Prior to this year, it’s no exaggeration to say that the only game I’d played in full since about 2010 was the original BioShock. Not really sure why I stepped away from gaming - probably just some usual combination of life getting in the way and dodgy prioritisation. Then, like many others, I became acquainted with a boatload of surplus indoor time this year, and chose to find my way back with an N3DS and a Switch. Turns out I really missed it. I’ve been slowly playing through a variety of titles I missed the first time around, as well as various others I’ve stumbled across along the way.
In compiling this list, I have learned that my gameplay times are crushingly slow, people have extremely strong opinions about the Paper Mario series and actually it turns out a really poorly specced PC was holding me back from gaming all this time. Would love to hear what others thought of this selection of games, especially those who hold dissenting opinions about my DNF list (I expect plenty in support of Xenoblade, lol). Be warned this is all through the lens of someone who is plainly just thrilled to be back in the fold and has zero concerns spending way more time than necessary to complete games! I suspect I have more patience and rosier-tinted glasses as compared to the average weathered gamer, so would also be interested to hear how my experiences stack up in the wider gaming context.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds Total play time: ~30 hours
Zelda factored little in my adolescent years, and apart from renting OoT a handful of times for the 64 (and spamming bombs in SSB) this is pretty much the only Zelda experience I've had. It's kind of a blessing and a curse, from what I can tell: I have none of the hangups but equally none of the emotional connection that often seems to accompany the franchise. I really only played this because it had been given to me and came highly recommended.
But this was about as good as introductions get - sure, it helped that this was essentially the first console game I'd played in its entirety in over a decade, but the game is clearly exceptional by all accounts. It seems I love a good gameplay mechanic where it doesn't tip into gimmickry, and the wall merge system I found novel, baffling and satisfying without ever being too frustrating.
I obviously can't speak to the nostalgia aspect of it, but coming to it fresh was a charming experience. It's pretty hard not to be at least casually familiar with aspects of Zelda lore, and I liked that there weren't any lengthy cutscenes (looking at you, Ōkami) or tedious tutorials to slog through. The storytelling is a little naff but not distractingly so, and for me the pretty predictable ending was offset by the fun final boss battle. And you sure do feel good solving some of those puzzles.
I'm not yet game to branch out into the open world of BotW, but I'm pretty glad my maiden Zelda foray was this one instead. More games ought to allow one to become a painting.
Highlights: big bomb flower lols, boss battles that were satisfying / a great relief to complete
Ōkami HD Total play time: 50:57:29 Completion %: 50/100 stray beads
I remember seeing promo material for this game back when it was first released and thinking the brush mechanic was dope - a hype disproportionate to the amount of PS2 I owned (none). So regardless I was probably always going to be predisposed to like this game.
This was the first game I finished on the Switch and I enjoyed it immensely. The art style is killer and helps it look great for a game of its age into the bargain, the brush mechanic and the puzzle element it introduces feels integrated rather than gimmicky, and the storytelling is rich and humorous. I know others have commented that the game is overly long, but I enjoyed being in the world enough that it never felt a slog. (This coming from someone who has played 100+ hours of Picross but…)
I will agree that the combat system was pretty whatever, though. I am a pretty rubbish gamer by conventional skill standards and even I found this game wildly easy, but I think that also speaks to my enjoyment of the game as an all-round narrative experience rather than pure mechanics. An additional dishonorable mention for having to fight Orochi no less than three times?! Sure, going back in time was a pretty neat narrative arc and I could forgive repeating the fight in that context, but by the Ark I was sure they had to be taking the piss.
Unlocking the additional skins gives this game some replay potential for me, especially the photorealistic wolf, laughable only in hindsight. The existence of about twice as many stray beads as I collected also means I may dip in and out in future, but mostly I have minimal desire to bring my dragon-head-whacking count up to 48. Nevertheless, a pretty inimitable experience, even if it took me a decade and a half to get there.
Highlights: the dang art style, drawing an emoji face for my demon mask and seeing it show up again in Sei-an City
Paper Mario: Sticker Star Total play time: ~30 hours
I can understand the criticism of this game: the combat system sucks and makes traversing through the world often not very fun, the characters are unmemorable, the necessity of having certain stickers to win certain fights is infuriating, the plot is generic, the lack of levelling up is nonsense. None of that stopped me from enjoying this game, though! Take that! As always, this was probably helped immensely by the nostalgia I carry for the original Paper Mario on the 64 and the fact I hadn’t really had any other Mario games to compare it to for a long time.
The super vitriolic abuse it seems to cop online feels a bit disproportionate but. From poking around the series, it looks like one that people are particularly vocal about, with the only correct answer being “TTYD is the best game in the series and all other future titles will be held against this specific benchmark”. Honestly I’m just glad I played this game without the knowledge of what the gaming community thought of it, because I don’t think this is a genuinely bad game.
Kirby: Planet Robobot Total play time: ~20 hours Completion %: 81%
Evidently I rather enjoy the cute-thing-in-a-mech-suit genre, between this game and Gato Roboto. But I have very fond memories of playing The Crystal Shards and am a Kirby main (lol) in SSB so I could probably be coerced into playing literally any Kirby game. I don’t have too much to say about this game; I think anyone familiar with the franchise will understand pretty much how it plays, but the mech suit mechanic is a heap of fun, with copy abilities possible both in and out of the suit.
There were some little details that I thought were quite fun: the collection of stickers that you can use to decorate your mech was bonus entertainment, the variety of gameplay styles in the final boss battle, the remote control Kirby in the casino levels. It looks great, it’s charming, and as mentioned, I like an idiosyncratic feature that isn’t gimmicky, and I think the mech suit ticks that box. I picked up Extra Epic Yarn off the back of this, too - it just looks so dang sweet.
What the Golf? Total play time: 08:24:56 Completion %: 97% Total strokes: 11656 Games I subsequently want to play: Superhot
If there ever was a time for escapism, the middle of a pandemic seems to be a pretty good candidate, and I am certainly guilty of using this game as a bit of a feel-good salve. But what the golf, it was a grand old time, and I think we can all use the laughs it provides. I bought the game off the expectations set by the trailer and was happily not disappointed.
This is a pretty straightforward game by all standards: simple overworld, three levels per stage, emphasis on silly in "silly physics". It feels like the schtick should get old pretty fast, but there's enough sly nods and references (and straight-up gameplay duplication) to keep it fresh and consistently funny. Caveat: pun disdainers avoid.
It's the perfect game to dip in and out of - none of the stages are particularly long, and while some of the pacrown levels can be a bit frustrating, you're not at all forced to complete them in linear fashion. Nevertheless, I played this game in pretty lengthy stints, so the format isn't a barrier in that sense either.
I know this is a fairly new game to the Switch, but it's been out on PC for a while it seems. I bought it only having seen it in the eShop, so if there was a hype train, it did not make a stop at my station.
Highlights: the Superhot levels, WHAT?, the constant anticipation of what a button press would do in a new level
Ori and the Blind Forest Total play time: 14:44:46 Completion %: 96% Total deaths: 488
It’s something of a classic, and evidently with good reason - I think I would have played this game for its art alone, but of course its reputation has since come to precede it. It runs really smoothly on the Switch, and the platforming is tight and enjoyable. Not sure how common it is in the wider world, but I really liked the save mechanic - as a chronic saver, I rather appreciated being responsible for setting my own save points, especially when it came to some of the more challenging sequences. I expected to struggle a lot with this one but I found the challenges fair, even the escape sequences, much as I may have wanted to burn down the Ginso Tree on the first few attempts.
Feels like most people who’ve had an eye on it have played it by now, and there’s plenty of reviews out there for those on the fence to decide either way, but personally I’m very glad to have played and finished it. I’ve since been told that both the sequel and Hollow Knight eclipse this game, though I do have some idea of what to expect from both. Now if Will of the Wisps could just get a Switch port...
Mosaic Total play time: ~3 hours
I’d been wanting to pick this game up because a friend of mine had a hand in its creation, but I kind of could not have picked a worse time for it. Without spoiling anything, the premise of the game is being stuck in a very boring corporate dystopia, and a lot of the gameplay revolves around the repetition of your daily routines. Obviously this kind of experience can already be a little harrowing at the best of times, but in the middle of a global pandemic where time feels completely immaterial it was often a bit much.
Certainly the gameplay won’t be for everyone; there is a lot of walking around in this game, and you can interact with various depressing billboards and your smartphone in ways you think might have some kind of a purpose but ultimately formally contribute nothing to your game - so in that sense, it’s kind of a bang on expression of its premise, though its messaging can be a little on the nose at times.
If you’re into the visual style and can get down with the premise, this is a unique gaming experience which is both lovely and deeply unsettling at times. If you’re at all curious, the website gives a fairly clear mission statement of the game.
Gato Roboto Total play time: 05:23:28 Completion %: 78%
Short and sweet, this one, and looks and feels great. I’d never really picked myself as one for metroidvanias, but this game came onto my radar after Ori and I was looking for a shorter, punchy game in a similar style, and this delivered on expectations.
As mentioned, I’m kind of crap at games, so the difficulty for this one felt about right for me. There were a handful of times the boss battles threatened to tip into frustration, but mostly it was just my timing being off (second stage of the mouse battle in the heater core comes to mind) as well as in the earlier parts of the game where I had just been lax in picking up healthkits.
I’ve seen some complaints about it being too much of a Metroid clone, but you can’t get down with that criticism if you’ve never played Metroid *taps head*. Its short length seems to be another frequent comment, but if you’re going in with expectations suitably managed then I think there’s not too much to fault otherwise. But of course this is coming from someone who has played basically no metroidvanias in their life lol.
And finally, my DNF list:

Katamari Damacy; abandoned after ~4 hours Heartbreaking for this to be on my list, but I am part of the small percentage that gets enormously motion sick from this game. A huge shame, because it’s one of those games I’ve wanted to play for literal decades now - I pushed through the first couple of levels but I just can’t make it work for me. The theme song has nevertheless taken up plenty of real estate in my brain.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3D; abandoned after ~2 hours This is probably a contentious choice to have on a list like this, though I clearly haven’t really given this a fair shake either. I think it’s probably partly to do with the learning curve of its rather involved format? Thinking of swapping this version out for the Switch one instead in the hope that might make it a bit more accessible to me.
Where the Water Tastes Like Wine; abandoned after ~2 hours The premise of this game is great, and I like its rather non-standard approach in defining what a game should look like, but it just plays so goddamn slow. I found travelling across the country extremely frustrating - none of the options were really any good - and it’s unfortunate because that makes up far and away the largest part of what you spend your time doing in this game. The voice acting is also great, but it never takes anywhere near as much time to scan the dialogue as it does to read it aloud, so most of the acting gets lost behind an A button mash anyway. I want to love this game, but I just never find myself wanting to reach for it.
Child of Light; abandoned after ~2 hours Call me petty, but I just could not manage to get past this game’s unbelievably naff rhyming dialogue. It made me want to skip through all the cutscenes and gave me no desire to attempt to follow the story. I thought the battle mechanic was quite interesting and enjoyable - not sure if this is common to other games in the genre, but it was new to me - but between the dialogue and an art style I didn’t really care for, this one’s been left by the wayside.
Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap; abandoned after 01:48 I played the original Wonder Boy on a Sega Master back in the day and figured a remake of another game in the series might be fun, but I couldn’t really get into this one. Felt like it was going to be a bit grindy for my tastes. I do think it looks great and switching between the art styles is cool, but I don’t think I’ll be doing much more than dipping in and out, if even that.

Why I dislike the last jedi (Spoiler warning I guess?)

An Honest to God, No Bullsh*t New Vegas Review (Base Game)

My lockdown review of Hit and Run: I now have the Krusty Seal of approval, so 2020 isn't a total loss.

