Dumbing Down

I’ve noticed a startling new trend in recent months which has reached new heights with the advert for the latest FIFA installment, FIFA 11. The days of well spoken narrators seem to be ending, and this worries me.
Television is perpetually dumbing down and it’s beginning to get quite condescending. Take BBC3’s documentary, 12 and Pregnant or whatever it’s called. As this show is typically about idiots or dare I say working class people, and most likely aimed at an audience of like minded people, they have a typically working class narrator in Eastender Natalie Cassidy. It’s as if they are suggesting that if you watch shit like this you are probably an idiot and won’t be able to understand anything with more than three syllables. It’s even suggesting that Natalie Cassidy is an idiot which even I think is harsh.
Supermarkets have taken this approach in their adverts. Waitrose and M&S have typically upper class narrators, Sainsbury’s have a middle class wanker in Jamie Oliver, and Tesco and Asda have gone the Cassidy route. I half expect government officials to start instructing you on which supermarket to shop at based on your elocution. If at any point you say “Is it?” when you’re not actually asking a question you’re not allowed to buy any food and you’re banished to a field to die. That’s what the Tories want.
If the narrator mirrors the intended audience, then the FIFA 11 advert suggests that its demographic is made up of cunts. In terms of marketing this must have an additional purpose other than communication. Imagine yourself to be one these cunts who would play FIFA 11 (easy for me, I own FIFA 10), you are watching TV and you see the FIFA advert, the narrator talks like you do, wow, he’s just like me, if he says to buy the game then I will buy the game for we are one. Wayne Rooney features in the advert and is on the cover, I wonder if there is a new mode this year where you can fuck a prostitute.
This kind of profiling is unfair because not everyone who watches 12 and Pregnant or plays FIFA is an absolute moron. If you go to Tesco it is not some kind of dystopian nightmare, not all the time anyway. I wasn’t aware that there was a problem of understanding well spoken narrators anyway. If I was any kind of paranoid I’d think this Epsilon narration is just a precursor to a greater class divide to the point where we end up with two separate species, the Morlocks and the Eloi. Thanks BBC3.

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

It’s been a quiet month. Well, I haven’t had anything to write about all month, and I don’t have the credentials to write about politics or current affairs so it has been a pretty boring September. Of course I could have picked up the new Halo game and written about that, but I’ve been frugal and besides I bet I would sum it up as “not as good as the fanboys say it is”. There’s always the X-Factor show thing but it’s been the exact same thing since its inception only with slightly different faces.

"Bodacious"

I did read today though a rumour that Keanu Reeves would be interested in a third Bill & Ted movie, finally a tiny vague subject matter I can write about. Before I get excited or even horrified at the thought of another movie, this probably will never happen. Bill & Ted were two teenage “slackers”, and Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter are now in their mid-forties and it would take a genius to make this film work.
While this is only a rumour it would be no surprise if this went into production because we are currently in an age of reboots and remakes and anything can happen. We’ve already seen a new Karate Kid, Freddy Krueger, Perseus and Predator(s) this year, and despite none of these really being that successful, it seems there are hundreds of reboots in production trying to capture the same success as Nolan’s Batman or Abrams’ Star Trek.
The problem with reboots is that they aren’t particularly necessary. There is no point in remaking an already great film (or even a good one) because it won’t be better than the original. Every year or so I hear a rumour about a Back to the Future remake, the last one I heard was that Justin Bieber would play Marty McFly. We probably never have to worry about such a tragedy because I like to believe that not even Justin Bieber would think it’s a good idea.
It seems that reboots are for those films that had potential, but were never actually that good. We've seen this year though that the reboots are still not actually that good. Clash of the Fucking Titans! If you were judging a film by its title that would win hands down. If you have a name like that you have to make sure that you have Titans clashing in your movie. Sure Liam Neeson was very shiny, but was it an improvement on the original? Still, they’re making a sequel.

