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rallamajoop · 3 years

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The Witcher: The Games vs the Books part 2 – Characters and Accents

So, I've already talked at length about the relationship between the Witcher books and games, but how well they captured individual characters is its whole own subject – and you’d better believe I have enough thoughts on it for a whole extra post.

Andrej Sapkowski's skill for creating vivid and engaging characters really is so much of what brings the books to life, and no matter how much work an adaptation might put into worldbuilding and plot, it's the characters you've really got to nail to get the long-time fans on board. Especially when you’ve done what the games have, framing themselves as a direct continuation of Sapkowski's story. Nothing invites comparison to your source material like basically forcing fans to read the original novels to understand even half the backstory alluded to in-game.

So how did they do? I can only offer my opinion – characterisation is necessarily going to be a lot more subjective than just telling you what plot points the games contradicted outright – but like any fan, I have opinions in plenty.

Of the main cast, I feel Yennefer is the character they've captured the best. They've done just as well with some supporting players – I have no real complaints about Dijkstra or Phillipa, for example, who are favourites of mine in both games and books. For the main players though, Geralt and Regis seem to be the ones who's differences I'm most inclined to forgive, whereas I don't feel like they've done Ciri justice at all. Book!Geralt is much less of a smartarse, for one thing, whereas Book!Ciri is much more of one. But if we're talking about the differences, I’m afraid we really need to start with Dandelion.

Dandelion

For all the genuinely good work the games do with characters, old and new, I don't think I can overstate what a disservice the they've done Dandelion, who I could not stand in TW3, but is now one of my favourite book!verse characters. Alas, Dandelion is a prime example of something the Witcher games really don't do well: camp. Being the archtypical bard, Dandelion is about as flamboyant as any enthusiastically-heterosexual man can be: you should be able to spot this guy by body language alone, he should be flouncing around and he should talk like a spoiled noble auditioning for Shakespeare. Book!Dandelion is over-the-top and ridiculous and just so much fun, and I loved him well before I'd even really gotten into the rest of the books around him.

Here's just a bit of dialogue from one of his first appearances, to give you a sense of how he and Geralt play off each other.

The bard seized the fingerboard of his lute and plucked the strings vigorously. ‘How would you prefer it, in verse or in normal speech?’ ‘Normal speech.’ ‘As you please,’ Dandelion said, not putting his lute down. ‘Listen then, noble gentlemen, to what occurred a week ago near the free town of Barefield. ‘Twas thus, that at the crack of dawn, when the rising sun had barely tinged pink the shrouds of mist hanging pendent above the meadows—’ ‘It was supposed to be normal speech,’ Geralt reminded him. ‘Isn’t it? Very well, very well. I understand. Concise, without metaphors. A dragon alighted on the pastures outside Barefield.’

Though TW3's Dandelion certainly looks the part, you have to go hunting through art from the Gwent cards to find much that comes close to really capturing his personality (see left pic below – though even there, a Dandelion who'd voluntarily break his treasured lute is a very hard sell). Though a lot of fanart does better (right-below – credit goes to Tatiana Ortaliz).

But as poorly as the games capture his flamboyance, they're not that much better when it comes to taking him seriously. TW3 left me thinking he was all talk and no substance; the books make abundantly clear that he really is renowned enough to be welcome in courts across the continent. Though he often overestimates what he can talk himself out of, he isn’t stupid either: he's lectured at Oxenfurt, spied for Dijkstra, and then there are the moments where the frivolous playboy mask slips and you realise he's sometimes much better at understanding people and relationships than Geralt will ever be (which is honestly kind of funny considering how many of Dandelion’s relationships end with plates being thrown at him from an upper story). He's not at all above mocking Geralt when he deserves it either (and especially his personal and relationship issues) – Geralt will happily mock him right back.

We never do learn how they became friends (I'm pretty sure the incident listed in the wiki is just the date of their first expedition together, not their first meeting), but Geralt just doesn't form lasting friendships or romances with anyone he can't have an intelligent conversation with. And Dandelion is a damn good friend to Geralt – one who, despite being a helpless, squishy little bard, will keep Geralt's secrets under torture, or will follow him into Nilfgaard in the middle of a war simply because you don't let a friend make a trip like that alone. (Seriously, I don’t ship it nearly as much as some, but hot damn there is some material in here if you do.) In short, it's basically inconceivable that he'd leave an amnesic Geralt wandering around Vizima alone, as he does in the first Witcher game – which is the kind of thing I can mostly forgive as a gameplay conceit, only it doesn’t really get better from there.

He’s also supposed to be blond, something I don’t think is technically specified until fairly late in the novels, but 100% what I’d been picturing since his first description as a man in a colourful bonnet with cornflower-blue eyes (let’s face it: Dandelion’s hair isn’t the only thing about him that screams ‘blond’). It’s a shame no-one from the games to the show to the novels’ cover artists seem to have noticed – but at least there are some fanartists out there who were paying attention (credit for these goes to Asphaloth, Ghostcupdraws, Hvit-ravn (tumblr deleted), 94355 and itsmespicaa).

As for the games? Well, I cannot speak to how Dandelion came across in the original Polish, but I think it speaks worlds about the priorities of the English version that they didn’t even bother to cast someone with a halfway-decent singing voice as their master bard. There are isolated moments of dialogue that come close to sounding like book!Dandelion– mostly in Witcher 2, which comes closer to capturing the spirit of the books than either 1 or 3, or his attempts to convince his captor he's a disguised noble when you rescue him TW3 – but his voice actor is just painfully ill-suited to the role.

Geralt

Geralt fares much better than Dandelion, though he’s still a little hard to square with the Geralt of the books. Book!Geralt spends a lot more time sulking, just to begin with: he sulks because his job is complicated and gets him no respect, and because the world is unjust and unfair – and, most of all, he sulks because Yennefer has dumped him again. He also gets mocked for sulking, and usually deserves it. Book!Geralt is generally a lot more taciturn and a less prone to making smart comments just to have something to say – arguably because in book!Geralt's world, making smart comments often ends at the gallows, or at least with some corrupt official making your life much harder. Book!Geralt's world kind of sucks, and he's just got to put up with it.

As much as he often plays into the expectations of being an uneducated monster hunter, he's also got a more of an intellectual streak than you’d guess. He may prefer to stay out of politics (because damnit, his job is to save people from monsters, not people who are monsters), but he attended school at Nenneke's temple and has even taken classes at Oxenfurt academy, and there's a lot of thoughtful nuance to his opinions – his speech to Ciri about why he can't in good conscience take a stronger stance against the Scoiata'el contains a wealth of historical perspective, just for one example. Even his smart comments tend to be, well, somewhat smarter in the books.

Book!Geralt’s explicitly a lot younger than Yennefer – around 50 is the usual estimate, falling far short of the 100-ish the games suggest (the scandal of having a man fall for – gasp! – an older woman clearly didn’t bother Sapkowski one bit). You don’t see nearly as much "I'm getting too old for this" from book!Geralt, who's really not that old by witcher standards, and is apparently still hunting monsters long into his future. I'm also a little annoyed by the way they play off his hatred of portals like he's a grumpy old man who doesn't like mobile phones, when his distrust originally came from having seen the gruesome deaths that result when portals go wrong. This is not to say Book!Geralt lacks other ordinary human flaws, however – twice in the last two books of the main saga, he gets severely sidetracked after his ego gets the better of him (in the adulation he receives after being knighted, then after arriving in Toussaint), and it's quite some time before he properly gets back on track for that whole rescuing-Ciri thing again. He’s also pretty hopeless when it comes to romance and relationships – breaking things off gracefully is really not in his skillset.

