[Sound Off] Why Bad Movies Are Successful In Spite of the Critics

Critics hate "Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen." But the public loves it. Why is there a disconnect?

I was recently participating in a discussion on Fark.com about why films like Transformers 2 and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince can be box-office successes despite their lack of critical support. Many critics have been posting up commentaries on how sad it is that Americans don’t listen to critics anymore, and how we’re going to get a continued glut of bad movies every summer because movegoers are so “gee whiz wow” amazed at things blowing up and aren’t interested in films that are actually, well, good.

I thought about this disconnect for awhile, and it occurred to me that there’s a good reason that moviegoers aren’t listening to the critics. There was a time when critics offered a valuable service to people who went to the movies as a form of weekly entertainment. But things have changed; movie viewing has evolved, while critics have not. And many changes have occurred over the last decade or so to create the disconnect we’re seeing now.

Filmgoers don’t watch a lot of movies in the theater
Movie theaters are increasingly empty, and with good reason — the novelty of the experience has been offset by some very annoying trends. Ticket prices are high. Concessions are ridiculously overpriced. Films are preceded by noisy commercials for youth-oriented products. Parents tend to treat theaters as surrogate babysitters for their tween- and early teen-aged children. Said tweens and teens disrupt the films by talking loudly, texting, and moving around mid-feature. Other audience members are rude, too, coming in late, coughing loudly, or laughing inappropriately. Some theaters have regular problems with sound and picture quality. Some are too cold. Others are like furnaces. The list goes on.

It costs my wife and I around $20 to go to the theater. (We sneak in our own sodas and candy because, well, we just don’t feel bad about not paying for grossly overpriced concessions.) For a family of 4, that’s going to be $35-40. That’s an awful lot of money to spend for two hours of entertainment, especially when you can get the DVD from a Red Box for $1 if you’re willing to wait… but we’ll tackle that point in a moment.

And what do you get for your money? Generally, a film that isn’t that much better on the big screen than it is at home. So you don’t got to the movies for the quality of the film — you go for the spectacle. It’s much more fun to see special effects films on the big screen. This has been true for several years, and it’s going to be even more obvious as more 3D films are released. If you’re going to assault your senses with loud sound and giant imagery, you want to do it with something fantastic and colorful, like an action film or an animated feature. If you’ve got a family, it’s got to be something everyone’s going to enjoy. Like it or not, those stupid action films and dumb animated kid’s films are the most likely to appeal to the entire family.

Filmgoers watch “Good” movies on home systems
Home systems have really come a long way in the last ten years, and it’s possible now to get a beautiful setup for a few thousand dollars. It used to be a big investment, but HD TV has become common enough now that most families have one of a pretty reasonable size. HD TV and DVD players have really helped home systems gain a lot of ground in generating the “authentic” movie experience. You can buy a DVD for the price of one or two movie tickets, and you can rent them for a dollar from the Red Box or on an inexpensive plan through a service like Netflix.

And thus, families often reserve the watching of “good” movies for their home systems, where they can cheaply and conveniently watch two or three films in an evening, with the ability to stop in the middle for a bathroom or snack break, to rewind if something important is missed, or to fast forward if a film is getting too boring. It’s a much more intimate and fun way to watch a movie, and it’s a lot cheaper, too. And, since it’s so much easier than going to the theater, families have the option to watch a lot of movies they wouldn’t normally view, or which might be too boring for a family outing, but interesting to one or two members of the family.

Filmgoers are influenced by social pressures and marketing
Often, I go to the movies not because I want to, but because someone else wants to. Sometimes, that results in my seeing a film I’m not particularly interested in seeing. There’s a huge social element to moviegoing (which is ironic, given the fact that you sit there quietly and don’t talk during the film), and it plays a big role in ticket sales. For many people, going to the movies is just something to do with their friends, families or dates; it’s not a big deal to them.

There’s also an element of marketing at play. Big movies are often heavily marketed, and even if they’re not good, people will go see them simply because they’ve heard of them. You see this a lot during the first few months of the year, when fairly bad films are released, but have fairly big openings simply because they’ve been marketed properly. The critics hate them, but it doesn’t matter; the marketing messages are much more appealing to the target audiences than anything the critics have to say, and besides — these films are usually released when there’s very little else to watch. And again, it’s something to do — moviegoers are more concerned about the experience than the content.

Now that we’ve looked at how movivegoers have changed, let’s look at the critics.

Critics see everything, and that’s not a good thing.
Critics are generally paid to watch all of the films that are released in a given week, not just one or two. They’re given special screenings of these films, sometimes in advance, and they can come into a film in a bad mood because they just saw a really good film right before it. They are prone to bias, and they often prefer certain genres of film over others.

I used to watch Siskel & Ebert and found that Gene Siskel’s tastes were much more in line with my own than Roger Ebert’s. I like Roger Ebert, and I think he’s a fantastic writer and film critic. But I only agree with his opinions about half of the time. And that tends to be the problem when you evaluate any critic who is reviewing a film outside his or her preferred genre; you might only watch horror films, but they’ve seen everything, and they’re going to compare your favorite genre to other films in general when they rate, and not to other films in the genre.

I knew a film reviewer for my college paper back in the late 1990s who saw Bride of Chucky and gave it a positive review. He was clearly not a professional critic, because his opinion was far outside the critical mainstream. But was his opinion any less valid? Certainly not. He just hadn’t been required to see every other film that week. And he happened to like bad films because he found them ironic.

Critics are often educated about cinema, while the public is not.
This is probably one of the biggest areas of disconnect. Critics often talk about producers, directors, cinematographers, screenwriters, and other creative people from behind the camera when they review films. They talk about storytelling structure, photographic techniques, and mise en scene. This is of litle value to the average filmgoer, who doesn’t know much about any of these elements. A film critic can appreciate the clever subtlety of an art film, because he or she knows enough about cinema to be in on the mechanics of filmmaking. The public will miss it entirely, because the public does not know how to appreciate cinema as an art form. As is true with most creative media, the public is more likely to search for personal meaning in a film than to try to understand what the creative team was trying to say.

