MadCap At The Movies - "Godzilla"

Well now, the real new one this time.  Not that black and white, poorly dubbed over monstrosity, we're seeing the real return of the real King of Monsters!  He's back and he's...carefully cropped in shots so that he's not completely seen for a good part of the movie.  Now, don't take this the wrong way, of course.  I'm not a Godzilla fan.  In fact, until the new movie was announced, the only things I had ever been exposed to concerning him were the 1998 film and clips of the Japanese films out of context.  But still, Godzilla has been a massive and undeniable impact upon our culture.  So, when Legendary Pictures (y'know, the guys who managed to save Batman from Bat-Nipples and the Bat Credit Card) and Toho were gearing up to bring the King of the Monsters roaring back to the big screen, I definitely wanted to get in on some of that.

The film begins with black and white shots of military moving about in formations at sea, and set ups that make it very clear we're in the Bikini Atoll circa 1954.  We see massive, imposing spikes along some creature's back as it rises just below the waves...before seemingly being destroyed by atomic fire.  Forty-five years after that, the action picks up in - where else? - Japan.  In the Janjira Nuclear Plant, seismic disturbances have picked up that are putting the entire plant at risk.  Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston), the head of the plant, is forced to watch as his wife and a team of specialists are burned alive by radiation after what is dubbed as a "reactor breach".  However, it quickly becomes clear that this was no simple mechanical error.  Or rather, it becomes clear fifteen years later.

Joe is joined by his son, Ford (Aaron-Taylor Johnson), who comes to Japan to bail him out of jail for being caught in the restricted "Quarantine Zone"...which they find out is not suffering at all from radioactive fallout as was believed.  Captured by the authorities whilst retrieving data from their old family home, they are witness to the release of a creature from a state of hibernation that is...not Godzilla...but he is soon on his way as he has not one, but two brand new beasts (dubbed "MUTO's" by the government).

I'll go ahead and be blunt here, if you're looking for a good monster fight, then you're in for a wait.  The first confrontation between Godzilla and one of the MUTO creatures is set up brilliantly.  The meet in Hawaii and are face to face...when it cuts away to Ford's son (Carson Bolde) and wife (Elizabeth Olsen) watching on television as apparently someone has managed to not only get footage of the fight in the chaos, but edit it into a highlights reel and end with Godzilla quickly jumping back into the ocean...for some reason.  At the very least, he's not running away from the military, which is something.

And I'll take a minute here to talk about the characters that aren't the giant, lurking monsters.  I don't really care for any of them.  Sure, I have some sympathy for Joe following the death of his wife (Juliette Binoche) and in his search for the truth about her death, but that link is severed with the death of Joe after the first MUTO breaks free and, after that, the film very quickly devolves in Alien vs. Predator syndrome.  I understand the need for a humanizing element in these films, that's what makes us relate to them as an audience.  That being the case, make us relate to them.  Give us reasons to care whether these humans live or die.  Johnson's Ford spends his time moving from place to place so we can see either destruction or the after-effects of the monsters passing through, all that Olsen's Elle really does is react by worrying and crying and doing absolutely nothing to contribute to the plot, and their son doesn't even really seem all that connected to things.  Not to rag on a child actor, but c'mon kid, show some emotion!

As for the creatures themselves, one can't go far without talking about Godzilla himself.  He looks great, though he's a little on the chubby side as many people have noted.  When you actually do get a full look at the majestic grandeur of the beast, you can really appreciate the work that went into rendering him.  This isn't a mutated French Polynesian water Iguana eating a lot of fish, this is Godzilla and he takes that title with a mighty roar and a proud stomp as he lumbers in to bring down your entire world down around your ears, pal.  We also get a showcase of the Atomic Breath - something the '98 film was severely lacking in - and let me tell you, it was the highlight of the film for me.  Of course, that was when they were getting into the actual monster fighting.

The MUTO creatures aren't really anything to write home about.  They kind of remind me of the creature from Cloverfield, and I almost think that was the intention.  Still, with one winged and one land based, they prove to be worthy adversaries to the title monster, if only because it's his first outing in ten years (yet, somehow, from about fifty years in the future - what the hell, Japan?) and he's a little out of practice.  The destruction is largely caused by them as well, in Japan, Las Vegas, and then in San Fransisco for the final bout.  The main focus in the plot is the pair of them are getting together to mate and bring a new race of not-Cloverfield babies to the Earth to repopulate.