So why does game!Geralt not bother me more? Well, he's the main player character of a game franchise, and one who has to carry the experience largely solo. Some adjustments for genre are pretty much inevitable in that position. He's certainly fared better than Meve, for example, who's been softened far more from her book characterisation for her PC role in Thronebreaker. Then there's the whole amnesia thing – it's easy to believe that sort of experience would change a man – and if he doesn't sulk so much as he used to, maybe he's grown up a bit. Geralt's also in many ways the straight-man of Sapkowski's Witcher universe – there largely as the reliable centre for other, louder personalities to play off. But I expect the real bottom line here is that I do still like game!Geralt enough to forgive him a lot of what he lacks.

The books never do describe Geralt as being very attractive – something book-based fanart often tries to reflect. The point has been made before that the rather-alien-looking Geralt of the first game (left pic above) is probably a lot closer to his book-description. However, the main distinguishing factor you’ll see in book-based fanart is probably the ubiquitous headband, which genuinely is what book!Geralt wears to make his hair behave (the example on the right above comes from Diana Novich).

All that said, if Sapkowski really wants me to believe that nearly so many women are eager to jump into bed with him, I’m going to have to shallowly assume our witnesses are unreliable on this front, and Geralt is at least as attractive as Witcher 3′s take on him. Nothing else makes sense. *g*

Regis

Regis varies mostly in that book!Regis is a lot more smug, sometimes verging on obnoxious – and a lot keener to make fun of Geralt (who generally deserves it). But then, Regis is old and wise and superpowered enough to dance rings around most everyone else – can you blame him? By Blood and Wine, Regis' overconfidence has been recently smacked down hard after his near-death-experience at the hands of Vilgefortz, and that kind of thing could knock some chips off anyone's shoulder. Throw in the fact that with Dettlaff, we have a situation not even Regis could make light of, and the changes to game!Regis make a certain amount of sense.

I do feel it's a bit of a shame that the vocal direction didn't work just a little bit harder to capture some of Regis' smugger side, or emphasise that his long-winded philosophising on human behaviour is supposed to sound a bit pretentious. This is actually something I suspect they were going for a few times in the script, but which didn't come through in the dialogue quite the way it was meant to. Still, again, I'm sure I'm biased by the fact that I like game!Regis far too much to find much fault in what they've done with him. They've done a lovely job capturing his friendship with Geralt too.

Looks-wise, there's a tendency in book-based art to portray Regis with long hair (even some pre-Blood-and-Wine Gwent art did so – see the two pics on the left above, from Gwent and early B&W concepts. The right-most pic is cover art from the books). I couldn't rightly tell you where long-haired-Regis comes from, though – perhaps it's described more explicitly in the original Polish, or perhaps it comes up in passing in some passage I've forgotten, though it may just as well just be a fannish meme.

The books do describe him as looking rather like a tax collector, slim, middle-aged, with an aquiline nose, prone to wearing black, and his hair as 'greying' or 'grey streaked', so presumably somewhat younger-looking than the game would have it. The hammer-horror-esque sideburns are likewise a game-verse addition, though I do like the look they went with – it's distinct from Geralt in a way that making him another long-grey-haired man wouldn't have been, and that's probably the point.

Being the hopeless Regis fan I am, I have quite the folder full of different fanart takes on book!Regis, so have a selection – art here is by gellihana-art, justanor, greysmartwolf, Nastyaskaya, NatalyLanier, beidak, natalliel, ellaine and afternoon63. For what it’s worth, I feel beidak’s (bottom pic, second from the left) comes the closest to what I’d have pictured personally, based on how he’s first described.

Ciri

I find it much harder to rationalise the changes to game!Ciri, who I didn't exactly dislike, but found stuck too close to the role of generic-macguffin-girl-who-just-wants-to-be-normal to be very interesting. Having read the books, not only do I much prefer book!Ciri, I'm not sure I can emphasize enough how much the game did NOT prepare me for utter gauntlet of whump and misery that girl survives in the last four titles. Book!Ciri is a character who works for me mostly because of the same flaws the game mostly strips her free of – TW3 makes some token noise about how you can't tell her what to do, but she’s an utter little royal brat when we first meet book!Ciri, and it’s so much of what brings her to life. She throws herself into her witcher training with the enthusiasm of a kid going completely native, but still revels in getting to be girly for a change when Triss first arrives at Kaer Morhen. She hates Yennefer at first, but soon bonds with her just as strongly as she ever did with Geralt, picking up some of Yennfer’s haughty mannerisms along the way. And then she gets thrown through a portal and lost in the distant wilderness, and the whole world comes down on her head.

The build up to the first time Ciri actually has to kill someone is intense... and things only get worse from there. Steadily. For another couple of novels at a stretch. Seriously, a major caveat that pretty much has to go into any rec for these books (and I will absolutely rec these books) is that Ciri's story gets heavy. So heavy one finds oneself using phrases like, "that time that one guy died of his wounds on top of her while semi-consensually feeling her up was honestly one of the less traumatic incidents in the period."

By the end of the novels, Ciri has nearly died of thirst, been beaten, tied up, dragged around the country as a prisoner, run with bandits and killed innocent people for the fun of it, done fantasy-cocaine and got a tattoo, fought off more than one attempted rape, been drugged, lain for multiple nights next to an impotent elf who completely fails to impregnate her, watched the bodies of her friends and girlfriend being mutilated in front of her, and did I mention where she got that scar? She has survived hell, and it is absolutely a testament to her own strength that she somehow comes through it and puts herself back together at the end. When Geralt finally arrives to rescue her, what matters most isn't that her ordeal is over, but that she finally knows she hasn’t been abandoned by everyone who’d ever loved her after all.

The Ciri of the books is fierce and wild and arrogant, but she's learned her morals from the best, and she holds onto them until she can't, then picks them back up again when she can, and above all she survives. For all that her story turns arguably too much of the last two books into a slog of misery, oh boy does it pay off at the end. And that's probably about as much as I can say about her Big Moment in the last book without spoiling too much, so suffice to say that by the end of the saga, Geralt has pretty much become a supporting character in Ciri's story, not the other way around. (Seriously, you’d be surprised how few chapters of the last two books he’s actually in.)

Finding art which captures the aspects of Ciri’s character and history which are missing from the game has turned out to be pretty hard, though the fanart above from her bandit phase takes a decent crack at it (credit to Loles Romero and NastyaSkaya). I do rather like that one shot of her on horseback beside her girlfriend too, which comes from Denis Gordeev’s illustrations for the novels (below).

How much of this does TW3 get across with her portrayal in the game? Well, she's still pretty headstrong, I guess. And they let you give a 'sorry, I like girls' answer in one bit of dialogue, so they remembered her girlfriend existed. That's nice. But game!Ciri still has a kind of wide-eyed innocence that book!Ciri lost years ago, while book!Ciri is a little force of nature in ways the games hardly even hint at, and that's a really shameful loss.

You'd think, with a character so young, it ought to be easier to imagine she's simply grown up since we saw her last, but so much of what's changed about Ciri feels like a step back rather than forwards. I can shrug off Geralt and Regis' differences and still enjoy their game-verse-selves, but Ciri leaves me genuinely disappointed.

I’d say the official art that comes closest to capturing book!Ciri is that one portrait of her as a very grumpy young child (right above). Some of the early concept art (left above) feels a little more like it has her attitude, though she’s rather too yellow-blonde – not to mention too pretty. I think it also bears pointing out that Ciri isn’t really supposed to be the kind of beauty she is in the game – even before she gets what’s meant to be a seriously ugly and disfiguring scar. (Fanart below by justanor and bobolip)

But of course, the male gamer fanbase can’t be expected to give a fuck about a girl they wouldn’t want to fuck, so game!Ciri must be generically gorgeous. Le sigh.

