July Mishaps

Hey folks, I know it's been a while since we've updated our stuff (And since we've been consistent with our content) and I'm here to let you know why! So July has been a "fun" month, for a number of reasons. Primarily, my computer died. Well, is still dead. The principle production computer for Final Show Films, to be precise, is having technical issues that are preventing us from being able to use it at all - It's in the shop right now getting looked at.

In addition to this, Uknits and Pooky had to leave town due to a death in the family, then Pooky got hospitalized due to blood clotting in her leg, and I was doing a show for the majority of the month which messed up my scheduling, and ShadowChorus is still unable to stream most days with his current job schedule.

It's unfortunate that this all piled up in the same month, but we're still dedicated to producing content - we've just run into a wide variety of road blocks.

We're working on ways to continue producing content (We're setting up a secondary editing computer with what funds we have now) and we're  trying to get back on schedule with our content production, but my computer still being AWOL makes a lot of that difficult. 

However, we are still here, and we are still doing our best - We apologize thoroughly for this July, and will get back to it as soon as possible.

Thanks,

"Senstaku"

Review: Warcraft - The Beginning

Warcraft is a high fantasy movie seeking to adapt the story of the First War, I.E. The first Warcraft Game, to the big screen. Warts and all, it's a remarkably faithful adaptation of that story, showcasing the initial invasion via the Dark Portal, the battling back and forth between the Humans and Orcs, the betrayal of Medivh and of Gul'Dan, and what ends up being ultimately a victory on behalf of the Orcs over the Human Alliance of Stormwind. Now, if you're initially confused by all of those proper nouns don't worry – I'm going to assume you're intelligent enough to wait for an explanation, which is something apparently a lot of reviewers didn't do.

So, why am I doing this review? I'm not a movie reviewer, I'm a game reviewer, and an entertainer, but some folks were asking my opinion on the matter and I figured "What the hell? Gotta start somewhere". So, let's do introductions. I'm Senstaku, and in addition to being executive producer here at Final Show Films, I'm also a film junkie / student, writer, actor, gamer, and critical thinker – that last part's going to be the important one. I've been various roles in the performance industry for the past thirteen years, getting my start on stage and eventually starting my own company – Final Show Films. I tell you all of this, so you can relate to my perspective.

Now, Warcraft has received an interesting breakdown of reviewers. Looking at Metacritic, and noting that this is not -all- of the reviews, only the ones picked up by Metacritic, the Warcraft movie has received the following stats: From Critical Review sources, 3 positive, 17 mixed, 19 negative, with the three positive not coming out until after it's stateside release. On the flip side, User Reviewes, it's got 176 positive, 16 mixed, 6 negative. So, why the massive difference in opinion? Well, let's start with mine, and then we'll go on to tackle some of those critiques.

We'll do this the same way we do the Natch 20 Review and tackle tabletop games; First impressions: I thought it was a really good action movie. Note the language I said there; Action Movie. The story is a bit 'meh', but that's mostly because it's copying almost word for word with a few notable adaptations from the story of the original game; Blizzard, as much as I enjoy their work, have never been the best writers and it shows when their script is lifted from game to movie.

They rely heavily on genre tropes, exaggeration, and if you've seen one high fantasy story you've seen them all roughly. There are exceptions, of course – the intentional showcasing of both sides of the conflict is a fresh addition that Blizzard threw in, adding a morally grey area to the conflict rather than the classic "Humans good, non-humans bad" sentimentality other genre archetypes stick to. The story, while generic, is still tight and consistent – something that can be taken for granted in today's movie industry. The action scenes are good, the CGI is very good – I don't think anything ever made me think these people are actually just on a green screen throughout the film – and the music is standard, but top notch in that standardization – Like the very best cafe mocha you'll get at a chain coffee store.

Things I liked: Seeing Warcraft realized on the big screen would have been enough for most Warcraft fans, but I really appreciated the attention to detail direct Duncan Jones took in bringing this world to life; As you watch the film, it's very easy to believe that this is all part of a bigger, breathing, world that we're only getting to see a sliver of – that's important for me, I like to know that the world I'm seeing is inhabited, and exists outside of the narrow framework of the movie. Travis Fimmel, who plays Lothar, and Toby Kebbel, who plays Durotan, put in some fine work as actors – they sell their roles complety, and are very much 'into it'. With the exception of Lothar's son there really aren't any flat performances amongst the cast.

Things I disliked: This is not a perfect movie, I will never say that it is. The screenwriters took far fewer chances than they needed to, for fear of alienating the core Warcraft fans in the audience, while making needless changes that neither served or hindered the plot for no real reason. Robert Kazinsky's Orgrim Doomhammer in this film is a member of the Frostwolf Clan instead of, as he was in the games, the Blackrock clan. Now, functionally it doesn't matter which clan he's in for the purposes of the film, the actions can proceed the exact same way whether or not he is in one or the other, so the only purpose I can think of for this change is the assumption that the audience would get confused if he wasn't 'On the good guy's side', which shows a bit of contempt for the audience I haven't seen since some of the critical reviews of the movie itself.

