Here There Be Dragons - 'The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug'

Ask any writer: the middle is a bitch.

Openings are easy. Endings can be tricky, but as long as the hero gets the girl and the bad guys get their due the details can be fixed in editing or swept up with broad strokes; ultimately they all live happily ever after. But the middle is a slog, the part where more good stories with good characters can flounder and capsize. The trick to staying afloat in the dreaded narrative median is to heap sufficient conflict at your protagonists to keep them scrambling without swamping them – and the audience. It's a delicate dance, an ulcer in the undercarriage, a high-wire act over a pit of leprous wolverines. But a second act well-handled can easily eclipse the opening salvo of any trilogy - think The Empire Strikes Back, The Dark Knight, Spider-Man 2.

The Desolation of Smaug is Peter Jackson's second shot at a middle story from Middle Earth; the first was 2002's The Two Towers, a film considered by many casual viewers and enthusiasts alike to be superior to his freshman The Fellowship of the Ring (I, myself, am hopelessly indecisive on the matter, unable after 10+ years to make up my mind one way or the other). Point being, it's a tough act to follow.  After taking his damned sweet time building up anything resembling momentum in An Unexpected Journey, the credulous Kiwi had the unenviable task of retaining that energy and thickening the plot without running out of book. He's got one more of these things coming out next year, remember.

I'm pleased to say Mr. Jackson largely succeeded. Smaug is a sharper, smarter, more engrossing effort than AUJ, though there is as much if not more 'Tolkien bloat' – those snippets or whole sections that depart utterly from the novel – to be found throughout. But the core story remains happily intact and the embellishments only stray into outright excess once or twice. One more pass in the editing room with a handful of people not so close to the project would probably have helped keep the runtime down (and spared a ruptured bladder or two). Through it all Jackson manages to inject a sense of urgency and purpose largely missing from the first Hobbit and widen the scope of the conflict to include elves and humans, which, in deference to our dwarf friends, is something of a relief. Muttonchops, mouth-breathing and potbellies get a tad stale when it's all you see.

The Desolation of Smaug covers what I GUESS could be considered the center cut of Tolkien's trim novel, although anyone trying to follow along with the book may be baffled by the pace: 40 minutes of screen time breezes over something like four chapters while elsewhere a two-page transition is lengthened into a huge, cornerstone action sequence.  Jackson and his writing team mine every paragraph for celluloid potential, sometimes coming up short, more often finding points of interest we might have otherwise glossed over. At best the bloat comes from tiny moments only hinted at by Tolkien himself - little side yarns which Jackson seizes and gleefully exaggerates. Gandalf's frequent holidays from the company, for example, explained by Tolkien at the time as mere 'wizard business' (which readers never see), has been extended into a meaty subplot involving the return of the dark lord Sauron (that glowing eye dick from the original trilogy) and a secret gathering of evil forces in a ruined fortress. This is material assembled from Tolkien's voluminous appendices, a sort of narrative cutting room floor where the good professor stored everything that didn't make it into his manuscript. As such, embellishments like these can sorta-kinda be considered canon and purists may take heart that the story hasn't been utterly bastardized.

I've almost got that eyelash...

Alas, orthodox Tolkienites might balk at some of the other 'new' material, even the stuff that breathes fresh air into the tale. The elves have a fleshier role thanks to the saw-it-a-mile-away appearance of Legolas (Orlando Bloom, a bit thicker than a decade ago) and his fetching she-elf companion Tauriel (Evangeline Lily), whose duties over killing scores of orcs with ridiculous ease include ramming home the oft-repeated morals of the folly of negligence and the interconnectedness of the world. While the elves' inclusion is a perfect excuse to notch up the arrow-slinging action, it also provides a prime example of the series starting – perhaps inevitably – to repeat itself: three films or six, the same profundities abound in Jackson's films; how and how often he chooses to spoonfeed/shoehorn these profundities is a balancing act. Thankfully the elves aren't too overbearing, especially if you're a dude: the camera happily feasts on Lily's leonine eyes and alabaster pout while she reprimands Legolas with the shaming rhetorical question “Are we not part of this world?”.  I've been preached to in worse ways.  

Where we do see some genuine script fatigue is in the contrived way the filmmaker's tether Bloom and Lily – the only good ones in a forest full of elf jerks – to the heroes for the rest of the movie. Legolas joins the fight with hardly more to motivate him than Tauriel's chiding, while Tauriel finds herself unable to resist the mopey doe eyes of Fili, the dwarf played by the youngest, handsomest actor who conveniently is the only one not wearing facial prosthetics. These seem like rather brittle excuses for two immortal warriors to turn their backs on centuries of obedience and the elf-dwarf love connection, while amusing, contributes to a monstrous slowdown in the third act. More on that in a minute.

And what of poor Bilbo Baggins, the titular hobbit? Sadly the company's burglar seems nearly lost amidst all the bravado and CGI. The halfling's iconic moments of heroism – confronting the Mirkwood spiders, ingeniously springing the dwarves from captivity, facing Smaug – are all there but they feel phoned-in and rushed, eclipsed each time by something bigger and flashier from Bloom's machine-gun archery to Benedict Cumberbatch's gnashing, fetid voice as the treasure-hoarding dragon. Even the One Ring itself upstages our hero – after a fashion – when it appears to drive poor Bilbo into a murderous, spider-hacking rage after briefly going AWOL from his finger. For all Jackson's gushing on how The Hobbit inspired him with Bilbo's uncomplicated courage and resourcefulness I expected more patience when it came to the great Tolkien-esque moments showcasing those virtues. Woe, then, that the “I come from over hill and under hill” lines are hurried through without the flourish they deserve. Thankfully Bilbo's Martin Freeman continues to delight anyway; his abashed expressions and faux-dignified pantomime are so gleefully British and perfectly awesome.

The third act never truly stumbles but oh boy does it slow down, which should be a ludicrous statement considering the third act includes a dragon, an orc raid, and even a cameo by eye-hole Sauron (see what I did there, saying 'eye-hole' instead of 'asshole'? I didn't ask for this talent, folks – the gods delivered it to my front door). But in this case, the faster the film tries to go the more it seems to tangle itself. The problem stems from the prodigious number of plot threads suddenly coming home to roost all at once. Jackson has to keep so many plates spinning his only option seems to be extending the action on each of them endlessly, sequence after sequence, without devoting five uninterrupted minutes to resolving ANY of them. I never would have thought the long-awaited confrontation with Smaug could be described as 'tiresome', but when stacked in the same pile as a Lake Town attack, a orc-versus-elf throwdown, Gandalf's troubles, a poisoned Fili waxing poetic about Tauriel, and reluctant hero Bard being tossed in the slammer by a jealous politician (Stephen Fry, woo hoo!!), yes the damn dragon gets a wee tiresome. The Lonely Mountain sequence goes on fully five-to-seven minutes longer than it should and by the time that – the largest of the many actions scenes – is finally resolved you've forgotten what had happened in several other plot threads.