Triss

I suppose I should at least touch on Triss, too, though she's a very odd case. She's so out of character in the first Witcher game that I am wryly amused that the biggest thing they arguably do get right is that taking advantage of Geralt the moment he showed up with amnesia is... pretty well in-character for her (look, I gotta be honest here, I'm not much of a fan of Triss in any of her incarnations).

The second game does a much better job with her – she actually feels like book!Triss, she has some good dialogue, we're finally dealing with some of her conflicted loyalties to the Lodge and to Geralt – though by the third, her characterisation has been so softened into “the nice one” that none of that potentially meaty conflict is ever resolved, or even really mentioned. Perhaps there's more buried in the Triss-romance path, which I've never bothered with, but the writers seem to have just given up on dealing with anything that might make her look less than wholly sympathetic. Heck, we hardly even get a clear statement about why she and Geralt broke up between Witchers 2 and 3.

Even speaking as such a not-a-fan of Triss, I promise there is more they could've done with the character the books give us. There's her ongoing trauma in from the Battle of Sodden, where she was injured so badly she was memorialised as one the dead: the 14th of the hill. There's her furious impatience with the neutrality of both the witchers and the Lodge: Triss has fought and died for a cause, and is ready to do so again. The second game sort of gets into this, but by and large, the games really aren't up to tackling the moral complexity of having such a theoretically-sympathetic character as Triss, who was still broadly willing to go along with the Lodge's plans to pair Ciri off and get her pregnant as soon as possible – her own wishes be damned. No, instead, Triss has conveniently left the Lodge before the rest of them go spiraling into abject villainy in the second game, clearing all that messy grey stuff out of the conflict.

Of course, the really big unresolved plot point still hanging over book!Triss is how badly she needs to terms with the fact Geralt's just Not That Into Her, and never has been – but since the games want Triss to be a serious romantic option, that's definitely not getting the resolution it could've used.

Book!Triss also pointedly avoids any outfit with a plunging neckline because her chest is covered with the ugly scars she received in the Battle of Sodden, something the games did not have the guts to reproduce. In a more confusing note, the books do consistently describe her hair as 'chestnut', which we'd usually think of as meaning 'brown' – though it turns out the games actually may not have been wrong to make her a redhead, since in Poland 'chestnut hair' apparently mean dark red hair (google some pictures of actual chestnuts, and you'll see why). Still, the firy-red-haired Triss of TW3 who wears nothing but plunging necklines remains a bit of a stretch, however you slice it. Once again, TW2 gets her best (and I must say, gave her the nicest outfit) – though even here she's conspicuously unscarred in all her sex scenes.

(Leftmost pic above is official Witcher 2 art, whereas Triss-with-scars fanart comes to us – once again – from nastyaskaya)

Shani

Shani sort of falls into a similar category as Triss as someone who isn't terribly well-served by any of her appearances, given that both exist in the first game largely to compete for Geralt's attentions. But I can't honestly say I find Shani’s portrayal in the Hearts of Stone expansion to be much better – the degree to which either version exists solely to fall all over Geralt is a bit painful, especially given that their relationship in the books is limited to a single, undramatic hook-up. Book!Shani really only appears in a couple of chapters: we meet her as a medical student friend of Dandelion's, who's been surreptitiously selling pilfered university supplies to fund her degree, then later see her again in the final book, where she proves herself as a battlefield medic during the climactic Battle of Brenna. She's pragmatic to a fault, and I really can't see her as the type who needs Geralt to point out to her that her patient is dead, for example, or who'd subject a guy with Geralt's problems to such an extended feelings-dump as you'll get out of her during the wedding.

Shani is a reasonably logical book-character to bring back, if only because she’s one of those who explicitly survives the ending, but for my money, "serious contender for Geralt's affections" is just not a role she works in.

Anna Henrietta

The duchess of Toussaint, Anna Henrietta, is another case who differs more from her book counterpart than you might think. In the books, the duchess is by far the least competent of the (pleasantly many and) various female leaders and rulers we meet – she comes across as rather young and naive, and every bit as absurd as everyone else in the ridiculous fairy-tale duchy she rules. She is, for example, most displeased to learn that Nilfgaard's war against the north is ongoing (something her courtiers have carefully avoided mentioning in her presence), because she'd long since sent the Emperor a stern note demanding he brought it to an end. She promptly has one of her ministers sent to the tower for misinforming her, and demands the others prepare an even sterner note for the emperor, which will surely do the job.

After Dandelion (inevitably) cheats on her, she has him repeatedly sent to the gallows, only to change her mind and send him a reprieve at the very last minute each time. Picture yourself a much younger and prettier version of the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, and you've about got her general vibe.

Blood and Wine sort of waves at this part of her character when she first speaks about Dandelion, and again in suggesting there's a widespread feeling she lacks compassion, and once more as she proves utterly immovable on the subject of her sister. But the generally sensible and insightful woman you deal with for most of the main story is a far cry from her book-verse characterisation. That’s a bit of a shame, because I feel like there's a lot more they could have done to blend the two versions of her. Still, it’s hard to argue the duchess we get suits the story being told around her.

Other characters

Much as I love Yennefer, Dijkstra and Phillipa, I don't really have much more to say about them because I feel the games have done such a good job. The Yennefer of the books gets to show a lot more depth and complexity simply because she has more scenes and more space in which to do so, but when ‘there isn’t more of her’ is your biggest complaint, the game is officially doing pretty well. I could certainly gripe her about how “dresses in black and white” seems to have been taken as “dresses in black with maybe a trace of white trim”, or how Yennefer and Triss seem to be the only sorceresses in the world capable of wearing pants, when Phillipa (just for one) is in sensible men’s clothing the very first time we meet her, but that’s getting into serious nitpicking territory.

(Not that Yen can’t look amazing in outfits with more white – art by Emily Caroll, theclashofqueens, BarbaraRosiak, and cosplay by greatqueenlina)

Vesimir, Lambert and Eskel, Geralt's fellow witchers from the School of the Wolf, fall into a similar category for me – though we spend far less time with them in the books, everything we see of them in the games feels like a fairly logical extension of their book-roles. Vesimir is somewhat over-played as the old fogey, and his death is painfully cliched, but the impact on the characters and Kaer Morhen still hits home – and the games do some especially great work expanding Lambert into a much more complex character. To my mind, the only shame is that more of the book-original characters didn't get the same treatment.

Who have I missed? There's Avallac'h, of course, but I think I've got him pretty well covered by that last post. Zoltan, perhaps inevitably, has had his personality largely flattened into 'generic dwarf', with nothing better to do than hang around Geralt and Dandelion. You wouldn't know Book!Zoltan was apparently incapable of turning away women and children in need, for example – even human women and children with the chronic inability to say thankyou for his help. Or that he eventually admits to Geralt that the luggage he and his friends are carrying comes from a decidedly unsavoury source for such a supposedly charitable, upstanding guy. Yes, even Zoltan gets to be a morally complicated character in the books – who knew?

Speaking of dwarves, pleased as I am that Yarpen Zigren gets remembered in TW2, he's an odd one to talk about, since even in the books, he appears to have had a substantial personality transplant between his two main appearances. Yarpen’s a largely comedic figure in The Bounds of Reason short story, where he cheerfully admits to having considered letting his men knock down a particularly pompous aristocrat and piss all over him to teach him a lesson, but he’s evolved into a studious voice of reason against the scoiata'el by Blood of Elves. TW2 doesn't do a particularly good job of capturing either version, which I suspect probably bothered me more than most people – I liked the later book-incarnation of Yarpen immensely (and not even just because he's one of few ever to really call Triss out on just how much she needs to stop misreading Geralt's friendship as anything more than it is). His chapter in Blood of Elves packs a hell of a punch.