Because of this, I don’t like the idea of making an average film into a better one because it seems like it can’t be done. The only reboots that have worked have been for existing franchises that were already good, where there were still more stories to be told, the characters still had room to develop, and new technology had created the potential to show something the original films couldn’t. Who did this perfectly? That pesky J.J. Abrams that’s who. The latest Star Trek film should be the template for all other reboots (not that a template should be used). Star Trek’s greatest achievement was to get people who thought Star Trek was shit (like me) to actually like it, a colossal feat.
The majority of announced reboots are unsurprisingly comic book movies and it appears that this will never end. When The Avengers movie finally comes out, which has been hyped so much it’s surely the comic book movie to end all comic book movies, what happens? They just reboot every attached franchise and we have to start all over again, but with less chance of something original being made.
If you take a look at the upcoming or rumoured reboots/remakes you will probably grimace your face off. Conan, Red Sonja, Highlander, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Police Academy, Buffy (The Movie (!?!?!?)), Tomb Raider, the list goes on. It’s like taking all those films you watched as a child, a lot of them you didn’t like, and then making you watch them again, no wait, it’s exactly that. Why can’t we just watch the good ones?
It’s not all bad because Ghostbusters 3 might eventually be made, and it might, it just might, not be shit…but probably will be. Karl Urban has been announced as the new Judge Dredd, and Alex Garland will be writing the script so that might, just might not be shit…but probably will be. James Franco will be in the new Planet of the Apes film, which might not be shit but probably will be. That’s the best we can hope for with reboots, for them not to be shit. If a Bill and Ted reboot is announced, I will be praying it’s not shit.