So, let's move on to those reviews. As I said previously, the audience reviews are overwhelmingly positive while the critical reviews are overwhelmingly negative. So, I've taken a small sampling of these mixed to negative reviews and we're going to go over a few of their points. The three that I've chosen are Moviebob's Warcraft review, by Bob Chipman, which can be found at his website moviebob.blogspot.com, the New York Times' review by Manohla Dargis, which can be found on their website at www.nytimes.com, and the Indiewire review by David Ehrlich, which can be found at www.indiewire.com. Let's start with MovieBob.

Now, Bob is a longtime movie reviewer and someone whose opinion I respect, though I don't always agree with him. Let's see what he has to say about this. His review opens up with "...WARCRAFT is a colossal, monumental, staggering disaster" Having seen the movie, I'm not sure it warrants the hyperbole, but let's keep going. His first major bit of critisism – which comes four paragraphs into his review, is "The characters are so arch the actors can’t move around inside them." - So, what does he mean by 'characteres are so arch'? Well, I'm assuming he's meaning archetypal because the word arch in this phrasing doesn't actually mean anything for film. He's saying that the characters are basically standing archetypes of 'The good king', the 'renegade knight', the 'bumbling wizard', the 'all-powerful evil wizard', etc. And to a certain extent he's correct.

In addition to Lothar, the Commander of Stormwind's army, and Durotan the Frostwolf chieften, we have Ben Foster's Medivh, the Guardian of Tirisfall – I.E. The Guardian of the World, Ben Schnetzer's Khadgar, a mage who was to replace the Guardian at one point but forsook his oaths and fled, Dominic Cooper's Llane Wrynn, the Goodly King of Stormwind who really just wants everyone to work together, Daniel Wu's Gul'dan, the evil warlock corrupting the Orcish forces with Fel magic, Clancy Brown's Blackhand, the Warchief of the Horde and Gul'dan's effective puppet, and Paula Patton's Garona, a half-orc who serves as a pet for Gul'dan, then escapes, and serves as an informant / ally for the Humans through most of the movie.

Many of these characters fill an archetypal role; The goodly king, etc. Etc., and I don't see that as a bad thing. Warcraft isn't trying to say anything new or insightful; Even the 'both sides aren't necessarily evil' hook of the original game isn't a new concept, it's simply trying to tell these concepts in an entertaining manner – which, to my mind, it succeeds at doing. Archetypal characters are an easy way to shorthand details about their personality to the audience, giving more time to the film than it would have had if they needed to extensively flesh out the backstory of each and every one of these characters. In fact, making the film easier to digest. Also, as this is an adaptation I'm obliged to point out that these characters have always been archetypal, for that very purpose. You know who else is an Archetypal character? Mad Max. He's the Lone Wanderer archetype, someone who comes from nothing and heads to nothing, while helping out other people who have a more extensive backstory along the way. I noticed nobody complaining about that with Fury Road.

Moving on, Moviebob's next big criticism is about the plot itself. "WARCRAFT is, technically, a video-game adaptation… except somebody decided that instead of adapting a story from the games or even setting a new story in the world of the games, the place to start was retelling in pedantic BEAUTIFUL MIND-level detail - the setup of the original game" Start of the original game was as the Orcs came through the Dark Portal and began attacking humans. The first half an hour of the movie takes place before that. The remaining 93 minutes covers the entire first game. I'm not sure why setting up the story to follow is a bad thing, but's he's technically correct in that it starts there.

So, there are other aspects of Moviebob's review that I'd like to tackle but as I said earlier I have a couple of these to go through so let's move on to the Indiewire review real quick. "Warcraft is a once-in-a-generation disaster" – Really? We're doing this again? Let's skip forward a bit, see if there's material I haven't already covered.

Ok, five paragraphs of hyperbolic put downs and a hasty telling of the history of the film itself in, and we find this juicy critique: "Orcs, for those unfamiliar with the videogame franchise, are a species of steroidal homunculi warriors who live by a savage code that seems incongruous with their posh British accents." First, homunculi is 'a very small human or humanoid creature' – Nothing about the Orcs is very small. They are humanoid, but they're a good two feet taller and broader than any human in the film. If you're going to use fancy words in your review, at least know what they mean. Secondly, none of them had British accents. At least, they didn't in the version I saw – maybe this guy saw a poorly dubbed release? They had gruff baseline Americana or Native American voices, if you're being racist.