Lockdown boredom got me to replay this, I dug out my old PS2, bought a Scart to HDMI adaptor, and had to spend £20 buying a new copy because my parents ditched my old games.
I won't lie the nostalgia was strong, I found my old saves from 15 years ago when I was 9, and that alone was a rush.
I started from the beginning and got 100%. My overall review is this game is phenomenal. I was obsessed with the Simpsons as a kid so i'm not sure how far you'll enjoy it if you weren't, but this is one of the few licensed games from the era that's actually a love letter to the original property and not just a cheap shovel ware cash grab (looking at you Simpsons road rage.)
I'm not an avid gamer, I dabble in and out, but honestly I think there's something to be said for games that have a 15-30 hour completion time. Every level is in my opinion a near perfect size. There are no loading screens except when entering buildings allowing you to roam freely across the map, hopping in and out of cars exploring at your own leisure. Likewise the number of collectables seems balanced. There's enough that it's a satisfying challenge, but not so many it becomes a chore. Furthermore every collectable leads you to a new gag, a new interesting part of the map, a clever reference, which makes it a very engaging and enjoyable search. A far cry from Ubisoft's collect 1000x feathers from random corners of the map. The only criticism I have is that collecting money becomes a grind. Personally I kept reloading level 7 mission 3 over and over, climbing up the power plant and kicking every box twice. It only took 30 minutes but it was tedious. Otherwise it was a genuine pleasure to explore every inch of the game and see the dedication the writers and designers had put in. I made a point of never looking at the wiki, which i'm glad for because I got a real sense of accomplishment after. (lockdown life is sad okay, get off my back). Although apparently I missed half the special cars, which is a shame.
The gameplay I found extremely fun. The cars move with a decent amount of weight, handling, power, and speed. It is quite fun when you get good enough to slip through the traffic without hitting anything while going 5 times the speed. Likewise it's also very fun to climb in the Snow Plow and hit things very hard. Smashy Smashy. Most of the missions are very similar, either collect items, race, time trial, collect stuff on foot, or destroy a rival car. But I think between rotating out the different missions, the flavour of the story, and breaking for collectable searches helped keep things from getting stale.
Difficulty. Throughout the whole game all I could think is "I beat this age 9, I should be able to beat it today". All I can say is 9 year old me had patience and thumbs that aren't rusty screws. Most of the levels took me at least two or three replays, but there were a good number that took more. Certain levels passed tricky, challenging, and testing and became utterly rage inducing. Apu's "Never trust a snake", and Homer's "Alien Autopsy part 3" had me struggling, but after an hour or so on each i'd walk away, come back fresh the next day and nail it with muscle memory and a fresh head. However Bart's "Set to Kill" had me on the edge of hurling the controller at the TV every time. Maybe I suck, but it seemed like you needed to memorise the course like the back of your hand, have a perfect run, and then be lucky. "What's that, armoured truck right in front of the laser stand you need". Restart. "Oncoming traffic outside the burns casino?" Restart. "Traffic at the intersection?". Restart. I'm in lockdown and bored out my mind, but usually i'd have better things to do with four hours of my time. (No exaggeration, I suck).
Soundtrack. Shout out to the track "Legitimate business man" for teleporting me back a decade and a half with 2 seconds of jazzy tunes. Who knew going through a car wash video game could be so emotional? Overall I found there was enough voice tracks and soundtrack songs that they didn't become overly repetitive unless I had to replay the level a dozen times.
Random culture notes: obviously the game is two decades old, which makes it prime fodder that "yikes I don't remember that cheap women/gay/trans joke" era.
LBGT+ wise I didn't see anything bad, or anything at all really. But i'll take no representation over bad representation any day, so yaaaaay??
Apu get's a whole level to himself. It does bring back the whitewashing and racist jokes, no way to sugar coat it really. Stereotypes galore. But also I found it just kinda weird generally that he of all the characters in the Simpsons he got own level, I remember him being prominent in the show but not on a par with the main family.
Genderwise Homer and Bart get two levels a piece, Apu one, Lisa and Marge one. I feel the overwhelming disproportion of male/female characters and their prominence is baggage carried over from the show. I suppose the entire show was supposed to be a satire of 80s middle class America. I'm still pretty depressed when I think Marge is rarely if ever shown to have a life outside of the family. Which is reflected in the game since almost all her missions are just running household chores.
Overall the nostalgia was strong, but also the gameplay is fun, the references and gags are funny, the level design is tight, and it was actually enormous fun to 100%. The plot and characters are also engaging and very funny at times. For me it was a game that reaffirmed what gaming can be, and i've resolved to get back into video gaming as a whole. Also I got that Krusty seal of approval, so 2020 isn't a total waste.

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Disney, please release the 3-hour 8 min initial The Rise of Skywalker cut as an Extended Edition! [SPOILERS]

I'm new at Reddit and looking back this post became way longer than expected, so hopefully worth the read, my apologies if not. But for sure, there is no doubt a longer version of the movie, and I for one truly believe it would make a major difference in how TROS is perceived, as I’m getting really tired of these, still continuous, media references on how ‘bad’ this movie was. I happen to be one of the many, but less vocal, people that really loved The Rise of Skywalker. Yes, now that it has been analyzed and discussed to death, that ancient Sith knife and how it outlined the death star took some liberties, but it certainly didn’t ruin it for me. The Millenium Falcon light skips were unexpected compared to previous known capabilities, but certainly nothing compared to R2-D2 suddenly flying in the prequels. Palpatine and the thousands of star destroyers definitely could have been explained better, but if I had a real concern it would probably be the pacing, and the lack of downtime between the main characters, which is why I feel an extended version would really enhance the experience and make me and a lot of people even happier. Yes, I realize it was a big thing a couple of months ago with the “secret JJ cut”, but this humble opinion post is more of an equal attempt to argue for why an extended edition would make perfect sense, and equally why the so called general opinion of this epic movie is misplaced, and why it deserves another chance to show its merits. Although I have little doubt that it will become a classic on its own in due time, I firmly believe a longer version would appease some of its more vocal critics, reduce some of its perceived problems, and display its full potential.
Let me start by first saying that I don't believe for a second that there are secret versions, that George Lucas has made his own version, or that there was political, behind the scenes, conspiracies against JJ Abrams by Disney. I know that most of you do not believe that either, but I just wanted to emphasize that this is not that kind of a nutcase viewpoint. What I am 100% sure of though is that an initial 3 hours and 8-minute cut exists. How do I know? Well, the chief editor, MaryAnn Branson, said so in an interview, and she should know. She also said that the movie was never going to be that long, so it could be that this cut is filled with stuff that doesn't make sense or has lots of place holders, but I really don't think so. They obviously filmed so much that a first rough cut, just to get an everything-of-interest-in-there version of the film to start editing, would have been much longer than that. No, this is something they worked on, that made narrative sense, and was a solid initial take but too long, and my feeling is that they felt it was too long from a commercial perspective, as opposed to an artistic. This cut may, for lack of a better word, be 'duff' in that it is too slow in some areas or too repetitive or have other problems and it is most probably also missing many VFX shots. But it would seem to me that in between the 142 min we got, and the 188 min they started from, there is, with some goodwill from Disney, a great extended edition waiting to be released. We also know that John Williams originally produced 135 minutes of score, which indicates a considerably longer movie than 142 minutes compared to previous movies. According to co-writer Chris Terrio it was initially such an extensive scope that it was proposed to split the film in two parts. Admittedly, this discussion probably occurred at a story telling phase before actual filming commenced, but it nonetheless indicates a substantially more ambitious approach based on the written material.
JJ Abrams has said in interviews that he does not want to do it, as once he is finished with a film he is done. I can understand that. He has edited and created a film into an artistic experience with a certain pacing and feel, and it must be exhausting to go back and open that door again. Ending a trilogy is hard in itself but ending a triple trilogy must be close to directorial suicide, and although I would argue the critique is partly a media phenomenon, it clearly didn’t generate the uniformly positive response he was hoping for, or used to from The Force Awakens. Interviews with JJ have also indicated that he was aware of the challenge and that it would take a miracle to unify the fandom after The Last Jedi. The Lord of the Rings trilogy, for example, had some very solid books that were universally acclaimed to rest on. The Marvel Cinematic Universe had even more movies to conclude than Star Wars, but in this case Endgame was not only an ensemble movie, with many of the characters already having had their own stories examined and developed separately, it was also split into two parts with each of the parts over three hours long. In this perspective it is less surprising that many felt The Rise of Skywalker felt a bit rushed, which, together with some plot devices being underdeveloped, seems to be the most common concerns with TROS. There is probably little debate that, if TROS had another year of development, some of the pure story telling devices might have looked different and would have had time for another review.
But more surprising, compared to for example Endgame and Return of the King, is that it was relatively short. A movie of this magnitude, wrapping up something this epic, generational and emotional, is like two movies in one. It must have a story line that allows it to stand on its own, but also allow for some time to say goodbye to the characters and wrap up their individual stories. This was done very well in both Endgame and ROTK, and although TROS displayed fine craftsmanship it could certainly have spent a bit more time here and there. Going from adventure to adventure keeps the audience busy, but the ending becomes more abrupt if you feel there was little to no personal time with the characters. Scenes like Rey building her lightsaber, or Kylo Ren meeting the oracle, does perhaps little for the story itself and certainly pulls down the pacing while making the movie longer (and a lot of viewers most likely don't care or can't stand too long movies), but this is where an extended edition comes in. With an extended edition many of these concerns will fade and feel less significant. Agreed, many times extended editions are pointless and really does not add anything. However, those times it does, such as in Lord of the Rings, which Extended Edition movies were 4 hours long, it truly added nuance and was very gratifying to fans, not to mention sold another truck load of DVDs. An extended edition would generate money for Disney, would renew interest in the canon, and dare I say it would show the fandom that Disney do care.
Let's face it, in contrast to common disdain in certain parts of the fandom, Disney has been a tremendously positive incubator for Star Wars in general. The Force Awakens gave it a renaissance that makes it hard to even remember what it was before, unless we only look at the 40+ year old’s that remember the original trilogy from their childhood, trying to convince their kids that the old movies are much more watchable and fun than Ironman and Captain America. A hard sell I would say. Today's youngsters want to be Rey and Kylo Ren, but Obi-Wan or Count Dooku not so much. Solo was perfectly fine and Rouge One gorgeous, an instant classic. And it is not only the movies. Mandalorian is obviously wonderful, which was almost a no-brainer given Jon Favreau’s Midas' touch, and visiting Galaxy's Edge is a fantastic, surreal experience, and it sure was great to get another season of Clone Wars.
Nonetheless, TROS did have less than stellar reviews, especially compared to the others. Again, personally I loved it, but it comes back to how expectations have been stratospheric on such an epic wrap-up. I'm arguing that TROS suffered more in the general opinion than anything else by being too short, and that an extended edition could help eradicate some of the issues people had. Everybody knew it would always be a challenge to end this, so no matter what, some people would be disappointed. I get it, some things didn't turn out the way expected, or some things were a bit cheesy. I feel the same way. For example, I've always felt that when scenes or monsters occur in muddy darkness, like most of the end battle and the interactions with Palpatine, it is because VFX was either rushed or on a budget or both, and there certainly were an element of that, and I think that is fair. From all interviews I've read, with Brandon, Abrams, the firing of Trevorrow, there is no doubt it was rushed, they had little to no pre-vis and they even did editing on the set in the end. Yes, concerns we have, but guess what, with the possible exception of A New Hope, I've had these concerns and wished some of it was done differently in every each one of these movies. It is of course not rational, as very few things in life are perfect, but more of an expression of how much some of us care about these movies and want them exactly the way we want them. A religion indeed.
I'm going to go on a bit of a tangent here, so bear with me, but there is also the elephant in the room, with the dilemma of the trilogy’s middle movie having a slightly rebellious director. Rian Johnson decide to somewhat take the story line astray, and in effect 'back-loaded' the third act with multiple story items to clean up. This is not to say the movie was poorly done or bad in any way, and I know many, especially film critics, thought it introduced interesting twists and was cinematographically beautiful. I think we can all agree on that. However, and this is where it becomes divisive, I would argue that that some of these ‘twists’ were not well thought out in terms of its consequences, and did not follow the original intent and therefore introduced massive damage control for the third act. It is not retroactive continuity if you have an overall story arc, even though not fully fleshed out, and the middle part suddenly gives mixed signals that seems to indicate a sharp turn in direction, which the third act then has to spend time clarifying. We've all heard how this sequel trilogy, just like the original, was intended to be written and formed by each part's director. However, there are also numerous interviews with Kennedy, Abrams, etc that explains that there were story points and milestones that had to be met. Quoted from Kennedy interview: “Colin was at a huge disadvantage not having been a part of Force Awakens and in part of those early conversations because we had a general sense of where the story was going,” Kennedy further said, “Like any development process, it was only in the development that we’re looking at a first draft and realizing that it was perhaps heading in a direction that many of us didn’t feel was really quite where we wanted it to go.” There were similar thoughts expressed after TLJ, which is likely why Disney didn't want the same happening to the final movie which had to wrap it all together. If Kylo Ren for example always was meant to have a redemption arc, it is not hard to understand why Disney felt hesitation continuing with Treverrow, similar to the way Rian Johnson likely did in his movie with some elements (that Disney/LucasFilm for some inconceivable reason let slide). We all know the debate, but I have to go there again with two of the most astonishing examples, not to argue a preference per se (although I have one) but more to show the challenge JJ faced after TLJ.
First, it is true that Luke were a already on the isolated island at the end of The Force Awakens, but that didn't mean he felt the whole Jedi had to end or that he would refuse to come to his sister's aid. And it certainly didn't mean that Luke Skywalker had turned into a person that would even consider killing his sister's child, who was put in his trust, and in his sleep. To me personally, these are unforgivable character assassinations of my childhood hero, and I think JJ felt the same. Listening to the TFA commentary track, when Rey and Luke looks at each other and she reaches him his old lightsaber, Abrams tells us how he loves the expressions on these two actors, and I quote "Luke looks at her and knows what it means, to accept this plea, and to come back to help". How Disney could allow Johnson to instead then let Luke turn his back on her in this moment, rejecting the plea for help in favor of a hermit life, and making the lightsaber handover a slap-stick comedy moment by having him nonchalantly throw it away, is beyond me. No wonder Mark Hamill continued to have strong reservations about this movie in all the interviews he made. He knew his character, and that is not how his character would have behaved.
Second, from a pure logical and story telling aspect it was another cheap trick to circumvent audience expectations by making Rey's parents nobodies. What is the point in that? Johnson have explained it with an interest in exploring what would be the worst that could happen to Rey, comparing it to Luke's father being a dark lord, and in an effort to misguidedly democratizing the force, coming to the conclusion that it would be if her parents were nobodies. Rian, let me explain this for you; Rey is sad that she was left behind and is seeking a belonging, while at the same time desperately wanting to know why. I don't think she for a second cared if her parents were the King and Queen of Naboo or nobodies. Just like George Lucas said himself, these stories rhyme, and I think it was beautiful that she experienced a similar thing as Luke in that her lineage was the worst possible in terms of evil. This is obviously something that is much worse than being a nobody, and it is ridiculous to think that someone like Rey would be disappointed in her parents for not being special or prominent. But regardless, let's just marinate on the term "The Skywalker Saga" and what that indicates. Did Johnson really think that anyone deep down would think it was satisfactory that the original trilogy was about Luke Skywalker, the prequels about Anakin Skywalker and then the sequels about a nobody scavenger girl that gets to enjoy the company, completely unrelated to the bigger picture, of the Skywalkers? It didn't occur for one moment that she would either be or somehow end up a Skywalker, and that this would make more sense? This story was admittedly about Kylo Ren/Ben as well, but it was much more so about Rey. The craftsmanship is wonderful, but this is a director who is obsessed by deflecting expectations, and that desperately wanted to introduce his own take and a clever twist. I'm sorry, but that is just egregious, self-pompous, and utter disrespect for the task given. It is actually easier to come up with plot vehicles that throws everybody off than it is to explain an expected story line in an engaging way. Not everything has to be a detective story. Well, this all became a bit of a rant, but my point is, TROS not only had a story to wrap up, it also had things to clear up that were left confusing from TLJ. Not necessarily retconning, but clear ups, as nothing in TROS really goes against what occurred in TLJ. I really love most of TLJ, and especially now that I can watch it knowing that some of the more questionable choices have been cleared up, but it also fair to say that I like it despite Johnson’s choices, and not because of them. (The casino excursion is still a fast-forward, again sorry, but I like to see one movie at a time. Rose was absolutely great, and I look forward to see Kelly Marie Tran in another movie where she is properly cast, and not shoe-horned in by a director just trying to create his own mark.)
You can't please everybody, but with TROS being the end of the saga, many die-hard fans expressed their feelings and it would seem a fair amount of them in wrath. As I myself loved it, it was initially interesting to read these reactions, and what it was that upset them that I had missed. Yes, this is admittedly not Shakespeare nor Ingmar Bergman, or as Harrison Ford himself said "It aint that kind of movie", but beyond all the usual trolls, and the unfortunate swath of people that somehow are attracted to trolls and their negative spew, there were arguably logical, reasonable, and well informed fans as well that were critical. It was as if many almost seemed to go through the classical stages of grief. They were in denial (where is the real JJ cut?), angry (this is all Kathleen Kennedy's fault), bargaining (Disney will erase the sequels from canon), depression (just going to pretend there were only six movies) and acceptance. Acceptance will take longer for these fans, similar to the way it did with the prequels. I believe an extended edition could not only help appease this part of the fandom, but a longer version now that the story is already known could actually allow them to enjoy it with their guard down, and ease the acceptance that their beloved story indeed has come to an end.
So were people in general really more disappointed with TRoS than, for example, ROTJ, which capped off the original trilogy back in its days? I took the liberty of looking into this. Starting with Rotten Tomatoes and the infamous 51% score. It is to begin with worth noting is that this score reflects the number of critics who were positive vs negative, and is not a rating per se. 240 critics gave a negative review and 250 gave it a positive. What is perhaps more telling is that ROTJ had an average rating among these of 7.23 out of 10 vs 6.27 for TROS among the top critics. Obvious advantage for ROTJ, but the 51% score for TROS is undoubtedly misleading. Looking at the audience exit score ROTJ have a very impressive 94%, but ROTJ is no slouch either with 86%. In fact, it is the same audience score as for The Force Awakens, and twice that of The Last Jedi at 43%. Looking at the actual audience rating, ROTJ comes in at 4.42 vs TROS 4.31, or close to a tie. To balance Rotten Tomatoes I also took a look at IMDB, where ROTJ have a very solid 8.3 and TROS a much more moderate 6.7. I would argue though that the scores for both TLJ and TROS were unproportionally affected by trolls, as 5% of TROS voters gave it a score of 1 out of 10, which basically makes all of these voters outliers on the bell curve. TLJ fared even worse, with 6.9% of voters giving it a 1. Looking instead at the median, i.e. the actual rating most people gave, it was a solid 8 for ROTJ and a 7 for TROS. Only 1% rated ROTJ at a 1. Based purely on comparing these two movies, it is probably also fair to expect the numbers for ROTJ being slightly affected by nostalgia, as obviously IMDB didn't exist at the time. This naturally apply to all pre-IMDB movies, but nonetheless worth noting when comparing sibling movies like this. In summary ROTJ earned a higher score than TROS, but TROS was held in high esteem with high ratings from its audience, and half of its critical reviewers. It fared less well at IMDB, but even its somewhat lower score doesn't reflect the more vocal complainers.
So why did it pull in less money than expected? This one is tougher, as money undoubtedly talks. It certainly wasn’t because of lack of interest. Referencing Wikipedia: "Pre-sale tickets went on sale on October 21, 2019 and the film sold more tickets in their first hour of availability on Atom Tickets than the previous record-holder for ticket sales, Avengers: Endgame. It became Atom Tickets' second-best first-day seller of all-time behind Endgame, selling more than twice the number of tickets as The Last Jedi sold in that same timeframe, while Fandango reported it outsold all previous Star Wars films." So what happened? Again from Wikipedia: "It went on to debut to $177.4 million, which was the third-highest opening ever for a December release and the 12th-best all-time, and it was also noted that Saturday (which saw a 47% drop from Friday's gross) was the busiest shopping day of the year, likely affecting ticket sales." However, wikipedia also notes that: "Deadline Hollywood did write that "we can't ignore" the less than stellar audience exit scores, which could affect the film's legs moving forward." Somewhere here that negativity herd started, and regardless of its motivation, bad word of mouth started to take its toll. For various reasons I had to see it a couple of days after the premiere and people were cheering and applauding in a packed theatre. However, I talked to a friend of mine directly after who asked, "How was it, was it as bad as they say?", which really is telling that something was going on. He went on to see it shortly after and absolutely loved it. I can't count how many reviews or forum comments I've read that said something along the lines that they initially really liked it at the theatre, but the more they read about it they realized it was bad. Besides saying a thing or two about people's strength in their own opinions in this day and age of social media, it is interesting how it almost can become a sport to bring down creative work that has involved thousands of people's hard work, and for what?
I'm going to bring up one professional reviewer as an example, because this critic, Scott Mendelson at Forbes, didn't just review TROS, he went on a personal, almost daily, crusade explaining how much this movie sucks and on so many levels. One has to question the motivation behind this, but a recurring theme was how TROS was blatantly retconning TLJ, something Mendelson apparently could not accept nor watch quietly. Or it could just be that negative articles generates better click bait, and that he gets paid based on viewers. His actual motivation doesn't matter, but googling TROS in the weeks after the premiere was sure to bring up at least one or two of his highly critical articles. He was admittedly not alone, but it is scary how general opinion is formed by what it written on the internet, and especially by well-known publications and their factory contributors that has to produce two or more articles a month with high readership. In comparison you seldom see a positive reviewer exposing this kind of behavior, which skews the perception a regular person's experience trying to figure out which movie would be fun to spend money on. I'm not sure why TROS received this kind of predatorial behavior, because even if we hypothetically assumed the movie was bad, clearly it wasn't so bad that it warranted a hunt. I'm sure analytics experts at Disney have been looking at this for months, but it would appear to me that once social media, with top search hits consisting of these pseudo blog journalists and youtubers, sniff out a possible issue with a highly prominent and exploitable event, such as a major film launch, there is endless click bait fodder to be gained. What is amazing is that this drum beat can even topple the marketing machine from a player like Disney. If people say a movie like TROS is garbage they are clearly not being rational, but for some reason almost politically obsessed to interpret things in black or white. (Come to think of it, perhaps this behavior actually do make perfect sense in our current political environment.) We know that Star Wars is a religion, but it never ceases to surprise to what extent. Toxic behaviors like this shows that the threat comes from within, and that we as fans are our own worst enemies. Of course, at the end of the day people love to categorize their impressions in black or white, good or bad, love or hate and I guess it is somehow easier to live life like that. But should at least more main stream media publications show some restraint in their endless click-baiting? I often enjoy bringing up Star Wars with people and I have yet to meet anyone that didn’t enjoy this movie. I have met a few though that haven’t watched it yet but heard it was bad.
I recently happened to re-watch The Dark Knight Rises, also a trilogy wrap-up, and some of you are undoubtedly thinking, sacrilegious, how can you even compare these! And the point is you can’t, they are very different movies with different restraints. The Nolan trilogy is truly epic and an astounding and dramatic take on the caped crusader, but it was also very dark and serious. Star Wars is much more adventure, it is supposed to be fun, and it is supposed to have stakes, but at the same time being watchable for a younger audience. One really has to keep this in mind. They both evoke strong emotions, but Star Wars has a bit of safety net built-in that Nolan never had to consider. Nolan further didn’t have to consider neither continuity nor an original creator like Lucas. This also brings the leaked script of Duel of the Fates to mind. It is certainly a very interesting script and I would have loved to watch and experience it. But, I can also see why this would have been another Rian Johnson version that neither fully respect nor rhymes with the previous ones. There were scenes and portions in DOTF I kind of wished Abrams would have kept, but it is also understandable that the story had to feel right and fit into his vision. I guess what I’m trying to say is that is not a question of whether TROS could have been a better movie or not. We know it could, as everything could, but by the same token it could also been a lot worse. It has many wonderful parts, and for most of us it was an amazing movie, that pulled in over a billion at the box office. Disney may not need to, but by releasing an extended edition this movie almost gets a second chance, and perhaps give even the most hard-liner critics a chance to re-evaluate their stance.
Perhaps an Extended Edition or Director’s Cut was, and has been, the plan from Disney all along? Something to fill the gap until the next movie or to spice up Disney+? It is certainly odd that we haven't seen any director's commentary, and not a single deleted scene yet. Could it be that these deleted scenes are being saved for a reason? Fingers crossed.