On the subject of accents

I do have to wonder if I'd have warmed up to characters like Triss, Shani and Dandelion (or even Letho) more if they'd only had halfway decent voice actors. It's not just that none are exactly leading the talent at the acting part of the job, it's that their American accents stick out in TW3 like a sore thumb.

Geralt mostly gets away his own US accent by dint of being the very first character we meet, so we've gotten used to the way he talks long before we notice how he stands out – hell, maybe that's just how they talk down in Rivia (hilariously, book!Geralt eventually reveals he's not even from Rivia, but simply picked the place and taught himself the accent so he could feel a bit less like the abandoned foundling he is, which only gives us yet more excuse for why his accent might sound a bit weird). More importantly, Geralt is meant to stand out, to be the outsider wherever he goes, so having him sound like no-one else fits the character.

But neither Triss or Dandelion are "of Rivia", and by the time they show up we've had dozens of hours in a game where literally everyone else sounds British, or Scottish, or Irish, or vaguely-eastern-European in the case of the Nilfgaardians. So why do these weirdos sound like no-one else on the continent?

The short answer seems to be that every character with an American accent in TW3 is someone who had an American accent in at least one of the previous games, which were way looser with their casting and had enough incidental American accents around that they didn't stand out. Clearly, by TW3, consistency with prior games has been prioritised over consistency with literally anything else we’re hearing.

Gaetan is an exception to the rule as the only new character (at least that I caught) with an American accent – presumably because between Geralt, Eskel, Lambert, Berengar, and Letho (and cohorts), some sort of 'witchers have American accents' rule has been pretty well established (another random American-accented witcher shows up in Thronebreaker, just to underline the point). We're going to mostly ignore Jad Karadin here, since his British accent is presumably a recent affectation to go with his new identity, and so makes sense.

This still doesn't really work though, since Letho’s school is all the way down in Nilfgaard (land of the Eastern European accents), while the oldest witcher from Kaer Morhen (Vesimir) is the one guy with a British accent. He sounds nothing like any of his students, despite the fact he's logically the guy they ought to have learned their accents from. So the logic falls in a heap however you slice it, and I'm thrown right out of the game.

With TW3 as your intro to the series, it feels almost as if characters like Triss and Dandelion have been assigned American accents because they're just too important to be saddled with the same pedestrian British accents as everyone else, which did nothing to endear them to me. The only one I eventually warmed up to was Lambert, and then only because he's just such a bitter asshole that he eventually goes full circle and comes out the other side (somewhere around when you've heard his miserable backstory, then gotten drunk together and told him how much you love him, man). Gaetan similarly snuck in under the same clause – American accents clearly work better for me in this series when attached to characters you're supposed to find pretty insufferable on first impressions.

Some final notes

To conclude, it seems only fair to throw in a quick nod to some of the more memorable book-characters who don't appear in the games. Neither Mother Nenneke (Geralt's sort-of-surrogate mother) or Vissena (Geralt's biological mother) ever appear either, alas – Vissena doesn't even merit so much as a Gwent card, which seems quite the wasted opportunity.

Milva, Cahir and Angouleme – the three remaining companions of Geralt’s who died alongside Regis but who were not so easily resurrected – naturally don’t appear. But nor are even really mentioned in all the games, which seems rather less than they deserve after giving their lives to Geralt's cause.

Cahir and Angouleme do at least have pretty badass Gwent cards to their names, though I am properly offended that Milva (who has the dubious honour of being my very favourite book character who doesn't ever appear in the games) is stuck with a card of her freaking death scene – which not only gets the scene wrong (believe me, there was no grimacing and gripping the arrow buried shallowly in her chest for poor Milva), but doesn't even bother to get her hair the right colour, for fuck’s sake. Basically, Milva was a stone cold badass and absolutely deserves better. #justice4milva

One can only guess how I'd have felt about some of these characters had I read the books before playing the games – I am obviously biased towards forgiving changes to characters whom I liked in their game incarnations, regardless of how they compare. Still, I think it does speak wonders that there still all these characters who suddenly made sense only after I'd met them in the books.

Even if only for Dandelion and Ciri, I can only dream of seeing a bit more of the book-original characterisations make it into the collective fannish consciousness. There's nothing wrong with getting into the canon purely based on the show or the games, but having read Sapkowski's novels, it's no longer any mystery how they spawned this massive franchise. That the saga wasn’t even fully available in English until well after Witcher 3 was released – a solid couple of decades late, and long after it had already been translated into Russian, French, German, Spanish and more – is a real shame. For once, it’s us in the anglophone world who’ve been missing out: these books deserve so much more than to be thought of as a footnote to the games or the show.

#Dandelion #Witcher novels #Jaskier #Ciri #Regis #Geralt of Rivia #meta #The Witcher #long post is even longer this time #I blame everyone who gave me such lovely feedback on that last post *g*

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the-sapphire-general · 6 years

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My Thoughts and Feelings About Mighty No. 9

It’s been a long time since I wrote a review for a game I’ve played. Well, I played Mighty No. 9 for a while now, and I finally finished it. And boy, was it…meh? I know tons of people consider it a disappointment and that the game is hated, but after taking time to think, it’s just average. It’s not the worst video game to ever exist, but it’s also not the best game. It’s far from it. Intended to be a spiritual successor to Mega Man, Mighty No. 9 was supposed to be a great game. I’ve done plenty of research about its development and what Comcept’s intentions were at the time. But so much went wrong! I still somewhat like the game, it wasn’t that boring, but I wasn’t oblivious to its flaws. Boy, there’s a lot of them.

Before I go on, I never played a Mega Man game my whole life, so I’m not that familiar with the franchise. However, I checked out a Mega Man X playthrough made by a YouTuber known as Capitalist out of curiosity. People stated that Mighty No. 9 ruined what makes Mega Man so great, and despite not knowing much about the series, I can see why. Everything that Mighty No. 9 has pales in comparison to what Mega Man has in store.

The story had a lot of potential. It takes place in the year 20XX on a futuristic Earth where humans and robots exist together. There’s even a Battle Colosseum for robots. The robots go haywire, and it’s up to Beck to stop them from destroying everything. Along the way, he saves the other eight Mighty Numbers. It all sounds cool, but the way it’s written had me bored. Not much happened, and whenever there were plot points, they seemed like they were shoehorned in and without explanation. Even a few plot points were revealed during conversations as you played through a couple of the levels. The one about William White being the one who created Trinity should have been like a flashback cutscene. Show, don’t tell, to explain how Trinity was a failure. The story was lifeless because there were multiple ideas that weren’t explored. Why the heck does William have issues with Dr. Blackwell? How were the Mighty Numbers and Call created? And some of the plot was just told, and they just felt awkward. At first, we didn’t know Will was at fault for the robot rampage. Heck we never knew he was Trinity’s creator.

Just like the story, the characters weren’t great. Aside from a few noticeable traits, they were bland. They didn’t have enough personality. The Mighty Numbers had one-note types of personalities, and they were annoying. And Call…she had no personality! I really hated Call because she had no personality. She was too emotionless for my taste. Yes, she’s a robot, but did she have to be so robotic, that she had no personality?? In the end, I didn’t care about anyone, not even Brandish. Not much occurred with the characters. They all lacked depth, and it’s sad because they all looked pretty cool.