Between this and his lack of appearance in the film, this makes Godzilla both a cocktease and a cockblock, if you can believe that.

But in the end, the eggs are destroyed, the city is saved from nuclear armageddon and, after a nap, Godzilla gets up and lets out that triumphant and iconic roar before lumbering back to the ocean until the day of the inevitable sequel humanity needs him once again.  It's enjoyable, if spending way too much time setting up Godzilla with very little pay off.  But the pay off that we do get is awesome and enjoyable.  If you're willing to wait for it, the final fight in San Francisco is pretty freaking awesome.  That doesn't excuse the rather slow and non-invested ride getting there of course, but it does deliver on the promise of giant monsters fighting it out for supremacy as humanity can only watch agape in horror...if only for a little while.

Godzilla is now in theaters from Legendary Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, and Toho.

For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin

MadCap At The Movies - "The Amazing Spider-Man 2"

Now, I've allowed myself to sit on this one for a couple of reasons.  Namely A) my new job keeps me pretty busy and I've found less time to do anything non-work related that doesn't involve sleep, and B) this film is apparently really polarizing...and I don't really get why.

Okay, that's not true, I do understand it and I even have a few problems with it myself.  I'm not particularly fond of how Norman Osborn - one of the greatest villainous movers and shakers of the Marvel universe - was cast aside for the sake of his son.  By that same token, Harry is a great deal distanced from several iterations of the character in comics, and he does effectively fit the role he was meant to fill...mostly.  But more on that as we go on.

The story picks up not long after The Amazing Spider-Man, with Peter Parker (once more taken on by Andrew Garfield) and his lady love Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) preparing to graduate from High School...with Peter, unfortunately, being caught up in his duties as a superhero and nearly missing the ceremony.  During the chase to prevent a crook (Paul Giamatti) from stealing plutonium from OsCorp, Peter saves the life of a man by the name of Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx) who quickly develops an obsession with the Wall Crawler.  And while Peter is able to save the day effectively and get to graduation just in the nick of time, he finds himself haunted by visions of Captain George Stacy (Denis Leary) who he has failed to keep his promise to.

From here, the narrative splits its time between Peter and Gwen yo-yoing between being in a relationship and not being in a relationship, Peter trying to deal with not only the rise of Max Dillon into Electro, and him reconnecting with boyhood chum Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan).  But that isn't all, believe it or not!  Gwen is offered a scholarship to Oxford (meaning she might have to leave Peter behind to pursue her dream), Harry learns from ailing father Norman (Chris Cooper) that he's dying and that he is also dying of the same disease.  The only cure, Harry determines, is a vial of Spider-Man's blood.  But also, the OsCorp Board of Directors is trying to shove Harry out and take over the company themselves and Peter still finds out a little bit more about the fate of his parents and what caused them to run away, culminating in...

...yeah, I can agree with the people that say there's a bit too much going on here.

However, this doesn't really keep the film from being enjoyable.  Far from it, in fact.  Much like the films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it's done to set up future projects.  While it is nice and it whets our appetites for all of that, it is important to focus on the narrative of now rather than later on, which this film manages to do well enough.  Mostly, anyway.

Andrew Garfield comes back into the role of Spider-Man and Peter Parker, and I will say that he plays both sides of the coin masterfully.  Right from the start, he's being snarky and cracking jokes while dispensing justice to the criminal element of New York.  This is who Spider-Man is supposed to be, not some awkward, geeky dork who happens to be stuffed into a Spider-Man suit - I'm looking at you, Tobey Maguire.  Actually, to be truthful, Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker is perfect...for all of the first Raimi Spider-Man before he gets the Spider bite.  While Peter Parker was indeed the awkward, nerdy dweeb of a man-child before he was bitten, Tobey's Peter never actually evolves from that point and even delves right into the "dear God, this man is creepy" territory.  Garfield is not only better, but has the character down far, far better.

Beyond just the costumed snarky joke machine that Spider-Man is, we see more of the scientific mind that is supposed to drive Peter Parker.  In his first fight with Electro, one of his webshooters gets blown apart by the electric current.  So, to circumvent this, he actually works on ways to increase the resistance to electrical charge.  It's one of the things I genuinely love about Garfield over Maguire.  In the Raimi films, of course, the focus was less on the science (because, Sam, someone creating webshooters is just unbelievable! Now somebody's entire biology being overwritten to given them natural spinnerets overnight, that's just fine!), and I'm glad that's something that the Webb films have brought back.  Because Peter Parker is a science based hero (even if 99.9% of all the "science" in comics is fantastically ridiculous), and he has often fallen back on science in the comics to solve his problems.

