror films. This game seems to have taken some cues from Alien: Isolation in that regard. You play as Daniel Lazarski, voiced very well by Rutger Hauer. I like the voice acting from this character. Rutger isn’t known for being able to boom. He plays the broken down old man very well. He is an Observer. They’re a new kind of law enforcement who can go into people’s minds and take information that they don’t want to give up out of their heads. It’s a dark concept, that admittedly has a lot of potential. Now he’s on the trail to find his son, with whom he is estranged, and gets involved in a plot of murder and deception, all inside the heads of the dead or dying.
This game has a very unique look. I liked the retro feel of the tech in this game. You have all these holgraphic displays, mixed in with computers that look like they were coughed up from the 80’s. It’s cool stuff. Seeing games willing to eschew the modern film convention of making all the technology super advanced is really refreshing. A pity Hollywood can’t seem to do that. The problem here is that since the game really doesn’t take a large amount of time building the world it inhabits, I didn’t find myself getting into this beyond the most basic “that’s kinda cool” sorta way. Which is really unfortunate because there was a lot of loving detail put into the environments.
Hacking into people’s minds brought me to another game that this one clearly took a lot of cues from. Well, not really a game so much as what could have been a game – P.T. After the death of Silent Hills, a TON of games have been trying to take that concept and run with it. To extremely varying degrees of success. In my opinion, this game didn’t seem to rise to the ambitious goals Hideo Kojima was trying to do the way others appear to be. All the intricacies of P.T.’s environmental puzzles connected to being in a single hallway are lost on this game.
Then we get the sections that it’s clear they took from a previous work, Outlast – the moving around and hiding sections from a monster that you can’t kill. These sections got very tedious, very quickly. It was so easy to predict where the monster would be, so all the tension that could have come from hiding from the creature was lost in a nano-second. I found myself wishing that they could have just ditched those entirely for maybe more creative environmental puzzles in the world of people’s minds. For all the potential the idea of jacking into people’s heads has, they really seemed to not want to take any crazy chances with it. I can think of 100 ways to make it a surreal nightmare all off the top of my head that they didn’t even try. I kind of want to see this idea done again by a studio that is a little more ambitious. Maybe Kojima can take a crack at it after he is done with Death Stranding? Just a good idea.
Which brings me to the fear element – this game isn’t scary. At all. They really should have ditched the fear side. I guess the fear is supposed to come from the idea of what it means to get into people’s heads and how that is violating their minds. But here’s the thing – 99% of everyone you jack into is dead. This concept could have been made immediately more disturbing if you had living people who are desperately fighting you in their minds from getting to their secrets. Like maybe have an investigation where the Observer is so desperate to get to the answer that he’ll do all sorts of crazy shit in people’s head. As I said, this is a really neat concept, that I want to see done better.
I guess my biggest problem here is that this game feels like a ton of potential that wasn’t wasted, per se, just not taken far enough. If they wanted to make a game where the implication of what you’re doing is supposed to be the scary thing (which I like on a VERY large level), then why not go all the way with it? I mean REALLY fuck with the player. Make it so that the player feels like they are partly to blame. Have them also so eager to get to the answer that they are pushing the main character to do all these things. Maybe some Fourth Wall moments where you put on the player that what they’re doing is wrong. So much potential in this thought process.
This is not a bad game. I just got very bored by it. To me it feels like a game that is riffing off other games and doesn’t go out of its way to be its own thing. Which is a bummer, because the kind of game I described above, I can see Rutger Hauer being an amazing addition to. Hopefully this isn’t his last foray into video games before he passes. He is quite old. It will be a shame when he goes. He’s a great actor, and has the chops for great voice acting too. But that’s just my thoughts. Let me know what yours are below.
It’s all about who’s a Nazi. The term Nazi is just as void and empty as the term “rape” in the world of SJWs. After all, they say that birth is a form of rape. Seriously, Google “birth rape.” That shit will blow your mind. There are articles written by feminists saying that any form of sex between men and women is rape because the penis has to be “forced” into the vagina. Maybe with you, frosty-cunt, but other women get aroused. I know, it’s something these women who write stuff like that wouldn’t know thing one about. Their love caves have cobwebs, that’s how void they are of sexual thoughts. Oh, I’m sorry, did that sound insensitive? Well, it’s about to get worse.