The gameplay, although I didn’t mind it much, it wasn’t that great compared to Mega Man X. Beck can only shoot in one direction. Not that it’s a problem(?), I mean Mega Man X did the same thing, but the difference between the two games is X looks way more fun than Mighty No. 9 (Mega Man in general looks more fun to play). That I can admit. Also, X can slide and jump on walls. That could have made things so much easier with Beck! There was also supposed to be a tutorial kind of thing in the beginning. It turns out I didn't know a few of the things I can do until I was too late into the game. If I had known I could configure buttons to the abilities I get instead of having to scroll through them, it would have been less of a hassle. Another thing about the gameplay is the ReXelections, powers that Beck can utilize like Mega Man. They were…okay, I guess. Some of them weren’t my favorites. Pyrogen’s ability seemed lame despite its limited use it had when I played the game. The same applies to Cryosphere’s ice ability. Dynatron’s and Countershade’s abilities were used only once, and I never bothered to use them again. Battalion and Aviator had good abilities, and Seismic wasn’t useful to me until the final boss (more on that later…). The only ability I really liked was Brandish’s ability, yet even that power could have been better.

Basically, the abilities were underwhelming. For example, Pyrogen. It’s a fire ability. What can it do? You blow stuff up. Sadly, you have to time it real well to blow stuff up, and it’s hardly of any use (along with the rest of them). I tried using it against Cryo since fire beats ice, but that backfired on me so badly, it cost me a life. This, along with the other abilities, should have been different. Maybe Pyrogen’s fire powers could have involved shooting explosives. Maybe Cryo’s ice could have included a blizzard bazooka or something like that. Avi’s power was okay, but maybe instead of floating down, it could have worked like a helicopter, to fly you over deadly pits (and then hurl the thing helping you fly at enemies). Dynatron’s ability is self-explanatory: intense electric attacks! Battalion’s is fine on its own in my opinion, though I would add a lock-on feature. Seismic’s shield is good, but executing it was clumsy, so that would be something I would fix. Countershade’s sniper ability is also good, but again, a lock-on feature could have helped. Finally, Brandish’s ability is one I like the way it is, but I admit it could have been more awesome. If you were to wield it, waves would fly right at the enemies. See?? I managed to come up with ways that could have made the abilities better. Heck, there are a plethora of idea that could have worked in general. If the abilities you get aren’t fun or lack opportunities to use them, then what’s the point?

As for the levels, they were meh. They generally lacked excitement. Whenever you take damage, it’s sometimes not your fault. Insta-death can occur in some of the levels, and some of them were complete bullshit. A game can be difficult, but it shouldn’t be too difficult or else it’ll just be frustrating. It was also tedious and annoying to go through a lot of the levels without finding any health items. Mega Man X’s enemies left health items, which made the game a bit easier. Mighty No. 9 doesn’t do that. You rarely get health on some of the checkpoints, but they are rarely helpful if you’re so low on health.

Call only got one level, and it’s one of my least favorite levels ever! Her abilities are weak and limited compared to Beck, and she couldn’t AcXelerate into enemies, making gameplay so tedious. And in addition to her lack of a personality due to how painfully robotic she is, during gameplay she kept on saying what she was doing! “Jump!” “Holding.” “Barrier.” That was annoying, I wished she had a mute button. She’s cute in appearance, but everything else about her is just bad. Seriously, ONE level?!!

And Trinity…..*sigh* Her level is fine, but once you get to the boss, it all changes. Yes, the final boss should be difficult, I know! But battling Trinity was a major pain in the ass! Even though I chose the right ReXelections and selected the three buttons for them in order to choose them real-time (something I discovered real late), Trinity kept beating me. The battle was more frustrating than any other boss I’ve fought. It took me nearly two hours (from two different days) to beat that final stage and battle Trinity! You don’t even get taken to the second phase, which is bullshit. With all the other flaws the game had, the final boss was frustrating! Once I finally beat her, I wasn’t satisfied. I was just relieved I was done with the game, so I can finally move on to a more fun game that won’t make me feel like I might lose my mind. It wasn’t my fault! That boss was just annoying. Out of all the bosses, Trinity is the only one I despise! Avi’s battle wasn’t even that hard.

A game can be difficult, but if it’s too hard to the point that it will only make the game not fun, then that’s the problem. A few games that are known for being difficult are the “Devil May Cry” games. Those are difficult, but I would rather play those games than deal with Mighty No. 9’s final boss. Games are allowed to be challenging, and that’s why Devil May Cry is fun, but the difference between DMC and MN9 is that one is poorly executed and unfair. Yes, DMC can be unfair to some, but the thing is the games’ difficulty is connected to your skills. If you lose miserably in, say, “Dante Must Die” mode, that’s on you because your performance probably wasn’t great. All you have to do is improve. Higher difficulty levels are available once unlocked, and you can get the hang of things in the normal difficulty level. MN9’s difficulty, however, is hard. No matter what you do, you’ll struggle. Heck, it has three other difficulties! Hard, Hyper, and Maniac! But since the game is already difficult (and a pain) to play, it’s not worth it. You have to be a pro to tackle those difficulty levels. I’m not a pro, and I admit that without reluctance, so I won’t be doing those difficulty levels for myself. Playing it normally was already a pain (especially with Trinity!! Arrrgh!!). Therefore, Mighty No. 9’s difficulty was the result of poor design, meaning some of the hits (and deaths) you take are bullshit. So Mighty No. 9's difficulty was unfair and sometimes uneven. Countershade's level wasn't that difficult in my opinion. And has anyone realized that some (not all) of the advice it gives you before you enter a level hinted at the weakness?? Such as Dyna's ability being effective during Countershade's battle? But even the advice is useless because with the abilities being the way they are, they just weren't worth using at times. I did more damage using Beck's regular shooting abilities.

In conclusion, Mighty No. 9 gets a 5/10 from me. I can forgive some of the stuff. The music was good, the bosses were okay, and the designs for the characters were tasteful. So I'm showing just a hint of mercy despite the whole Trinity crap. But the gameplay wasn't super exciting, the final boss was frustrating as hell and no satisfaction can be received even after beating Trinity. The story was bland and it glossed over what could have been great storytelling if it wasn't poorly written, and the characters were boring and annoying (looking at you, Call!). Also, there's a boss rush!...I'm NEVER going for it because of Trinity. I can try to master the other bosses, but Trinity is one that I wish to never battle again (unless I want to torture myself out of boredom). I might try the challenges??? I'm not too sure. Despite the game's flaws, I oddly don't mind playing it. I like other games that are disliked by everyone. Last Rebellion and Shadow the Hedgehog are a few examples. Even Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy 7. People have different tastes, you know.

Still...what happened with this game?? Where did they money go??? Where????? Because $4 million dollars should have been enough to develop a fun and cool video game for Mega Man fans and newcomers. I also know that there were plans for a TV show and movie. If they had made better decisions throughout this whole process, Mighty No. 9 could have been great. I would have watched the TV show (or was it an anime?) and movie. Oh, and they had plans for a sequel...the post-credits scene was a sequel hook. But due to how the game turned out, I'm not sure if there will be a sequel, or a TV show/anime, or a movie, or anything. Then again, never say never. Bubsy came back with a new game after Bubsy 3D, and it took 21 years! Though the game wasn't that well-received. The point is if they do want to continue Mighty No. 9, please make better decisions. Reboot the game if you must (not that it's likely at this point), but don't do the same thing you did here. Mighty No. 9 has wasted potential, just like many other video games. Those certain games failed as a result of rushed development, bad decisions, and/or just plain laziness. Mighty No. 9 could have been great, and it's a shame that it didn't reach its full potential.

#mighty no. 9 #mighty no. 9 review

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justanothercinemaniac · 7 years

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Epic Movie (Re)Watch #163 - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Spoilers Below

Have I seen it before: Yes

Did I like it then: It’s a guilty pleasure.

Do I remember it: Yes.

Did I see it in theaters: No.