More troubling, I'm seeing signs of Jackson and Company beginning to self-mutilate. That is, the more story they tell the more they undermine what they've already done, specifically in the original Lord of the Rings trilogy. You can refer to the Star Wars prequels for virtually innumerable examples of this phenomenon, this poisoning the mystery by drawing the curtain back too far. Gandalf's subplot, while an excellent chance for the wizard to show off, concerns the portents of Sauron's return and the horrors coming sixty years down the road with the War of the Ring. His confrontation with a proto-version of the Dark Lord as an oily, disembodied shadow is a back-slapper of a moment for Gandalf fans who, as in his fight with the Balrog, displays something closer to the demi-god level of power he really possesses. Rich, velvety prequel material, to be sure. But the deeper Gandalf probes the more your eyebrows tend to tent up in puzzlement: the Gray Pilgrim seems to be uncovering enough of a poopstorm to keep him plenty worried for the next sixty years...not dancing with midgets at birthday parties and lighting fireworks, no? The subtlety of Sauron's return, the image of the vile spirit as a meticulous schemer skulking in the shadows is all but banished here in favor of a spell-slinging action blast-'em-up. It looks great, but I couldn't help thinking 'If Gandalf went through all this, how on Earth could he be off-guard at the beginning of LOTR?

“I have terrible news! Sauron has returned!!”

“Um...we know, dude...you threw down with him sixty years ago. Or did you forget?”'

I get that Jackson is trying...hell, is obligated to top himself in every way possible. But the more you try to fill in the gaps for the viewers the more you tend to stumble...and take the audience with you when you go down. Despite all their embellishments the Hobbit movies have done a pretty good job of sticking with the core message, but this plumbing of the ring mythology feels less like comfortable territory and more like caltrops on the road of continuity.

Final verdict? I'm a charitable sap, but when the credits do make their (long-awaited) appearance what we're left with is ultimately a pretty good film, middle chapter or otherwise - the delicate dance is done to satisfaction.  The frenetic action matches the hero's growing haste and desperation (even as certain sequences go on too long) and the script has a good rhythm, wafting back and forth between grim, playful, thrilling and thoughtful. At times everyone seems to have too much to do, but that's the nature of any second act – lots of balls in the air. Jackson is a master of the over-the-top set piece and his timing with scenes both somber and humorous is masterful. As a reader of the book it was a thrill especially to see the barrel-riding sequence (even testosteroned to a fare-thee-well) and Lake Town, here re-imagined as an frigid Elizabethan labyrinth by way of Neil Gaiman. I enjoyed the fact that, unlike in Lord of the Rings, the greatest danger is not, in fact, the journey, but rather the enormous, vengeful dragon at the end of that journey; you ain't just tossin' a trinket into a hole this time, little hobbit. And as cliff-hangers go, this one was a doozy.

But that sound you're hearing is Han Solo's carbonite-encrusted butt reminding us that we only have to wait 'til next Christmas to see this through to the end.  

Return to Rapture - Bioshock: Infinite 'Burial at Sea' (Episode One)

Booker and Elizabeth are back.

Or are they? There’s something different about the tortured ex-Pinkerton and his lovely charge. In his case it’s hard to say what – he’s just a pair of animate forearms, after all – but though his right hand bears a familiar ‘AD’ brand and his mysterious nosebleeds remain, Mr. Dewitt seems something of a changed man. Elizabeth, meanwhile has...filled out. The headstrong teenager has nudged the sex throttle all the way to va va va vooom, morphing into a Chandler-esque femme fatale, her baby blues veiled in onyx eye shadow, her sweet voice edged with smoke and moxie. The innocent girl whom we only wanted to nurture and protect has become the woman who's gonna step on our hearts with stiletto heels.

Why do these people feel at once so strange yet so tantalizingly familiar?

To anyone who played, finished, and – most crucially – understood Bioshock: Infinite, the answer to that question should be obvious. To anyone reading this expecting a review free of main-game references, turn away now – there is absolutely NO reason you should be playing Burial At Sea if you haven’t completed Infinite. And if you’re in that third category of (baffling) people who finished the game but didn’t understand the ending, do whatever the hell you want, as you’re unlikely to appreciate this DLC anyway.

It's another time, another place – Rapture, if you care to know, on December 31^st 1958. Whether it is the same undersea metropolis from the original Bioshock – or whether it is just hours away from a calamity that will doom it to madness and ruin – doesn't really matter. There's always a city, remember, just as there is always a man and lighthouse, and whether this is the same Rapture or one of a thousand million others is, for the moment anyway, inconsequential. Dewitt has (inevitably?) found himself in the same dubious line of making an honest dollar, sleuthing. A decidedly different Elizabeth is his client who hires him to find a missing girl, a job she intuitively knows will pluck at something deeper and more profound than Dewitt's wallet. “You'd do this gratis,” Elizabeth tells him, sounding cocksure. Booker follows with hardly more incentive than a come-hither glance from his winsome retainer, as suddenly, unaccountably drawn to her as he is to the case.

So begins the second DLC for Irrational Game's extraordinary Bioshock: Infinite. The first, Clash in the Clouds, was an arena-style dust-up heavy on combat and light on story. Burial at Sea is the exact opposite, a stylish dimestore vignette that features some shooting but doesn't dwell on it – call it 'story-driven violence', if you will. Gamers who loved Infinite will find a thousand reasons to swallow the price tag for the download, while those who didn't care for it but adored the original Bioshock will likely go for it anyway, as it returns you to the old stompin' grounds: the libertarian utopia of Andrew Ryan, a man so anti-government he founded a damn city on the bottom of the ocean (Seriously, how do they get enough food to feed all the people down there? That's always been my question about that place).

2013 tech has given Rapture a facelift and a new coat of paint; the modernist architecture and sleek set pieces have never looked sharper, and there are more windows and portholes than ever through which you can gape at the grandeur of the deep, from the glittering undersea skyscrapers to passing cetacea. And there's actually time to gawk, since this is a slow-burn mystery with a casual pace instead of the survival horror scramble we're familiar with. So keep Elizabeth waiting for a bit, hang out on one of the verandas, check out the shops and enjoy yourself before things get all conspiratorial. It will seem like a delirious dream for veterans of the first game.  We're used to seeing Rapture as a charnel house of insanity and excess. Here it seems a damn fine place to visit...at least at first.

After nosing around for what seems like no time at all Booker and Elizabeth find themselves hip deep in the bad stuff, forced into the bowels of Rapture where industrialist Frank Fontaine and his supporters were banished after Ryan decided he could do without them. Lucky for our heroes then that the ruined shopping mall that's been physically broken off from the rest of Rapture(!) is also where Elizabeth expects to find her missing girl. One problem: since being severed from the main city the survivors of Fontaine's little disagreement with Ryan have had nothing to do for fun but overdose on plasmids, transforming them into deranged splicers. So it's actually more like many dozens of very psychotic problems, all gunning for you. Fortunately Booker has a generous array of weapons and powers held over from Infinite to help even the odds. The hand cannon is back, as is the blunderbuss shotgun and the ubiquitous Shock Jockey among others. Elizabeth's reality-warping power is still there to provide timely cover, turrets, and robot samurai. Yeah, robot samurai – it's Bioshock fer chrissake, just go with it. And though this may be a different Elizabeth, she hasn't forgotten her oh-so-helpful habit of tossing Booker a clutch health pack or ammo clip when the going gets rough. You'll need it all as you battle your way through the various shops and hallways, a space that is probably the equivalent of one decent-sized 'area' from the main game.