I am just about sick and tired of all this “Nazi” bullshit on my feeds. Facebook, Twitter, just about everywhere I fucking go, it’s all about the Nazis. You have the right-wing idiots in Charlottesville who decided to get together and get tiki torches and do a white nationalism parade. Just about the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. Something like that should have just been mocked and have people rolling their eyes. Instead, it got a massive amount of counter-protesting. Which the police were just fine to allow and then be totally cool with both sides coming to blows. Don’t we pay these people to stop stuff like that? Funny how that works. Even had the mayor of that town saying that he would tell the police to let that happen. Of course, the ACLU was quick to point out that that is illegal, but in the end, that didn’t really matter (a Linkin Park reference. RIP, Chester).
Then there was one really sick fuck who decided to smash his car into a bunch of innocent people. Fuck that guy. He was rightfully vilified by the media, and I have no problem calling what he did an act of terrorism. Of course, we have a Muslim in Barcelona who smashes a van and kills 13 innocent people, while the guy in Charlottesville only killed one. Seems the Muslims are better at this than the “Nazis.” Oh, wait, they’re a religion of peace. Yeah, sure. Never mind all the unrepentant killing in Europe by people connected to a religion that tells people to murder those who don’t believe. Sure, why not.
What has me pissed off is the fact that it seems like everyone on the left has decided that while the extremists on the right may wear the symbol and name of the Nazis, they will take the mindset of fascists to heart. What do I mean? I mean that they are totally cool with doxing, harassing the employers of, and even driving people out of communities? Why? Because they have opinions that they disagree with. Are these people killing anyone? Are they burning cars? Are they throwing firebombs at cops? Are they doxing people? Nope. Not one. Meanwhile, the people who are attacking them have those on their side who have done ALL of the aforementioned things. Killed cops, burned cars, rioted and destroyed property, threw firebombs at combs, attacked people just for having an opinion they don’t like, kidnapped and tortured some kid because he was white, pepper sprayed a woman who was also voicing that dissenting mindset, and doxed those who have an opinion that differs from their own.
Some people have called these people the modern equivalent of brownshirts. An interesting comparison. Chris Ray Gun did a very charming musical rendition of the concept, which I think is more prescient now than EVER before.
I don’t. These people are more of the modern equivalent of Mao’s Red Guard. A paramilitary force of students who fought in favor of a fascistic mindset. That’s what we see here. College students who don’t see the historical irony in using tactics that fascists used to make sure that their mindset is the only acceptable one. Might as well just put them in an SS uniform. They certainly love propaganda and punishing thought-crimes. Since they seem to love marxism, I wonder if they know that they’re doing Stalin proud. Wait, maybe that’s a little extreme. Then let’s say they’re doing Kim Il-sung proud. Yeah, that seems much more fitting.
But you wanna know what really pisses me off about all this? The fact that I am out here defending fucking white nationalists! I’m out here defending these people’s rights to believe their retarded bullshit. Why? Because I’d MUCH rather we have a society where these idiots can get their fucking tiki torches and go out and protest their stupid crap than one where everyone walks in lock-step to one way of thinking. Where we have Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and seemingly every major social media outlet sucking the cock of the “progressive” mindset, and Google firing people who dare to say that ideological purity destroys the potential of good ideas. Oh, that’s right, he said that women are dumb and don’t belong in tech. Says people who clearly never read a single word of the memo that was so infamous. One where the writer comes out and says he is totally for diversity, but not when it’s forced. The gall!
I, a man who wears the banner of liberal, am defending the rights of white nationalists to believe their retarded bullshit. That’s what it’s come to. Fuck the regressive left. They can take their notions of “tolerance” and shove them right up their fucking ass!
Until next time, a quote,
“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.” – H.L. Mencken
Our favorite conservative “think tank” has come out with yet-another video where they blatantly miss the point of an issue while trying to sound super smart, and somehow these people have a ton of defenders. I will never understand that. As in never, at any point in time. How a conservative group dedicated towards “education” can make videos on such relevant topics as why people don’t like saying Merry Christmas, or why belief in God is actually the best thing for America, or the ever-popular God showing that murder is wrong. Yeah, that’s totally not contradicted by the Bible. Nope, not at all.