Critics just don’t seem to get this. They’ve forgotten what it’s like to be bewildered.

Critics don’t understand marketing
Good critics tend to insulate themselves from the hype. Roger Ebert, for example, refuses to watch film trailers. That’s a good practice. It keeps one objective.

But the public is constantly being bombarded with advertising messages and hype. These things shape their opinions and make big films sound more interesting to them. Did most people really enjoy Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End? I don’t think so. It was a nonsensical mess. But that film was so heavily marketed, Johnny Depp was an attraction, and the Keith Richards appearance so heavily discussed, that people flocked to it anyhow because it was familiar and sounded fun. Their opinions of the film were already shaped by marketing and by past experience.

Critics miss all of this. They often have disdain for the marketing, and complain that it tarnishes the films by making messages out of catchphrases. When they insulate themselves from it, they misunderstand why people are going to see films. And when they criticize it, they essentially tell the public that they are stupid for buying into the hype. And that, unfortunately, creates yet another disconnect, causing the public to believe that critics are not respectful of those who aren’t just like them.

So, simply put, critics do not watch films like the average person does; they watch films like critics do. That’s what’s causing this disconnect, and that’s what’s making critics irrelevant. Sadly, critics do serve an important function in helping to guide and shape the aesthetics of the audience so that people can properly digest what they’ve seen. But with critics so focused on consumer reviews, they’re really missing an opportunity to elevate the discourse… and instead simply alienating the people they believe they’re writing for.

[Book Reviews] – ‘The Chronicles of Prydain’ by Lloyd Alexander

'The Book of Three' by Lloyd Alexander

When I was younger, Disney released an animated film called The Black Cauldron. As Disney films go, it wasn’t the greatest — I remember being more excited about my adventures with the computer game than with the film itself.

A couple of years later, I ran across a copy of the novel The Black Cauldron at my library, and had a hard time reading it since it was so different from the film. I kept expecting things to happen like they had in the movie, but the book was so different that I gave up on it. I felt like I’d missed out on part of the story, too — the book had a movie cover and gave no indication that it was part of a larger series.

When I was a little older, I found out that The Black Cauldron was actually part two of five. And so I picked up The Book of Three (which, as it happens, formed the basis for most of the plot of the film) and found myself drawn into Lloyd Alexander’s fantasy world of Prydain.

The Book of Three is about a boy named Taran who lives on a farm with the old scholar Dallben and the farmer Coll. Taran longs to be a hero, and as he hears the stories about the Death-Lord Arawn and the war leader known as the Horned King, he daydreams about leaving the farm in search of adventure. Coll gives Taran the title of “Assistant Pig Keeper,” since Taran’s job is to help care for Hen Wen, a prophetic pig. It’s meant to be a joke, but as the story progresses, the title becomes much more important.

Something upsets the animals, and Hen Wen escapes. Taran goes chasing after her and loses her in the forest. He runs smack into the army of the Horned King and is wounded. A heroic prince named Gwydion finds him and tends to his wound, and the two go out looking for Hen Wen. They meet a hairy little creature named Gurgi (who isn’t quite a man, but isn’t quite a dog, either) and discover that the Horned King is after Hen Wen. Gwydion and Taran have a frightening encounter with undead warriors called the “Cauldron born”, and they are wounded and imprisoned in the Spiral Castle. There, they meet Princess Eilonwy and the two resolve to escape. Taran persuades her to free Gwydion from the dungeon as well, but since he is not specific about who his friend is, she frees a bard named Fflewddur Fflam instead. The castle collapses due to an enchantment being broken by a magical sword Eilonwy had pilfered, and the characters believe that Gwydion has died.

Taran decides that he must warn Gwydion’s kingdom about the Horned King, and the three set off with Gurgi in tow. They realize they’re being followed by Cauldron-born, and are driven off course. Several adventures ensue before they find Hen Wen and the Horned King’s army. Taran challenges the Horned King to combat, and the evil adversary smashes his sword with a single blow. Taran grabs the magical sword from Eilonwy and is barely able to budge it from its scabbard because of its great power. Just pulling the blade out slightly causes lightning to shoot out and burn him. Taran blacks out as Gwydion emerges, uttering a weird word. The Horned King bursts into flame. It turns out that the only thing that could destroy him was hearing his secret name.

Gwydion explains the series of events that allowed him to survive, as well as to learn to speak to the hearts of all living creatures. He gives each of the companions gifts; Taran forgoes his own and just asks to be taken home, where he can be an Assistant Pig-Keeper in peace. Eilonwy and Gurgi go with him, since they have nowhere else to go.

That’s an awful lot of adventure for a single book, and there are four other books in the series: The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer and The High King. All of these are reimaginings of Welsh mythology, and they take place in a world where humans have had all of their special skills and tools taken from them so that they have to toil at anything they do. The Death Lord Arawn is the source of evil, and until he is killed by Taran in the last book, he commands the Cauldron-born,  a vast legion of undead soldiers made up of the dead warriors of Prydain’s past.

So, what makes these books worth reading? First of all, they’re funny. Alexander managed to work a lot of humor into these books, from the bizarre antics to Gurgi to the lying tendencies of Fflewddur Fflam to the emotional outbursts of Eilonwy to the designation of Taran as the “Assistant Pig-Keeper.” Things get very dark and serious at points, but there’s usually a light touch somewhere to brighten the mood.

Second, they’re well-written. Alexander wrote these books for children, but he didn’t dumb them down at all. He uses complicated names and complex stories, and he isn’t afraid to allow some of the characters (like Arawn and Gwydion) to personify good and evil. He also skillfully weaves in characters like Gurgi, who are humorous and melodramatic, but who play an important role in the growth and development of Taran.

Third, they’re epic. But unlike other fantasy epics, these books are not about one giant quest to destroy evil and make the world right again. Rather, they’re about the growth and development of Taran and Eilonwy as they mature from youths into adults. The fourth book, Taran Wanderer is both tedious and fascinating in its lack of action and insistence on Taran’s growth as a character. He really transforms from being a boy to a man ready to become a hero, and it’s fun to watch because you’re already so invested in the character.