Seriously, the guy's like Batman, but with a soul. (Yes, I went there.)

Also returning this time is Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy.  And, not one to fit the stereotype of the damsel in distress, Stone's Gwen Stacy continues to be a complete and total badass.  Indeed, a lot of Gwen's development in this film either averts or inverts the usual tropes with superhero girlfriends.  She gets an opportunity to go to Oxford and it looks like Peter, not her, will have to work around her schedule, rather than the other way around.  She is the one who comes up with the plan to magnetize Peter's webshooters for his fight against Electro.  She refuses to play the yo-yoing between being in a relationship and not being in a relationship with Peter, as I feared that his film was going back to the "will they, won't they?" nonsense from the Raimi films.  Not so, and I'm immensely happy about that.

Also, the chemistry between the two leads is absolutely perfect, as it was in the first film.  Seriously, I feel like I might actually get diabetes from watching how sickeningly sweet Garfield and Stone are.  It is abundantly obviously in virtually every scene these two are in how much they love one another, which makes her death at the end of the film all the more heartbreaking.

...oh, that isn't a spoiler! 1973 was over forty years ago!  Read a Wikipedia article!

The event is all the more soul-crushing because of their chemistry (both on and off screen), and Garfield's performance from the elation at thinking that he's saved her, up to the moment when he realizes that he has not and we see him broken down almost completely - even to the point of giving up being Spider-Man for a far more believable and sympathetic reason than in Spider-Man 2 - it's just another event in a long string that makes their entire romance, for all of its high points and it's tragedy, all the more believable.  Peter Parker loses the love of his life in that bell tower, and the performance lets you feel every ounce of that anguish as his soul is torn asunder by it.

But hey, Peter, at least you have Mary Jane...who will erase your marriage through a deal with Satan...

But those are the main leads.  The rest of the cast brings solid, if not really good performances.  Aunt May (Sally Field) in particular deserves important note, and it's one again that I have to bring up a comparison to the Raimi films.  I find that Field's May Parker is far more believable and like able as a character.  Sure, Rosemary Harris's Aunt May in the first three films was essentially the perfect, idealized version of your Grandmother.  She never seemed to be all that troubled for more than short parts of the films and seemed only there to provide exposition or a schmaltzy story for us to all cough at the awkwardness of the writing.  It's very clear that she cared for Peter, but she seemed more like a two-dimensional cardboard cut out of the Grandmother stereotype than an actual character.

Field's May, on the other hand, struck me as far more three-dimensional in this film. She is worried about how she's going to put Peter through college and doesn't know how she's going to manage with Ben being gone.  However, she's not going to take the Maguire approach and mope, taking classes in order to become a nurse so she can help keep her home in order and help further Peter's education. And she still manages to be supportive of Peter and help inspire him both before and after Gwen's death.  My only gripe with her at all, and I mean at all (seriously, I love Sally Field and her interpretation of May) is that - like the first Amazing film - they have the crazed implications that she knows that Peter is Spider-Man...which they reinforce near the end of this one.

What exactly is that a build up towards?  Why doesn't she just tell him?

Jamie Foxx's Electro is next on the block and...feels a little rushed.  Now, mind you, they had a lot to cram into the film, but I felt as though his development from obsessed fanboy to raging psychopath could have been given a little more time to fully blossom.  That being said, I don't really find Electro sympathetic as many have tried to make him out to be.  At first?  Yeah, we've all had a little hero worship go to our heads once and a while.  But once he starts taking the Dr. Manhattan power set and killing people who get in his way...I'm a little less than sympathetic.

Kind of like Loki in The Avengers.  Betrayed by your old man and lied to your entire life? Yeah, you'd have a right to be pissed.  Go to a planet that had nothing to do with it and start killing people with your mystical glowing stick? Bit too far.

The secondary villain of the piece comes in the form of Harry Osborn, childhood chum of Peter's from grade school (who was oddly never mentioned before), who learns from his ailing father Norman that the disease that is killing him is hereditary.  Thus, Harry attempts to seek out a cure...first going with trying to convince Spider-Man to give him some of his blood, and then breaking into OsCorp's special projects to get vials of venom from the spiders that bit Peter.