Para's Proper Reviews: My foray into Star Wars (Part 4: The Sequels)

Please be considerate and tag all your spoilers in discussion (>!spoiler!< becomes spoiler)

There was one thing I knew about the sequels going in: they are wildly divisive. While the originals are mostly revered and the prequels mostly reviled, the reactions to the sequels run to both extremes and everything in between even among the reasonable fans. That made me doubly curious. I have “done my duty” in watching the rest of the movies, but my history with Star Wars doesn’t go back even a month. I had no expectations except a strong suspicion that the dialogue will be better and the CGI finally unnoticeable. All I had was hope.
Strap yourself in because this is going to be long. Really long.

The Force Awakens (2015)

I fucking loved this one. From start to finish, it was one hell of an enjoyable ride and exactly the kind of excellent space cheese I’m in for.
I know, it’s pure fanservice. Old characters and props feature heavily and in general, it builds on what came before rather than trying to do something radically new. Even the plot follows largely the same lines as A New Hope. This is as much a strength as it is a weakness. It plays things far too safe, recycles too much, and the more I think about it, the blander it is. But I’ll be damned if I didn’t squee with excitement every time I recognised something. I fell for it hook, line, and sinker.
(Then there was a twist in the second half that I absolutely did not see coming and resulted in much yelling. Is that how it feels to watch a movie unspoiled?)
But the real reason why I loved it so much is that it improves on the originals in many aspects (yeah yeah heresy I know). The dialogue, my biggest complaint with literally every one of them so far, was finally passable. No longer did I cringe every damn time certain characters opened their mouth. The battles were great even in the originals, but seeing everything done with proper, modern CGI was fantastic. And most of all, it’s no longer so awfully white and male (could it do even better? Sure. But when there’s an improvement, I’ll take it). For all the outcry, it’s nice seeing that everyone can have space adventures. And my headcanon that when you have a helmeted character, there could be anything under the bucket is pretty much confirmed and I love it.
Plus, it helps that I really liked Finn and Rey. Rey is pretty much the new era equivalent of Luke or Anakin, so I was curious where will the story take her. And Finn is an ex-Stormtrooper! How damn cool is that? I only wish they thought the whole ex-Stormtrooper aspect through and actually considered the implications. Had more Stormtroopers change sides. Maybe not have everyone (Finn included) kill Stormtroopers by the score – given that he showed so much compassion for his dead friend at the start, it makes no sense to humanise the faceless bad guys and then dehumanise them again.
As I said in my intro post, I watch Star Wars because it makes me feel less like shit. This one more than did the job.

The Last Jedi (2017)

Hope is like the sun. If you only believe it when you see it, you’ll never make it through the night.

Let’s get the bombshell out of the way first: Yes, The Last Jedi is, no shit, my favourite Star Wars movie of them all.
If The Force Awakens played it a little too safe, The Last Jedi has balls. It takes risks. It attempts to be a breath of fresh air and defy expectations. And for me, it worked out wonderfully. Of all the movies, this is the one that never once broke my immersion. It was a joy to watch all around.
The plot is more complex, with characters splitting up and several interweaving storylines, and for me it largely worked. Rather like a multi-POV book where you like each POV so much you’re not mad in the least when it switches. It’s far from perfect, there was some dodginess in the spaceship arc everything hanging on the fleet running out of fuel is questionable given that Star Wars mostly avoids considering banalities, and I really didn’t like the second half of the casino subplot – part because the thief annoyed the shit out of me and part because the codebreaking part was all for nothing in the end but Rey’s arc in this one or shall I say, Luke’s was beyond fantastic. I fucking loved what they did with Luke. His grumpiness, bitterness, basically being a disillusioned old man makes for a far more interesting character than if he remained the hero he was. I never liked him much in the original trilogy and considered him alternately either irritatingly stupid because the plot demanded it or boring, but here he was my favourite by far. The deconstruction at the start and eventual reconstruction over the course of the movie as he found hope again, astonishingly good. After all, it’s flaws and failures that make a character interesting.
Characters and character development in general is what The Last Jedi excels at and another reason why I love it as much as I do. I’m a sucker for it, and here it was done beautifully.