Overall, I’d highly recommend this series. It’s easy to read, it’s a lot of fun, and it’s much, much better and deeper than the Disney film would lead you to believe.

Sean recommends: Start with The Book of Three, and if you like it, read the rest. As good as the first book is, the last two are the high points of the series.

[Book Reviews] – ‘The Neverending Story’ by Michael Ende

"The Neverending Story" by Michael Ende

When I was growing up in the 1980s, fantasy was a pretty mainstream genre. I remember watching the animated adaptations of Tolkien, playing with He-Man toys and seeing films like The Last Unicorn, The Princess Bride and The Black Cauldron. But one of the most interesting films of the era came out in 1984, and it had a very interesting title — The Neverending Story.

The film was actually an adaptation of the first half of a 1979 German novel by Michael Ende. I didn’t read the book until I was a little bit older, and the edition I got was different from the one I own today. The library edition I initially read had text in green when it took place in the fantasy world and red when it took place in our world. It also had illustrations on the cover and inside the book that were not derived from the film, and thus very different in conceptualization. I bring this up because the film is likely to be familiar to people, while the book is not. And while the film is a good adaptation of part of the novel, it really misses the point of what Ende was trying to say.

The plot is very interesting. Bastian Balthazzar Bux is a young boy whose mother has died and whose father neglects him. One day, he hides from some bullies in a bookstore owned by a man named Carl Conrad Correander, who is reading a book called The Neverending Story. Bastian steals it when Correander isn’t looking, and takes it up to the attic of his school so he can play hookey and read. He finds himself immersed in a story about a place called Fantastica that is facing a crisis, and the story frequently cuts back to show his reaction to different elements. But as he reads, he finds himself being drawn deeper and deeper into the tale until he realizes that he has become a part of it.

The story Bastian is reading concerns a young warrior named Atreyu who is sent on a quest to find a cure for Fantastica’s “Childlike Empress,” a benevolent ruler who has fallen ill as a plague called “The Nothing” sweeps across the land. Atreyu is guided by an amulet called AURYN, which has two snakes wrapped into a coil, the one eating the other’s tail, like an ourobouros. This amulet represents all of the power and wisdom of the Childlike Empress, and gives Atreyu the strength he needs to complete the quest.

Eventually, Atreyu rescues a luckdragon named Falkor, and the two travel together before finding out that the only thing that can save the Childlike Empress is a human child. They rush back to the Ivory Tower, and she reveals that she needs the human child to give her a name. Bastian feels he has a talent for naming things, and shouts out that her name is “Moonchild.” With that, he is pulled into the world of Fantastica and discovers that the “Nothing” is the result of humans giving up on fantasy. Bastian is given the power of AURYN so that he can wander around the realm of Fantastica and rebuild it with his imagination.

This is where the story really diverges from the films, and though The Neverending Story II tried to tell this second half, it did it so clumsily, and excluded so many important scenes, that Bastian seemed like a pawn in a political battle instead of a victim of his own arrogance. What happens in the novel is that Bastian goes out and has many adventures, using AURYN to grant any wish that comes to mind. Bastian eventually defeats an evil witch named Xayide and makes her his servant, but she eventually turns things around and starts to manipulate him so she can regain her power. Bastian and Atreyu become friends, but Atreyu becomes more and more concerned that Bastian is misusing AURYN and losing himself in the process. Xayide persuades him to wage war on the Ivory Tower and to try to crown himself childlike emperor. Atreyu defeats him, and Bastian wanders off, memories slipping away, until he finally becomes a boy without a name.

Bastian finds a group of humans that have forgotten everything, and who, like him, were once the great shapers of the world before their memories went away. He realizes that he only has a few precious memories left, and goes off in search of his one true wish. He eventually loses all of his memories, and Atreyu helps him to achieve his wish and return home. The book is gone, and Bastian goes to speak to its owner to tell him what happened. As it happens, Correander has also been to Fantastica, and the two become friends, bound together by their experiences. Bastian also mends the rift with his father, and his life is, presumably, better in the end.

This book had a huge impact on me as a child, because it was really the first time I’d ever seen a fantasy world constructed for the purpose of analyzing the psychology of a human being. Ende was very concerned about people losing a sense of wonder and awe for the world of imagination, and he created a means of showing the value of it. But at the same time, he decided to show readers what happens when one becomes too immersed in fantasy — that he or she can lose a sense of self and connection to others, and plunge into chaos and darkness. Bastian’s power in the world of Fantastica is great, but it warps and corrupts him because he isn’t connected to anyone. Even Atreyu, who represents Bastian’s good and heroic side, has to stop Bastian from corrupting the world and then has to help the feeble shell of Bastian find a way home.

Another interesting thing about this book is that it’s incredibly rich. Ende didn’t adopt Tolkien’s style of fantasy, and though AURYN may seen at times like the One Ring, it’s a very different device. AURYN is not evil; it is meant to bestow power so that the person who wields it can shape the world. It is as much a device of protection and goodness as it is a device of indulgence and evil. When Bastian wields its absolute power, he is corrupted not by AURYN itself, but by the delusion that he is the source of its power.

I would also argue that the Childlike Empress and Xayide are mirror images of each other. Moonchild is a wonderful person who is wise and powerful and kind. She brings out what is best in Bastian, and she needs him to help her because her world is in need of the power of imagination. Xayide is a terrifying woman who is cunning and malicious and who lusts for power. She brings out what is worst in Bastian because she needs him to grow her own power. Ultimately, Xayide is nothing without Bastian, but in corrupting him, she can achieve a level of power and standing that will make her almost as great as the Childlike Empress.

Just thinking about this book for the purposes of review makes me want to go and read it again. It is really a fantastic adventure, and much deeper and more meaningful than most children’s fantasy. The movies only really scratched the surface of the book’s true meaning. What Ende was really trying to say is that imagination is a wonderful and necessary thing… but that we must use it towards positive and benevolent ends or it will ultimately consume us. Used correctly, the stories we can conceive of will go on and on and give us more wonderful things. Used improperly, our imaginations will lead us to death, destruction, chaos and loss.