Through it all veterans of Infinite should be on high alert, not for enemies but for clues. It's plain from the outset that something – everything, really – is very, very wrong about this whole scenario. If Booker and Elizabeth have never met why does she regard him with such cold indifference? What is the meaning of Booker's sudden seizure-like flashbacks and the haunting grayscale glimpses of strange people, odd reflections, other...worlds? Why can't the detective remember when he arrived in Rapture and why is he helpless to explain why the missing girl interests him so much?

The answer, or part of it, comes at the end, somewhere between two and three hours of playtime later. This is Burial at Sea Episode 1, after all; another episode is forthcoming. This first chapter sets the stage and introduces the players but it stops short of full disclosure, although not before an eleventh hour twist that, just like the end of Bioshock: Infinite, will fairly well blow your face clean off and deposit it on the other side of the room. I will stop short of spilling the beans in deference to the folks who will play this DLC and love it unconditionally – the ones who are going to understand said twist and will want to see it for themselves. My reaction was to gently lay my controller on my lap and stare off into space for a solid ten minutes while I meditated on the mind-blowing implications.

Okay, I'll give a little hint. Ready? Neither Booker nor Elizabeth are who they say they are...but they are exactly who they've always been. Whoooaaa...

It's fifteen bucks for the download, which is a tad hefty for such a lean volume, but this is quality over quantity, no question. Irrational took their time with the details: Rapture is festooned with innumerable charming details from classic Americana-inspired billboards flogging 1950's domestic technology ('Surprise her with a Fontaine Futuristics vacuum cleaner!') to the automated p.a. ads dripping with cheesy father-knows-best voice-overs. The gunplay is frenetic and colorful and the new plasmid/vigor animations are as eye-popping as ever. Troy Baker and Courtnee Draper reprise their roles as Booker and Elizabeth respectively. Both seem entirely at ease with their alter egos this time; Draper especially has a chance to stretch her vocal talents, playing Elizabeth a half-octave lower with a throaty Ava Garder whisper. Is it worth it? My answer is yes, if only to get you pumped for the next chapter in the story, which is sure to be a jaw-dropper.

Constants and variables, my friends. This is a mystery worth solving.

'Batman: Arkham Origins' - Everything Old is Young Again...and That's Just Fine

Now with 30% more brooding...

This review isn't as timely as a proper review should be; for that I apologize. And yet I do NOT apologize, for the lion's share of the reason I've been taking my damn sweet time is two-fold, one in service to myself, the other to my readers, for which I am not actually sorry in either case. As to the latter I was endeavoring to strike a balance between talking about this game and talking about this game without spoiling the surprise for anyone stupid enough to have built a life for himself instead of playing a video game from shrinkwrap to end credits in the span of a week. As to the former, I was taking my time because I wanted to. Some games deserve to be chugged. Others, no matter what your final verdict, demand slow sips and appropriate decompression.

Anyway...

There's a moment near the beginning of 'Arkham Origins' that has become the de rigueur of most open-world/big-sky type games; you know the moment I'm talking about. It comes after the obligatory prologue mission when you're set free in the sandbox and allowed to jump or fly or dive into the virtual world, going wherever the wind may take you. The developers usually strive to make your starting point someplace bracing or visually arresting so they'll elicit a 'whoa'. Then invariably they'll plop your next objective someplace far away so you're sure to pass something amazing on the way over, prompting 'whoa' number two. Sure, it's the designers screaming 'Look at this!! See how AWESOME we made this world?!', but, hell, it takes hard work to do what they do and I won't begrudge them a little showing off.

In the case of 'Origins' the folks at WB Montreal set Batman loose in a section Gotham you've never seen before, but immediately instruct his keister to turn around and fly north, which brings the Dark Knight squarely in the middle of the area that is destined to be Arkham City. The 'whoa' here is not one of visual overload or effects-driven bafflement, the sort of “WHOA!” that spews chocolate milk across the room, but rather a reverent, whispered “whhhooooooaa...” as the snow glare dissipates and the original, uncorrupted version of Old Gotham unfolds before you, unveiling a place before Hugo Strange and Protocol Ten, before the concrete walls and sniper perches went up, before everything descended into the terror and madness of Rha's al Ghul's mysterious final solution. Only later do you fully appreciate the greatly expanded scope of Gotham in this title and enjoy the added breadth through which the Caped Crusader can soar. If you're a veteran of 'Arkham City' you're likely to spend the first couple hours dumbstruck, marveling at how the developers conjured the ghost of Gotham's past and meticulously recreated the last game's playground denuded of Alcatraz decor. It's effective, it's stirring, it's positively haunting...doubly so since 'Origins' takes place on Christmas Eve.  Dickens would approve.

The past seems as good a place as any to go for the next (last?) game in the wildly, deservedly successful 'Arkham' series. Arkham City was one of the greatest console action titles I've ever played, but let's face it: they kind of burned the forest down with that one, presenting us with one of the bleakest scenarios Batman has ever faced wrapped up with just about the biggest downer of an ending imaginable, with (SPOILERS) both the Joker and the Dark Knight's lover Talia al Ghul stone dead as John Cleese's parrot. Even the DLC epilogue Harley Quinn's Revenge did little to resolve the gloom of that jarring aftermath. But with the revelations proffered by City came innumerable questions about how it all got going in the first place. It's only natural then that the next Bat-game would look to the past and explore the seeds of the insanity that is to come. That is where younger, greener Bruce Wayne comes in, taking to the streets with a head full of piss and wind and employing decidedly less finesse than we're used to seeing.

Not that subtlety is going to help the Caped Crusader this time.  Black Mask, Gotham's criminal kingpin, has escaped from prison and declared a $50 million bounty on the winged avenger's pointy-eared head, summoning a rogue's gallery of exotic assassins to each try their hand at besting the Bat. Expect to run into them at the most inopportune times, usually right as you're about to plop a bookmark on your game and retire for the night. But the hired guns are just one set of a multitude of challenges awaiting our hero: as before he, that is YOU, are called upon to tackle a healthy to-do list of non-story missions, including trashing stockpiles of illicit weapons, sleuthing out criminals Philip Marlowe-style, and dive-bombing into hordes of Gotham ne'er do wells intent on committing 'random crimes', the sort Batman can stop while still half-asleep. If this all sounds familiar...well, it should.

The gameplay is a near-clone of Arkham City, which for me does not constitute a complaint (although it has been the lynchpin of some other folk's tepid reviews). There was no need to reinvent the wheel here, not when the last game achieved such intuitive perfection with virtually every aspect of combat, stealth and open-world flexibility and movement, all wrapped up in a fun, easy control scheme to boot. With a new studio taking the reins from Rocksteady some minor tweaks were inevitable, perhaps because the new guys really could improve upon this and that, or perhaps because it is just human nature for people to want to put their own stamp on something, even when the the other guy's stamp worked just fine. Most of the 'new' ideas are just twists on tried-and-true elements from previous titles, but they include a couple of fun new gadgets (it was love at first sight for me and the Remote Claw, an auto-guided tether that creates instant perches or can smash two goons together from a distance), or new uses for old gadgets (the multi-Batarang option from Arkham Asylum is back). But there are a couple of genuinely innovative elements incorporated here in Origins for the first time, both of which fit Batman's style like a brass-knuckled glove.