“The only soul I have is on the bottom of my feet“

I saw this the other day. We have Scary Movie to blame for this. What began as a simple lampooning of horror movies mutated into a torturous franchise of badly written, directed, and acted shitfests referencing whatever successful films were about at the time. We’ve had Date Movie, Epic Movie, Movie Movie (probably), and now that even the retarded of retards have fathomed that anything with “movie” as a suffix is shit, they have had such titles as Meet the Spartans, Stan Helsing, and now, Vampires Suck.
Of course vampires do suck, they suck blood, and they suck as in they are shit. Making a truly dreadful vampire film (I don’t need to see it to know) about how bad vampire films are is kind of like raping people to show them how bad rape is.
Twilight is bad, but Vampires Suck will be worse. Do the writers, actors, and studio not know this? Of course they don’t, that’s why they made it. These films have no soul (much like a vampire), they are essentially a 90 minute tasteless joke, told by some obnoxious prick who thinks he’s the funniest thing since sliced bread (has me in stitches), and he isn’t, he’s that guy at a party you stay away from.
Scary Movie worked in a sense that it made fun of clichés, it just did it badly. What the latest efforts (if you can call them that) do is make fun of other films, it doesn‘t matter if the jokes don‘t work. A vampire spoof film should make fun of the clichés of vampire films, and there’s plenty of them. Vampires Suck appears to have just made fun of Twilight and Alice in Wonderland, just in case you wanted to see Vampires Suck but hadn’t seen Twilight and needed a joke you’d understand. There have already been vampire spoofs, Dracula: Dead and Loving it, and the Horne and Corden craptacular, Lesbian Vampire Killers, do we really need another? We didn’t need those two.
Vampires have changed a lot in recent years. The classic gothic movement of vampires has gone, and yes the whole damn thing is so pathetic it has eras. Fuck off Dracula, we want moody dickheads dressed in black leather. As much as I loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I was darn obsessed with it, it does nothing but bring me misery these days. Those people who loved it more than I did, thought to themselves that they could totally write their own vampire TV series or novels. One of those people was Stephanie Meyer.
The first three seasons of Buffy featured a love story between Buffy and Angel, a moody vampire in leather. Twilight is a love story about a moody whining bitch (based on Meyer I assume) who is inexplicably attracted to a moody and incredibly dull vampire with a misshapen face. They would be identical would it not be for the eternal blabbering of Meyer’s protagonist. Yeah, I’ve read some of the Twilight series, and it’s fucking awful. Team Twilight or whatever they call themselves (Team Cunts?) would say that I’m just trying to be cool by criticising it, but it really is bad, perhaps the worst piece of fiction I have ever read. Fair enough I don’t care for the content, but judging purely on writing style, I can’t think of anything worse, and this has sold millions of copies, shame on you world.
What I read of Twilight was just an angsty teenage girl whinging about nothing for pages and pages, it only stopped when I threw the book away. Before you say “why did you buy the book then?” I didn’t buy it, I read someone else’s copy, and you know who you are!
I even saw half of the first film on a plane. As a vampire film it doesn’t work. As a love story it doesn’t work. As a teen drama it doesn’t work. As a werewolf film it doesn’t work. Nothing has ever been so bad on so many levels. Yet it has made millions and millions of dollars and Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner have all become award winning A-list stars despite not being able to act very well.
The whole Team Jacob, Team Edward thing has become so big it’s not even synonymous with the franchise anymore. Of course, R-Patz is just a tortured prisoner of his own fame, and really really just wants to be left alone. FUCK OFF. This faux misery he puts on might be more believable if he could hide the constant smirk from his face that says “I fucking love being me”. It may have been extremely shallow to make the previously unremarkable Taylor whatshisname into chiselled hunk Taylor Lautner! But at least he’s grateful for it. No one cared about him in the first movie, he does a few sit ups and OMFG!
It’s not just Twilight that irks me, it’s vampires in general, I don’t get them. I liked Buffy, but that was because I liked Buffy. The appearance of vampires has changed, but the character still remains the same, and this is what I hate. A dark, mysterious cavalier man with dreadful dialogue (“The only soul I have is on the bottom of my feet“ - probably an actual quote), seduces and murders every woman he meets. In other words, an arrogant womanising twat, or Calum Best. The bad boys are always catching women’s eyes apparently, and perhaps that is the attraction to vampires. True Blood after all is essentially just vampire porn for the masses.
Franchise after franchise is a little too much, and a “movie” movie pointing this out only adds to my pain. Maybe, and I’m just brainstorming, instead of making all these franchises, desperate men can start dressing in black and be moody and womanising, and the women who find this attractive can fuck them and write about it in their diaries and no one else has to know. Just a thought.

Scott Pilgrim: Round 2!