Now they have decided to come out and say that the death penalty is a-okay! I’m sure this guy considers himself “pro-life” too. Of course he does. If these people weren’t bleeding hypocrites, they’d be nothing at all. Dennis Prager comes out and say that the death penalty is not only right, it’s moral. Let’s take a look at this bullshit.
Prager begins by saying that there are almost no issues where he doesn’t understand both sides. Dennis, there are a TON of issues that you don’t understand both sides on. I linked three of them above. Your inability to understand the most basic of counterarguments that people make is quite something. But it seems that when it comes to the death penalty, Prager has an unbridgeable gap that he cannot reconcile with the left on. He wants us to make sure he knows that he thinks not every murderer should be killed, but he believes there is a moral imperative that they should not be. Okay, Dennis, let’s hear your reasoning.
He goes through a story, and yeah, it’s awful. The two people he talked about are terrible people. But, Dennis, this isn’t about your anecdotes about horrible people. There are a TON of truly horrifying stories that I can tell about murders that go far beyond two guys and one crime. He says that the people opposed to the death penalty in this instance are saying they deserve to live. It’s not that, Dennis.
What people like myself are saying when we say that we oppose the death penalty isn’t that people like these two scum-fucks deserve to live. It’s that we do not believe that if our government is going to say that we believe in the rule of law, and that murder is wrong (two things I wholeheartedly do believe), then we can’t have a government coming in and saying that we should have no issue killing other people. What those two men did was deplorable. They are awful people and I have no problem locking them in jail and throwing away the fucking key. But it is ethical hypocrisy for us to be able to say that we are a moral nation that has an ethical standard, and then fail to live up to that standard. I’m sorry, but that’s wrong.
He goes on to say that people like me are saying that these people don’t deserve to die. I’m not saying that all, Dennis. I’m saying that our country is a nation of hypocrites if we decide to kill these two people and then turning around and saying that murder is wrong. It’s not that complicated. This is what I hate about Prager. He can’t do ethical arguments. The whole reason he told this story with the background going all back and dark images meant to conjure dark images in the mind was to get past the critical thinking part of your mind and get to the part that wants justice. The part that wants blood for blood. Those two men he described are disgusting people. I don’t care if they get butt-raped in prison. But I am able to look past the emotional side and see to the side that says that if we are going to be the kinds of people who ignore our own standard, then we might as well just not have that standard at all.
Let me give you a counter-example, Dennis. Say those two men do what you described, and I just happened to be there with a loaded .44. I blow their disgusting fucking brains out for what they did. I apparently wasn’t there in time to stop them from doing it, but I am there in time to kill them as they are trying to escape or something like that. What would happen to me? I’d be tried for second degree murder. Maybe I could make the argument that I was trying to save the life of the father who you never said if he lived or died. But if they are no longer a threat and are fleeing, then I killed two people in cold blood. I’d be found guilty. Maybe my defense lawyer could do what you’re trying to do and maybe that would work, but probably not. Because at least one person would see that I took the law into my own hands.
By your standard, I did nothing wrong. Those two men are disgusting people and they don’t deserve to live. So then why should I not be potentially found guilty of two counts of second-degree murder and potentially sentenced to death and they should. What’s the line between them and what would be me? Where do you draw that line?
Your first example is pretty much on point with what I just said as to what people like me believe. Bravo. But your second example is fucking stupid. I just said that I don’t care about the value of human life in respect to those two pieces of shit. Fuck them. This is purely a standard of ethics and a refusal to be a hypocrite.
Prager then says one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard – that sparing murderers belittles the act of murder. How? They’ll be in jail for the rest of their lives. For all the crimes they are guilty of, those two are never going to breathe free air again. I have protected the public by locking them away, if I’m on that jury. I’m dying to hear how keeping murderers alive somehow belittles the act of murder. Does sending a rapist to jail belittle the act of rape? SJWs calling everything under the sun sure does, but when the police arrest someone and they are found guilty in a court of law and they are on the sex offender registry for the rest of the lives, that sure as fuck doesn’t sound like it belittles that. That person will likely never hold a good job, likely never have a stable relationship, and likely never have a good home because plenty of good neighborhoods have laws about sexual predators living there. Some places have it where if you are on the sexual offender registry, you have to go door to door and tell people that. Effectively killing any chance of you integrating successfully into that neighborhood. I’m not seeing your point here.
