Tron: Legacy

Tron: Legacy is quite possibly the coolest movie I have ever seen.

Mind you, I'm not some die-hard Tron fanboy, and I came into this sequel with low expectations.  I tried watching the original when I was a kid, but I just found it terribly boring. Coming to it recently as a more cultured adult, I found it still boring, and furthermore ridiculous, but I could at least appreciate that it was unique, at the time new, and unlike anything else people had ever seen before.

Like its predecessor, Tron: Legacy too is something new and unique. But it also looks good and is entertaining. Indeed, I think the new world of Tron: Legacy is what Tron was supposed to have looked like all along, only the technological constraints of the time having distorted the vision. It creates a world wholly and deliberately unreal, yet makes it as convincing as it is attractive. Yes, it is somehow, paradoxically, convincingly unreal. Credit must be given, of course, to the original Tron, whose basic design laid the groundwork for the sequel. Whenever, God forbid, I should imagine what it is like to exist inside a computer, the image shall hereafter forever be informed by both movies. But, whereas everyone remembers the original as a technical marvel, I don't imagine that Tron: Legacy is the result of considerably more supercomputers at work than any other current special effects-laden flick. Rather, the singular aesthetic of the movie is, first and foremost, a work of art that sets it quite apart from any other blockbuster.

Equally essential, if not more so, is the film score by Daft Punk. Even before the film transitions to the virtual world, the urgent soundtrack takes hold and has you surrendering your emotions to the groove. The hypnotic score remains in the foreground throughout, and the otherworldly visuals later seem almost more an illustration of the movie's sound. The sublime marriage of audio and visuals is truly what makes Tron: Legacy, nearly a feature-length music video.

Writing is also improved over the original, although the story is definitely a sequel, and depends heavily on the first film's. All the ridiculous explanations from the first movie remain in effect, but they seem less ridiculous this time, mainly because the sequel doesn't even bother explaining how flesh-and-blood humans are able to enter the realm of digital data. Tron: Legacy also doesn't tell viewers much about who Kevin Flynn and Tron were, though both characters return, the latter being more welcome than the former.

On that note, I should make mention of the special effects used to make Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner appear young again, whether because they appear in flashbacks or because data isn't supposed to show wrinkles. By some accounts, the digitally de-aged Jeff Bridges is the one blemish on an otherwise visually impeccable film. To be honest, I wasn't much bothered by it. Rather, when I watched the original Tron just a few months ago, I was startled by the genuine image of the young Jeff Bridges, since I had only ever really known him from his work as a much older man. So, perhaps because any young Jeff Bridges is, by its nature, a strange sight to me, I did not regard his CG mask as itself deficient in Tron: Legacy.

It is somewhat the opposite case with Bruce Boxleitner. Playing Tron would be the highlight of his career, so for most people, having not watched him age through his later roles, he has remained frozen in that image of him as a young man in Tron. So when I saw him as the young Tron again in Tron: Legacy, it seemed right (and, in this case, I have met little disagreement), whereas it was the scenes featuring the old Bruce Boxleitner's real face that kind of unsettled.

At the risk of spoiling things, I will say that Tron's role in the movie is brief, and his face shown only from a distance and through some distortion filter for most of it. So maybe the filmmakers themselves did not have complete confidence in their tech to do justice to the series's coolest and most beloved character. It makes me wonder about the possibility for future sequels. Without both CG assistance and shrewd editing, Bruce Boxleitner is already too old, not only in body but in voice, to convincingly play the same character from thirty years ago. I'd wager that limiting that character's minutes in Tron: Legacy was simply a practical necessity. But, going forward, would a Tron movie without any Tron at all even be worth making? Well, I suppose as technology advances, the Tron character may yet endure, and now truly as just data.

The Last Unicorn

"And where were you twenty years ago? Ten years ago? Where were you when I was new? When I was one of those innocent young maidens you always come to? How dare you? How dare you come to me now, when I am this?"

The Last Unicorn was not so vivid in my memory as Robin Hood. In fact, I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard of it before, let alone seen it. But there was something vaguely resonant about the title and DVD cover art, and as I read the synopsis, I felt certain that this was the very movie I had been searching for for years.

It was back when I was a kindergartener. At my elementary school, I remember, at the end of the last Friday of every month, all the kindergarteners would gather into one classroom to watch a movie (usually a Disney animated classic—Lady and the Tramp, Peter Pan, 101 Dalmatians, etc.).