The first is the greatly expanded deduction/crime-solving aspect, which was missing entirely from the first game and present only in rudimentary form in the the second. Vets of Arkham City will remember a handful of times when the Dark Knight had to analyze a crime scene before he could proceed, usually following footprints or examining bullet holes and extrapolating their trajectory back to a shooter. Origins took that and ran with it, turning what was an amusing distraction into a genuinely compelling element of the gameplay. Players will periodically be confronted with crime scenes where the dirty deed has already happened and the assailants are long gone, leaving Bats to reconstruct the events based on evidence left behind. This involves scanning the area for clues and recreating the crime a little at a time, using Detective Vision to weave a complete picture that plays out like the first three minutes of any given episode of Law and Order. By rewinding and advancing the scene and studying it from every angle you can find a previously hidden clue and use it to fill in the blanks in an appropriately Sherlock-ian manner. It's not what any gamer would consider challenging exactly, but analysis and deduction is a huge aspect of Batman's character that had heretofore been absent from the previous titles – he is the World's Greatest Detective, after all – and it's gratifying to spend some time doing what the Dark Knight does best when it doesn't involve breaking other people's bones. Kudos to the developers for having the patience to develop this idea and for making the crime scenes so deliciously ominous.

Not entirely new but heavily revamped is the experience/reward system, which now allocates XP based on your performance. You receive more points for a flawless beatdown than you would in one where you get knocked around, and are given bonuses for employing more combos and variety in your attacks. The same goes for the stealth/predator sections: clear a room without being seen and you're rewarded accordingly versus making noise and giving away your position. This system gives you an incentive to plan your attacks ahead of time and think on your feet. XP is also tied directly into item acquisition: you spend your experience ala carte instead of collecting new gadgets and upgrades as you progress, purchasing new weapons and enhancements only when you have the cheddar to do so. This is a nice twist because it allows you to tailor your arsenal based on your style of play, eschewing toys you'd barely use and mod-ing up the ones you like even more. I would have liked more freedom here: the tech tree only has so many branches, forcing you to occasionally blow an upgrade on something with little application outside the arena challenges. WB Montreal ratchets up inventory management even further by tying your equipment list into the Dark Knight System, a checklist of challenges and goals you need to complete before unlocking some of the coolest bling. Overall it's designed to make you to be the best Batman you can be, which is no less than what Batman expects of himself.

Gotham Dentistry Annex, here I come!

The visuals of Origins take some getting used to if you're a vet of the last games. From the commercials and demos before its release it certainly looked an awful lot like Arkham City, but on playing for any length of time you realize there are subtle variations in the artistic sensibilities this time around, as if the new studio decided to give the foundation a painstaking restoration, some fresh paint and a spit polish. The new sections of Gotham look decent, although not awe-inspiring compared to other virtual cityscapes of recent memory (and I would have liked some more variety in appearance of the different neighborhoods), but Old Gotham, the future super-prison, is a study in understated contrasts versus the last time we saw it. This may not be an accident, as it is supposed to be depicting a saner, more rational time in Gotham's past, a time when the veneer of the great city was starting to slough off but hadn't yet been utterly stripped by corruption and Batman's detractors. Everything looks a little better-proportioned and realistically arranged, the colors are less manic and better layered, contrasts in light and shadow are more subdued, and the streets themselves seem elegant and rich with Gilded Age filigree that is only slightly worn at the edges. This approach is evident in the character models, too: the villains haven't dressed themselves with the outlandish costumes that are their trademarks, the henchmen wear bomber jackets and three-piece suits, and Batman himself dons a utilitarian throwback to his iconic outfit, wearing thick pieces of armor fastened with heavy straps like the Teutonic knights of yore and a belt that has actual pouches (and, in what must be a nod to the last two films, a skullcap cowl with a flexible neck).

I was especially impressed with the copious detail of the environments, which are strewn with hundreds of tiny, endearing quirks from the graffiti on the walls to ashtrays with still-smoldering butts in them to the gorgeous interior level designs. The GCPD building looks and feels like a real police headquarters, as though an actual architect had to draw blueprints of the place before the digital artists could attempt to render it in three dimensions. In all, it feels far less like a comic book and more like a crime novel, and for the kind of story Origins is trying to tell that is a good thing.

Origins looks different; it also sounds different. Sure, most of the effects have been retained (the roof of the Sionis steel mill still makes the same clunk when you walk over it!), but the voices have undergone an overhaul. One of the most geek-tastic things about Asylum and City was the extensive use of the very same voice actors featured in the groundbreaking animated series, most notably Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill as Batman and the Joker respectively. Neither man reprises his role this time around. Again, barring any knee-jerk fanboy hated for anything different (the Devil you say; when does that ever happen!?), this is a good thing, too. Different game, different style, different sounds. The new Batman, played by a man with the has-to-be-fake name of Roger Craig Smith, has found a good middle ground between Conroy and Christian Bale, blending an alpha-male baritone with a deadly rasp to come away with something not unlike a young Clint Eastwood ala A Fistful of Dollars. Filling Hamill's nigh un-fillable shoes is voice acting's Hot New Thing Troy Baker, the ludicrously talented dude who gave us Booker Dewitt and Joel from The Last of Us among a growing list of plum roles. Baker's good, but he falls short of Hamill if for no other reason than he fails to make the role entirely his own; rather his genius lay in his ability to almost completely recreate Hamill's acid-laced intonations and zany, unnerving cadence, albeit with the edgier menace of a younger – and perhaps slightly saner – man.

Which begs a larger question: did WB Montreal just do what Mr. Baker did: simply copy the gold standard and repackage it? Many seem to think so, from casual gamers I've talked to numerous pro reviewers, too. They're not wrong: Origins is familiar wine trussed up in a new bottle, not from the same family perhaps but certainly made in the same style. It plays it safe in many respects – safer than they should, I think, especially when it comes to the side missions, which are very similar to the last title (and therefore very predictable) while failing to engage you as intensely as Arkham City did. I'm putting a big asterisk at the end of that statement, however, because it's clear as day to me that our Canadian friends spent the entire development process walking one hell of a tightrope with this one. They assumed the mantle of 2011's Game of the Year, a 10 out of 10 from countless gaming sites and publications, a title that is regarded with reverence by mainstream players and Bat-fanatics alike and considered the zenith of superhero games just as the Dark Knight himself is considered the zenith of 'real' superheroes. I'm left to wonder how many strained marriages, sugar crashes and bald spots are to blame for the stress of inheriting such a challenge and trying to do one better.