It’s easily proven, he says. This should be good. He argument is the biggest non-sequitur I’ve ever seen. Saying that murderers shouldn’t be killed is the same as making murder have the same punishment as…a speeding ticket? The fuck?! One of these things is not like the other. By putting a murderer in jail for the rest of their life, or for the vast portion of it, you are effectively removing that person from the rest of society. They can no longer present a danger to anyone. How is that belittling it. We recognize this person as a serious danger, and so they will be removed from society for the vast portion of their life, if not all of it. The two gentlemen he described, if found guilty, their parole officer doesn’t exist. For four (potentially, we don’t know if the father lived or died) counts of murder and two (or three?) counts of sexual assault, these men are never getting out of jail. Ever. How was murder belittled? All ears, Dennis.
Then we get the “what about the loved ones?” argument. Oh Groj. Yeah, and what about the loved ones of the people who are killed by the state? This makes for a nice segway into another argument against the death penalty – what about the loved ones of people killed for crimes they didn’t commit? Like that dad in Texas who was killed because he was found guilty of murdering his daughter, when it was found out later that she actually was ripped up by the family dog, and the cuts the investigators believed were knife wounds were from the surgeons trying to stop the bleeding. What about that man’s loved ones? He was sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit, and it’s only after he is already dead that he is exonerated. What about those people?! Where’s their justice? In my eyes, if we kill one innocent person as part of your “moral” imperative for the death penalty, that’s one person too many.
He says that the families are angry and hurt because that person isn’t dead. Sure. Of course they are. But here’s the thing, Dennis – justice isn’t about that. It isn’t about emotional satisfaction. If that were the case, shouldn’t the victims of rape be allowed to rip off the genitals of the person who raped them? What about the woman who kept teenage girls in her basement as sex slaves? What should they be allowed to do to her? The justice system is about doling out punishments that fit, based on what the person did. I’m sorry that the person in front of that headstone is sad. It sucks. I’ve lost someone I loved to a fucking idiot who is going to be getting out of prison in the not too distant future. But he served his time and that’s that.
Then he make a strawman argument saying that if I think the Dr who I guess did live at the end of this saying that the people who did this should die, I think he’s immoral. I don’t think that. What I think is that he is being government by his anger, and not seeing that the law isn’t about making him feel good. If that were the case, punishments for all sorts of crimes would be infinitely worse. The law is about removing dangerous elements from society, and about providing rehabilitation for those who can be rehabilitated. Granted, with the piss-poor quality of American prisons, that’s not happening. Gotta love the private prison system and the drug war. But some people can’t be rehabilitated, and they have to go away forever for the safety of the public. I’m sorry the doctor is angry. I really am. What happened to him is awful. But his anger doesn’t dictate the nature of the law and how punishment is supposed to work.
And then we get another strawman of those who made the argument I did about those who are innocent and get killed, saying that we oppose it even when evidence is absolute. Dennis, that’s not the fucking point! The point is that one innocent person being killed by this law that you say is so justice is one too many! For a guy who says that he sees both sides of an argument, you sure are missing the point on this one. Huh, maybe it’s because his notion of seeing both sides is bullshit.
Prager then makes the argument that by keeping murderers alive in prison, they get to kill more people in prison. Hey Dennis, I don’t know if you knew this, but a fuck-ton more people get killed in prison when gang violence in the streets comes inside. America’s prison system is so fucked because of the drug war, and the drug war comes inside and that is where so much more prison murder comes from.
That’s all of the major arguments. After that it’s just him reiterating his old points. My point stands – if we are going to say that we say that murder is wrong (which I most-assuredly do) and that we are a nation that respects the rule of law (which I try to believe, though until all cops are forced to wear cameras), then we cannot kill another person while saying that killing is wrong. Mama didn’t raise no hypocrite.