To be honest, I didn’t really like “movie day,” mainly on account of the fact that it was always hosted in the other kindergarten class, where I would have to sit on the floor and be surrounded by strange kids I didn’t normally see. Looking back, I also wonder why we even had a movie day. What educational value was there to be had from watching Disney movies during class time? As heavily criticized as California’s under-budgeted education system is nowadays, I suppose it’s easy to be cynical in retrospect and imagine that the underpaid teachers were just idling the day away any way they could.

But, no, I really did like my kindergarten teacher, and though I can’t remember much of the day-to-day in her class, everything I can remember tells me that she had the students’ best interests at heart. It is neither easy nor profitable being a teacher, especially for the very young kids. I have to believe that anyone who would take on that job would do so from the heart (though that speaks unfortunately little of their qualifications). And maybe, for us young kids, movie time existed for the same reason as nap time—we could only handle so much and needed periods to unwind.

But I’ve no expertise to comment on such matters of education, and, anyway, I digress. The Last Unicorn was not even screened on movie day, but rather came presumably from our teacher’s personal collection. Near the end of the school year, she would end every day by playing a bit of the movie. I don’t remember her introducing it in any way or even discussing it at all. When the work was done for the day, she would just turn the lights down, pop in the tape, and have us watch quietly until the bell rang.

Trying to sort through the memories now, it’s hard to make sense of the math. I feel like we must have watched The Last Unicorn for at least a week, but, in that case, we must have only been watching for a few minutes at a time, because it was not a very long movie after all. Yet each viewing must have been long enough for me to become quite engrossed, as I definitely recall being the case. But what I mainly remember is that the school year ended before we could finish the movie (and, yes, we were still watching it up to the final bell of the final class day).

I was, at the time, still quite new to this “school” thing, so I didn’t really appreciate what “summer break” meant, even though my older brother seemed very excited for it. I gathered quickly enough that it was a long break from school. But, to be honest, through that whole enjoyable summer, there was a small part of me that was still anxious to find out how The Last Unicorn was going to end, and, in my naivete, I actually believed that, once school started up again, we would pick up right where we left off. Once first grade did start, it did not take me long to realize how stupid I’d been to think that I’d be resuming The Last Unicorn with a different class and different teacher. But I was still a tad disappointed.

For years after that, I continued to wonder how the movie was supposed to end. I might have just asked my parents to buy the movie for me, except that I actually couldn't remember the title of it. And in those pre-Internet days, it was not easy to look up and identify a movie based on some recollected description. Over time, I would forget almost entirely what the movie itself was about. I would only remember, now and again, that there was some animated fantasy movie that I had watched in kindergarten, which I did not get to see the end of.

I might have asked my kindergarten teacher, except that she left the school after my year. I was told that she had moved away with her husband, who was nothing less than a Harlem Globetrotter. I knew that athletes had to do a lot of traveling, so I supposed that she also had to move around a lot to be with him. Only much later in life did I do some digging and find out that her husband was actually David “Smokey” Gaines, a former Globetrotter, who was already long past his performing days by the time I was in his wife’s kindergarten class. He had become a basketball coach, and he had received an offer in another state, so that was why they had moved.

To be honest, I actually managed to track down Mr. Gaines’s current office, and I almost considered giving him a call just to ask how his wife was now. Of course, I didn’t know if they were still married, or if she was even still alive . . . . But, even in the best-case scenario, I seriously doubt she would remember me, just as I can no longer remember much about her. And what would I even say to her?

Hello, Mrs. Gaines, I was in your kindergarten class some twenty years ago. Chinese kid. Kind of quiet. You asked me once how I would feel about being selected for a “good citizenship” award, and I told you to “let me think about it.” You laughed and said okay, but later you gave me the award anyway without ever asking for my answer. Thank you for that. And how are you these days?

Yeah, it probably wouldn’t go down like that . . . .

Anyway, I digress again.

As for the movie itself? Well, I actually bought the DVD about three years ago, but, even though I'd already waited twenty years to see the end of it, I kept putting off watching it until yesterday. Or maybe, precisely because it had been that long, I was afraid to watch it, for fear that it could not possibly live up to my childhood feelings about it, those feelings being about all that I could remember, in lieu of any details about the movie itself.

Well, now having seen the whole thing finally, I don't think it's a particularly great movie, worthy of all that I've invested in it over these more than twenty years. But there is a certain haunting beauty and an earnestness to it that is seldom found nowadays in children's pictures. I would say that the filmmakers grasped rightly that a child can more deeply feel than think. Truly, there is little of sense to the movie, but the characters' ever guileless (and seemingly always unprovoked) expressions of love, longing, frustration, sadness, and dread would have been keenly resonant to younger audiences, children being all emotion before reason. Or perhaps I speak only of my own younger self.