Format: Blu-ray

1) This is (or was, not so sure after this viewing) a quintessential guilty pleasure movie for me. I’m a sucker for crossovers and old monsters, so even though this team isn’t EXCLUSIVELY monsters the presence of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, a why-is-she-a-vampire? Mina Harker, a not-Griffin Invisible Man, and Dorian Grey make the film as much of a guilty pleasure as Van Helsing for me. That’d make for a good guilty pleasure double feature.

2) I get this dude has never seen a tank before, but how stupid can he be?

3) I have a feeling Germany would not actually say this verbatim in a situation like this.

4) So I absolutely love the idea of taking The Phantom of the Opera and making him into the big bad technical war-mongering genius the League has to fight in this film. I love the idea, but I feel the execution is a little sloppy. Combining The Phantom’s with James Moriarty utterly takes away any sympathy we have for the character. In Gaston Leorux’s original novel, The Phantom was a figure of tragedy and heartache. I would’ve loved to see more of that side of him, to understand why The Phantom wants to start a World War and what that pain means for him. But instead we get sort of the cliché, “bad guy wants to start war to get rich,” scheme which may be very much in the vein of Moriarty but not in the vein of the Phantom of the Opera.

5) Sean Connery as...

According to IMDb:

Sean Connery was offered roles in The Matrix (1999) and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), but said he didn't understand the scripts. So when offered another screenplay he didn't quite get, (LEG) he took it.

Connery hated working on this film. Absolutely hated it. There were constant production delays and he clashed frequently with director Stephen Norrington (who also hated working on the film, mainly from studio pressures). Connery has retired from acting pretty much because of this film. It was this film which convinced him that he’d fallen out of love with modern filmmaking. In the 14 years since LXG’s release Connery has only had two other acting roles: voicing James Bond in a video game version of From Russia with Love and as the titular character in the poorly received animated film Sir Billi.

Among the many liberties the film takes with the source material, it removes a lot of Quatermaine’s flaws. Yes the pain of losing his son is a nice source of conflict for the character, but this dude was messed up in the original story. His primary character flaw being his addiction to opium, but Connery refused to play an opium addict. The decision to remove this sort of defining flaw makes Connery’s portrayal of the character sort of a generic action hero, at least that’s how I feel. He’s pretty much playing Sean Connery, for better or worse. He never does anything totally unexpected or unique (again, in my opinion) and that hurts the film I think. Connery’s fine in the part. Again, he’s pretty much playing himself. It’s not worthy of a Razzie or anything. But it’s just...fine.

6) There are some really awful bits of dialogue in this film, not helped by exceptionally wooden delivery on some occasion.

Sanderson Reed [as a shootout begins]: “They’re indestructible!”

Allan: “No, just armor plated.”

7) One of the most interesting aspects of Quatermaine is his skills as a hunter and later his sharing of those skills with Tom Sawyer (more on that later). It is a side to him I wish we could’ve seen more of. Patient, steady, able to get off one good shot instead of a dozen fine ones.

(GIFs originally posted by @mercisnm)

8) There are so many random name drops and references in this film which are just done to remind you you’re in a world of fictional characters. Some of them work, but some of them feel REALLY awkward.

Allan [after Reed says he made good time to London]: “Not as good as Phileas Fogg. Around the world in 80 days? Ha!”

So basically you referenced something and then thought the audience was too stupid to get the reference and just said the name of the book. Great.

9) Richard Roxburgh as M/The Phantom/Moriarty

This film is FILLED with talented character actors and Roxburgh is one of them. In fact, he’s one of the finest character actors around. With notable roles in Van Helsing, Moulin Rouge, and the lead role in “Rake” (Australian TV show), Roxburgh is able to play a wide array of interesting characters. While this film may lack in some plot and structure, there are a number of performances which I find extraordinary (no pun intended). Roxburgh is able to play the calm and collected gentlemen M, the mad warlord The Phantom, and the conniving scoundrel James Moriarty all in the same character. Three different opportunities shown in one character, all of which done totally and excellently. If only the script would support these opportunities and differences better.

10) In continuing the theme of fine (fine as in exquisite, not fine as in “it’s just fine”) character actors in the movie: Naseeruddin Shah as...

(GIF originally posted by @barbara-stanwyck)

Hey would you look at that: an actual Indian actor playing a character who was originally written as Indian in a major Hollywood film from 14 years ago! What a concept!

Shah is another actor who is pretty damn great in the role he plays, if only the script would have supported it more. He is able to portray Nemo’s authority and skill in presence alone. When Captain Nemo enters the room you KNOW he’s someone you don’t want to mess with. He is powerful, reserved, but also able to convey Nemo’s pain when necessary. Honestly for all this films problems there are some members of the cast who I just truly love, and Shah as Nemo is one of them.

11) Another member of the cast I think just freaking nails it is Tony Curran as Rodney Skinner/An Invisible Man (not THE Invisible Man, but more on that later).

According to IMDb:

20th Century Fox was unable to get the rights for the literary character of The Invisible Man, created by H.G. Wells. Not only did this necessitate the character in the film have his name changed from the book's "Griffin", but that he could never be referred to as "the" Invisible Man, only "an" invisible man.

Honestly the change works much better than you might think as Skinner is one of the most likable characters in the film. Curran is able to make his charismatic, devilish, witty, and entertaining for someone who is typically never seen. Unfortunately he sorta disappears around the middle (and the film is worse for it), but Curran is another talented character actor who does an excellent job in the film.

12) Peta Wilson as Mina Harker.

So...Mina...I don’t really know where to start with Mina. She’s the leader of the League in the original graphic novel, not Alan Quartermaine. She also is NOT a vampire, is dealing with trauma over her encounter with Dracula, and is seen to be a bisexual suffragist (or at least, Alan Moore’s understanding of what that is). A lot of that is lost in the film, and while her vampirism does lead to some badass moments Mina’s motivations are...I’m not sure, actually. I would assume she wants to stop the spread of evil throughout the world to prevent another Dracula, but she has some weird past romance with Dorian Gray and gets sassy with Allan when he acts sexist and...that’s it? Wilson is another strong character actor in the film, but I feel the script supports her even less than it supports say Captain Nemo and Skinner. I’m actually not sure what else to say about Mina.

13) Why does Sean Connery play so many sexist characters?

Connery [to Mina]: “I’ve had women along on past exploits and found them at best a distraction.

Maybe if you didn’t objectify them and trusted their competence you wouldn’t be so distracted.

14) So if you pay attention, right before The League visits Dorian Gray there are newspapers plastered up on the wall of a building talking about Mars (pretty much the words “Mars” is really big). This is in reference to the second volume of the comic book which dealt with The League fighting off HG Welles’ aliens from War of the Worlds. I like that volume more than the first personally, but like a lot (if not all) of Alan Moore’s work it can be problematic. Anyway, moving on.

15) Dorian Gray.

Unfortunately I feel like Stuart Townsend is one of the weakest actors in the film as Dorian, but that could also be attributed to Stephen Norrington’s direction (theoretically, it’s not like I was on set or anything). He’s kind of overact-y, portraying Dorian’s self assuredness and vanity in a way which kind of makes him a prick. Another character not originally in the novel, I don’t think the film necessarily needed Dorian Gray. Although he does have one of my favorite lines in the film.

Bad guy [after he shoots up Dorian to no effect]]: “What are you?”

Dorian: “I’m complicated.”

16) Tom Sawyer.

Tom Sawyer is pretty much Tom Sawyer in name alone. He has little-to-nothing in common with Mark Twain’s original character, being a secret service agent instead of a devious little trickster who’s always getting out of work. The studio asked for him to be included as they felt the movie needed an American character to be interesting to stateside audiences. Since he’s not in the original work and he’s not really Tom Sawyer, he ends up being kind of another generic action trope. A shoot-em-up rookie who learns from the more experienced Quatermaine and that’s it. They cut a line which explains that Tom is so desperate to get The Phantom/M/Moriarty because he killed his partner (one Huck Finn) but that’s literally his only unique motivating character factor. And it got cut. It’s done and gone. So we’re just left with...this. Shane West is OK in the film, but the script doesn’t give him much to do in the first place.