First, everything under the massive spoiler tag above. This is perhaps the best one, and my favourite.
Poe: Slapped and demoted for recklessness that caused a loss of life the Resistance could not afford at the start of the movie, we see him eventually get over his hero complex. I was a huge fan of his interactions with Holdo and Leia. Is Holdo an ass? Yes. But she has no reason to trust him and and Leia is not wrong about him needing to get his head out of the cockpit. Do his flaws make him any less of a hero? Not in the least. If anything, they make him a better, more interesting character than if he was the standard action movie hero played straight and never challenged.
Finn: I also like the juxtaposition with Poe at the start: while Poe is a little too cocky, Finn lacks confidence and doesn’t really believe himself to be a hero despite people telling him otherwise, to the point of defeatism and, almost, desertion. Impostor syndrome. I saw someone mentioning that Finn learns why it’s worth fighting for things instead of just against and I think it’s a very good point. The casino subplot may have ultimately ended in failure and been rendered pointless but is hugely important for his character development.
Rose: A new character! Not quite as developed as the rest, mostly due to being new and all, but still gets her own arc going from a timid mechanic to a confident Resistance hero. From a side character to a main character. It sort of combines the elements of Rey’s (broken pedestal, seeing the flaws in the people she looked up to), and Finn’s (gaining confidence), with the consequences of her backstory and having lost her sister in the initial bombing attack thrown into the mix. Plus, she’s dorky and adorable and I love her.
Rey: Her hang-ups about being a nobody and searching for a place where she could belong are a far more traditional heroic arc, and not as interesting as most of the others, but still very satisfying. No real complaint from me.
Kylo Ren: Even the villain gets development, in a way! It’s been established in the previous movie that he is, in essence, an immature Vader fanboy prone to temper tantrums. Which is fun enough on its own. His central theme in this movie is letting the past die. In many ways, this is similar to a standard heroic arc, and a mirror to Rey (which makes thematic sense, given their connection). He realises the old ways are flawed. And then comes to exactly the opposite conclusions than a hero would. Namely that everything must go down in flames. He comes to the precipice…and instead of turning back, consciously decides to jump off the cliff, turn to the dark side completely, deny the offer of redemption, and seize the power for himself. He wants belonging, like Rey, but doesn’t realise it cannot come from anger. That power will not help him. This makes him one of my favourite villains ever. Far more interesting than the more standard “evil for the sake of evil.”
The only real character related complaint I have, aside from the thief being extremely annoying, is that Snoke is a very boring and ineffective villain, especially in comparison to Kylo Ren. Basically discount Voldemort.

In addition, it really hammers home the point that Star Wars and space adventures are for everyone. Not just visually this time, not just in terms of characters, but as an actual strong theme throughout the story. Take, for example Rey being a nobody from nowhere but getting to be a hero regardless, Finn with his background, Rose with hers, the little children in the end telling stories about Luke Skywalker and using the Force…all of that while those you’d think were born to be heroes – like Luke or Kylo – have failed in one way or another. It’s not just about inherent destiny anymore, and flaws and fuckups are an inherent part of it all (“Pass on what you have learned. Strength, mastery, hmm…but weakness, folly, failure also. Yes: failure, most of all. The greatest teacher, failure is.”). And that’s powerful. Thematically, this is by far the strongest movie so far.
And it all comes together into a coherent whole. The action scenes and the visuals are spectacular, it’s entertaining, it has humour (I loved the evil ironing machine in particular), but it’s also backed by some iron-solid character work and themes that made the occasional slips of the plot easy to forgive. I’d put it in the “god tier” category right beside The Mandalorian. Nothing is perfect, but then, it doesn’t have to be.
Also, it features the best explosion in all of Star Wars. I envy those who could see that in theatres. So there’s that too, I guess!

The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

I went to the cinema with no small amount of trepidation. Getting into Star Wars right around the time when a new movie came out and I could see it on the big screen has been very lucky indeed, but at the same time, the opinions have been…mixed. Sure, it was unlikely to come close to The Last Jedi, but it could have at least been as enjoyable as The Force Awakens, right?
When I saw the opening crawl, I made a face. My expectations fell significantly. What? They’re bringing back what? Why? How? Why now? How does this relate to any of it? What the fuck, what an ass pull! How could it break my suspension of disbelief with the opening crawl? The sequels aren’t supposed to be trainwrecks, that’s the prequels’ job! But okay. Maybe it will be okay. Two and a half hours to go, the premise is atrocious, but they might salvage it.
It did not get any better from there.
The most obvious issue with The Rise of Skywalker is that the plot is ridiculous. It’s an incoherent sequence of ass pulls loosely connected by a fetch quest and smoothed over by references and flashy action. It’s not that it isn’t what I expected, it’s that it makes no fucking sense whatsoever. Everything about it, every little aspect, every subplot, falls apart completely if you think about it for more than one second. It’s standing on foundations so shaky a breath could knock the whole thing over. “Hey,” it says often, “did you know that X is Y now?” Why? How? Fuck knows. “Oh, look, quick! Bad guys with blasters! Move along!”
And it’s like this with everything, all the time. There is such a barrage of it that absolutely nothing is ever explained, not even with a throwaway line, even though there are not one but several things that seem so highly improbable even for a movie series about space wizards that treats physics as optional that they would, you know, really need a decent fucking explanation. I’ve complained about this when it comes to books before. The bigger the anomaly or inconsistence that’s completely at odds with what the audience knows is, the more effort do you need to put in to maintain the suspension of disbelief. The lack of foreshadowing with one exception: Luke’s X-Wing and internal retcons don’t help. So much of what happens on screen didn’t ultimately seem to matter. Blink, next scene. Move along, move along!
But okay. I didn’t have much of a problem with inconsistencies or ass pulls other Star Wars movies. After all, it wouldn’t be a Star Wars movie without at least one ass pull. Space wizards, whatever. So why the sudden urge to nitpick now? Why was I able to disregard the plot issues in all the other movies except the prequels, but not here? What’s so off that I’m suddenly focusing on plot points and believability? What’s bringing all my attention on it? I’m still not entirely sure. I think part of the answer could be the sheer quantity. I could take a few smaller, plot-convenient coincidences or ass pulls for the sake of dramatic tension, but in such large quantities…it’s not something you can base a movie on. It seems like there was no planning involved whatsoever.
Or it could be in the execution. By which I mean, it probably is. For all I complained about the flaws of the prequels, at least they mostly had a strong, coherent plot thread. I could not argue with that. When you put it in bulletpoints, it’s a solid fucking story even if the execution sucks. And The Last Jedi made up for the occasional dodgy plot point with strong themes and characters.
And this is an even bigger problem with The Rise of Skywalker: the character development, quiet scenes, emotion, or anything that’d provide a connection to the characters is utterly lacking for the sake of…faster, flashier pacing? The complex, careful character work the previous movie established? Yep, gone. Wasted. The characters are all flattened significantly. Dialogue is mostly exposition, conversations usually interrupted by action because fuck forbid we have a quiet moment, with the occasional scene with two characters (most often Ren and Rey) exchanging lines Very Dramatically. The dialogue, while not prequel-level bad, is noticably worse.
This is such an issue because quiet scenes are the connective tissue that bind the story together. It’s what gives meaning to the action, the foundations, the essential contrast. Making a movie not boring is all about balance, you need both. Paradoxically, constant action and an abundance of…stuff do not equal good pacing or make a movie go by fast, sometimes you need a damn break too. Scenes that don’t directly advance the plot serve character development, and this is basic stuff.
So much for bringing balance to the Force.
Besides, it doesn’t commit. At at least three or four points, something bad seemingly happens to a major character – except nope, a couple minutes later they’re shown to be totally fine. Which utterly wrecks any sense of tension. I could take it once, but all the time? It’s pure narrative cowardice, an attempt to pull off emotional moments without really sacrificing anything. It doesn’t help that the characters aren’t given the time and space to emotionally react to those moments because plot must happen! Go, go, go! And if characters can’t, what chance does the viewer have?
(Speaking of narrative cowardice, there was absolutely no reason for Rose to play such a minor role.)
It then attempts to iron over the messy plot and lack of substance with action scenes and nostalgia. Now, I’m not at all immune to call-backs. I left my review of The Force Awakens as it was after I finished the movie. But cheap tricks don’t work when the core of the movie is as shoddy as this, they only highlight the larger flaws. Action without emotional connection is meaningless and boring as shit, no matter how much they attempt to speed up the pacing. Pretty visuals alone do not an interesting movie make. And throwing reference upon reference at the viewer when most of the references make no in-story sense is a little insulting.
And is it even worth pointing out that it fucks up thematically as well? Is it any surprise after what I wrote above?
It’s not even that it’s shallow, or that The Last Jedi raised my expectations too high. I wouldn’t have minded shallow. It’s space cheese. I went in expecting something in the vein of The Force Awakens or slightly worse – a bit of a rehash, mildly disappointing in comparison to The Last Jedi, but ultimately a fun ride regardless. But shoddy plot in combination with shoddy pacing and shoddy character work is killer. Not even a red guard cameo was able to save this mess. “Sit back and enjoy the explosions! It’s just a movie about space wizards for kids! Don’t overthink it!” Well, I can’t when its flaws are practically screaming in my face. It being action, it being a franchise made to sell toys – that doesn’t mean the movies cannot be good at the same time. And it just…how could they have screwed it up so bad? How did they manage to make it boring? Why did I spent the entire time either facepalming, sighing, or wondering when it will be over so I can go take a piss? Argh. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
Hopefully the next movies and series will go back to being good again.

Verdict

In the end, “wildly divisive” proved to be about right. My reactions were about even for all the movies in the original (fun, if flawed) and the prequel trilogies (varying degrees of shitty), but here they reached both the highest of highs with The Last Jedi and the lowest of lows with The Rise of Skywalker.
If there’s one problem the sequel trilogy at large has, it’s a lack of coherent vision. I have said in my post on the prequels that the common issue with Star Wars is that while the big picture is solid, the details often aren’t. When it comes to the sequels, this is no longer true. The Last Jedi builds off The Force Awakens, no complaints about the first two movies, but it becomes obvious with The Rise of Skywalker that they didn’t plan the ending. At all. Many of the plot points from the previous movies are either ignored entirely or retconned, and it instead centers on an element the sudden return of Palpatine (which, hey, that’s a good movie title right there) that was not foreshadowed in any way whatsoever. It highlights a structural issue that goes deeper than just one movie, even disregarding all the other issues I ranted about. I bet a lot of fanfic endings are more canon-compliant and more of a logical conclusion based on what came before than this.
(By the way, if anyone knows of any fanfic that starts where The Last Jedi left off and constructs a better, canon-compliant ending, please float a link my way. Seriously. I beg you. Especially if Finn and Poe get to be a couple.)
Besides, being massively disappointed in at least one movie seems like an essential part of being a Star Wars fan, and I feel like I had my trial by fire now. My initial, knee-jerk reaction might have been “oh my god the last movie RUINED it” but after a private, indignant ranting session, I calmed down. One bad movie does not invalidate my love for the worldbuilding, or for everything that came before, or how much these movies helped me. And I refuse to let the disappointment turn into hate. I refuse to let it consume me. Prequels make it clear that you don’t have to like all the movies to consider yourself a fan, so why would this be any different?
I will not turn to the dark side.
This may be the last trilogy for now, but there are still Rogue One and Solo left for me to watch. At least one more post to come!
More reviews on my blog, To Other Worlds.