Robin Hood

While shopping the other day, I happened by the movies section of the electronics store at the mall. And, for whatever reason, I quickly gravitated toward the animated shelf. Perhaps I was looking for some comforting reminder of my childhood, back when I could watch a movie more earnestly, even if it happened to star talking cartoon animals. I passed by a number of older titles that I could remember liking—An American Tail, The Rescuers, The Fox and the Hound—though I could not otherwise remember anything about them, so long had it been since I’d seen them.

One that caught my eye was Disney’s version of Robin Hood. It had been a particular favorite of mine growing up, though again I cannot remember it well enough now to determine where it would stack up against more recent pictures. But I remember, back when my parents, who used to work days and nights, would drop me off at the daycare, Robin Hood was one of the handful of VHS tapes on hand to entertain the kids.

I probably watched Robin Hood at least a dozen times there, yet somehow the twelfth time was as engaging as the first. I suppose, being a child, maybe I was just easily diverted. It has now been many years since I last saw it, but there is still one scene that I can vividly recall.

I believe it came near the end of the movie. I don’t even remember the exact context, but Robin Hood was attempting to flee Prince John’s burning castle. All avenues of escape were cut off, however, and he was forced to turn from one dead end to another, meanwhile having to evade relentless guards and arrows fired from all directions. Although Robin Hood had been a charismatic and cocksure hero up to that point, the panic and desperation were now clearly drawn on his expression, as though he were for the first time confronting a situation he wasn’t sure he could get out of. And as his seemingly futile escape attempt stretched on for interminable minutes, it became all the more agonizing to watch him get boxed in, his options shrinking along with his chances, until he was driven to flee deeper inward and upward into the castle (which, in my five-year-old experience, was never a good idea).

The climax came when finally Robin Hood dove (or fell) into the moat. He sank beneath the surface of the water almost upon landing, a hail of arrows following immediately behind, while both Prince John and Robin Hood’s own merry band looking on waited expectantly for him to rise again. But there was no stirring in the water, and as the bubbles stopped floating up to the surface, what followed was only his hat, an arrow running through it. Prince John was exultant, while Robin Hood’s friends were in disbelief, then pained resignation, the depth of their grief itself, more than anything else, serving as seeming proof of the cruel fate handed upon their heroic leader.

Of course that wasn’t the end of the movie, and Robin Hood did survive, and there was much rejoicing as good triumphed over evil. Yet somehow that whole sequence was, every time I saw it, as vital to me as though I were seeing it for the first time. Even though I knew he would make it out okay—in fact, I probably knew that even the first time I watched it—somehow it was still terrifying for me every time Robin Hood sank beneath the water. Somehow I got anxious every time waiting for him to surface. And the anguish of his friends, as they believed him perished, especially tore me up inside every time.

Anyway, that was Robin Hood to me.

Maybe for charity

You know how they sometimes have Celebrity Jeopardy!, Celebrity Apprentice, etc.?

Well, maybe they should do a "Celebrity" edition of Dancing with the Stars.


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You know, just to shake things up for a season.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

I feel about Modern Warfare, as a video game, much as I do about The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. I think both are technically well-made, but I have little personal affection for either. I probably enjoyed playing Modern Warfare more so than I did watching Lord of the Rings, but I think parts of me also despised the game much more so than those movies, toward which I would describe myself as more lukewarm. In all fairness, I am not a particular fan of first-person shooters, so Modern Warfare may have started at a disadvantage for me, but truly I must say that playing it was one of the most soul-numbing experiences I ever had in gaming.

The game was sold to me as the modern exemplar of its genre. If you were to play only one FPS in your life, in other words, it should be this one. I might actually be inclined to agree with that, although I have admittedly not played that many examples myself. But Modern Warfare does include just about everything one should expect from an FPS, and most of it done better (if only slightly so) than in any other game I've played.

There is fun to be had here, as well as some of the most exhilarating moments I've had in gaming. Truly, what make the game are the explosive set pieces and scripted sequences that leave the player feeling as though they are acting out a Hollywood blockbuster. There were occasionally stunning images, such as the sight of a helicopter spinning out and going down in real time (no cut to cinematic, pre-rendered or otherwise), while my character sat watching from another helicopter alongside. Even more impressive were the interactive moments that, although obviously scripted, gave the player just enough of an illusion of agency to feel like the hero of the script, as in the game's most adrenaline-fueled scene, when the slow motion kicks in, and you know you've got just one clip in your sidearm to make count, or else.