17) I’m disappointed with the design of the Nautilus.

Nemo calls it, “The sword of the ocean,” and I’m just wondering if they couldn’t have let that be a bit more metaphorical instead of looking like a giant sword.

18) At one point Mina does an impression of Allan/Sean Connery. According to IMDb:

According to Wilson, this was a last-minute addition to the scene, and she felt nervous doing it, since Connery impersonations were considered a no-no on the set. Before the shoot she called Connery and offered not to do the accent, but he insisted she should. Afterwards, she asked him what he thought. He replied, "You were great!" She was taken aback and asked if he really meant it. He said, "Yeah, it's terrible! It's the worst impersonation I have ever heard, and it's perfect."

19) Jason Flemyng as Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde.

Jason Flemyng is another one of my favorite character actors - having notable post-LXG roles in X-Men First Class and 2010′s Clash of the Titans - and may tie with Tony Curran as my favorite actor in this film. Flemyng is able to capture both Jekyll and Hyde very well, making them unique in and of themselves. I have to remind myself that they’re the same actor considering the heavy amount of makeup Flemyng is put into for Hyde. But he brings a wonderful physicality to the part which I think is just spectacular. Unfortunately - again - the script does very little to support his performance and the actor gets a little lost in the middle. A great performance even if I wish it were better written.

20) Gathering the League feels totally inorganic, unfortunately. Literally the first half of the film is, “let’s get him and let’s get him and let’s get him,” without actually contributing to the overall plot with The Phantom and the impending World War. It is very telling of the film’s biggest problem and that is the one it has with structure and pacing. Everything feels very messy, with not much thought put into why some scenes exist or play out the way they do. Which is unfortunate again because you have a mostly-stellar cast who are already pretty damn good with a crummy script. Imagine what they could do with a better one.

21) Allan teaching Tom how to shoot maybe my favorite part of the film. It not only connects to Allan’s own internal conflict with the loss of his son but it also taught me - at 13 years old - how important patience can be. Just breathe and take your time. It’s better to get off one perfect shot than a dozen shitty ones.

22) So in the course of about ten minutes it is established that both Tom and Jekyll are into Mina even though nothing from before gives them reason to be and they never once revisit it after. Remember how I said this film had some structural issues? Well it has some developmental issues too.

23) This film is an hour and fifty minutes. It takes them fifty-five minutes to get to Venice - where they’ve been trying to get to the whole time - and then the bomb goes off right away (literally) and they have to stop it. The plot is literally: assemble the league, go to Venice, get to Venice and stop the disaster. Nothing in between. Again: this film has some major structural issues.

24)

Jekyll [after he’s asked to bring Hyde out]: “No! Hyde will never use me again.”

Dorian: “Then what good are you?”

(GIF originally posted by @marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer)

Seriously, why did they bring Jekyll around? Did they only need Hyde? And if so, for what? I know M wants the serum for Hyde but what about the rest of them? What convinced them to bring Hyde along and then be okay with him not doing anything on their big mission?

25) Another example of an extremely wooden delivery. This line hurts my soul every time, although in fairness Dorian himself is supposed to be faking it.

Dorian: “Damn Skinner! He must’ve told them we were coming!”

It hurts my ears, that line. I hate it. So much.

26) I have so many questions about the car chase through Venice. How does Tom know to drive a car? Why is the car designed like it’s American with the wheel on the left? How can Nemo track the car’s “frequency”? Who does the car have a frequency, it is never seen using the radio? I’m so confused.

27) This is the weirdest James Bond movie ever.

Allan: “Vampire lady has us covered.”

28) The scene where Alan faces off with The Phantom in the Venice graveyard is close to interesting. If The Phantom were more developed as an individual and it took its time to peek into Alan’s internal conflict, it could’ve been an excellent character moment.

29)

M [revealing his entire plan via a record]: “It was a ruse to get me closer to my goal.”

(GIF source unknown [if this is your GIF please let me know].)

So M wanted the technology to the Nautilus, Hyde’s serum, Mina’s vampirism, and Griffin’s invisibility. And here’s how that plan worked: rob an English bank disguised as Germans, kidnap German scientists disguised as the English, try to convince Quatermaine to join a fake League I made up, try to kill Quatermaine to show him the danger is real, send the League I have already to get Dorian who is a traitor in their midst, try to kill them all with Dorian to convince them the danger is real, have Dorian steal what I need from everyone, blow up Venice, have Dorian escape.

(GIF originally posted by @dailydctv)

If you already had Dorian and an army of minions at your service, couldn’t you have sent them to get what you need from everyone? Wouldn’t that have been easier and less expensive? I’m just...I think I need to move on.

30) The best part of the sinking Nautilus is Jason Flemyng really gets to shine as Hyde. Except it makes no sense that Hyde suddenly doesn’t want to betray and murder everyone for his own personal gain but actually wants to work with the team. There was absolutely nothing to change that character motivation. At all.

31)

Quatermaine [after the Nautilus is trashed, about pursuing Dorian]: “We were the faster, but now we’re the tortoise to his hare.”

Except the tortoise won that race. Did you not understand the point of the story?

32) And then a random white tiger shows up, stares at Quatermaine, and leaves.

(GIF source unknown [if this is your GIF please let me know].)

I know it’s supposed to tie into how Allan feels his an old tiger sensing the end but it’s also just totally random. And like, did you need an actual tiger? There’s no subtly to that. At all. You’re just taking the metaphor literally and not trusting the intelligence of the audience. I just...gah.

33)

Skinner [after slapping Mina’s as while invisible]: “I’ve been waiting all week to do that.”

To sexually harass her? Well, you’re still not as awful as how Alan Moore wrote The Invisible Man in the story.

34) Like all the set pieces in this film, the climax is poorly paced and sort of dull. You keep cutting between Hyde and Nemo fighting a weird Hyde clone (which, btw, is not how the serum works in the original novel; it’s not Hulk juice), Mina fighting Dorian in a bedroom because she claims, “You broke my heart once,” (really?) Allan and Sawyer chasing down M who is revealed to be Sherlock Holmes’ Moriarty, and Skinner just being somewhere and then getting burned. It’s just...meh.

35) Also should looking at the painting kill Dorian? Is that how it worked in the original novel? I thought if you stabbed the painting it killed him or something.

36) In an actually somewhat developed part of the film, Sawyer shoots Moriarty remembering Allan’s teachings about patience.

37) And then Alan dies, but not really because they wanted to do a sequel and totally set up him coming back from the dead. Too bad this killed the potential of a franchise.

This film was a lot less enjoyable as an adult than it was when I was in high school, but I’m also analyzing it for the (Re)Watch. Yes the story is a muddled mess with underdeveloped characters and concepts which just really don’t make any sense. Yes Sean Connery is sort of just showing up. BUT it’s largely well acted and come one! It’s a film where Tom Sawyer shoots James Moriarty in the back after being taught by Allan Quatermaine how to do it. I’m a sucker for crossovers so this is still a total guilty pleasure. Don’t watch it if you’re not interested, because it’s pretty crummy. But it might be enjoyable for the individual who’s interested in these kind of stories.