Sean’s Recommendation: Get a copy of this book immediately. Read it alone. Read it to your kids. Discuss it with other people. It’s a really amazing work of fiction that I highly recommend.

[Book Reviews] ‘The Space Merchants’ by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth

"The Space Merchants" by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth

I love science fiction. I love marketing. So, I guess you could say The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth is pretty much one of my favorite books ever.

And you’d be right. This novel, written, in the early 1950s, envisioned a future where entertainment and advertising have become so entwined that ads are the dominant form of popular culture. Ad writers can become “Star class copysmiths” and be rich, famous and respected. Ad firms are like film studios, and ad executives are the most powerful people on the planet. One of these firms, Fowler-Shocken, is tasked with selling the public on the idea of colonizing Venus, despite the fact that it’s a terrible place where no one would ever want to live.

But in the midst of this consumer culture, a group of people called the “convervationists” is operating in secret. They’re sort of like environmentalists, believing in the preservation of natural things and renouncing the ideas of rampant consumerism waste.  It’s bad to be outed as a “consie”, especially if you work in an advertising firm. But unlike the secret so-called communists of the 1950s, the consies are actually intelligent and organized, with the plan to turn public opinion against Venus so they can take it themselves and turn it into a paradise.

The story itself is something of a fall and rise sort of adventure, where the main character, Mitch Courtenay, works his way to the top of Fowler-Schocken only to find himself framed by a rival and branded a consie. He moves to the evirons of society, discovers how he’s been framed, and outs the consie conspirators. There’s a nice twist to the ending that puts things in perspective, but the structure of the story is fairly standard stuff. Were I judging the book on the merits of its plot, I would probably consider it a readable, but mediocre title. (I certainly feel this way about the sequel, The Merchants’ War, which follows the pattern of the original while updating the book’s ideas for the 1980s.)

No, what makes this book so awesome is the world that Pohl and Kornbluth conceived. It’s frighteningly close to the world we live in today. Advertising is used not just as a means of persuading people to buy products, but to shape public opinion about real issues, like the scarcity of water and fuel, and to make people feel like their lives are better than they really are. Every piece of communication is persuasive; every idea has an agenda. Even the simplest slogan has been massaged by expert ad men. The world is a dark and frightening place, and yet society is kept under control by these resassuring messages that they should be happy because of the products they consume.

One of the most memorable and horrifying scenes in the book comes when Courtenay finds his way into the facility where “Chicken Little,” a processed chicken product, is packaged. What he finds is a giant, living mound of chicken tissue, where butchers come and cut pieces of flesh off to prepare for processing and packaging. The campaign around the product leads you to believe you’re eating normal chicken, but this genetically engineered, unthinking living blob of meat is all it is. The idea is that as long as people don’t know what they’re really eating, society will hold together.

A lot of science fiction looks to the future and sees exploration, space ships, aliens, and evolution. These things exist in a world where there is a single government, and poverty has been extinguished, and anyone can be an adventurer. That is not the case in The Space Merchants, where society is, instead, a glittering sea of false promises established to keep people from understanding how bad things really are. Happiness is not rooted in simple pleasures and natural living, but in consuming products and listening to advertising messages. Achievement is not rooted in social benefit, but in manipulation and half-truths. The ad executives have all the real power; public officials (even including the President of the United States!) are an anachronism. In many ways, The Space Merchants is more realistic than most of the science fiction you’ll find from the 1950s… or in the entire genre.

If you don’t want to read the book, CBS once produced a condensed radio version of it. It misses pretty much the entire point of the novel, but it does cover the plot.

I want to comment on one more thing, and that’s the style of this book. 50s sci-fi really has a certain feel to it — an idea of progress towards simplicity, an idea of buying shiny new things and discarding old ones. The future is a place much like the 1950s, where everything seems exciting and safe, and there’s no pain or suffering. More modern books have played with this theme and shown the rotten supports below this sort of lifestyle. The Space Merchants fits into this paradigm, and it was clearly far ahead of its time in its ideas. I fully expect this genre of “nostalgia punk” sci-fi to show up again down the road. I may even write some myself.

"The Merchants' War" by Frederik Pohl

Ironically enough, I’d place the 1984 sequel, The Merchants’ War, much closer in tone to the futuro noir style of Blade Runner than this nostaglic tone I’m referring to. I felt like The Merchants’ War was a lot closer to cyberpunk in tone, though it lacked the foresight to see the impact computers were having on the world. Pohl seemed a lot more concerned with critiquing collectible items and the cola wars than he was about returning to the themes of the original book, and it’s a shame. As I said, it’s not that the sequel is bad… just that it’s not nearly as groundbreaking or memorable as the original.

Sean’s recommendation: Track down a copy of The Space Merchants, read it, and enjoy it. It’s a fantastic book that was really forward-thinking 50 years ago, and which still has a lot of relevance today. The Merchants’ War isn’t too bad, either, if you’re craving more when you’re done.

You can get both in one edition if you’re really interested.

[Game Reviews] The Pandemic Games

Pandemic 2 from Crazy Monkey Games and Dark Realm Games

I’m a sucker for a game with a good concept, and the rush of protecting the world from micro-organisms is a great way to introduce your inner geeky scientist with your inner super hero. In fact, I’ve happily killed an hour here and there with the board game Pandemic, where you play as a CDC scientist trying to save the world from an onslaught of diseases!

But every now and then, I get crabby and want to destroy human civilization instead of protect it. What’s more, I want to do it in such a way that no one will see it coming until it’s too late… with a minimum of personal discomfort, of course. And that’s why I love games like Crazy Monkey Games / Dark Realm Games’s free flash-based games Pandemic, Pandemic EoM and Pandemic 2, where you get to create your own infectious creation and send it off into the world to do some damage.

Pandemic 2 is really the best of the three, so I’ll discuss it for a moment. You start off by naming your virus, bacteria, or parasite, and begin in a randomly selected part of the world. Your job is to get the virus out and infecting the rest of the world before everyone catches on. Then, your job is to evolve the virus and kill as many people as possible before a vaccine is created. You accomplish both of these goals by upgrading your virus periodically with “evolution points,” which you earn as your virus does its damage and time goes by.