My favorite mission in the game, essentially a series of scripted encounters, had me playing as part of a two-man sniping team. The operation takes place indoors and outdoors, moves from the foliage to an urban environment, and encompasses just about every gameplay type--stealthy infiltration, long-range sniping, escort mission, and hectic standoff while awaiting rescue. Had that been the only mission in the game (actually, it was spread across two campaign levels), it might still have been the most perfect FPS I would ever have played, despite also being the shortest.

But then there were the other five hours of the roughly six-hour campaign. Most of the game, unfortunately, is just tedious room-clearing, practically indistinguishable from the basic gameplay found in Haze or Perfect Dark Zero, which are regarded as among the worst FPS titles of this generation. You just march forward, unload a clip into any enemy combatant that pops up probably out of nowhere, reload often, retreat to regenerate health, and probably die many unforeseen deaths before it's all over. The formula repeats several times, until there are seemingly thousands of nameless dead left behind on both sides, and there is almost no discernible narrative to let you know where you are, who you're fighting or why. It's unsettlingly impersonal, one of the most emotionally and spiritually deadening experiences not just in gaming, but in my life in general.

The game is assuredly better than Haze or Perfect Dark Zero, yet in some ways it made me feel worse. It may be the game's attitude in the face of its own realism. The game's action is, for sure, very over-the-top, but the overall aesthetic is still starker by far than the cartoony Perfect Dark Zero or even a rugged sci-fi shooter such as Gears of War. Even in the aforementioned favorite mission of mine, there was something eerie about the way, every time I sniped a guy in the head, my AI partner would compliment me with a mesmerized "Beautiful." In Haze, these sorts of war-intoxicated hollow men were the bad guys. Even Army of Two, with its mercenary protagonists, was less unnerving, because it actually came across as satirical at times, whereas Modern Warfare seems sincerely gung ho in its militarism.

The very worst (and most impersonal) mission in the game, "Death From Above," has the player staring down the sights from an AC-130 gunship that is providing cover fire for friendlies on the ground. Everything is black-and-white, and your job is to fire upon the many tiny, noiseless enemy silhouettes below until they just stop moving. Your mostly dispassionate pilot will periodically mutter a "Nice shooting" to let you know that you hit your targets. Although Modern Warfare was released three years ago, the stage bears a remarkable resemblance to the infamous WikiLeaks "Collateral Murder" video that came out earlier this year. Even the pilot audio is almost identical. It all suggests that, compared to Haze or Army of Two, Modern Warfare's representation of war is probably the more realistic. It's also uglier. What's furthermore baffling is that, come end credits, developer Infinity Ward chose to roll more of this type of footage, before closing with an irreverent rap anthem that samples, among other things, the developer's own pre-release hype for its game.

So did I ultimately have fun with Modern Warfare? I guess. I'm really not sure, however, because by the end I had kind of stopped feeling.

No Such Thing

Stopping by the workplace commons to refill my water, I spotted the off-duty older security guard sitting by himself and staring out the second-floor window. Alerted by the gurgling of the water cooler, he turned to stare at me. I smiled and nodded in acknowledgment, as is my usual response, and prepared to make my exit back to work.

He had other ideas, however, and stopped me to ask whether the office would be open on the day after Thanksgiving. Employees are of course given that day off, but in past years, when the workload has allowed, management has encouraged people to come in and earn overtime. There had been no official word yet for this year, and it was highly unlikely that I, as unconcerned low man on the totem pole, would be informed before security, for whom, if operations are running that day, coming in is maybe not so voluntary.

I told him that I hadn't heard anything, but that, in any case, it hardly mattered to me, because I would not be coming in either way.

"Lucky rascal," he said. "Going home, or staying local?"

For me, home was local, but he didn't need all the details. I answered, "I'll be here. I just won't be here."

"But you're still single, right?"

This seemed to me rather a non-sequitur, but I indulged him and answered in the affirmative.

"Lucky rascal," he said again.

He was being playful of course, and now looked away as if to indicate that he had had his fun and I was free to go. But something compelled me to carry on a little longer.

"Are you married?" I asked him.

"Thirty years," he said.

"Happily?"

"No such thing!" he answered triumphantly, as though he had been the one all along steering us to this punchline.

But I was heading in a different direction: "You know, I think maybe you're the lucky one."