My heartfelt thoughts after finishing Dragon Quest XI in 15 days (Spoiler Free)

Growing up as a fan of Japanese RPG, I always found Final Fantasy as the perfect influence on the genre. I’ve always enjoyed turn-based RPG with good storytelling, and a massive open overworld to explore to. For some reason, it’s JRPG that really got me back to feeling the nostalgia. Dragon Quest XI is the quickest JRPG fix in modern-day JRPG standards.
DQ XI really hits all the right notes for me. At first, looking at this game in stores during the Nintendo 3DS era made me want to avoid this title off the shelves, despite knowing its successful reputation in the JRPG market. I really was not a big fan of how everybody in the Dragon Quest universe looks as if they are character rejects from the Dragon Ball franchise. After all, the characters in both franchises were designed by the same artist… (And so was Chrono Trigger.)
After feeling burned out from playing the newer games on the Switch, JRPG or otherwise, I decided to tease myself by watching gameplay reviews of DQ XI. Lo and behold, this quarantine gave me an opportunity to reconnect with my childhood that once loved the turn-based JRPG genre.
DQ XI is your traditional JRPG as your hero quests to get stronger while his party encounters boss battles found in every dungeon crawl.
The story is very basic and not very complex at all. You play as the Hero, the prophesied Light of the World, whose task is to eradicate darkness and the Lord of the Shadows. It makes up for a pretty shortsighted storyline. The story is as simple as that, and it’s ok not to be more than what it is.
The battle sequence is also very linear. If not, it is a perfect 3D rendition of the earlier DQ titles of the 90s. As compared to the Final Fantasy titles of the early 2000s, where your party is given a special overdrive option, DQ titles are less specific on combat moves, and more reliant on repetition and strategy. For a turn-based RPG, it’s simple, yet effective to keep me entertained for hours and hours on end… and I think the franchise perfectly made it that way.
What really made this game so interesting is how it is well-paced. There are multiple character developments during the Hero’s adventure. The grinding never felt like a grind at all. In fact, it can be more engaging with the sped-up battle option on the Switch to grind through the skill tree. The PS4 version lacks these enhancements and makes grinding feel more like a chore. It was very fun and the next thing I knew, I lost track of time.
The biggest hurdle for me was realizing that the pace had suddenly, in a mere instant, shifted from being a very linear story with clear steps of progression and challenges to a more open-ended affair that has less in common with the previous chapters of the game. DQ XI just made me feel like wanting to live in this world forever… but as one thing ends, though, another begins. That is the way of the world.
I just realized that I ended up loving this game bit by bit and felt so attached to it that I just wanted to explore the world of Erdrea even on the post-game after defeating the final boss.
Dragon Quest XI is just so full of heart and so true to itself. The world of Erdrea is bright and cheery, and even when it gets dark, hope eventually shines through. To a certain extent, it felt like playing a Studio Ghibli game with Dragon Ball character rejects, and there is nothing wrong with that at all.
Casually taking selfies on a mountain cliff in Arboria
For a formal game rating of age 12 and above, DQ XI has a lot of adult innuendos which I find obscene from the eyes of an adult. Roulette and poker are some of the side-games marketed to teenagers who don’t even have the slightest idea of what a casino is like. This is not to forget mentioning that these side-games are part of the lore, to which I spent half of my days playing and being rewarded tokens in exchange for rare items and cool costumes for my party.
There is also another side-game where you talk to certain NPCs across the world of Erdrea and if you are lucky enough to spot them, they will reward you with a Puff-Puff. In Dragon Ball/Dragon Quest lore, a Puff-Puff is essentially the act of a woman massaging another person’s face with her breasts, though the true nature of the act was only ever hinted in the game.
I love it! I loved how Square Enix promotes gambling and sex through its subtlest forms. While I find it funny that life is full of vices, it’s even funnier that art imitates life…. even for teenagers.
It is exactly what my younger self would have wanted to play, and now that child in me is satisfied with the playthrough — of being a hero and embarking on a quest to save the world, meeting friends, getting stronger, and strategizing boss battles through turn-based tactics.
I finished the game within 15 days with a gameplay time of about 100 hours —that means I pretty much traded my body and soul to Square Enix, but it’s okay, it was well worth it anyway!
Playing Dragon Quest XI moved me so much I had to write about it. I was instantly hooked from the characters and how they were always getting stuck in certain situations, some times just silly quests, most of the time end-of-the-world serious. It now has a special place in my memory and I’m just glad I had the chance to play it.
Perhaps I’ll give Dragon Quest VIII a fighting chance for glory.
P.S. Listening to Overture XI from Tokyo Symphonic Suite ALWAYS tears me up.
Read the full review here.

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Red v. Blue: Color Symbolism & Americana in Twin Peaks

Note: I'm writing this as someone who has watched the entire original series, Fire Walk With Me, The Missing Pieces, and The Return, as well as other features from Lynch's filmography (Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Eraserhead); marked for spoilers now, do not proceed if you haven't seen them all. This is a longpost for Twin Peaks-obsessed nuts like me.
One of the things that remains a statement of the original incarnation (and thus, a statement by being substituted with HD digital cameras in The Return) is Twin Peaks's absolute mastery of the highly saturated 4:3 box TV aesthetic. I've heard Lynch was adamant the color palette not be corrected to a grittier, desaturated version when execs received the tapes. It's part of what's made so many iconic sequences and shots from the original run hallmarks of Tumblr and Instagram accounts aplenty. Twin Peaks came (and could be argued, ushered) on the precipice of a major shift in the television format. We would see the contemporary form of television media developed further with shows like The Sopranos in the HBO prime cable era, or The X-Files (no wonder Chris Carter plundered Twin Peaks's cast for his own attempt). As a marker for the end of the 80s and its preceding decades though, in many ways Twin Peaks to spoke to a form of TV largely since faded: soap operas and sitcoms and serials. It's part of why I loved the metatextual inclusion of the soap opera Invitation to Love, allowing the show to reference its own stylized dramaturgy.

Jade & Emerald... Jade give two rides, hm?
Very specifically, I find the series loves to riddle blue and red, like one oni to another. Fire and water. Hot-cold (like the shivery feeling Audrey gets when she holds an ice cube on her bare skin for a long time). The red and blue on Mike's TP varsity letterman jacket could be the most striking and concise marriage of this dynamic pairing. Donna & Maddie dive into this in the season 2 opener, scheming at the Double R (docked points for the silly jailhouse seduction routine by Donna, though). Subtler in palette but more obvious in Americana, Major Briggs's omnipresent blue uniform incorporates red in his breast patch (and Don S. Davis's ruddy-warm complexion, imo) speaking to his inherent patriotism as part of the Air Force. On more than one occasion Big Ed is spotted with a red & blue flannel.
Much to be said about the pairing of Bobby & Mike, comparing to BOB & MIKE; MIKE saw the face of God, but Bobby is the one who saw the light in this duo.
The flashing lights of a cop car. Dr. Jacoby's iconic 3D glasses-flavored shades (note that Jacoby and Ben both hailed from the Robert Wise-directed 1961 film adaptation of West Side Story, the famous 50s musical depicting rival gangs experiencing a Romeo & Juliet plot amidst culture clash in NYC). Lil the Dancer, communicating through expressive dance a coded message in FWWM. A barbershop quartet in the background behind Coop & Albert in "Coma".
I believe it's The Secret History of Twin Peaks book that is paired with red and blue filter lenses, so you can view certain hidden information? Either way, Lynch likes his 50s/60s Americana; reminds me of Castle Horror gimmicks.
The blue flower was a central Romanticism symbol; as blue roses don't occur in nature, they hold an air of mystery and fantastic possibility. Tennessee Williams used the blue rose to symbolize the fragile & unique character Laura(!!) in The Glass Menagerie.
The sign outside One-Eye Jack's. Red pairs often with green or black in gambling/casino situations; from the card deck motif for the sex workers to the mix-match patches of a roulette wheel. The malfunctioning lift for Leo in "The Orchid's Curse." The stage behind Julee Cruise during Roadhouse performances, especially "Lonely Souls." Even though the Red Room is known for its red, we see eventually that the Lodge holds strobing blue lights and the milky cataracts of doppelgangers. In a more peaceful sense, blue light washes over Laura as she smiles in the Lodge at the end of FWWM, reunited finally with her angel.
You can practically hear the buzz of the neon zapping into life from here. Knowing how important electricity is to Twin Peaks, these little details really stand out.
Ben and Jerry, at various times, switch between the two to complement each other much like the Miser Brothers. We also see it in Ben's interactions with Catherine; their affair in "Traces to Nowhere" finds Catherine clad in a powdery blue blanket, Ben's fiery tie, Catherine's ruby toenails (sidenote: not a fan of the Tarantino interaction). We see more of this Ben-Catherine color scheme in "Cooper's Dreams" during the Iceland convention with Leland's impromptu dancefloor breakdown. Ben, as central locus for Twin Peaks's criminal element, seems to be a lightning pole for these color dynamics. Notable is his integral need as a character to keep his publicly clean image and seedy underworld dealings separate, the perfect human symbol for Lynch's sequence in Blue Velvet's intro depicting the rotting & squirming insects buried beneath the idyllic Levittown surface of Lumberton. And Ben, even beyond his perennial cigar, enjoys many scenes by the fire of a hearth.
Ben floats through the two by himself on a regular basis, which I think ties into his role as the uber 80s corporate & cold American businessman, espousing social niceties & charm but hiding his sinister and impulsive skeletons in the closet. It's almost like he should be Lodge, but he's only run parallel to it as a human being.
Likewise, when it comes to the Lodge, BOB and the Man from Another Place/The Arm make a perfect red-blue pair. I noticed this especially in FWWM during the chaotic convenience store sequence. Given that during the night the sky can range from black as a cup of Coop's coffee to a Prussian shade, by following a Goethe color theory mindset, we can admit "Blue is a darkness weakened by light." BOB never comes off weak, but as a possessing spirit, for the viewer, his sudden appearances/reveals herald a (at times literal) spotlight into the black oil that is his essence (follow this link for a Youtube vid that informed some of my own theories). Goethe characterizes blue as common (think of country folk and bikers and truckers), as well as cold and melancholy, powerful. Red is much easier for The Arm; in addition to evoking the Christian iconography of a devilish imp figure, he is pure fire, the kind that truly walks with you (Goethe considers red as beautiful, dignified, closer to the essence of light; perhaps this echoes the Neoclassical Venus statue found often with Red Room curtains, or the red lipstick of the various beautiful women commonly prey to Twin Peaks).
BOB's always clad in blue denim to match The Arm's impish red suit. Noticeable since they remain the two most active agents as Lodge creatures, continuing the BOB/MIKE dualism that existed pre-show.
Given the only color left to throw in is white (HMM,, White Lodge? Sarah's pale horse? Leland's hair? The stuffed arctic fox in Ben's office? That weird long-faced elk thing at the Packard-Martell house? Pete and Coop enjoying/trying to order a mug of milk? The Tremond/Chalfont boy's white mask?) and you have the Star-Spangled Banner itself (the mini-flag at Twin Peaks Sheriff's office that flanks Coop while he's sitting across the table from Dr. Jacoby, as well as Coop's fixation on the full-sized incarnation while he's in the Bros. Fusco's office during his Dougie stint in The Return, are just two instances). Notable as a tri-color national aesthetic, red white & blue sometimes finds its way back in altered forms: straightforward visual representation with the Icelandic investors, as well as more tonally & artistically-derived influence from Lynch's favorite country (we'll forget the agonizing French hookup leaving scene from The Return and think more of Monica Bellucci's dream sequence, or Ben & Jerry orgasming over fresh baguettes with brie).
Great shot from Tim Hunter here.
Part 9, \"This is the chair.\" I remember this sequence being a spark of sorts, tantalizing to see Coop stir somewhat from his Dougie stupor.
While it should come as no surprise an American show would have many American-specific themes, I'm often convinced that Lynch is using the visual shorthand to simultaneously sing, criticize, celebrate, and reflect on what it means to be America. It is not coincidence that Dale Bartholomew Cooper's name reflects the notorious Pacific Northwest hijacker D.B. Cooper, or Harry Truman with the 33rd President (who, mind you, ordered the atomic bombs dropped in WWII). Or Franklin "Frank" Truman with the 32nd, for that matter. Coop openly ponders the Kennedy assassination (itself rife for conspiracy theories and speculation, much like TP) in a log to Diane, as well as Marilyn Monroe's involvement with the family; who else is Laura Palmer but a hometown Monroe?
Much like D.B. Cooper, Coop took a historic leap.
I would love to dig down deep and really review all of his work to understand more about Lynch's fixation on Lincoln (a portrait is in the Donna/James classroom when Laura's death is announced; a dramatic shot in Blue Velvet fixates on Lincoln Street which divides the town's good/bad parts & has an antagonist by the name of Booth; the "Gotta light?" Woodsman in The Return).
Now if someone could explain this connection... Dick says this right before the fire alarms go off and swamp Leland with water while BOB rams Leland's head in to break his last vessel and escape from justice.
Why Lincoln? I refer to it as The House Divided. Lincoln is one of the most recognizable presidents, partially due to his assassination (Kennedy echo), partially due to his role in the Civil War and how America resolved its most divisive internal conflict. He's emblematic of the Old America and the New America, slavery and post-slavery, secession and preservation. Somewhat like Republicans & Democrats, red v. blue. We know the toy Lincoln Logs, we hear the term Lincoln Lawyer, he's even one of the faces on Mt. Rushmore (referenced explicitly in The Return - "There they are Albert, faces of stone"- as well as compositionally in "Cooper's Dreams"); given the existence of both a Black Lodge and White Lodge in mythos, I think it's safe to draw at least some broad comparison to black America and white America (as well as Windom Earle's fetish for chess). Even as a goofier entry during Season 2's decaying period, Ben's mental lapse into General Robert E. Lee and fixation on the Civil War (mirroring Johnny Horne's fixation with the indigenous headdress and colonist America) gives some meat to this motif. Although it's never quite outright verbalized in show, one gets the sense that America is inherently built on some original sins. The water in the well was poisoned before the Trinity test
Notable too for the context of having Hawk (Nez Perce) included in this recreation. Mt. Rushmore was originally a sacred place for the Lakota Sioux; its present condition is considered desecration to their culture. America in its current incarnation was founded on the genocide and forced relocation of its indigenous peoples; Twin Peaks is loaded with Native American patterns and imagery, i.e. The Great Northern.
Note as well that red, by itself, can easily be tied to Twin Peaks's lifeforce, and by extension Lynch's entire repertoire. Fire. Red velvet curtains. Lipstick and nail polish. Blood. Pete's fisherman flannel. Audrey's heels, and her cherry trick. Norma's cherry pie. Log Lady's frames. "Let's rock" on Agent Desmond's car in FWWM. The women at One-Eye Jack's. The blooming roses peaking through white picket fences in Blue Velvet. The vast majority of neon signage (The Roadhouse especially). The traffic light at Sparkwood & 21. Leo's ostentatious Corvette. The lifeline zigzags on the high school walls. MIKE, in Philip Gerard, is fond of red tops, connecting him directly with The Arm. Much is made of Twin Peaks's proximity to Canada in the original series; the corrupt Mountie during the internal investigation arc stands out. The balloons at Dougie's corporate plaza. The Scarlet Letter. Lancelot Court, red door. Laura Palmer's Secret Diary.
Night time, my time. Red can be a carnal color, igniting passion, but also a warning to stop, turn back. Often we find it in the company of characters who have experienced a lot in Lynch's world, and not too much good.
And blue too. Blue is much more sparing in Twin Peaks, to greater mystical effect. Blue Rose. Laura's cold lips in the Pilot. Blue Velvet. Isabella Rossellini's dramatic eyeshadow as Dorothy Vallens. The waitress outfits at the Double R Diner. Leo's button-down when Shelly shoots him. The light in the morgue as Hawk tails Philip Gerard. The lifeline zigzags on hospital monitors (how they spike with Ronette, how they fall flat when Leland strangles Jacques). Ronette is swaddled in soft blue blankets during the S2 opener, her tilted head recalls Marian imagery (interesting from a Madonna-Whore complex standpoint); two episodes later her IV drip is tainted with blue dye, a visit from BOB. Maddie Ferguson's nightgown during her carpet-stain vision. Coop's iconic jammies. Rita's blue key & Betty's blue box in Mulholland Drive. The woman's hair at Club Silencio. Whenever television sets or camera footage shows up onscreen in Twin Peaks, there's a noticeable cool blue tint: think of that first tape, Laura & Donna dancing in the woods; the static showcased in the opening credits to FWWM; the footage of Coop gambling, obsessed over by Jean Renault. Gordon & Albert speaking together after meeting with Mr. C and watching Tammy walk away. Flashes of lightning. The sign at the Luna Lounge, where Fred Madison plays his discordant sax solo in Lost Highway.
Two dead girls wash up in the water. Calhoun Memorial's morgue stays bathed in blue light. Louise Bourgeois claimed it as hallmark, stating blue left behind \"the drabness of day-to-day reality\" for \"a world of freedom\", inner truths. BOB is certainly free.
Beyond red and blue, the colors I tend to notice in Twin Peaks are pink and green (notable for following a warm/cool polarization as well), which do not concern themselves to the same extent with Americana, if at all. Pink is much more sparse in its application, typically feminine: Nadine's prom dress during her suicide attempt in the S1 finale; Naido/Diane's bathrobe in The Return; the drapes behind the new One-Eyed Jack's girl Ben sleeps with in "Zen" (purposefully designed to evoke a vagina, in my opinion); fudging into purple, but we can count the Mauve Zone and Coop's run-in with Naido to an extent; Gersten Hayward's princess outfit during her piano performance for the Palmers; the trio of Candie, Mandie & Sandie; the gut-churning Pink Room sequence from FWWM with Laura & Donna.
Candie was a surprising standout for The Return. I felt these girls were a commentary on One-Eyed Jack's in the way the Mitchum Bros. were commentary on Ben & Jerry; where Ben & Jerry enjoyed public acceptance but indulged in dark secrets and ran through vulnerable sex workers, Bradley & Rodney have a dark reputation/entrance but ultimately possess hearts of gold, rescuing at-risk women like these three.
Green is more expansively utilized, and supernatural in tone: the billowing leaves of those Douglas firs in an ominous breeze; the iconic Twin Peaks font's outline; the guiding light we see through Dougie's eyes (which I assume has always been a part of Coop's psyche and intuition); Dougie's iconic oversized jacket; the infamous Owl Cave ring; the vintage lampshade adorning Ben's desk; the childhood bike Ben fondly recalls in The Return; the framed picture of the tall pine in the Sheriff's Department lobby; the tiny fir stuffed by the partition in the Palmer household; Jade & Emerald, even. Ben says to Leo, conspiring to burn the mill in "The One-Armed Man" - "Three nights, Leo. Green light." Something about it reminds me of Jay Gatsby's over-analyzed yearning green light from the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic; the idea of the American Dream with wanton capitalism, and how it's impossible to achieve (am I crazy for thinking there's a connection between Big Ed's Gas Farm's neon egg sign and the West Egg/East Egg class divide?).
Of course, the owls are watching. Much like the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg.
Ed's business harkens to how convenience stores (early-to-mid-century modernist American consumerism) were both the pumping blood and desiccated bone of our culture, as well as the Woodsmen womb. It also reminds me of old-style egg timers, and what is Twin Peaks but a show obsessed with the manipulation and perception of time? Was it the chicken or the egg that came first? Is it future or is it past?
By the time of The Return, we have lost these overly saturated tones, but the direct symbolic use of color is still integral to a Peaks viewing. I find it even more interesting that The Return made extensive use of black & white footage. Eraserhead and The Elephant Man alike (I've found both hold the spores for concepts and aesthetics fully developed in Lynch's later filmography, like the chevron Lodge floor pattern we all dearly love) were filmed in this manner; I feel Lynch chose this as nod to this earlier work, as well as the old formats of pre-color TV and film, like WWII newsreels. I find it relevant as well that older generations dream in black & white, a vanishing phenomenon which is directly related to the media of their era. B&W film informed the visual rhetoric of their unconscious minds; we, as younger Americans, dream in Technicolor.
This is the first shot we see of The Elephant Man. Notice how this is specifically his left arm, hand floating over the flame. Later in the film during a particularly moving sequence, Merrick first proves he is capable of speech for the first time by reciting the 23rd Psalm in a louder and louder tone, mirroring Annie Blackburn's prayers while Windom Earle led her bound into the Lodge.
The black & white sequences occur within the Lodge, relate directly to the Lodge - may Part 8 live forever in its atomic power - or otherwise involve unexplained phenomena (Cole's Monica Bellucci dream). By the time of The Return, a disconnect with the past and nostalgia is a core theme. The colors have faded. Coop, a half-baked shadow of himself, only gets restored by the chance mention of Gordon Cole's name in Sunset Blvd. Note Billy Wilder's 1950 film revolves around an aging actress lost in the reverie of her long-gone prime. (Also note her insistence, when William Holden's character asks her about the Salome film script, she's not conducting a "comeback" but a *return*; this, I feel, ties in as well to Major Briggs's underappreciated vision scene, emphasizing the idea of a return.) Although not shot in black & white, Pete, assisting Catherine as she tears apart their library, pauses for a moment during "The Last Evening" to linger on his high school yearbook. He's lost in the old pre-color photos, in the memory of Midge Jones, a man we never know. He's returned to a place in his youth, much like Garland's return to the gleaming, radiant marble of the fantastic palazzo in his S2 vision.
These two live in a retro-futurist Art Deco fever dream, accompanied the very appropriate Slow 30s Room soundtrack piece. Everything about the Fireman & Senorita Dido tells me of an America past its prime. I'm also convinced this was what Lynch envisioned for Briggs's palazzo; if only Don S. Davis was alive for The Return.
There's a plethora more I could get into, definitely for another thread: the preoccupation with trinities, animals, rings, technology, fine art references, and sonic elements are on my mind as well. I need to rewatch The Return again soon so more connections and thoughts are present. Let me know if you guys enjoyed this rambling mess!