There are two ways to play the game, really: to try to get a high score (which seems to be related to how many people you can kill in how short a time) or to try to annihilate all traces of human life. Since you’re likely to have trouble figuring out how to accomplish either goal, here are some tips:

• High score: Pick virus, make your starting symptom “fever,” and quickly ratchet up your transmission stats so you can start infecting the world quickly. Focus on upgrading your drug resistance, and don’t really worry about the others so much. Instead, upgrade your killing power quickly to Tier VI and pick up a nasty fatal condition like heart failure or kidney failure. Your goal is to kill as quickly as you can. Don’t worry about how many you kill; just how quickly you kill everyone you infect.
• Annihilation: Pick parasite, sell your starting symptom, and then upgrade to “drug resistance II” and “rodent transmission.” Then, walk away for a half hour or so, and come back. Don’t do anything until all the islands (particularly Greenland and Madagascar) are infected. Then, ratchet up the four transmission methods, moisture resistance II (to activate “waterborne”) a fatal condition (like heart failure) and wait. If everything works out, you’ll overwhelm the hospitals, shutting them down before they can develop a vaccine, and you’ll kill every single person on Earth. Well done.

I really like this game — it’s a fun little simulation to have running in the background when I’m doing something more important, and it gives me an opportunity to cackle evilly when things go my way.

I do have some criticisms, though:

1) Transmission between regions only occurs through human means (borders, planes, boats, etc). This is not realistic at all, since birds, fish, foodstuffs, and other methods can spread disease. As such, it’s very irritating that island nations like Madagascar and Greenland can shut down their boats and be immune to disease. Unless they’re reverting to a primitive state, they’re still going to be somewhat vulnerable.

2) Vaccines take effect immediately across the world. They should spread from the region of discovery like a virus, coming to the Third World last.

3) The scoring system doesn’t make any sense. Why should you get fewer points for killing off humanity than you would from just killing off Europe?

Ah well… hopefully, these issues will be addressed in Pandemic 3. And I’m not going to gripe too much about a game that is free, fun, and flash-based.

Play Pandemic 2 on CrazyMonkeyGames

[Game Reviews] Upgrade Complete!

Upgrade Complete by Armor Games

In the realm of video gaming, it’s easy to get obsessed with the idea of “upgrading”. In fact, many great games are built around the concept of “play just a little further, and you can make your guys that much better and cooler…”. A lot of times, these upgrade experiences aren’t that exciting, especially when you’re working towards upgrades like “alternate costume colors” or “bad guys wearing funny hats” or the dreaded “extended credit sequence”.

So, I suppose it was inevitable that someone would go out and make a game where upgrading is the actual focus. Armor Games’s Upgrade Complete! is a free, flash-based game that’s all about upgrading to your heart’s content. The game starts off by telling you you need to upgrade so you can have a pre-loader. Then, you have to upgrade to get menu buttons, a logo, copyright information, a menu background, a progress bar, and so forth.

The actual game itself is a simple little Galaga-style shooter where you move your shift left or right and blast everything on screen. You start out with one gun, no sound effects and some Atari 2600-style graphics. But, of course, all of these things can be upgraded! You can put your money into improving your ship’s gun, but you can also add other weapons and useful components (you can have 12 modules in all) to make the game a little easier. There are 20 waves of enemy ships to blow up, but you never are actually penalized for losing. In fact, replaying levels over and over until you can earn enough money to upgrade your ship is a pretty sound strategy.

It only takes about 15 minutes to get your ship up to the point that it’s maxed out, and one of the achievements you can earn essentially says, “Oh yeah, there’s a game, isn’t there?” and rewards you for actually bothering to finish wave 20. Chances are good you’ll still be upgrading even after finishing that last wave — after all, you’ll still want to upgrade the graphics, the music, the logo, the copyright information, and the game’s ending.

Upgrade Complete!, along with another Armor Games titles called Achievement Unlocked (where you find yourself unlocking ridiculous achievements at a rapid pace), represent something you don’t see often in gaming — social criticism of game culture. It’s fun to be able to play some simple little games that mock both gamers and developers for being too focused on the mechanics of gaming and not enough on the gameplay itself. What’s more, since they’re flash-based, you don’t need any special hardware to give them a try.

Play Upgrade Complete! v. 1.5 on Newgrounds

Play Achievement Unlocked on Newgrounds

[Book Reviews] ‘Neuromancer’ by William Gibson

"Neuromancer" by William Gibson

There are a lot of terms on the internet we take for granted today. One of those terms is “cyberspace,” and it’s a word that derives from a 1984 novel by William Gibson called Neuromancer, widely regarded as the first real “cyberpunk” novel. What cyberpunk is and what it stands for is somewhat open to debate. But most people agree that Neuromancer and the 1982 film Blade Runner really established and popularized the genre in the minds of science fiction fans. Both featured near-future settings where the world was becoming a giant mishmash of Asian-Euro-American culture. Both explored the ideas of artificial intelligence and what it means to be human. Both featured heroes who were anti-heroes, in a sense; Blade Runner’s Deckard is a bounty hunter who murders artificial beings because they are not human, while Neuromancer’s Case is a hacker for hire who doesn’t seem to have much in the way of scruples. Both played an important role in shaping science fiction post-Star Wars, and both inspired a whole wave of Japanese comics and animation.

So, before I talk about Neuromancer, it’s important that we establish what a groundbreaking book it was when it came out. William Gibson envisioned a world where technology had created two alternate realities — a real world where people were increasingly using tech to enhance their human abilities, and a virtual tech world where humans could manipulate machines into doing what they wanted. Gibson didn’t really understand computers that well, and he didn’t know much about hacking. His hacker underground seems to be more inspired by punk rock and motorcycle gang culture than 1980s computer geek lingo.  But the ideas of Neuromancer are really, really cool. What’s more, they’ve shaped reality in some important ways.