Until next time, a quote,
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” – H.L. Mencken
As a graduate with a degree in journalism and public communication, seeing the media’s blatant attempts to try and subvert the conversation about the DNC leak last summer was infuriating. It was 24 hours of “Russia done did it!” A pathetic dodge that fooled only the same liberals who were going to suck Hillary’s dick anyway. Do I support Trump? Fuck no. But seeing evidence being released of a political candidate working in collusion with the media to outright rig the primaries was fucking infuriating. We all got to watch democracy fail in front of us, and just like every other time I’ve watched it fail, nobody cared. Not really. Because then the narrative become, “if you don’t support Hillary, you support Trump!” Or they tried to hide under the email scandals skirts. Even now, all the “But her emails!” memes sure do not want to talk about the REAL reason we hated that cuntbag. It’s so frustrating.
But now we know that it was not Russia. In the Daily Mail (article linked here), they discuss an article from The Nation, where a series of experts came forward with information that the amount of information leaked to WikiLeaks was too large to be done over the Internet. It would have had to be someone inside the camp getting the information directly from there. In other words, someone in Hillary’s camp grew a conscience (hard to see, I know, given Hillary’s outright refusal to admit that ANY of what she did was wrong) and leaked the information. The news media is unable to do their fucking job, so of course it was from an outside source. If they could do any REAL investigative reporting, what a wonderful world it would be.
What do we hear, now that all the “Russia did it!” crap has been debunked? Not a lot. In fact, it’s pretty much radio silence. You’d think this would be big news. Proof that the left’s eagerness to restart the Cold War to cover Hillary’s ass sure was misplaced. But nope. It’s just lots of silence. Though, there was a report from New York Magazine where they made the argument that The Nation’s article was poorly written. So that invalidates the information they got? Un-fucking-real. Will you people say ANYTHING to avoid taking responsibility?!
Just once, I’d like to see a news outlet with integrity. They don’t exist. Not anymore. How I’d love to find the teacher I had for Journalism and the First Amendment. She made the argument that the news in this country isn’t nearly as broken as I claimed it was in a class discussion. Wrong, bitch! Now we know that it is. Because when the news was caught in a lie, rather than taking responsibility, what did they do? “RUSSIA!” When they were caught using that as a dodge because now we have evidence that it wasn’t Russia?
If the media is this incapable of admitting when they do wrong, then what is their ethical standard? What is the line that ethically-void talking heads like Rachel Maddow draws? Where is that place that CNN is willing to admit that what they did was wrong at? I genuinely want a fucking answer. We all know that Hillary will NEVER admit that anything she did is wrong. She released a fucking book called “What Happened,” which is basically her denying what really happened. What happened is you, moron! What happened is the fact that your a vindictive cunt, who was so desperate to get your turn at the wheel that you rigged the primary against a candidate who would have destroyed Trump. That’s what fucking happened!
All I want is some sign that the field of journalism is something other than sellouts and ideologues. Just one. Just one goddamn sign that the field has some redemptive qualities. But no! They get busted putting their hands in the cookie jar and all they can do is deflect and then hope if they don’t talk about it for long enough that everyone will go away. Because hey, if you can’t make those almighty dollars and get in tight with the heir apparent (at least in her mind) to the Presidency, then what are you doing?
Moments like these make me feel like I wasted my time with this degree. After all, if everything that comes out these days is just click-bait bullshit, then the field really is dead. Now it’s just ideologues on one side of the fence or the other telling their audience exactly what they want to hear. I follow liberal and conservatives, and see a complete lack of nuance on any side. When I am seeing Laci Green giving the most nuanced perspective these days on Twitter, something is fucking wrong! Not that anyone cares. Or ever will. After all, better to just be told what you want to hear. This country is so lost.
Until next time, a quote,
“An empire toppled by its enemies can rise again. But one that crumbles from within? That’s dead.” – Baron Zemo, Captain America: Civil War
What a fascinating film I just watched. I love me some old Godzilla movies. The effects are so bad, but the kaiju fighting is just too much fun. Plus, watching them dubbed adds an extra layer of cheese that cannot be compared. I didn’t really like the new Godzilla movie that America made, partly because there was so little of the actual monsters. A similar criticism could easily be leveled at this movie, but I won’t. Why? Because this film just took the most fascinating approach. There is a lot to unpack here, so let’s get down to it.