Ghost Of Tsushima, and I guess a treatise on the self-devouring nature of blind industrialism when coupled with a virtual mammonocracy. (Sorry)

So I have been playing through Ghost of Tsushima, and it is stunning. Visually it is incredible, but the gameplay is seamless and intuitive. I found myself, after a short story mission, distracted by a bright yellow bird that darted past the corner of the screen, so I decided to follow it. It seemed to be moving slow enough to allow me to keep pace with it, and after a few minutes I was surprised to find that it had led me to a clearing where a side mission was waiting to be discovered. That is probably the simplest way of describing the sort of attention to detail and artistic style that makes the game so incredible. There are almost no menu's in the in-game experience, and aside from the HUD, the immersive nature of the main story-line and its side quests is literally built into the nature of the virtual forest. I have not seen anything this integrated, regarding art/interface, ever before, it is sort of delightful. There is a great deal of depth to the dialogue and the actual plot too. Rather than simply leading the player along through a singular stream of story driven tasks, GOT engages the player in the cultural ethos of the Bushido ideology. You are not just a virtual task performer cloaked in Samurai themed imagery, you are a versatile novice, being slowly developed into whichever version of Samurai warrior is best suited to your playstyle. You have the freedom to travel the countryside freeing fortresses from the oppressive rule of the Mongols, or you can explore the hidden troves of ancient or legendary myths where unique items and rich storytelling engross you in the layered backdrop of a historical identity that is brimming with surprising depth and beauty.
Despite all of this, the experience manages to keep from being bogged down by the multitude of iconography and lore. There is just as much opportunity to experience the battle driven elements of the RPG, with regard to the kinetics elements that drive the experience. That is, sword-fighting, and maneuvering around the mountainous countryside, as well as employing stealth and an arsenal of weaponry designed to give you an edge against the overwhelming numbers of the Mongol horde. As you play through the first few hours or so, you are introduced to the basics of swordplay, and given a default fighting stance as well as the basic weapon you will be using for the rest of the game, your Katana. Within the Samurai culture, as with many early Japanese belief systems, there is a ritualistic respect paid to the tools which one relies upon for survival. This is the sort of attention to detail I'm talking about, the reverence which the main character shows to his weapon, and the respect and honor shown to the various legendary items that are discover-able throughout the game, highlight a certain realism which elevates the franchise from the standard "beat'em'up" 3D platformer or open world exploration simulator. It feels like you are participating in art and getting a rare chance to witness an alternative paradigm from within its subjective perspective. It is more than the subtleties, even the tutorials are integrated into the experiential, as players are shown how to use new skills they learn by being drawn into memories of Jin's (the main character) youth which he spent training with his Uncle. This provides not only a seamless means of delivering perfunctory information without exiting the context of the narrative, it also invests the player in the relationships that drive the story. Rather than simply watching some character named "uncle x" get kidnapped princess peach style before compulsively weeding through numerous obstacles in order to rescue him, you are engaged in the development of a multidimensional relationship between an orphaned youth and his stern but caring Uncle who takes him in and raises him. You begin to recognize the extent to which Jin's devotion to his Uncle is rooted in the echoed trauma of a broken youth, and the veracity of loyalty that blossoms from within the shared healing that comes of a mutually felt loss. These aren't the usual thinly veiled boolean physics of a logically designed causal framework, this is a glimpse into another version of the human journey through suffering that is shared across all cultures and societies. That is probably what most strikes me about the game, even the fighting styles that can be unlocked as one progresses through the leveling system (which is simple and extensive all at once by the way) display a versatility of spirit in their forms. They speak to the level of aggressiveness one is partial to and give the player the opportunity to experiment and grow in their play-style as the game plays out. On one hand I find that this gives the experience a versatility that keeps it from becoming repetitive or procedural, and keeps the player learning constantly as they further the narrative element of the game. On the other hand, it gives a sort of variety to the controls which develops into a kind of mastery of martial technique that mirrors the disciplines that are being emulated. The versatility of the tools, such as kunai and smoke bombs, compounds this depth and enriches the experience further, such that operating the avatar within the profound environment of the world becomes a layered and in depth aspect of the story as well. I have yet to complete the story-line, as I have been spending a lot of my time wandering the open world and searching out treasures and immersive folk tales to play through, but from what I have seen so far, I have to say, Ghost of Tsushima is one of the most beautiful and thoroughly designed RPG's I have ever had the fortune to play, and I am obviously beyond impressed with the craftsmanship that went into it.