He straightened up and smiled more sincerely then. "You've got time," he reassured me, and we both left that as the final word.

And I went back to work and he went back to staring out the window of the empty break room.

No, of course I didn't mean it. I would not trade my life for his for anything. But it seemed like the right thing to say at the time.

Drawing the Line

You've probably heard by now that, in honor of the 25th anniversary of Super Mario Bros., Nintendo will be releasing a Wii port of the 16-bit Super Mario All-Stars next month. And, I ask, people are supposed to be happy about this? I've been a sucker at times, but I will not be giving Nintendo thirty dollars for this. No, sir.

Let's take things back a bit to 1993, when Nintendo released Super Mario All-Stars for the Super NES. The compilation was one of the sweetest packages in gaming, bringing together three of the NES's most celebrated platformers on one cartridge and giving them new life through completely revamped graphics and audio and the ability to save your progress. It also threw in one additional full game, The Lost Levels--actually the original Japan-only Super Mario Bros. 2--which many Western gamers had for years been curious about. It is perhaps not widely known that, a year later, Nintendo even added a retouched Super Mario World to an updated version, Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World, which was distributed as a console pack-in. Like I said, pretty sweet, eh?

Now fast-forward some ten years to the Game Boy Advance era, AKA "the dark times." With the GBA proving more than powerful enough to handle ports of SNES games, Nintendo set to granting many players' wishes by portable-izing some of their 16-bit favorites. Near the top of the request list had to be Super Mario All-Stars and its collection of evergreen titles. Maybe Nintendo would even be extra cool and give us the + Super Mario World edition. Well, we got it all right . . . as three separate $20-30 cartridges.

Somehow, as the games got older, what was once one of the greatest deals of the 16-bit era was now, ten years later, being sold to us again, no longer a collection nor a bargain. Why? Seemingly for no other reason than because Nintendo had figured out how to squeeze its fans for their every last drop of passion and especially money. The Super Mario Advance series, so nonsensically ordered, didn't even look good on the shelf as separate titles. We got Super Mario Advance (Super Mario Bros. 2), Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2, and Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 (Super Mario Advance 3 was Yoshi's Island).

Where were Super Mario Bros. and The Lost Levels? Well, the 8-bit versions had already been ported and enhanced for the Game Boy Color as Super Mario Bros. Deluxe in 1999. Even Nintendo wouldn't have tried to sell us those games yet again so soon, right? Not at all! In 2004, as part of the "Classic NES Series," Nintendo gave us a straight port of Super Mario Bros. for the GBA for $20. This was, of course, the same mercenary line that included the 8-bit Metroid, which had already been featured as an extra in both Metroid Prime (later removed from the Wii version) and Metroid: Zero Mission. Other games in the $20 "budget" series included Excitebike, Donkey Kong, and Ice Climber, all of which were available both as extras in the GameCube Animal Crossing and as much cheaper cards for the e-Reader.

Speaking of Animal Crossing for the GameCube, did you know that it included complete emulations of both Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda? I wouldn't blame you if you didn't, because to this day Nintendo has never given players any means to unlock them. You can find any number of lesser NES games quite easily within Animal Crossing, but Nintendo quietly backed away from even acknowledging the existence of these most prized items, even though hackers have confirmed that the games are right there on the disc. Why were they coded into the game if Nintendo had no intention of letting us find them? Well, probably the Animal Crossing developers started with a cool idea, which then went out the window as soon as Nintendo realized that fools would pay $20 for what might otherwise have been offered for free. That is surely why no subsequent Animal Crossing game has included emulated classics, which were practically the only thing I liked about the GameCube game. After all, how can Nintendo afford to be giving away free games, when people are willing to pay money yet again for Excitebike on the Virtual Console?

I'll concede that the Virtual Console is a cool idea with a lot of untapped potential, but sometimes that potential seems deliberately untapped. And that brings us to now, when, instead of bringing Super Mario All-Stars to Virtual Console for 800 points (the standard rate for SNES titles), Nintendo is charging us $30 for a retail disc that is, by all accounts, nothing more than the original ROM with only maybe updated copyright dates and legal screens. There's no Super Mario World, none of the GBA or e-Reader extras, no four-player Mario Bros. remake, and certainly nothing brand new to this edition. It's just 17-year-old versions of 20-25-year-old games, the originals of which have long been available on Virtual Console, among myriad other formats.

DOESN'T IT MAKE YOU ANGRY?!

*sigh* You wonder why Nintendo isn't cool anymore? It's not because they make baby games now. It's because they pull stuff like this.