The plot of this film is just focused exclusively around Godzilla. No other kaiju to fight. This movie has our titular monster as the big bad, which again sounds like it would be boring, but this movie just so odd. It tells the story of a new Godzilla in a world where he never existed, now coming for Japan (what is his beef with that place? What the fuck did they do to him?) and the Japanese government desperately trying to save their country from destruction.
This film is perhaps the most political movie I’ve seen in years. It’s weird. 95% of this movie is spent with characters just talking. There is so much talk about Japanese politics that you almost forget that you’re watching a Godzilla film for a while. I wanna hate that, but I don’t. Getting to see this Japanese government and some genuinely-likeable characters desperately trying to figure out what to do in the face of an international threat that is looking to take excessive measures to stop Godzilla is genuinely touching. The head of a special department who is trying to figure out a way to stop Godzilla specifically is my favorite. You genuinely get the feeling that he is invested in this effort to save his country.
Since the entirety of the movie revolves around the political sphere, if you hate listening to people talk about politics for almost the entirety of the 2 hour runtime of this film, you’re gonna hate it. That’s the big and small of it. Even when you see things happening in service to the plot of the film, they always find a way to bring it back to the the government’s efforts and how international pressure comes into play. It’s actually kinda smart. You genuinely feel for these people who are stuck in a world where they have red tape and public to worry about. I like this perspective. In the American film, it was all about a small section of military characters, none of whom were particularly interesting. This movie has a kind of authenticity because they keep it focused on Japan and make the outside world as not evil, but disconnected. You can take all this for what you will.
That being said, this film has a LOT of elements that are silly to the point of ridiculousness. Since there are a lot of American characters in this movie, you get some genuinely funny Engrish. This female character who is the American liaison to Japan is my favorite. It’s clear that she’s a Japanese actress and English is NOT her first language. But believe it or not, they get real American actors to play American parts. The problem is that the writing for these actors is clearly done by somebody where English is their first language. So the dialogue is so fucking stilted. It’s kind great. Oh boy.
Speaking of ridiculous things, let’s talk about the effects in this movie. In the old films, it’s clearly someone in a suit. This time they decided to trade in the suit for CG, and it’s…terrible. I love it. When you first see Godzilla in his original form, it looks so bad that I was laughing my ass off. The eyes especially. That was the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time. Maybe that’s why they worked so hard to keep the focus off him. Because too much time with the monster and we would have been laughing our asses off.
But it isn’t devoid of cool effects. There is one scene that just blows me away. It’s when they finally do real damage to the monster, and he loses his cool. What follows may not be amazing, but is done with so much finesse and really good musical cues that you feel how desperate the situation is.
One thing I do wanna point out is a track used in this film. When I first heard it, I laughed my ass off. It’s so clearly robbed from Evangelion. I mean, to the point of shameless. If it wasn’t for the fact that I know that FUNimation is at least partly licensed in the production of this film, I’d be amazed that they haven’t sued the living shit out of this studio. It’s so obviously the track from Evangelion. They do change it just a little bit later in the film, but it’s not enough to make me think it’s anything else.
I also wanna talk about this film’s weird habit of suddenly taking strange angle shots right the fuck out of nowhere! I mean nowhere! They’ll suddenly have a shot from the weirdest angle and then cut away. Whoever was behind that decision, I want to know why. These shots just come and go in a split-second, and serve no purpose in any scene they are in.
Overall, I’m not sure how to rate this film. There are a TON of flaws that one could easily nit-pick to death. But, I had fun watching it. This is a genuinely entertaining movie, for me. Maybe it’s because I liked these characters, and the politics they were talking about was genuinely interesting. I don’t know. But your mileage with this movie will vary. So glad I watched it with subtitles. If I had had to suffer the dub, I know I wouldn’t have been able to take ANY of it seriously. The genuine strength of the performances comes out only in original Japanese. This review may not make much sense to you, but this is the best I can talk about it. Do with my review what you will.