If I had to give a few critiques, I would say that the inability to lock on to targets is probably the most noticeable frustration I have. Though I kind of understand how it had to be sacrificed to enable a freer flowing maneuverability in terms of swordplay. It would be nice to be able to lock on, but it would also interrupt the otherwise seamless inputs that make it so much fun to operate. So maybe I would say that it poses more of an added challenge, then it does indicate oversight. There is also something to be desired of the way-point system, being that the game attempts to show the player where they are supposed to be headed through giving them minor control over the wind and which direction it is blowing. This is effective for much of the game, as a lot of it takes place in lush fields of long flowing grass and forests, but it is somewhat obtuse and lacks precision. Also, when you are playing through a large fortress or rocky path of open expanse lacking in high grass and rustling canopies, it can be sort of confusing to figure out which direction the wind is leading you. This is made up for somewhat by the HUD and the naturally emergent constructs such as the yellow birds that swoop in to lead you to side quests and what not. There is also the sort of clunky cooperative mechanic as it relates to working together with your various partners as you play through. I had one experience where a follow mission was sort of sprung on me all of the sudden, and in the time it took me to summon my horse, mount it and start galloping after the character I was meant to follow, the distance between myself and the other rider became so vast that I kept failing the mission. Ultimately, I had to load a previous save, and mount my horse early with the knowledge of what was about to happen to guide me. So, things like that can get a bit frustrating, but only because everything else is so seamless and fluid that moments like that stick out as very noticeable extremes.
Anyway, if you have not played it, or were thinking about skipping it for whatever reason, I urge you to give it a try. It is really something. I personally am a Witcher fanatic, and I think wild hunt and the expansions released for it was the best role-playing game ever made. So GOT is like, the first game I have played since the Witcher, that comes close to contending with the quality I have come to expect from CD project Red. I am not trashing all other genres by the way, I love pretty much all video games, and I think the new Assassin's creed releases (Origin, and Odyssey) are on the same level as it relates to depth and integrative game-play/narrative elements. I see elements of the same evolution in medium with respect to Nintendo's masterpiece, Mario Odyssey.
In gaming right now, there appear to be two ends of a spectrum as it relates to development. There are artisans, who are taking the medium and the added computing power of the new systems and reinventing the media as a means of interactive, artistically sophisticated storytelling. And there are developers who are taking the same potential and employing it as a means of fabricating the same procedural processes that they have always used, coating them in imagery that dazzles with high fidelity recapitulations of former media, and pivoting it into a sort of neo-casino game where players are pitted in materialistic competitions driven by feigned scarcity and cosmetic flourishing meant to trick gamers into spending real money on virtual objects. Which is not to say that those sorts of franchises do not have their place, certainly E-sports and the world of FPS tournaments would insist they do. However, it is one thing to release something like Fortnight or Warzone, and tell me upfront what sort of product I am signing up to buy, and it is another thing entirely to promise a dense and profound narrative driven experience (as was promised with Destiny and other titles like Anthem) and then deliver a loot based PVP game that offloads the work of storytelling to an obscure web based stack of index cards and short stories that provide a story as an afterthought, and proceeds to operate as a procedural shoot'em'up that continually adds cosmetic upgrades and shallow story arcs to a finished product that is obsessed with convincing me to keep buying it over and over again as a penalty for having it installed on my system. I suppose even that would be palatable, if it wasn’t for the fact that these games tend to be released with glitches and bugs that actually render them unplayable for months on end while consumers are expected to wait patiently as the developers finish manufacturing their product after it’s release, and spin it with p.r. lingo as if it equates to receiving something extra for free. In the case of Anthem this fiasco was played out to the extreme. Somehow, despite being developed for over a decade, and despite being advertised as a rich and thoroughly engrossing universe that presumably told a story of some kind, while delivering an exciting and groundbreaking new game engine, It failed to satisfy any of those expectations. Instead what was delivered was a third person shooter version of grand theft auto, set in a watered down monster hunter environment, with a loot crate system that was more functional than the actual gameplay, and a poor man’s iron man suit in lieu of the ability to interact with a variety of vehicles and items. Which I guess could have worked if it had been merely a scaffolding off of which there was meant to hang a vast and interesting narrative element, alas, there was scarcely any story to be gleaned from the game at all. On top of that, it mostly did not even work for the first few months after its release, going so far as to cause irreparable damage to the hardware it was played on in a number of cases. I mean, that is a little harsh, but it is also true. I am only stating the basic elements of a game which was in fact released and which to this day doesn’t seem to be poised to make any kind of comeback, or else attempt to deliver on the litany of promises used to sell it.
This sort of thing is seen a lot within the echelons of corporate networked strategizing. It isn’t necessarily malevolence or some base concerted effort to trick people into buying a faulty product. I tend to think it has more to do with the limitations of creativity and artistic integrity, as it contrasts with the simplistic and scalable metric of financial bottom-lining. A corporation run by a board of attorneys and investors, which has amassed a number of media producing companies as a portfolio from which to extract profits, is not going to be able to interact with the manufacturers according to storylines and quality driven elements, or risks which are meant to further develop the artform as a means of expression. So instead they adopt this methodology of appraising each of the subsidiary production companies according to their cost benefit metrics, and in doing so become more and more apt to pressure the developers according to monetary factors, at the expense of quality. And the limitations of creative processes as they contrast with quantitative analysis, render the developers virtually mute relative to their financially minded higher ups. I think that is why when Bethesda released Skyrim, and Oblivion before that, we were presented with a sixty-dollar game that held up in terms of quality and performance for more then a decade. I to this day, still sometimes find myself just starting up a new playthrough in Skyrim, because it has not yet stopped being enjoyable. While there were a few remasters and maintenance driven reasons to spend additional funds on what was essentially the same decade old RPG, it feels worth it, and delivers as a product. But then, once corporatism began to divide and financialize the development company into a number of subsidiaries, and the conglomerate was then put under the purview of a monetary surveillance system tasked with managing a group of creative enterprises according to purely quantitative measures, we got Fallout 76. An inoperable MMORPG which took a successful product, watered it down, forced it into a framework that was meant to sell more copies and keep players engaged for a longer duration, in order to present the opportunity to market additional products within that framework, and thus create a means of perpetual returns on investment, rather than selling a game that had a beginning middle and end. And, like we have come to expect from such perversions of products by their aloof industry heads, rather than admit to being greedy and rushing a product which fundamentally compromised the integrity of the developers, they spun it, tried to fiddle with the branding and work magic with the marketing to misdirect their consumer base from the bitterness of the reality. Which of course, was that their good faith had been first used to sell them a product, and then twisted into evidence of their own naivety and used to blame them for being manipulated. That is how corporatism works. As it grows, it begins to strip away the human elements which define its purpose little by little, until eventually the purpose is basically lost entirely. What begins as a work of creativity and expression meant to offer a service and provide some manner of meaningful interaction, for which profit is meant as little more than a way to make such an endeavor possible, eventually becomes little more than an empty nostalgic mirage of itself, stretched grotesquely over the skeletal framework of a meaningless mechanism designed to suck wealth from whoever it once served for as long as possible, whilst providing less and less of what it promises.
The Witcher: Wild Hunt, released two twenty-dollar expansions, and each of them was basically the size and depth of an entire game. Which is not to say that everyone has to be like that, but it does seems to sort of illustrate the central difference between a game that is made as means of arbitrarily amassing profit, and a game is created as a work of art and aimed at providing an experience and ultimately a service, for which profit acquisition is merely a means to an end, rather than both the means and the end. The difference at the end of the day is what is asked of the Gamers who consume the media that is released. Are they being asked to engage in an experience of something worthwhile and beautiful, or are they being cajoled into spending as much money and time as they can be convinced to spend by the dopamine driven reward mechanic built into the framework of a simplistic infinite puzzle that pits them against strangers in an all too real facsimile of the same numb transactional programming that has begun to bleed over from the industrial complex into our communities, and which seems to be replacing social interaction and human connection with the suffocating extremes of hyper reactionary obedience to nostalgia or else its opposite in the suffocating solipsism of convincingly feigned empathy aimed at reducing the whole of our cultural ethos to the tyrannical enforcement of small talk and alienation via the monetization of social validation as a means of weaponizing belonging.
I swear I was just intending to review a videogame. But sadly, it seems like the same nightmarish purification of the human spirit which pervades the halls of our political institutions is not limited to how we choose our leaders. Perhaps it is the radicalizing influence of the political party system itself, coupled with its role as a means of quantifying the aims of out collective societal intentions, which acts as the nexus through which the industrial complex infects humanity with a self-devouring loyalty to apathy and the unfeeling objectification of human worth. Perhaps it is just that we have become so numb to the horrors of inequality and social injustice perpetuated by our adherence to the unnatural processes that once served us, that we haven’t even realized how long we have been blindly engaged in serving those systems at the cost of our greater humanity. So to bring it full circle, haphazardly no doubt, that is why I was so moved by the quality and beauty and subtle workmanship of Ghost of Tsushima, because it seems to me, like a hopeful sign. An omen which tells of the possibility that we are moving past that choking numbness, and resuscitating the warmth and spirit of the shared goal of all human endeavors, to find meaning and purpose as it emerges from among our ceaseless attempts at being beautiful despite the situational tragedy which at times plagues our world. To manufacture the miracle of faith, so that we can muster hope in the face of adversity and in doing so balance the periods of personal suffering we each experience, against the ocean of collective progress and triumph that defines our species when it is seen for the best of itself, rather than condemned for its imperfections.
Love you.

Wrestling Observer Rewind ★ Oct. 1, 2001

Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives.
PREVIOUS YEARS ARCHIVE:
1991 • 1992 • 1993 • 1994 • 1995 • 1996 • 1997 • 1998 • 1999 • 2000


1-1-2001	1-8-2001	1-15-2001	1-22-2001
1-29-2001	2-5-2001	2-12-2001	2-19-2001
2-26-2001	3-5-2001	3-12-2001	3-19-2001
3-26-2001	4-2-2001	4-9-2001	4-16-2001
4-23-2001	4-30-2001	5-7-2001	5-14-2001
5-21-2001	5-28-2001	6-4-2001	6-11-2001
6-18-2001	6-25-2001	7-2-2001	7-9-2001
7-16-2001	7-23-2001	7-30-2001	8-6-2001
8-13-2001	8-20-2001	8-27-2001	9-3-2001
9-10-2001	9-17-2001	9-25-2001