How do you follow from seeing Scott Pilgrim vs. The World? You see it again, that’s how. I could have seen Salt or Grown Ups, but I would have sat through either of them thinking “I could be watching Scott Pilgrim again“, and that would pretty much ruin my week, let alone seeing a film with David Spade in it.
It also appears that I have to follow a post about Scott Pilgrim with another post about Scott Pilgrim. While I could write endlessly about the books and film, there are in fact two mediums I haven’t yet written about. I intended to write about Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game in the last post, and would have had it not been for a fear of writing a post the length of War and Peace (hey I know classic literature exists!) and winning the title of Scott Pilgrim fan boy 2010. Since then I’ve procured a copy of the soundtrack, and am probably only a fancy dress costume away from being Scott Pilgrim fan boy 2010.
I was quite surprised when I heard they were making a Scott Pilgrim game, despite the series being heavily influenced by video games and featuring action, I always saw it more as a love story, and love stories don’t make great games (or could they?). I was kind of relieved when it was announced it would be a download only game, because if it was a full release, I would no doubt have spent £40 on it and been dismally disappointed. That sort of disappointment when you watch a beloved childhood TV show when you grow up and it turns out it was shit all along.
Fortunately, the game is not shit, it’s just not very good, but it has enough style and charm to get by. Developed by Ubisoft, SPVTW:TG (it’s even long abbreviating it) is a beat em’ up. You don’t see many beat em’ ups these days, mainly because they don’t really work anymore. Double Dragon, Streets of Rage, and Golden Axe were part of the golden age of beat em’ ups way back when, but since then interest in this genre has dwindled, mainly because they only really work in 2D, and we’ve pretty much been over 2D since the mid nineties.
It’s a shame because Nintendo have shown that there is still life left in 2D platformers, so maybe the beat em’ up can be resurrected. SPVTW:TG is a start at least, and like the latest 2D Mario games have done, has incorporated newer elements to create a much more immersive gaming experience than the 8-bit era gave.
SPVTW:TG looks and sounds the part, in fact it’s the best thing about the game, and remains reasonably faithful to the source material while bringing its own style. The artwork is well done, if a little repetitive, but the cutesy playable characters will surely please most fans. Most homage’s and references are to the Mario series, but it’s still a nice touch. The game’s soundtrack has rightly received universal praise, and chiptune band Anamanaguchi have created something really special that is nostalgic of my early childhood. I didn’t know there was such a thing as chiptune a week ago. See, the things you learn.
The gameplay really lets the whole thing down by not being very good. It is pretty much unplayable until you unlock the counter move, and even then it’s still pretty hard to play. There is a slight RPG element that gives a little more purpose to the proceedings. The extra moves make it more exciting, but after a few level ups it becomes much easier. Perhaps it’s just a beat em’ up thing, but the game is either too easy or too hard, it never seems to be a fair or fun challenge.
The levels are quite inconsistent, with the bosses sometimes being underwhelming and easier than the rest of the level, and this can be quite frustrating. The bosses should be more significant to the plot of the game as they are in the books, but instead feel irrelevant. I know they are going for a retro feel and most people who will play the game know the plot anyway, but a little exposition would have made SPVT:TG much better. Monkey Island was notorious for its funny dialogue, it really feels like a waste that no dialogue was put in this game, it’s not like they are short of it.
Maybe time and money stunted this game, but it’s such a wasted opportunity, and it’s highly unlikely that another will be released. At a glance it looks a perfect companion to the film and books, but hardcore fans will be disappointed once they get past the style and sound. It would have been cooler to have more unlockable content, especially in terms of characters, or even have them appear in the game. Wallace Wells could have been like Toad, offering extra lives, they’re both gay so it would have worked. It’s a little sad that this is the only Scott Pilgrim game we will get, but hey, at least the soundtrack rocks.
Speaking of soundtracks…onto the film’s original soundtrack. So yeah, this rocks too. Music is integral to Scott Pilgrim (Bryan Lee O’Malley even published his own playlists in the back of the books), so it is natural that a lot of work was put into making the film sound right.
To their credit, the film sounds like I imagined the books would have. I know Sex Bob-Omb are supposed to be terrible, but I really like their songs, especially Garbage Truck and it’s a shame that they’re not a real band. In fact even Crash and the Boys and Clash at Demonhead are pretty good, Metric’s Black Sheep (performed by Brie Larson as Envy Adams in the film) being the standout track on the album.
Other contemporary bands like Broken Social Scene, Blood Red Shoes, and Black Lips appear, but there are a lot of older artists like The Rolling Stones and T-Rex as well, creating a good mix that never feels out of place. Just a minor criticism though, removing the fictional bands, this does just sound like any other indie soundtrack for an indie film. Garden State, 500 Days of Summer, and Juno all have these unique indie soundtracks, but as a collective they are starting to get repetitive. It’s only a minor criticism though, and the fictional bands haven’t been removed and thus the soundtrack is a joy to the ears.
I don’t write about music much and now I know why, it’s not that interesting to write about. No wonder the writers at NME are bitter angry pricks. There is still the score of the film to buy, which I will eventually, but I won’t write about it, we can just assume I like it, maybe two blogs ago we could have just assumed I like Scott Pilgrim and everything about it and saved everyone the hassle. Next week, Scott Pilgrim: The T-Shirt reviewed!