I love how the Internet just loves to get pissed. It really does. The Internet loses its fucking mind every time there is some big thing that they feel they have to get upset about, because they have nothing better to do with their time. Lately, it’s been Riley J Dennis getting her panties in a bunch because people chose to call out the video that her girlfriend made where she basically says that if you don’t date a trans person who still has the genitals of the sex they were born as, you’re a bigot.
This argument is so dumb for a lot of reasons. I’ve already talked before in my post about the Fall of Zinnia Jones how this is simply ridiculous. After all, you’ll like dick if you just give it a try! What’s what? That argument sounds just like the ones that straight people said to gay girls? I know my friend Quinn heard that same argument from the Priest in the church she grew up in when she was younger. But now we have the regressive left literally taking that EXACT SAME argument and waving it with the banner of it being a good thing. That just blows my fucking mind. They’re so desperate to be seen as tolerant that they take the rhetoric of intolerant people and use it as a way of proving how not-intolerant they are. There’s so much delicious irony.
I am one of the people who says that Riley’s girlfriend was basically making the argument that sexual “preferences” is a choice. Because you can choose to magically like dick, if you are a girl and don’t. Just like I can magically choose to like dick on a girl. Right? See, here’s something that all these SJW retards don’t want to realize when they make the argument “the last thing I think about is genitals.” Really? Then you’ve never have sex. See, sex is about sexual contact. To all the SJW guys, here’s a question – you have a girlfriend? If you get one, and you’re in bed with her, would you wanna suck her cock? Would you want her fucking you up the ass with it? Because if she has one, then that’s how sexual contact will go. You will be fucking her penis. I wonder if that’s how Steve Shives gets it on. Maybe he is living proof that you can grow to like it long enough if you take it.
Everyone I see on Twitter and other sites arguing this crap seems to want to totally ignore the fact that if you are making the argument that what you like to feel, sexually, can be changed. So ladies, you like getting fuck by a big cock? Great. These people are telling you that you can not like that, if you just give it a chance. Do you see how stupid that is?!
It baffles me how we’ve come to this. Everyone on the far-left is so desperate to not be called a bigot that we’re going to pretend that what you are sexually into can just be fundamentally changed if you just give it enough of a chance. All the straight guys are gonna magically want to suck cock and all the straight girls are going to want to touch vaginas. An argument for which there is NO evidence of ANY kind that it is true. After all, you’re born wanting what you want. The same argument that the gay community uses equally applies here.
We live in an age where, in order to be seen as “progressive,” there is a fucking purity test. This bothers me. This social justice mentality has infected everything. A lot of people are saying that going after SJWs is tired, but then we see this stupid crap, and I realize that it’s not. It’s as big now as it has ever been. And these people don’t see how they’re doing real damage to their own movement. Because now, instead of wanting to be allies, they’re made to feel guilty about their “preferences.” Yeah, because what you like to have when you are at the most intimate moments of your life is just something you can choose. Imbeciles.
I get where all of this is coming from. For real, I do. I maintain that I get why Riley said this crap. It’s because she didn’t want people to be rejected. Rejection hurts. But here’s the thing that Riley and all the people who think like her don’t seem to want to accept – rejection is part of life. Trust me, I’ve gotten a ton of it. I know what it’s like. You gotta accept that not everyone is going to be attracted to you. Some people who see that giant honking Adam’s Apple are going to be put off. Some people who see that painfully-average penis are going to be put off. That’s not bigotry. It’s because they know what they want to have sexual contact with, and that isn’t it. Hey Riley, would you suck your girlfriend’s cock if she had one? Would you let her peg you with it? If that thought provides even a moment’s hesitation for you, then maybe you fucking get it. And maybe you can see that this isn’t bigotry. It’s just someone wanting something else in the bedroom than you. I’m sorry if you or your friends have been hurt before because someone didn’t want you. But we all have to deal with that. Saying that a lesbian is a bigot because she doesn’t want a penis inside her is just as disgusting as the aforementioned Priest saying Quinn should just give dick a try and it would grow on her.
I genuinely can’t see the difference between those points of view.
Until next time, a quote,
“I think putting labels on people is just an easy way of marketing something you don’t understand.” – Adam Jones