#The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen #Sean Connery #Richard Roxburgh #Jason Flemyng #Tony Curran #Naseeruddin Shah #Peta Wilson #Stuart Townsend #Shane West #Epic Movie (Re)Watch #Movie #Film #GIF

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flauntpage · 6 years

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Bad NFL Refereeing Should Mean More Replay, Not Less

Every morning, you awake to the dumbest time in history. The leader of the free world held a press conference last week to say he’s not a moron, two days before announcing a new date for his Fake News awards show. I watched a guy help a friend guide his car into a tight parking spot on icy asphalt not from the sidewalk but while standing between the cars and nearly getting his legs pinned. And NFL referee Jeff Triplette got to call a playoff game.

Sports, even in this politically charged climate, are meant to be an escape. It's foolish to believe we can get away from all the issues that plague society, as the athletes we’re watching live in that society, too, but I don’t think it’s too much to ask sports to help us escape stupidity. Not completely—give me Bills fans lighting themselves on fire and jumping through tables every Sunday—but we should at least have a baseline agreement that certain logical things make sports better.

One of those things is video review, specifically in football. It’s not perfect. It’s flawed. It can and should be improved. At the same time, we should all be in agreement that it’s a necessary safety net for a sport played on a surface that’s 120 yards in length and 55 yards in width and officiated by seven part-time (for the most part) employees whose average age falls in the same demographic of people who enjoy CBS dramas.

At some point over this wild card weekend, that argument went out the window.

I don’t want you to think this is a straw man, because it sounds like one. “You’re arguing for video replay to correct mistakes and you’ll have me believe there are people that want to get rid of replay?” Yes! And they’re not Twitter eggs or the 19-year-old editor of a college newspaper in Kenosha. These are high-profile, legitimate football people!

ESPN’s Tim Cowlishaw wants to live without replay for a year! A year! A full fucking season! NFL announcer Kevin Burkhardt of Fox thinks replay is the worst thing happen to the NFL and MLB! The worst thing! Sports Illustrated’s Peter King quote tweeted Burkhardt’s tweet in agreement! Turtleneck enthusiast and former NFL player Danny Kanell hates replay, too! Even NBC’s Al Michaels griped about it during a game!

What seems to bother a lot of people is the inability to fully enjoy a play as it happens because it might be subject to review. You know what? Too fucking bad! The play happened near the sideline so maybe we will look it again. I’m sorry you can’t be immediately gratified by a third-and-nine completion for ten yards near midfield and must wait a few extra seconds to feel a temporary mild high about a sports play that you will forget about in an hour anyway. Banning video review so you can savor a play for an extra 15 seconds before the next play pushes that play out of your memory bank seems equal parts selfish and obtuse.

Doesn’t that sound like some millennial bullshit? “I want my catch now!” But it’s not! It’s old people! Old people—the people you get stuck behind in traffic—are now in a big rush to move what is ideally a three-hour game a little faster. Peter King ain’t got shit to do on game days! We should get rid of replay so Peter can get to the coffeehouse ten minutes sooner to tell a disinterested barista about Jalen Ramsey’s game-sealing interception?

Everything on Twitter is performative but anyone tweeting—fucking tweeting—that a game needs to move quicker because they have better things to do is full of so much shit it’s coming out of their eyes. We are on Twitter and watching sports because we have nothing better to do. Let’s not lie to ourselves and to others.

Al Michaels made a comment about how he loves hockey because the last two minutes actually take two minutes, intimating that the sport isn’t bogged down by replays. He clearly hasn’t watched hockey in a while since games are now stopped to see if a skate blade was slightly offside or if a goaltender was nudged enough to have a goal overturned, both of which are good things because previous officiating ineptitude proved the NHL needed to protect itself against those errors. Everyone crying for the NFL to get rid of video reviews is a dipshit of the highest order.

This is a symptom of the Age of Stupid. We all know that rules surrounding catches need to be simplified and are the root of many extended reviews, yet somehow the takesman’s arrows have missed the easy target of an overly long, poorly written rule and landed on the technology that prevented the Titans from having a game stolen from them in Kansas City. Officials would not have realized a ten-second runoff was required at the end of Panthers–Saints if not for the checks and balances that save the league from embarrassing outcomes that mar important games! This weekend's slate of games is the perfect argument for replay, not against it. Have you all lost your minds?!

Time rots the human brain. It tricks us into thinking things were great Way Back When. It leaves people longing for a time when a blown call could cost a team a playoff game because Tim Cowlishaw is simply far too busy to endure a game that’s eight minutes longer than it should be. “My car’s radio isn’t working. Better light the whole damn automobile on fire and get a new car in a year!”

There was a booth-initiated review at the end of the first half of the Bills–Jaguars game because a receiver was knocked out of bounds a yard short of a first down. He was clearly short but we had to take two minutes to make sure what we all knew to be true was true. Something should be done about these needless reviews, but to hop onto your pulpit and scream "REPLAY IS THE WORST THING TO EVER HAPPEN" because you had to wait two extra minutes to take a halftime dump makes you look like a jackass.

How about this? The challenge system stays the same. All scoring plays are still automatically reviewed. We change the catch rule so that catches are catches. No more booth reviews in the final two minutes of halves. If you want to challenge a spot with 40 seconds to go in the first half, you have to use a challenge. That will force coaches to be more judicious with challenges, which will quicken the game, and the final two minutes of NFL games will resemble the final two minutes of NHL games as Michaels remembers them.

Technology can have drawbacks that make you reconsider the technology itself. The internet has allowed information to spread freely and quickly, but what if the information is incorrect? Has conveniently communicating via e-mail and text left us more disconnected from people on a human level? CGI technology allows for a believable light saber fight but what if it’s used to create a distracting wax robot version of Grand Moff Tarkin that everyone has to pretend is great?

The halt to play that comes with making sure touchdowns are touchdowns and fumbles are fumbles and catches are catches is a small price to play for not royally screwing over a team. Suck it up, people.

Bad NFL Refereeing Should Mean More Replay, Not Less published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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amtushinfosolutionspage · 6 years

Text

Bad NFL Refereeing Should Mean More Replay, Not Less

Sports, even in this politically charged climate, are meant to be an escape. It’s foolish to believe we can get away from all the issues that plague society, as the athletes we’re watching live in that society, too, but I don’t think it’s too much to ask sports to help us escape stupidity. Not completely—give me Bills fans lighting themselves on fire and jumping through tables every Sunday—but we should at least have a baseline agreement that certain logical things make sports better.

At some point over this wild card weekend, that argument went out the window.

This is a symptom of the Age of Stupid. We all know that rules surrounding catches need to be simplified and are the root of many extended reviews, yet somehow the takesman’s arrows have missed the easy target of an overly long, poorly written rule and landed on the technology that prevented the Titans from having a game stolen from them in Kansas City. Officials would not have realized a ten-second runoff was required at the end of Panthers–Saints if not for the checks and balances that save the league from embarrassing outcomes that mar important games! This weekend’s slate of games is the perfect argument for replay, not against it. Have you all lost your minds?!

There was a booth-initiated review at the end of the first half of the Bills–Jaguars game because a receiver was knocked out of bounds a yard short of a first down. He was clearly short but we had to take two minutes to make sure what we all knew to be true was true. Something should be done about these needless reviews, but to hop onto your pulpit and scream “REPLAY IS THE WORST THING TO EVER HAPPEN” because you had to wait two extra minutes to take a halftime dump makes you look like a jackass.

Bad NFL Refereeing Should Mean More Replay, Not Less syndicated from http://ift.tt/2ug2Ns6

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flauntpage · 6 years

Text

Bad NFL Refereeing Should Mean More Replay, Not Less

At some point over this wild card weekend, that argument went out the window.

Bad NFL Refereeing Should Mean More Replay, Not Less published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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flauntpage · 6 years

Text

Bad NFL Refereeing Should Mean More Replay, Not Less

At some point over this wild card weekend, that argument went out the window.

Bad NFL Refereeing Should Mean More Replay, Not Less published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

0 notes