Having said that, I feel Origins did a good-to-very good job striking a balance between the the best of the old while earning the right to carve it's own sigil in this stellar trilogy. In spots – many, many spots – the developer's innovations border on brilliant, while some of their best tweaks and details are so subtle you're likely to miss them the first time around. My favorite from a smorgasbord of examples big and small: when you advance a certain point in the story Alfred chimes in via comm link and says “It's midnight, Master Bruce. I just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas”, to which the Dark Knight replies simply, quietly “You, too.” That's it – no extra mission, no pithy British wit, just a long-suffering manservant saying what any surrogate father would say to an adopted son he loves more than life itself. It's a microcosm of the story as a whole, which cobbles together Bat history from a variety of existing sources (Batman: Year One being the most obvious just as Arkham Asylum was inspired by the Grant Morrison book of the same name) combined with an original script that is a good deal more introspective and, dare I say it, adult than the previous titles. Unfortunately it's something of a jerky story, one that doesn't flow as naturally as the last two. Many of the plot twists seems manufactured out of thin air as an excuse to send Batman to the other side of the map, while the assassin characters, menacing though they be, are largely second-stringers in the Bat world and not as interesting as the tentpole foes we know and love but who haven't yet reached super-villain status (this would be one of the spots where I'm holding off sizable spoilers, just FYI). At times the attempts at subtlety are a hair obtuse but other times they're just right, especially around the halfway mark when tantalizing hints of Rha's al Ghul's future involvement worm their way into the narrative, suggesting the immortal megalomaniac is pulling the strings even before the incident on Arkham Island.

Origins lacks the meat of the first two titles; as a prelude to a three-game saga this is almost inevitable. As a sequel to two of the best action titles of this generation it had a herculean task to accomplish satisfying we spoiled-rotten fans. Taken on its own it is still a damned entertaining title that shines in many spots, copies most of the best elements from its predecessors, and fudges things only here and there on the rare occasion it starts to lag.  

'The Glass Teat' - Vintage Ellison, Stored Under Intense Pressure - Uncork At Own Risk - Best If Sipped Slowly

Harlan Ellison has, well...a bit of reputation.

Which is rather like saying the moon is a bit cold, Mercury is a tad hot, and the sky is a little tall. Yet even heaven-and divine hyperbole barely hints at the depth and breadth of Mr. Ellison's character, for it is a subject about which whole books might be written, BIG books, especially if you were to try to compose a well-rounded account of it. A hundred producers, a thousand writers, and more than one studio executive would each have something different to say about the big H-E, and while I couldn't guarantee all of it would be honest, I can certainly assure you it would be colorful. A man who's spent the better part of five decades speaking his mind is bound to have made enemies; a man who's spent the better part of five decades speaking his mind and writing so goddamn well along the way has, I have little doubt, earned the respect of those enemies. And, oh yeah, he's picked up a die-hard fan or two, Yours Truly among them.

Mr. Ellison is an old man now. He writes still and he still writes well. And while he has for a long while now been called a curmudgeon (and every variant thereof, see 'grouch', 'sourpuss', or the adjective form 'crotchety', 'grumpy', 'cranky', and 'sour'), it's important to remember that Mr. Ellison was and still is a man who believes in fairness and justice, courage and principles, in standing up for what's right, doing the good thing when the good thing might get you killed, and in never backing down. Hell, he even believes in love. More than four decades ago Harlan was a contributor to the Los Angeles Free Press, an alternative newspaper with a bit of leftist slant, which was a dangerous thing to have in Nixon's America. In the little fiefdom of space allotted to him each week he wrote about love and justice and courage, and he did it with his characteristic wit and vitriol jammed into lightspeed overdrive, setting the page afire with his serrated prose. Hell of thing to say about a column about television, huh? The Glass Teat is the first of two collections of writings from Ellison's tenure at the L.A. Freep. The omnibus form, and its companion volume The Other Glass Teat, have been available in print only sporadically since their original publications many years apart.

The reason Ellison's Teats have been so hard to come by is a tale in and of itself, one Mr. Ellison details in no fewer than three forwards to the new edition presently available. I won't spoil all the scurrilous details, but suffice to say our man Harlan's polemics in the pages of the Press caught the attention of the Nixon White House, and in particular Mr. Nixon's Brylcreemed Nazi-cum-attack dog Spiro Agnew, a man as close to a real-life Bradbury-ian fireman as ever this country has seen. Seems ol' Aggy didn't take kindly to Mr. Ellison's tone on a multitude of topics, the tipping point being what the VP at the time saw as a personal attack on him, part of a larger, more sinister plot to subvert the country's leadership and incite anarchy from coast to coast. Agnew (the author contends) launched a private little war against Ellison, blackballing his work from the shelves of major booksellers and imposing massive pressure on his publisher and editors to bring him to heel and, when Ellison refused to capitulate, to shun him entirely. The Other Glass Teat was blocked from widespread distribution for years, while the first Glass Teat was returned from retailers one unopened box at a time, smeared as 'dangerous' literature by the administration's propaganda machine. Ellison spent years doing what he does best: fighting back with every ounce of will in his diminutive frame. It was years before the first volume saw the light of day sans complications, and wasn't until the early 80's that an unmolested version of The Other Glass Teat returned to print.

For all our problems now, it is hard for most of us who weren't there at the time to imagine an America where such a thing could happen.  It still shocks, the idea that such blatant, naked censorship could ever be tolerated by a free society, much less that the leaders elected to protect that society could commit such atrocious perfidy against the first amendment. But that is exactly the sort of thing Ellison writes about in these columns: the culture of fear and paranoia that ruled those hairy times, the disparity of education (and opinion) between the coasts and middle America, the hypocrisy of the talking heads in Washington, the gross inequities of a country still mired in hateful racism and open class warfare, the shifting definition of 'patriotism', the intrusion of religion and nebulous morality in matters of public policy, and, through it all, how the still-emerging medium of television acted as a mirror reflecting every aspect of the vast, complex, polymorphic American culture. Anyone who's ever listened to parents or older siblings talk about the lunacy of the sixties will understand a little better after reading The Glass Teat why those times were considered at once so hopeful and yet so dark, so thrilling, terrifying, unprecedented and always, always so confusing.

The Glass Teat is a snapshot of a wildly different age that is so very much like ours; two years of the most tumultuous decade in U.S. history dipped in amber and preserved for future generations, warts and all. Ellison didn't just watch it happen; he lived it: he raged during the Chicago riots, he cried as the body count climbed in Vietnam, he marched for the rights of migrant workers in California, he shook his head in utter disgust at the downward spiral of minorities being treated like burdens by an uncaring state, and for a man simplistically branded a 'science-fiction writer' he had a decidedly mixed opinion about the moon landing, too. He wrote about it all, reacting as only someone who was there watching history happen could react: truthfully. He was only in his thirties at the time, a lad from Ohio moved to Hollywood to write fer th' talkin' pitchers, yet to read his words from week to week is to watch a man grow older before your very eyes – older, more weary, more wary, and yet, trite as it sounds, more hopeful. For Ellison never loses his capacity to find little islands candid joy in his oceans of acid, nor does he forget the beautiful things from his experience, strewn there amongst the heartache and worry like pearls hidden in jagged clamshells. It is what makes the collection a well-rounded chronicle and not just a collection of bitter screeds.