Main problem with this - where exactly do you get off killing Norman Osborn?  Y'know...the guy who murdered Gwen Stacy, manufactured the entire Clone Saga (somehow) to drive Peter Parker completely insane, at one point took over all of the Marvel Earth and shot both Valeria and Franklin Richards point blank with a handgun, and when he learned that Doc Ock had swapped bodies with Spider-Man he did everything he could to make Ock's life a living Hell...

...wow, my nerd is showing, isn't it?  The point is, Norman Osborn.  Deserved way, way better than this.  But I can look past that.

Harry himself is alright.  There's obviously some Daddy issues (again, Norman Osborn is his father) and a horrific desperation in him as he wants to find a cure for the disease.  While we do see Peter's point in his moral questioning over whether or he should give his blood to Harry (given what cross-species genetics did in the last film), Harry's pain and anger at the rejection is all the more sad and terrible because of his desperation...and leads to some unfortunate consequences that have already been brought up in this review.  I'm also glad that, not unlike the first film, Harry wasn't killed off at the end of the film as he very well could have been.  Of course, it's a set up for the Sinister Six film, but I'm still quite behind the idea of keeping villains alive at the end of superhero films (something that the Raimi films, comparing again, failed to do repeatedly) because of other stories that could be told.

That all being said, Harry looks absolutely ridiculous as the Goblin.  I know people want to laugh at the William Dafoe Power Rangers outfit, but I had to stifle a laugh when Harry came onscreen.  They're going for the Ultimate look, which I get, but he just looks adorable.  I really just want to go "Who's gonna go kill Spider-Man? You are! You are, aren't you? Yes, you are!" in that annoying baby-talk voice people use on their dogs any time I see him.  If it weren't for the lead up to Gwen's death, you couldn't even call the guy menacing.  Just hilarious.

And also, to everyone who's mentioning that Rhino (again, Paul Giamatti) is the third villain in this film...he's not.  He's comic relief, and he really shouldn't be taken as anything else (at least until the third film, which he is slated to be in).  I've heard that fans of the Rhino were actually rather pissed about his sudden cameo in the beginning and the all of two minutes he appears in the end in costume.  My only rebuttal to this is...there are fans of the Rhino?

Seriously?  The Rhino?

Also, Felicia Hardy (Felicity Jones) and J. Jonah Jameson (Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Film) make cameos, but besides the two mythology gag jokes with the latter, they're not really of note.

The only real problems I have with the whole, besides it trying to fit a bit too much for it's britches, is one thing.  The scenes with the planes should have been cut.  Electro has control of New York's power grid (somehow) and it's a race against the clock to stop him and save the city.  The stakes are already ridiculously high.  I mean over the top levels.  Throwing in a new element of characters who have no bearing on the plot and who we haven't had time to see development of doesn't allow us to care about whether they live or die.  They're NPCs under a bad DM, essentially.

But really, besides that problem (and really, that's really the only problem I had), I really like this movie.  I like the first Amazing Spider-Man more, but I definitely would take this film over any of the Raimi trilogy by far.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is now in theaters from Marvel Entertainment, Columbia Pictures, and Sony Pictures.

For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, be sure to follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.

Madcap's Reel Thoughts - "Godzilla, King of the Monsters!" (1956)

I know I’m a little late to the party on this one.  But still, I gotta say, this film isn’t half bad.  I’m surprised, honestly of the absolute sheer balls to do the film in black and white, as well as using practical effects over CGI.  Bryan Cranston seems oddly subdued in the film, however, and the entire thing is stylized so that it looks like a film made in the 1950s, not unlike the original that…

...oh...this is the original, isn’t it?

...crap.
So, Godzilla, King of the Monsters was a film produced through the American company Jewell Enterprises Inc. and, of course, Toho. Brought to American theaters in 1956, it is the first joint effort between Toho and an American company to bring the titular King of Monsters to the big screen...admittedly a great deal more on Toho's part than that of Jewell Enterprises. To explain, a great deal of the footage for the film comes from the Japanese picture Godzilla, produced two years earlier and released to Japanese audiences. So, if you're looking for where Power Rangers got the idea to re-purpose footage of men beating the crap out of one another in rubber suits, look no further.
However, much like that TV show, Godzilla, King of the Monsters! does not merely dub over the footage with English-speaking actors...actually, it does at several points, however they actually shot brand new footage to work in with actor Raymond Burr, who plays the journalist known as Steve Martin.  Interestingly, this film may be the first form of the "found footage" genre - think films like Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity - or at least closely akin to it, as Martin stops off in Tokyo on a trip to Cairo and ends up reporting on the rise of Godzilla and the destruction that follows in the creature's wake.