The wrestling industry in the United States is in uncharted waters right now and Dave is starting this issue by examining the overall situation. Part of it is due to outside factors. The mood of the country is still shaken by the events of 9/11 and the effects of the attack on the economy are still uncertain. WWF is the only major pro wrestling company and its closest competitor is UFC, which isn't even wrestling. Dave says it's been a horrible year for the business, with WCW and ECW folding. Wrestling magazines closing up shop. The Invasion angle was totally botched. By every metric, business is declining. It's a terrible time to start a new company in the U.S. because getting a major league product off the ground is a just too expensive. Dave thinks the WWA idea in Australia might be the best option right now. Build some buzz over there where the market is easier and then try to strike a deal to air it in the U.S. But the biggest problem with WWA is, well, Vince Russo is the guy in charge. Dave says that Russo's idea of wrestling was a massive failure in WCW and the problem is that he didn't learn from it, and to this day continues to blame his WCW failures on outside forces (18 years later, that hasn't changed). Dave expects WWF to feel the crunch of business declining and suspects that many of the low-paid developmental wrestlers under contracts should probably start being concerned for their jobs.
WWF and DirecTV struck a temporary deal to air the Unforgiven PPV. If you recall, they have been negotiating a new deal and it wasn't going well. But the two sides agreed to air Unforgiven under the terms of the old deal while they continue to negotiate a new one. Not airing the show would have cost both sides around $1 million each in lost profits, so needless to say, they both want to settle this. So for now, negotiations continue...
The unpredictable concerns over the economy in the wake of 9/11 are already becoming noticeable. Merch sales for WWF were down significantly since the attacks. House shows this week did okay but most of those tickets were bought when they first went on sale weeks and months ago, prior to the attack. The next round of house shows go on sale this week and seeing how those sell will be the real test. One WWF house show in Fairfax, VA was already cancelled this week due to low advance sales. WWF is also scheduled to return to Madison Square Garden in 2 weeks. Tickets for that show went on sale before 9/11 and were already weak and needless to say, they aren't picking up any steam now. Rock is working that show (one of the few house shows he's doing) and it seems that since returning from filming Scorpion King, even the Rock doesn't have the same drawing power he had beforehand. That being said, WWF has lots of revenue streams, lots of cash reserves, lots of stock they can sell, and they pay their wrestlers far less than any other sport. So WWF is uniquely positioned to weather this storm and probably still be okay.
For UFC, on the other hand, 9/11 couldn't have happened at a worse time. UFC's parent company Zuffa is based out of Las Vegas and the attacks have hit the Vegas casino business hard, with cancelled trips, people spending less money, etc. Nobody wants to get on a plane these days, much less just to fly to Vegas and throw away money in an uncertain economy. Zuffa owner Lorenzo Fertitta, who operates casinos in Vegas, also owns an investment company whose major offices were in the World Trade Center. Financially, Fertitta is getting hit on all sides right now, right as he's trying to get the revived UFC off the ground.
Oh yeah, speaking of WWF Unforgiven, that show is in the books and was highlighted by Kurt Angle winning the WWF title from Steve Austin in his hometown by making Austin tap out clean. The crowd was kinda flat for most of the show, despite a lot of good matches. From a long-term booking standpoint, Angle winning the title doesn't make a ton of sense, because there's a lot of mileage in Austin as champion, but it seemed as though the decision was made to give the crowd a feel-good ending considering the last few weeks the country has had (Bruce Prichard later admitted that, yeah, having Angle win the title here was purely a short-term "give the American audience something patriotic" decision). There were also a bunch of minor injuries during the show with Perry Saturn, Edge, Jericho, and Austin all got busted up lips or eyes.
The biggest story coming out of the show was the UndertakeKane vs. Kronik match which was so bad that it resulted in Kronik leaving the company after only debuting 3 weeks ago. Dave says it was the worst WWF PPV match of the year. No word on why Kronik left yet (some say they quit after the match and others say they were fired) but they have already reached out to Russo about working the WWA tour in Australia. The big story going around is that Jim Ross told them they would be sent to OVW or HWA for more training and in protest, they quit but Dave hasn't been able to verify that. If it's true, Dave suspects WWF was hoping they would quit because those 2 guys have lots of experience (both have worked for WWF in the past) so Dave feels like this might have been a way to push them into quitting. Considering they're not great workers anyway and they were notorious troublemakers in WCW, Dave doesn't understand why they were even hired in the first place, aside from the fact that Brian Adams and Undertaker are friends and it was basically a favor for Taker. (Dave clarifies a bit of this in later issues, not all of that is entirely correct).
Other notes from the PPV: Dave points out that Raven is in the best shape he's been in years. The first Edge vs. Christian match, which needed to be a star-making performance for both guys as they branch off as singles stars, was good but the lack of crowd reaction hurt it a lot. The aforementioned Kronik match gets negative-2 stars. RVD was one of the few guys to get a reaction, as the crowd was nuclear for him. This is the match where Jericho got his eye busted from a kick and needed stitches and Dave says RVD is getting a reputation for this sort of thing, which isn't good. And Angle's family celebrated with him in the ring after he won the title and they played it up as if he finally achieved his life-long dream, conveniently forgetting that Angle's already won the title once before. Lots of 3 and 4 star matches here, but the crowd really hurt the show overall.
UFC 33 is happening before you read this but after press time, so Dave hasn't seen it yet. And I wouldn't normally cover this but this show is legendarily bad, so here we go. Things were looking good at first. The show sold out weeks in advance, setting a record live gate and attendance for the company and UFC did a hell of a job promoting the main event for months beforehand. But then 9/11 happened and the economic woes of that are expected to take a toll on the buyrate. Then, due to 9/11, the high-profile Felix Trinidad vs. Bernard Hopkins boxing match got moved to within 24 hours of the UFC PPV, which is also expected to cause a major hit to UFC's PPV numbers. Then 10 days before the show, Vitor Belfort had to pull out of the show due to an arm injury in training, completely derailing the main event they spent months building. Vitor somehow fell through a glass window during training and suffered a horrible cut that required 40 stitches and partially severed his tricep. When he couldn't go, UFC scrambled to find a new, big name opponent for Tito Ortiz. First, they reached out to Ken Shamrock and offered him $180,000 to take the fight on a week's notice. Shamrock countered, asking for $500,000 and that pretty much ended those negotiations. So then Frank Shamrock was offered $150,000 but also turned it down, not wanting to risk his 4+ year unbeaten streak by taking a fight on such short notice with no time to train and prepare. It eventually went to Russian fighter Vladimir Matyushenko. Many insiders are predicting Matyushenko will win because he's a better wrestler and punches harder. Dave gives credit to Ortiz for also taking this fight without having time to prepare for it and thinks it's a hell of a risk for Ortiz. So we'll see.
Antonio Inoki and the promoters from PRIDE and K-1 held a joint press conference in Japan to announce another Inoki New Year's Eve show taking place on 12/31. It will be a joint show with PRIDE fighters, K-1 fighters, and pro wrestlers. The hook for the show is that there's expected to be a lot of Inoki's guys (all of whom fight for PRIDE) going against K-1 fighters, so basically inter-promotional MMA with a wrestling twist.
The idea of Universal getting into the wrestling biz is back on the table and it looks to be a go starting in November. Hulk Hogan had been in talks with Universal off and on for most of this year about starting a new promotion but as of press time, word is Hogan is not involved in this. Hogan is said to be more interested in returning to WWF than he is running his own promotion but until his lawsuit with Time Warner (over the whole Vince Russo/Bash 2000 incident) is settled, he probably won't be doing anything. Hogan is trying to argue in the lawsuit that the incident damaged his career, and it's going to be hard to prove that if he goes back to WWF and has a big money-making run there. Plus he's still recovering from a recent knee surgery. Jimmy Hart has continued negotiating with Universal and it appears he and Nasty Boy Brian Knobs will be running this new promotion, with Kevin Sullivan helping with booking. A 2-hour pilot is scheduled for filming in November and several former WCW stars and other unsigned names (mostly old 80s stars) have been contacted about coming in. They're also looking at some younger indie names and seem especially interested in former ECW star Super Crazy. Dave expects this to be run like an old Memphis-style studio territory show and figures Jerry Lawler will probably be involved too unless he re-signs with WWF before then. Anyway, Dave doesn't seem to have high hopes for this succeeding (indeed, it does not).
And now we have an article from Ben Miller. Dave drops an editor's note and says to welcome Ben Miller as a columnist for the Observer and expects him to have a column in here once a month or so. It's fine I guess, but it's really just an opinion piece by some guy who isn't Dave. But to his credit, it's a well-written column that makes some good points about what WWF needs to do to improve and make the Invasion angle and upcoming brand split work. But it just feels out of place here in the Observer. I believe Miller later become a columnist on the website and was involved for years after this.
In Puerto Rico, former WWF wrestler Tiger Ali Singh now wrestles for IWA and since 9/11, he has become the biggest heel in the promotion, with the fans chanting "terrorist!" at him (just in case you're wondering, Singh is from India and is not Muslim).
Remember the MMA fighter Brian Johnston who suffered a major stroke backstage at the last PRIDE show? Good news! It was originally thought he would be paralyzed from it and confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, but in the last few weeks, he's made a miraculous recovery, regaining a good deal of movement on his right side and is even able to stand with assistance. He still can't talk but he has total recognition of people who visit him. Doctors are optimistic that he will make a full recovery and should be able to walk again, although it would take an even bigger miracle for him to ever compete in MMA or wrestling again. (Here's an article about him from 2013. Long story short, he mostly recovered. He still suffers symptoms and doesn't have full motor control, but he recovered well enough to pretty much live a full life. But no, he never fought again).

READ: Brian Johnston: Where Is He Now?

Antonio Inoki finally made it back to Japan after being stranded in the U.S. after 9/11. As soon as he got back, he spoke with the media and criticized NJPW for the main event of their upcoming Tokyo Dome show, saying nobody wanted to see it and bashing them for not booking Fujita vs. Ogawa instead. Dave thinks this is some peak-WCW shit. The most popular icon in company history rips into his own company right before a big show, saying their main event sucks and nobody wants to see it. That's gonna do wonders for ticket sales. At least in WCW, the owners of the company weren't criticizing it publicly. While we're on the subject, Dave reviews the most recent NJPW TV show and says it's WCW-in-its-last-year levels of bad. Three different matches get negative star ratings. ("dAvE iS bIAsEd fOR neW jaPAn!")
Bushwhacker Butch was hospitalized this week with a staph infection. He had complained of a neck injury and then passed out and was rushed to the hospital and diagnosed with staph and pneumonia. As of press time, he's still hospitalized and breathing through tubes (yeah he ended up getting sepsis and nearly dying).
In regards to the WWA tour in Australia, Vince Russo is reportedly pushing to have toplessness or maybe even full-frontal nudity for a women's bra & panties-type of match on the PPV they're filming. One of the women is former ECW/WCW valet Kimona/Leah Meow (so yeah, this match happened, but she wasn't in it. It was 3 women and a guy in drag, all nameless people who never went anywhere in the business. It was called a Skin To Win match. Two of the women (Penthouse Pets brought in to "wrestle" end up getting their tops taken off but they were wearing pasties because I assume they were forced to. When this PPV aired in the U.S., the match was edited off. Russo's brilliant billion dollar idea that would have revolutionized the industry, foiled by the censors again!).
Dave has been hearing rave reviews about a 4-way indie match featuring American Dragon, Low Ki, Christopher Daniels and Scoot Andrews, with many who saw it calling it the independent match of the year. Dave hasn't seen it yet but expects to have a tape in a week or two and will report back.

WATCH: American Dragon vs. Low Ki vs. Christopher Daniels vs. Scoot Andrews - 2001

The New York Times did an interview with Linda McMahon for a story about how WWF is handling the current real-world situation in the wake of 9/11. The story hasn't ran yet but it's expected to reference WWF's exploitation of the Gulf War in 1991. In the interview, Linda mentioned that the name 'Raw Is War' is going to be changed to simply 'Raw' and that the December PPV Armageddon will be renamed (it becomes Vengeance). She also admitted that the events of 9/11 did play a part in Kurt Angle winning the WWF title this past week (I completely forgot Linda admitted it here).
Notes from Raw: Dave says it was a strange show. For starters, the night before at the PPV, they talked about having a big birthday celebration for Stephanie on Raw the next night. But that didn't happen. Stephanie's birthday was acknowledged, but there was no big party or angle about it. They also spent the entire episode teasing what would happen when Austin showed up but the entire show aired and....he never arrived. Dave again points out that hyping something for 2 hours and then simply not delivering is some WCW shit (it's also some 2019 WWE shit). There were several little things like that throughout the show also. Dave thinks back to 18 months ago when WCW used to do dumb shit every episode and he would always write, "WWF would never do this," and here we are 18 months later and it's happening all the time. Shane McMahon announced a match with Kurt Angle defending the WWF title against Booker T, leading Dave to wonder how in the hell Shane, as part of the Alliance, has the authority to make WWF title matches. DDP is now doing a self-help gimmick (who'da ever guessed?). RVD has been getting over huge as a face lately, so of course they put him in a match with Rock (the most popular guy in the company) and had him lose clean, which accomplished nothing other than killing RVD's momentum.
Sean O'Haire got into a fight in the crowd at an indie MMA show last week and was actually choked out by another fighter before the police broke it up. The guy who choked him out was also a lot smaller than him, but he also came up behind O'Haire to do it. But size doesn't matter and Dave says when a trained fighter gets the jump on you from behind and puts you in a choke, you're probably going to sleep no matter how big you are. That being said, O'Haire is lucky he doesn't work for Bill Watts because losing a real fight (to someone smaller than you no less) as a pro wrestler would get you fired back in Watts' day. O'Haire and the other guy were arrested after O'Haire was awakened from his slumber.
Eddie Guerrero is expected to leave rehab soon. During his time in treatment, Guerrero has been living with Tom Prichard, who has also been battling some addiction issues. Guerrero is still being paid his downside guarantee and is expected to be brought back to TV when he's done with rehab. Dave talks about how some guys don't succeed in rehab but then points out how William Regal is seen as the best case scenario. Regal had a nasty drug habit and was on the verge of washing out of the business and being deported, but he cleaned himself up and is now back on WWF TV in a prominent role and doing great. Dave hopes the same for Guerrero. When he's out, he'll probably spend some time in OVW first before returning to WWF.
Jim Ross answered a bunch of media questions on some conference thing last week. It was mostly a discussion about the future plans for WCW and since there isn't any definite plan yet, he had to be vague. Praised Booker T, RVD, and Kanyon for being 3 of the WCW guys to adapt well to WWF. Others praised Hurricane for the same but Ross was kinda dismissive of him, seeming not to agree. Noted that Jazz from ECW has signed and will be working with Sharmell Sullivan in OVW. Speaking of Sharmell, she was pretty much only signed as a favor to Booker T. He also praised Rey Mysterio and Juventud Guerrera but basically said there's no place for them in WWF right now. Ross was asked about Ken Shamrock and praised him but said Shamrock has a lot of MMA stuff he wants to do and only wants to wrestle in WWF part-time. But they want him full-time, which is why he hasn't been brought back at all. In regards to Rock's blooming Hollywood career, Ross shrugged it off and basically said Rock is under contract to be a wrestler full-time and that's what he loves to do. Ross predicted that Rock may take off once a year to film a movie but that the WWF is his priority. Time will tell on that. If his movie career takes off, Dave doesn't see Rock sticking around.
Various WWF notes: the list of wrestlers who are hurt right now in WWF is absurd. Dave says it would be easier to list who's not hurt. Anyway, Dave lists everyone who's hurt, their injuries, their surgeries, when they're expected back, etc. There's going to be a WWF-themed episode of NBC's The Weakest Link show featuring WWF stars taping this week. Mick Foley is appearing on Celebrity Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Shane McMahon was on the Opie & Anthony Show and was asked about Stephanie's breast implants, which led Shane to respond that "they are 2 good reasons to tune into Smackdown this week." Dave thinks that's kinda weird. Sara Undertaker has dyed her hair brown and is training to wrestle.
WWF is meeting with former WCW wrestler The Wall next month. He was originally going to be signed and brought in when they bought WCW, but then they learned he had a pretty nasty drug problem so they passed on him. Dave kinda doubts they'll hire him. He's big, but he's also not very good and already in his 30s with a drug strike against him. They might sign him and send him to developmental but they already have a ton of guys wasting away down there already.
If you've been noticing all the references to Ric Flair on WWF TV lately, it's not an accident. There has been a lot of consideration recently of buying out the remainder of his Time Warner contract. The reality is WWF has completely failed to create any new stars out of the WCW names they signed and if they are serious about running WCW as its own brand next year, they need big names. The other names discussed were Sting and Goldberg, but they both have a lot higher contracts with more time left on them and economically, it just doesn't make sense to WWF right now to bring them in. That being said, Dave kinda questions how valuable Ric Flair could be in WWF these days. WWF has a younger audience than WCW did and Flair isn't getting any younger. He can talk his ass off but as far as working matches, Dave doesn't seem to see much value in Flair as an in-ring guy beyond a few nostalgia matches with big name WWF stars. All in all, Dave feels like bringing in these big name WCW stars would have worked much better if they did it at the beginning of the angle months ago. Although in the end, it doesn't matter who they had. The way it was booked, with WWF just rolling over WCW like they were nothing and nobody wanting to sell for or put over the WCW stars, it would have still failed no matter who they had.
The latest on Triple H is that he isn't expected to make it back by Survivor Series as originally hoped. Now it's looking more like December (not quite).

FRIDAY: First season of Tough Enough comes to an end, WWF ordered to pay the World Wildlife Fund's legal bills, details on new XWF promotion, more on Kronik, NJPW ticket sales, and more...

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