"The orcs are a supposedly smart species, but they have yet to invent t-shirts nor can they seem to figure out why every world they inhabit seems to start dying after their obviously evil wizard leader", ok, this guy seems to be writing the review entirely to take the piss out of the movie, rather than to review. It's given away by the language; Being pedantic and referencing a lack of t-shirts in a fantasy movie, as if T-shirts are the epitome of intellectual thought, and missing basic facts of the movie – For instance, he says that Lothar frees Garona from Gul'Dan when it's actually Durotan who does, which the movie states out loud twice, and shows quite clearly happening. I'm not sure how he mistook the giant Orc for the lithe human.

Moving on to the New York Times review – "Probably the best way to experience "Warcraft"... is stoned." Oh come on!

Seriously, reviewers, I understand you all went to school for writing and know that the key to a good opening paragraph is to 'hook' your audience in with a powerful statement, and sure, opening with 'this is garbage trash garbage' certainly seems like a strong statement, but it also immediately explains your stance while removing all potential context and reasoning from your argument, being combative from the get-go and turning off a swath of potential readers. Don't do that.

Anyways, the NYTimes review at least has criticisms by the fourth paragraph. "“Warcraft” is such an obvious bid at brand expansion, which may be why no one bothered with an intelligible story." Now, this is a bit of criticism I have seen previously and as I watched the movie I struggled to put paid to the thought. Was this story unintelligible? I understood it perfectly fine, but I also already knew the story so I asked my friend Pooky, who was with us when we saw it, if she understood it – She didn't know the story going in, she's only ever played the tabletop RPG Warcraft not the games – and she was able to follow it cleanly through. The story isn't so complex as to get lost in it – Orcs are invading, humans don't want it, they fight, they lose, Orcs continue invading. The character drama involved is a bit more complex, but never so much so that I or Pooky got lost.

Which actually brings me back to Moviebob's review to close this out – In the middle of his review, Bob says this: "it’s still pretty astonishing to realize that once the movie is done introducing every location, race, faction, region, sect etc that someone seriously thought we needed two full hours to understand a plot that boils down to: “The Green Stuff Is Bad.”" - To start off with, I think this is the worst thing any critic can ever do to any movie – To be so deconstructive as to reduce the story of a movie to a phrase. The reason I think it's the worst thing you can do as a critic, is because it's something you can do with ANYTHING and it means just as much elsewhere.

 

I can easily say the message Captain America: Civil War says is "Good guys sometimes have to break the law". It's technically true, but no less disingenuous. Or to take Fury Road and say "Max drives across the desert and then drives back." Also technically true, but bullshit if you've seen Fury Road.

In the end, I felt the movie was decent – Not spectacular, not groundbreaking, but way the hell better than a 'monumental disaster'. If you are a fan of Warcraft, you'll enjoy it. If you're not, you'll probably still be able to have a good time. The IMDB page for Warcraft has a 7.8/10 from 47,779 users at time of writing, which is pretty much what I'd give it if I were to give it a numerical score. It's not the best movie out there, but it is the best video game movie I've ever seen.

The major takeaway for this, though, is that if you want to see more Video Game movies made with love from the people that love the games they're based on, go support this movie. Tell people about it, and go see it yourself, because the only thing Hollywood producers listen to is the Box office numbers. If it sells well, the trend will follow. If it doesn't, it'll crash and burn, or get handed off to Uwe Boll and we'll never get it back.

"Senstaku"

5 Lessons learned from Ride to Hell: Retribution

So, this past Saturday we started a new show on Twitch called Senstaku's Artisanal Critique, a show where I play bad games and try to derive at least 5 cogent thoughts that can be used as lessons moving forward in the realm of video game development, and boy was it tough limiting it to 5. So, without further ado, here are our 5 Lessons learned from Ride to Hell: Retribution.

A bit of a content warning: If you are sensitive to talking about sexual violence towards women, you may wish to skip this blog post. The game has certain sexual violence themes in it that I address in the list below, not going into any detail, but it is still a potential trigger for those among you who are sensitive to that. Please, if it will upset you, don't read any further.

#1 - World Consistency

So the first lesson we've got here is about the consistency of the world you're creating. As a game dev, you have a near unlimited amount of ability to craft the world your game takes place in, and the most crucial aspect of that is to make sure that your world - No matter what it is - is consistent internally.

This means; If you're making a game set on Earth in the modern world, you need to make sure the world functions like Earth does. I.E; Motorcycles don't float. When an object impacts another object, it makes sounds. Ride to Hell: Retribution fails to do this, and more; There are several times when riding on your motorcycle that you notice the bikes do not actually make contact with the ground, they don't even try to keep up the pretense. So, either these bikers have found some mythical noclip technology - Or the game devs fell asleep.