Ah, I'm forgetting the bit about TV, aren't I? Yes, The Glass Teat is all about TV, or 'tv' in lower-case as Ellison insists (that and 'god' never receive proper noun status from him). From early October 1968 to late November 1969 (first collection) Ellison plied the airwaves, critiquing new and established shows including sitcoms, dramas, news programs, specials, and variety hours. Fair warning for the younger readers: there's a considerable generation gap here. You won't recognize half the shows Ellison cites, and even your knowledge of the ones that still live in the annals of pop culture might be thready. They were current at the time of course, but as now so then, there were countless shows there one night and suddenly gone again, mentioned once then dispersed into the mists of broadcast obscurity. Would you expect a present day critic to pay homage to Drive or Freaky Links? Never heard of 'em? Exactly. But with Ellison as your guide you'll get a crash course in late 60's 101 and come away with a better understanding of the boob tube milieu of the day. For example, I'd always heard of the Smothers Brothers and their Comedy Hour, but I had no idea it caused such a headache at the White House; seems the show was flagged countless times for inciting dissent, promoting fringe notions, encouraging counter-culture, empowering the damn longhairs and joshing the conservative base, who never took kindly to being joshed. And here I thought they'd been a couple of wholesome folk heroes with never a bad vibe for anyone.

Ellison never flinches, but he also never misses a chance to play fair. He calls out the news media for sensationalizing campus unrest (and ignoring the source of the youthful angst), but also praises daring investigative pieces for blowing the lid off U.S. chemical warfare and the My Lai massacre; he lambastes dramas and comedies that employ grotesque stereotypes of blacks and Hispanics even as he takes care to cite the bold, well-written shows that dare to depict America as it is, not America as Nixon wanted it to be; and he savages the old men who write women as giggling, pointy-breasted caricatures, then singles out those actresses from a new generation of empowered performers who have real substance. Occasionally he even acts the oracle, predicting the success of new, untested shows that we know now would go on to become television legend, such as 'All in the Family'.

Ellison is an angry man; no one would deny that, least of all him. In The Glass Teat he does nothing less than invite each and every one of us to be angry with him, to fight city hall, to join him in the vanguard as he rages at the dying of the light, and most importantly to ask questions. Nixon is dead and Agnew is manning the back door in Hell, but the spirit of Ellison's fury is as relevant and undiminished today as it was when the ribbon on his typewriter was still warm. The Glass Teat is a living document, a Philosopher's Stone that applies to every generation of America, a stiff drink and a seat belt for the turbulence ahead.

And damn, can that man write. 

Stellar Filmmaking - 'Gravity'

Gesundheit!

At some point I'll see Gravity again, and when I do I'm going to bring a stopwatch. I'll want one because next time I watch I plan on timing the length of director Alfonso Cuaron's trademark long takes, those meandering, uninterrupted shots in which he seems to film forever before finally cutting, giving his audience (and his actors) a much deserved breath. He uses these shots to spectacular effect in 'Gravity', even more so than in his terrific 2006 Children of Men, and though I know he must employ a palette of digital sorcery to extend and enhance those scenes you can't help but be utterly entranced by them. Entranced and fooled, as the scenes stretch on with such seamlessness, such extraordinary verisimilitude, you not only forget you're watching a work of fiction, you practically forget you're sitting in front of a screen at all.

The opening scene of Gravity must, I think, clock in at over three minutes, and that's a guess that errs on the conservative side. We're treated to an unbroken track-over of an astonishingly bright and blue planet Earth before dipping heron-like down to an orbiting space shuttle, there to join NASA astronauts hard at work repairing a telescope – we get so close we can read the decals on the sides of their instruments – and then, after a ride-along with Sandra Bullock so intimate it feels like an intrusion, swing back up and rejoin the grander cosmos, the little humans and their little machines suddenly a smudge on the lens. There are a hundred ways such a shot would come across as gimmicky and a hundred directors who would butcher any attempt to do it justice, but Cuaron can do these protracted cuts because he seems to understand how the human eye – and by extension, the mind – really works. The eye, being lazy, is naturally drawn first to blank space and then toward a single point on which it can focus. As soon as we have that focal point, like, say, an astronaut, the blank space is essentially forgotten while the eye instinctively tracks towards first one nearby object, then another, until the foreground is filled with action and the eye has to really go to work to discern everything that's happening. All the while the space behind the action turns merrily on, banking up or down, wheeling crazily clockwise or widdershins, or even turning 180 degrees around so the Earth is gone and the vastness of space is suddenly before us while we're none the wiser. By the time Curano pulls out again he's taken us on a roller coaster ride that we weren't entirely aware we were on in the first place and we find ourselves inexplicably breathless. The shot ends and the chorus goes up around the theater: “How the hell did he DO that?!”

It's a cool trick, to be sure, and a perfect device for the subject of this film, for what must it be like to float through space if not equal parts dreamy freefall and worst bungee jump ever, a melange of inspiration and terror with a dollop of humility throw in? Gravity gives us plenty to time to chew that over as Bullock and George Clooney play astronauts faced with the mother of all worse case scenarios, a disaster in space that leaves them cut off from Earth and flailing like moths in an updraft, a shared tether the only thing keeping them from being swallowed by the infinite void. (Note: in the interest of preserving the mood of the film I'm going to play this review pretty vague. I could deconstruct this film as I often do others, but to do so would be to limit the experience, if not diminish it outright. The trailers for Gravity had the right approach – showing less is definitely more – so I'll adhere to that philosophy speak in broad strokes. Trust me, it's worth it.)

Clooney is Matt Kowalski, spacewalker extraordinaire, a man so cool he stores rib eyes in his underwear; a dude for whom the unfathomable majesty of the unknown is comparable but not necessarily better than dollar beer night at the rib shack. Bullock is Ryan Stone, newbie genius, sent up to personally install a humdinger of a modification to the Hubble, her own design. When we meet her she's finding the view a little hard to handle, probably because her lunch is trying to come back up for a looksee of its own. It is, in every respect but the space thing, as routine a day at the office as one could possibly imagine. It borders on dull. Then the debris pelts their shuttle like a sideways hailstorm from Hell, a barrage of superheated shrapnel that perforates anything it touches. In the blink of any eye it's all gone; Stone and Kowalski are alone, grasping helplessly at cold vacuum. The circumstances are high-tech, but thematically we're talking that ancient, atavistic fear of being lost someplace – anyplace – where no one can hear you and no one can help you. And it is horrifying to behold. The disaster is so sudden, so merciless and indiscriminate we feel rage, though there's nothing to rage against, no antagonist toward which we can direct our hate; it's space, it is random and brutal. Like mission control we know something terrible has happened but we sit there in the theater as helpless as the commanders on the ground, desperate to reach out for Kowalski and Stone, to give them just that one tiny nudge that would bump them back on course.  But like any disaster seen from afar we are unable to do anything but watch, impotent, while uncaring space smacks them around like ragdolls. What follows is a survival story that essentially tosses your emotions in a sack and beats them like eggs in a pinata.

This might be a bad time...but do you wanna know how I got these scars?

Clooney and Bullock are the only actors in the entire film; there is no parallel narrative on the ground, no cigarettes-and-clipboards powwows back at Huston, no furrowed-browed Ed Harris declaring it ain't gonna happen on his watch (though Mr. Harris does lend his voice for radio chatter; his particular vintage of gruff, deliberate Jersey-speak is impossible to miss). Like their alter egos, Clooney and Bullock must carry the day alone together. What a terrific challenge for the actors: imagine having a perfectly pleasant conversation with a co-worker someplace nice on pleasant day; then imagine having to quite suddenly depend on that person for your life, having to cling to, clutch and manhandle the other to safety like you're playing the most invasive trust-building exercise ever. It's what Kowalski and Stone must do if they're to survive, though they'd been trading puke jokes and awkwardly flirting scant minutes before.