But first, let’s talk about the novel itself. I first read Neuromancer when I was in high school, just as the Internet was beginning to catch on. To be perfectly honest, I found the book to be barely readable. Gibson’s minimalist style was really difficult for me to handle. I often had to re-read chapters to understand what was going on, and I had a hard time following his action sequences, which often lacked the necessary description for me to fully conceptualize where characters were standing in a room or what was happening to them. Even during a recent re-reading of the novel, I found it a ridiculously challenging experience. I tend to skim over description and focus on the meat of the story. You can’t do that with Gibson; it seems like every word is important. I found myself having to read each chapter slowly so I could absorb the sparse detail Gibson gives. There are some really memorable scenes in Neuromancer, but you can miss them if you read too quickly and find yourself ridiculously confused.

And that remains my chief criticism of the book — while I think Gibson is a good writer (and his later works are a lot easier to read), Neuromancer demands so much of my attention that it’s not something I could really read for pleasure. I suspect part of the reason it got so much attention when it came out was because people were persuaded enough about its cool concepts that they were able to look past the writing style. Perhaps the style commanded their attention. Whatever the case, I know that there are people in the world who absolutely love this book, and who have read it dozens of times. I also know that there are people who never make it past the first chapter. Some stop reading after the book’s opening line, “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” This is just not a book for everyone. To put it another way, it’s an adrenaline rush that many won’t find welcome.

On the other hand, Neuromancer has some insanely cool concepts that are as exciting in 2009 as they were when the book came out 25 years ago. The virtual reality known as the “matrix” originated in Neuromancer, and while popular culture has taken the concept and turned it into many other things, the idea of hacker “cowboys” finding ways around “black ICE” while running around with “Razorgirls” with mirrored eye implants and retractable-blade fingernails is pretty distinct to this novel. Neuromancer’s other distinctive feature involves an AI called Wintermute manipulating humans so that it can achieve its own unusual goals… and while the rogue AI concept has shown up in other science fiction, it’s never been quite as cool or edgy as it’s been in Gibson’s novel. Hacking the matrix, too, is an exciting ordeal, with hackers jacking in through electrodes that connect directly to their brains and interacting with computer programs in a wireframe environment. In the world of the matrix, the hacker is powerful, but susceptible to death in the form of “flatlining” — having a jolt administered directly to his or her brain. One of the characters in the book has actually been killed by this, and finds a way to survive in the matrix as an AI RAM construct.

All in all, I guess you could say I’m torn in recommending this book to everyone. On the one hand, it remains one of the freshest, coolest novels in all of science fiction, and it’s served as a massive influence not only on media, but on the way we conceptualize the internet today. On the other hand, it’s one of the more challenging science fiction novels you can pick up and read, and a lot of people who have been spoiled by all the cyberpunk films, anime, comics and video games out there are bound to say, “why bother?” So, I’ll throw this out there — the sequel, Count Zero, is really good, and the final book in the Sprawl trilogy, Mona Lisa Overdrive, features the return of Molly Millions, the highly memorable mirror-eyed, blade-fingered Razorgirl from Neuromancer. But you have to read Neuromancer for those other two books to make any sense, because Gibson doesn’t really slow down to explain things a second time.

So, there you have it. If you’ve got even a shred of curiosity about cyberpunk or how it all began, you owe it to yourself to read Neuromancer. But if you’re content to stick with more polished efforts from the 1990s like The Matrix or Ghost in the Shell, you’re not going to be missing a whole lot, because while Neuromancer was the original, those later efforts have taken Gibson’s ideas and turned them into stories that are more palatable to most science fiction fans.

Sean Recommends: Read this book if you’re looking for some serious, hardcore sci-fi. Otherwise, you might try some of Gibson’s later books first (like Virtual Light, which kicks off the Bridge Trilogy), since they’re actually a little easier to read, though they’re less groundbreaking in their ideas.

[Movie Reviews] – Gattaca

'Gattaca' written and directed by Andrew Niccol

I’ve been meaning to watch Gattaca for awhile now, but never gotten around to it for some reason. I’d heard it was a well-constructed science fiction film (it’s technically part of the “biopunk” subgenre), but I’ve been burned by so many sci-fi films that I really didn’t want to be let down by this one. Fortunately, it’s available on Netflix Instant Watch, and since I was in the mood to watch a movie last night, I finally gave it a go.

I’m glad I did. Gattaca was a fun experience, and a really well-crafted science fiction piece. I’d say it fits more in the vein of dystopian satire (like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World or George Orwell’s 1984) than anything else, but it does have many biopunk elements about it.

In the world of Gattaca, genetic manipulation has resulted in an odd sort of fatalism — the moment you’re born, you are told what your probabilities for death are. It’s much safer, and much more socially beneficial, to create children through a lab, where the best parts of the mother and father can be combined and the genetic deficiencies can be eliminated. The main character, Vincent, is born with a probability of heart failure by the time he’s 30. His parents have a younger brother, Anton, who is designed to be superior to Vincent in every way. Vincent grows up in a society where there is a lot of predjudice against him for being a natural birth, and he is told that he’ll never be able to achieve his true dream: to be an astronaut. But Vincent doesn’t accept his fate, and when he realizes that he is capable of beating his brother in a swimming race by sheer determination and will, he leaves his family and finds his way into Gattaca, the mission control center for space shuttle launches.

Vincent starts off as a janitor, but eventually finds a way to infiltrate the organization. Gattaca conducts regular urine, blood and hair follicle tests to ensure that its people are legitimate — the best and the brightest, not genetic inferiors. Vincent’s way around this is to use a “borrowed ladder” – he partners with a man named Jerome who is genetically superior, but who has lost the use of his legs in an accident. (In this world, invalids are also looked down upon, particularly when they’re supposed to be genetically superior.) Vincent’s job is to pretend to be Jerome so he can become a navigator aboard a mission to the moon of Titan. Jermoe agrees to supply Vincent with all the genetic material needed to pull off the ruse in exchange for a cut of Vincent’s salary.

Unfortunately, a week before Vincent’s mission is scheduled to take off, a murder occurs, and a police sweep finds an eyelash that links him to the crime. His ruse becomes much  more tense as the police begin more aggressive DNA sweeps, and Vincent knows it’s only a matter of time before he’ll be discovered. All he has to do is make it one more week until his shuttle takes off, and nothing will matter anymore. But unfortunately, one of the detectives has a suspicion about what’s really going on… and he’s determined to bring Vincent to justice, even if Vincent didn’t commit the actual murder.