#2 - Story Consistency

The first lesson dealt with the world, this one deals with your story; Let me pose you a hypothetical question. If you were a member of the military stationed at a base, would you know the ranking members of that base at least by name or face, if not on a personal level? Certainly. That's not unreasonable. Now, if you also had a brother whom you cared about enough to chase after when he runs off, you'd show some sort of reaction when his life is threatened correct? Of course you would. And finally, if two people leave a location on two bikes, it stands to reason they both would still have those bikes upon arriving elsewhere, barring a crash, right? Yes.

Since I bothered to list out those three things, you can be sure that Ride to Hell's devs forgot about them. At the beginning of the game you are shown in a military base, you are addressed directly, and then you apparently leave. Later when you return to that very same base, nobody apparently recognizes you and you recognize nobody.  Also, your brother gets a machete put to his throat and you have no emotional reaction, and when you and your brother are trying to flee from some gang members, your brother's bike suddenly dematerializes and is never spoken of again.

#3 - Gameplay Consistency 

So, in this first one we're talking a lot about consistency but that's mostly because the devs of Ride to Hell don't know what the meaning of that word is. The opening of the game showcases elements of the gameplay; A turret section, a quick time event fist fight with a character named Anvil, and then you jumping over a Helicopter and not dying. In this section, it is entirely possible to die - very quickly and for no apparent reason - and to have to start it all over again. That's not how you do intros.

Also, the events in the intro appear to be a 'flash forward' with bits selected apropos of nothing from the game itself, however the scenes depicted never actually happen. For instance, it shows us having a fist fight with Anvil but in game we chase him down on a motorcycle and gun him down from a distance. That's not to mention the fact that sometimes the mechanics of the game do not work as intended - I.E. power sliding under an object but the game still registering that you hit it instead, and holes in the ground that can only be used once as an environmental kill - Because one body apparently fills up the empty space below it, never to be used again.

#4 - Learn how to Sex

First of all, just because you want your game to be mature doesn't mean you have to put sex scenes in it. It's not necessary. That being said, if you're going to put them in, at least learn what Sex is. At the bare minimum, you should know that you don't have sex through denim. the Ride to Hell devs have a lot to answer for, but this is one of the more blatantly obvious missteps. Whenever your "Hero" gets the "Reward" of Sex from a pretty lady, they spend a half a minute grinding against each other while fully clothed, behaving as if they are having the best sex of their life. Speaking of rewards...

#5 - Sex is not a Reward.

Finally, the most critical issue I have with this game is that it teaches the player that sex is a reward you are owed for doing any amount of kindness to a woman. Any amount, from rescuing her from a potential abuser, to murdering her ex husband - and there is an awful lot of the former in this game. No matter how much the woman in question was telling the previous guy 'No', all you've got to do is beat the shit out of him, and she's all of a sudden ready to ride you like a prized stallion, without so much as a "How are you" or "My name is".

Sexual violence towards anyone is abhorrent, a perversion of what is normally a natural physical experience meant to bring pleasure that instead brings both physical and emotional pain, and more often than we'd like, death. It should not be treated as frivolously as this game treats it, nor should your "reward" for stopping it be the very thing that was stopped. This is at the bottom of the list, because there is nothing worse than this particular aspect of this game.

There was so much wrong with this game that it took me longer than it should have to type this up, and the more I talk about this game the more I go from just being irritated by it to actively loathing it. Just writing this has made me hate the game more than I did previously. So, game devs, and anyone who ever wants to design pretty much anything - These rules apply to film, books, or any other media that requires you to construct a world and story - please learn from those that came before you, and remember - Sex is never a reward owed to anyone. I can't believe I have to spell that out.

"Senstaku"

Schedule Update

This will be a quick update; We're changing our schedule!

If you look at the 'Our Schedule' tab, you'll now find a google calendar that has our stream listings, and will have other things added as we need it. You'll also notice less entries than we had previously on the calendar. During this month's staff meeting, we discussed the fact that for almost a year we've been pushing ourselves to stream every day of the week and, with a few exceptions, we managed it. However, the situations in our lives are changing - Most of us here at Final Show Films are expectant parents, and we've been pushing ourselves very hard.

So, with that in mind, we're pulling back slightly on our stream schedules - We're still producing content every day of the week, but we're removing two of the streams from our schedule - specifically, Tuesday and Thursday. This gives us a little more time to rest during the week so we don't burn ourselves out, also giving us more breathing room for editing and producing other content aside from our podcast, streams, and Let's Plays. 

Speaking of new content, the Saturday Stream which has thusfar been just another Senstaku's Shenaniganery is changing from a normal Twitch stream to a Critique stream. We're going to be playing games that are generally poorly received, and taking an even closer look at it than before. And to start it all off, we're going back to the beginning - the very first game I ever streamed, Ride to Hell: Retribution.

That's all for now, we'll see you all next time.

"Senstaku"