Moments of calm intercede between moments of abject panic, stunning contrasts that mirror space itself: the peace of stark silence versus the desolation all around them; the beauty of Earth so tantalizingly close versus the horror and doom that awaits them should they stray too far in one direction, slip from each other's grasp or even breathe too fast. Indeed, of all the unimaginable demands put on Bullock's Dr. Stone perhaps the most impossible from our perspective is Kowalski's ardent command that she control her breathing, take shallow drags from her dwindling air (“Remember,” Kowalski says of her oxygen supply “Wine, not beer. Sip, don't gulp.”) and rein in her panic long enough to...what? What exactly passes for a solution in a situation like this?? Whatever it is, matters of survival cannot be tackled passively. The script employs a clever trick to keep the danger ever-present and escalating; Kowalski and Stone are not out of danger once the debris has passed and are, in fact, in the path of an even worse calamity than the one that precipitated the disaster in the first place. Speed and decisive action is essential to their staying alive, but how can you move fast in a frictionless environment? How can you evaluate your options when there simply are none? Again, a hundred bad answers depending on who's got the camera. But Cuaron never succumbs to the Michael Bay explosions-solve-everything approach, or the J.J. Abrams technodazzle-the-audience technique, nor does he employ even a drop of Spielberg-ian sap. Instead he tackles these quandaries with all the relish of Hitchcock, elongating the suspense as he elongates his takes, making us grasp and tumble with our wayward astronauts and leaving us so on edge our back teeth hurt later.

It goes without saying Gravity is technically dazzling, the visuals spotless (space is a forgiving medium for visual effects, as anyone who worked the X-wings in Star Wars can tell you). For all the complexity of his big takes Cuaron shows admirable restraint in what he chooses to show, eschewing the loaves-and-fishes camera impossibilities and the refusing to hop on the shaky-quaky AuthentoCam bandwagon like so many movies this year (lookin' at you, Man of Steel). Instead we get clean pans, elegant set-ups and if not simplicity then at least the appearance of simplicity.

The best thing you'll ever see coming thru an airlock...

Finally, Gravity, in case you were wondering, is all about Bullock, who is simply magnificent. It is no accident that I choose to end my review on her. Too often we laud an actor by saying “Oh, she made it look easy!' Forget that. If any actress made this scenario look easy I'd be calling her a fraud and demanding her exile from the Screen Actor's Guild. Anyway, saying an actor makes something look easy is a gross oversimplification and a backhanded compliment to boot – it implies the average screen gawker has insight of the process that went into creating the role. No, in portraying Ryan Stone, Sandra Bullock makes it look hard. The physicality of her performance, the panic, the forced restraint, the savage gulping of air, the subtle shifts along a loaded emotional spectrum, the crumbling of her brave front, the teeter-tottering between despair and mule-headed tenacity, the sheer stamina Bullock exhibits during those ultra-long shots – all of it – is truly inspiring. It must have been hard. Hell, I know it was hard because I had to watch her do it from the comfort of a heated theater for two hours and I felt like I needed a Valium and nap afterwards. So yes, Ms. Bullock made it look hard, daunting, crushing, impossible; it is the greatest compliment I can give. When you look at her and say “Damn, I'm glad that's not me up there” you aren't just referring to her character up in space – you're referring to the actress trussed up in those rigs and harnesses, dangling in those 360-degree camera controlled green screen chambers, acting her heart out to absolutely nothing while the stopwatch keeps counting and Cuaron films on, demanding “More, more!” I feel like, as with Plato and the allegory of the cave, we have finally met the real Sandra Bullock, not the pale shade we've seen flickering on the wall in crap rom-coms and two-star dreck with which she's paid her dues in Hollywood for twenty-plus years. If she does not score at least a nomination come Oscar time, I will declare some serious shenanigans. 

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog

“You are NOT entitled to your opinion; you are entitled to your INFORMED opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”   - Harlan Ellison

Blogs are funny.

It wasn't until I started my own blog that I realized how many truly shitty, godawful ones there are out there. There are also a lot of good-to-very good blogs that are staffed by shitty writers, 'writers' being a term I use largely because it's sunny outside and I'm feeling magnanimous.

Maybe it's my background as a writer that gives me a slight advantage over Joe and Jane Everyblog, or that I love good journalism and have good journalists in my family, or maybe it's simply that I hail from a generation that still reveres certain precepts about expressing one's views. More than anything I think it is my holy reverence for the written word, combined with the fact that I refuse to waste time (mine and my reader's) writing about something – anything – to which I haven't devoted at least 20 minutes and two cups of joe. Now that I am a participant in the sundry arts of the online missive as well as a spectator I find I've grown hyperaware of the volume and caliber of pustulant dreck out there. And while I'm content to let the majority of this sludge wash over me with nary a mark to show for it I sometimes find myself nursing a dull ache from even having to look at it in passing.

But, hey, it's someone's opinion, right?? Can't raise a stink because it's someone's honest-to-gawd opinion, and everyone's entitled to their opinion, aren't they?? 'IMHO', right, man???

Look at the quote at the top of this piece. Think about it. Now read it again. Ellison's words are as true today as the day they were were spoken; they'll continue to be true long after the dust of our bones has scattered into the four winds. Americans – of whose number I count myself – worship at the alter of Sacred Opinion. Opinion is unassailable and beyond reproach. As an American I say 'you bet your ass'. Wouldn't have it any other way. But the digital age has taken that great tenet worldwide, and has given voice to every semi-erect mammal who thinks he or she can string a sentence together (and tons who can't, but blog anyway). It's a great thing, having a voice. So great, in fact, we're now loathe to insert any corollaries or qualifiers into the holy writ that says a person's opinion is as valid as the anyone else's.

But, seriously, have you ever tried reading half this shit? I read it every single day. Blog hubs like ZergNet can be a source of tremendous entertainment, trivia, humor and yes, even the occasional real scoop; but just as often it more resembles sitting alone in a shopping mall food court, eardrums irised to maximum aperture, and finding yourself beset by the dumbest crap to be passed over the vocal chords of homo sapiens. That you're reading it on a computer screen is a mercy to the ears even as it is double-down torture for eyes.

Let me submit to you a sacrificial lamb to which I will note from the outset I have no personal animosity. The morning I penned this piece I happened on a blog post that was gunnels-full of things that pissed me off. It was a compilation of witless tripe and lazy, slipshod conventions I'd seen many times in many other blogs, but this particular gem just happened to showcase an ideal cross-section of things I and every informed writer should find deplorable.

The subject of the post, ostensibly, was the forthcoming sequel to Avatar. It addressed the rumor that Arnold Schwarzenegger may somehow be a part of it, a suggestion not wholly without merit, as James Cameron is known for employing a loose corps of actors with whom he's had prior success (Michael Biehn and Lance Henriksen are two other examples). Let's start with the header: “Can The Terminator Save Avatar 2?”.

Right out the gate we have a title that is designed solely to catch the eye and inflame the gonads; it's one thing to refer to Schwarzenegger the actor by his most recognized role (after all, it's still in his contract that only he, and not any other cyborg in the franchise, may be called a 'terminator'), but it's another thing entirely to suggest that (a) Avatar in any way requires saving and (b) that the level of Avatar's peril is such that no less of sci-fi/action legend like the former Mr. Universe is needed to implement its salvation.