Gattaca is really more of a cautionary tale than a futurist film, and while the sterile, harsh world of the film seems believable enough while you’re watching it, the idea of a society obsessed with genetic probabilities is a little far-fetched. But the idea of the film — that human achievement is greater than any probability determined by scientific understanding — is profound, and the way the film is constructed makes for an interesting series of revelations about the characters.

One of the more interesting things going on in the background involves a woman, Irene, who has the same heart condition that Vincent does, but in a much milder form. This condition doesn’t proclude her from working at Gattaca, but it does prevent her from going into space, no matter how capable she may be. Irene is so mired in the probabilities of death that she believes them. Once she learns what Vincent is, her entire world opens up to a new range of possibilities.

This film was written and directed by Andrew Niccol, and it’s the only one he’s done that’s been what I would call “hard sci-fi.” His follow-up film, The Truman Show, was also very good, though much softer and less realistic. S1m0ne, a movie about a film producer who creates a complete digital film star, was really lacking in plot development. I never got around to seeing Lord of War or The Terminal, though I’m told it neither has any hint of science fiction. I’m hoping Niccol delivers another film like Gattaca down the road — it’s one of the most consistent hard science fiction films I’ve ever seen, and the fact that it’s not based on a book or cribbed from another film makes it all the more appealing.

Sean Recommends: If you have Netflix, watch it instantly. It’s worth the 105 minutes you’ll put into it. If not, rent it or buy it on Amazon for a few bucks. It’s worth it.

[Book Reviews] – ‘Dune’ by Frank Herbert

I feel sort of silly reviewing Frank Herbert’s Dune, because it’s considered to be the bestselling science fiction book of all time, so chances are good that anyone who’s reading my reviews has already read it. And even those who haven’t read it probably have it on their list of books to read. So, in the spirit of making this review interesting and useful, I’m going to talk about the reasons why Dune, unlike a lot science fiction from the ’60s and ’70s, is still important and relevant today.

Just in case you haven’t read Dune, I’ll give you a quick overview. Several thousand years in the future, humanity has spread to the stars, and culture has shifted away from machines (due to a machine uprising) and instead towards human achievement. People live longer and benefit from advanced medicine and technology. Human “computers” called Mentats are used for logistics, calculations and strategy. Women of the order of the Bene Gesserit oversee religion and evolutionary breeding. Space guild “navigators” are the only people capable of folding space, but do so at the cost of being hideously deformed and inhuman. Human warriors are trained to be much more ruthless and capable than any other warriors in history, and the Emperor’s Sardaukar troops and the culture of people known as the “Fremen” are among the most powerful fighters in the universe. Much of this advanced human achievement is made possible by a drug known as spice, “melange,” a substance found on a desert planet called Arrakis… also known as Dune. It’s said that whoever controls the spice, controls the universe. The great houses take turns running the planet of Dune, but their power is checked by the might of the emperor.

Duke Leto Atreides is given the opportunity to oversee the planet, and he brings his Bene Gesserit consort, Jessica, and his son, Paul, with him. Unfortunately, the emperor has been conspiring with House Harkonnen to knock the Atreides out of power, and a betrayal occurs that results in the death of the Duke and the stranding of Paul and Jessica in the desert. They are nearly eaten by the enormous desert sandworms before they are resuced by the Fremen, and Paul eventually discovers that his true destiny is to lead the Fremen to take over their own world and shift the balance of power in the universe. Paul is able to do this because he is the end result of the Bene Gesserit breeding program and is able to drink the spice-concerntrated “water of life” and live through it — granting him the ability to see any point in time. Paul and the Fremen take over the empire, and the book ends… though Paul’s eventual doom (and the  conquering of the universe at the hands of the violent Fremen) is spelled out in the sequel, Dune Messiah. The two books that follow, Children of Dune and God Emperor of Dune tell the story of Paul’s children, Leto and Ghanima. The other two books in the series, Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune are a little less readable, and ultimately end in Arrakis losing its special place in the universe and another home for the spice being created.

(Some other prequels have been written by Herbert’s son, Brian, based upon Herbert’s notes. Besides being unnecessary, they’re not very well-written compared to the original. I don’t recommend them.)

Dune is an important book in science fiction because it was the book that showed that science fiction and the sort of world-building you see in fantasy could work together to create a cohesive whole. Herbert didn’t just ask, “What if this spice existed?” and tell a story about it. He created a vast universe with many millenia of history shaping the views of his characters, and he developed a complex political intrigue that made his universe seem all the bigger and more magnificent. Even though 90% of Dune occurs on Arrakis, you always get a sense of the bigger scope and feel of the universe around it. The empire feels absolutely enormous, and the struggles of Paul Atreides are truly epic. Star Wars take a lot of cues from Dune, as do many of the sci-fi space opera series that followed in its wake. It’s an important turning point in science fiction, and it really established the modern genre of space fantasy (books that are set in space, but that aren’t necessarily science fiction) that was so popular in the ’80s.

But at the same time, Dune is hard sci-fi in the respect that it does offer plausible explanations for most of the things that happen in the story. Herbert really thought through space travel and human evolution, and he developed his galactic empire around the idea that humans, on their own, could not traverse the vast interstellar distances required and still have a cohesive civilization. His ideas about human beings serparating into different groups and becoming the ultimate fighters, ultimate navigators, ultimate computers, and ultimate breeders is quite different from much of the science fiction that followed. The only thing one might call “magic” in Herbert’s universe is the spice itself, and even then, he attempts to offer explanations into how it allows people to accomplish great feats.