At $2.7 billion dollars, Avatar stands tall as the highest grossing film of all time. It was released in over 100 countries, screened at over 14,000 theaters worldwide. It won three Oscars for nine nominations and is widely regarded as the preeminent and best 3D film of modern cinema.

Well, gee, I don't believe a sequel would require 'saving', do you? What gives, fellow scribe?

But wait! Silly me, I forgot to read the second line of the post, typically where one might expect to find a link or citation of where this Schwarzenegger rumor was heard or some hint as to the origin of this scintillating nugget of fanboy intel. Alas, there was none to be found in the second line, or the third, or any line thereafter. Rather the author chose to stray from what I can only assume was his purpose in making the post in the first place – discussing the casting rumor – to wax poetic on the tepid merits of Schwarzenegger in general and to soapbox his opinion of the first Avatar film. Guess what? He didn't like it. And he spends the rest of his post visiting (re-visiting you can be sure, as this doesn't strike me as his first offering on the subject) why Avatar was “overhyped”, “unoriginal” and “a waste of money.”

Illumination! The 'saving' Avatar 2 apparently requires is not an 11th-hour rescue from the production dustbin, or a down-to-the-studs remodeling of the script, but rather a miracle from On High (or Austria, same diff) that will prove the salvation of the franchise in the milieu of this writer's noggin. On the basis that he considered the first film lame, he, like the African missionaries or the Jehovah's Witnesses, believes the franchise's immortal soul can only be 'saved' by accepting Conan as it's lord and savior.

So for a single sentence addressing the 'news' of Schwarzenegger's possible casting we get a post totaling 333 words (and two enormous, glossy photos) heaping more retreaded gripes about Avatar the First. The blogger eschews original thoughts in favor of still another Pocahontas comparison, sparing a line to savage James Cameron for his 'clever' (quotes mine, word the author's) invention of the term 'unobtainium' for the precious material coveted by the humans, implying that Cameron – the writer, director, executive producer and partial funder of the film – was not only uninspired but also lazy. Do I need to actually point to the irony of using the endlessly recycled Pocahontas piss-'n-moan parallel to call someone out on being unoriginal?

You didn't like Avatar? Fine. Lots of people didn't. It weren't no Shakespeare. Hell, from a narrative standpoint it wasn't even on par with Cameron's first Terminator. Yeah, it was a contrived story that resembled Pocahontas and Dances with Wolves and every other tale about an indigenous people warring against technologically superior/morally bankrupt imperialists. I'm not here to defend the film, although as a sidebar I would simply say that it appears trite because it's a classic narrative theme – sticking it to the Man – and you'll never realize how frighteningly easy it is to stray into Avatar territory until you try writing a story about an alien planet (happened to me on more than one occasion; I'd write 3 or 4 pages of notes and suddenly say 'Shit, this sounds too much like Avatar').

But for God's sake, can you at least attempt to have an original thought, a fresh opinion, something new that might have occurred to you between 2009 and now? How about citing the ways either of those other films was better, how their execution of the same story was superior to Cameron's, or how other elements besides writing like photography, pacing, or acting made them more enjoyable? Maybe you could consult the archives of some film critics to see that they had to say about all three films and isolate some factors the professionals felt stood out as examples of superior filmmaking?

This Schwarzenegger rumor – and it is only a rumor, and not a very good one – was simply this individual's gauze-thin excuse to unleash still more rehashed vitriol on a film that clearly wasn't worth his time to begin with. It's bitching for bitching's sake, and that, gentle readers, it what so much blogging is: it's not writing, it's not journalism, and it's not the free exchange of informed opinion. It's complaining; it is something that EVERYONE loves to do, but now their pissant gripes and ill-conceived whining is laid bare for all of us to accidentally click on at 8:15 in the morning.

Oh, but I haven't gotten to the best part.

No, the best part was the bookends of this masterful post, and how they illustrate a feckless inconsistency so harebrained and obvious I have to wonder if the author even proofread the piece before hitting the 'submit' button. In paragraph one he tells us he likes Schwarzenegger “as much as the average person” but that he “...doesn't have the acting prowess of...most other actors...” Fair enough, good sir, although I'd suggest that if they constitute the majority of moviegoers, 'average' people must like Schwarzenegger very much, given his history of box office gold.

The author then waits until paragraph three before dropping this bomb: “I have no intention of seeing Avatars 2, 3 and 4.” Wait for it...we're still fine. I have no problem with folks declaring their intention to NOT see a movie, so long as you stick to your guns, pointedly avoid seeing it, and not dare to criticize it after the fact anyway; many people did that while protesting Tropic Thunder – I considered it cretinous to the extreme. But the author continues: “Would [Schwarzenegger] be enough to get me to see Avatar 2? Yes, he might just be enough.”

Wellity, wellity, wellity! We've seen the light and it's about as purewhite as a bedsheet in a youth hostel. To recap: after luring us in with the prospect of a juicy sequel rumor only to ambush us with tired derisions of an “overhyped”, “unoriginal” Avatar that was a “waste of money” and proclaiming his intentions to never see an Avatar 2, the author concedes that the presence of Arnold Schwarzenegger, a dude to whom he admits a torpid liking despite his lack of acting prowess compared to “most other actors”, would be sufficient incentive for him to abandon his prior dictum and indeed darken the door of his local cineplex, surrender some greenbacks and three hours of his time, and actually see Avatar 2. High praise for Schwarzenegger from the author's corner, to be sure, especially since the former governor of California boasts exactly zero movies in his filmography that would EVER be considered overhyped, unoriginal or a waste of money.

People all over the world are going to read that, and by tomorrow they'll be reading another ten thousand posts just like it. Yeah, blogging is funny.

As I said, this particular post from this particular author, who may well have penned many and more perfectly good posts on many and more perfectly good topics, is just a sacrificial lamb, an effigy for my angst. It is an example of the kind of shiftless, unthinking, contrary garbage out there that enjoys the same amount of playtime as a thoughtful, constructive piece that doesn't contradict itself in less than 400 words.

And before you go thinking that it is I who am guilty of the ambush, leading you on with this diatribe only to flare my own neckflaps and hold myself up as the acme of bloggers, fear not. I've been known to shoot from the hip too, however I try to make sure the gun's loaded and the safety is off before I pull the trigger. Today I woke up ugly and this particular piece happened to set me off, dredging some long-simmering discontent with what I see is a grossly misplaced sense of entitlement owing to the digital age, that anyone and everyone can routinely take a hatchet and slop bucket to the landscape of informed discourse, smear their awful ignor-feces across a broad sweep of it, and defend themselves by saying “Hey, it's just my opinion!”

Look, I may not agree with what you say, but if I'm going to defend to the death your right to say it I'd like it to be worth my time. Think before you write. Do some homework. Cite your sources. Think for yourself and don't be that guy who makes the Pocahontas comparison as if you were the first to think of it. Your opinion is your right; don't turn it into a joke. Most of all, refuse to be ignorant.

By the way, additional information for this piece was found on www.boxofficemojo.com and www.imdb.com. Further references available by request.