Dune is also a novel with a lot of relevance to the world around us. Herbert based a lot of his ideas off his own experiences. The Bene Gesserit are based around the Catholic church. The great houses take cues from the idea of superpower nations. The spice itself is very similar to oil in some ways, and it’s no accident that the Fremen are modeled after the Bedouin people out in the Arabian desert. The ideas of Herbert’s books often centered around what it meant for humans to become gods in some fashion, and Dune shows the rise of a messiah only to bring him down in the sequel. Readers should even be left wondering if Paul’s rise was a good thing, or if his fall was inevitable. Even the “Golden Path” his son pioneers comes at a great cost to the rest of the universe. Again, you just don’t see this sort of philosophical debate going on in science fiction very often, and many of the imitative works (including the books written by Herbert’s son) have lacked the insights Dune had to offer.

I also want to take a moment to talk about Dune Messiah. If you read Dune and skip this sequel, you’re really missing out on the point of the series. I’ve heard that Herbert originally intended for them to be the same novel, but his editor did not appreciate the message of the second part since it did not embrace the heroism of Paul’s rise to the top. As a sequel, Dune Messiah is a big letdown, because it’s about the fall of Paul Atreides, not his continuing adventures. But if you read it as the rest of the story of the novel, it’s a bit easier to see how it plays a role in finishing the story.

All in all, Dune is one of those books that I’d recommend to just about anyone. It begs to be read multiple times, and I’d argue it’s one of the most important works in the history of science fiction, and a novel that really changed the way science fiction is read and written today. Don’t settle for the David Lynch disaster of a film or the Sci-Fi channel miniseries; both lack the power and punch of the book itself, and both gloss over a lot of the important details that make the book so interesting. This is one of those stories that’s best told in novel form.

Sean recommends: If this one’s on your list of books to read, bump it up to the #1 slot. If you’ve already read it, read it again. And read Dune Messiah when you’re through.

[Book Reviews] ‘Snow Crash’ by Neal Stephenson

"Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson

Every now and then, I read a book that makes me want to give up the idea of being a science fiction writer. Sometimes, it’s because the book is so popular, and yet so awful, that I don’t think it’s worth my trouble to write for an indiscriminate audience. Other times, it’s because the book is so good, and so far beyond what I could accomplish on my own, that I just want to curl up in a corner and sob while I reread it.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson is definitely one of the latter books. How I’ve made it through 17 years without knowing that this book existed is a testament to the terrible science fiction I’ve been reading, I suppose.

I don’t think I could fully describe this book if I tried. It’s wonderful. It’s part cyberpunk, part dystopian satire and part linguistic primer. The story takes place in a future where government is broken down and people live in territories controlled by franchises sold by organizations like the Mafia, Mr. Lee’s Hong Kong, the nation of Nippon and yes, even the United States government. The world is a lawless place where violence reigns and the authorities are privatized. One of the main characters, a 15-year-old girl with the moniker Y.T. (“Yours Truly”), is a Kourier — a skateboarding delivery girl who catches rides on the back of cars with a magnetic “poon” cable. Her partner in crime is a half-Nipponese, Half-African man named Hiro Protagonist, the last of the freelance hackers and the world’s greatest sword fighter (if you can believe his business card, anyhow). Hiro and Y.T. are working together to gather information for the CIC (a combination of the CIA and the Library of Congress that has since become the backbone of the Internet) about a street drug called “Snow Crash” — a strange new synthetic drug that can wipe out a human mind like a computer virus. Their quest takes place both in the real world and in the Metaverse, a 3D virtual world where users interact with lifelike avatars and own virtual property (think Second Life, but keep in mind that Snow Crash was first published in 1992, long before most people were even talking about the Internet). The idea is like the Virtual Reality concepts of the early 1990s, but far more developed.

The “snow crash” virus turns out to be something that’s rooted in Sumerian mythology and linguistics, and Hiro spends a good chunk of the book investigating its origins. Y.T., in the meantime, gains the attention of the Mafia boss Uncle Enzo and is recruited to run several missions that involve a lot of danger and explosions. She also attracts the attention of the villainous Raven, a giant Aleut with homicidal tendencies. Raven is a unique villain in that there is a disincentive to stopping him — he lugs around a hydrogen bomb that’s wirelessly linked to his brain. If he dies, it detonates. Thus the private law enforcement tries to contain his killing sprees instead of taking him out.

Snow Crash has a great sense of humor about it, and the first chapter, while a little out of place thematically, offers a nice introduction to the world and the two main characters by chronicling the adventures of “The Deliverator,” a high speed pizza deliveryman who faces certain death if he misses that 30 minute delivery guarantee. As the book goes on, it gets a little more serious, and I was actually quite annoyed to see the main characters (particularly Hiro) start dropping into soliloquy mode towards the end. The near-final showdown between Hiro and Raven involves a long, drawn-out conversation between the two characters about their fathers which is seriously hard to believe. I suspect Stephenson was running out of room to cram in all the story he wanted to tell, and this was the only way he could do it. (His solution in more recent books is to just keep on writing, and reader be damned; his last series, The Baroque Cycle, was 2700 pages long across three volumes!)

Still, I’m stunned by the “big ideas” in this book, of which there are three: the idea of franchise-states, the idea of the Metaverse, and the idea of a linguistic virus. The third one is by far the centerpiece of the book, and something I find quite annoying because a) I came up with a similar idea a year ago and b) Stephenson did it so much better than I could have that I almost want to fold up my laptop and forget about writing ever again. I have to take consolation in the fact, however, that Stephenson’s first two novels bombed before he achieved success with Snow Crash, and despite the many, many great reasons for reading this book (if you haven’t read it, go get a copy right now and get started!), I still spotted minor grammatical errors, continuity blips and plot holes, suggesting that the novel still needed another pass in the revision phase. But those are microscopic gripes for such a magnificent novel. It’s one of the best science fiction novels I’ve ever read, and I highly recommend it.

I’ll be reading Stephenson’s next two books, The Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon, once I finish off the stack of science fiction books I just picked up, so check back in a few months for reviews of those. Hopefully, by then, I’ll be over having my creative soul crushed by Stephenson’s amazing talent and back to working on developing my own ideas again.

SEAN’S RECOMMENDATION: If you enjoy science fiction of any kind, you should read this book.  It’s a bit on the “hard” side of science fiction, and cyberpunk’s certainly not for everyone, but it’s plotted well enough that it’s a rewarding read.