This is actually both a good and bad thing, as having some new footage helps to make it a little more accessible to an American audience, while still having a large amount of the focus being on the people of Japan and the actors from that side of the Pacific - this being in the time right after World War II, being one of the first films to portray the Japanese in any positive light since then - and still keeping to the basics of the original film.  The problem with this comes in with how it was done.  Now, at the very least, the locations (sets, possibly?) used to film the new footage are consistent with the original footage.  The problem comes in the dubbing of some of the Japanese actors and...well, Raymond Burr.

At the time of writing, I have never seen anything else that Raymond Burr has ever been in.  Not even once.  So, those that might know better might forgive me for this and it might just be poor direction, but...this guy cannot act.  He can't.  His performance in this is near to unbelievable.  Generally, when one is facing a kaiju, you should feel...fear? Shock? This guy stares up at Godzilla...Godzilla...with a blank expression like he's trying to remember if he unplugged the iron.  I mean, Godzilla, c'mon! It's not listening to a boring story from a distant, elderly relative and trying to resist the urge to tear your brains out with a dinner fork! It's Godzilla! Sheesh!

Apart from that, the film pretty much goes as you might think.  The only jarring gaps are when certain actors are brought in to double for actors from the original Japanese version - such as when the head of the scientific expedition speaks to Burr and has his back turned from the camera during the entire scene, or when he speaks to his "good friend" Dr. Daisuke Seriwaza (in the original footage played by Japanese actor Akihiko Hirata) on the phone and the actor standing in for him has his face obscured by scientific equipment...while still wearing the same clothing and even the eyepatch as Dr. Seriwaza does in the original.  And that's not even getting into the dubbed dialogue, some of which is just the stuff of legend.  However, unlike many dubbed projects, this film stays firmly very close to the plot of the original Godzilla film.

The plot is a simple one.  Possibly one of the simplest in movie history.  The film starts out with Burr narrating from a makeshift hospital after a great catastrophe, which he begins to recount.  A few days later, something is out in the seas around Japan that's been destroying ships and leaving no survivors.  Steve Martin, a reporter for "United World News", is on a routine trip to Cairo, stopping over to see his good friend Dr. Seriwaza (with whom he never shares a single scene with, for obvious reasons) and getting caught onto the story.  Allowed to cover it, Martin basically becomes an observer to events as the original film is played out. Godzilla makes his first appearance surprisingly in broad daylight.  The film does quite a bit to build up to the first appearance of the King of Monsters and...it's not really that impressive.

He pokes his head over a hill (Burr, again, looking completely blank faced at the sight of it) and roars a few times before he retreats to the sea...off screen.  It does quickly become apparent, though, that Godzilla is heading for Tokyo, which causes the Japanese military to get on high alert and get all the model planes and cardboard tanks they can possibly get their hands on to fight him off!  Oh, and the high-tension electrical wires surrounding the city that produce over 300,000 volts of electricity!

If you know anything about Godzilla, you know that this is exactly what it would take to moderately irritate him.

Eventually, Godzilla just gives up.  Heads back to the ocean, and seems to be done with his rampage.  And so, the Japanese - deciding to take a page out of the Doctor's book - decide to go poke it with a stick.  Or, more accurately, with a chemical compound known as the 'Oxygen Destroyer'.  Created by Seriwaza, the chemical compound removes the oxygen out of water...which somehow equates to any creature within said water reduced to a skeleton.  More accurately, at least according to Toho, the death is caused more by suffocation...though Godzilla can swim and can also breathe air, so why he doesn't exactly just stick his head up and survive, I'm not quite sure.  But hey, deus ex machima.

It's also an interesting parallel to the themes of the original Godzilla.  To give a little history lesson (hush, you have to learn something), the original film was made not long after the testing of the atomic bombs in the Bikini Atoll.  What Godzilla was, at least as originally intended, a response of nature to the horrors that man had inflicted upon himself.  A reminder to us that, no matter how far man advances, nature will always be several steps ahead and will be all too happy to make us pay for our arrogance in the spades.  It also serves, more directly, as a metaphor for the atomic bomb in general, reflecting the memories of survivors of the nuclear explosions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that feeling of utter helplessness against a force that cannot possibly be stopped or contained.

This is reflected, also, in Seriwaza's "Oxygen Destroyer".  Now, setting aside the cheesiness of the name and the fact that it's very likely making science cry even to this day, Seriwaza is tormented by his creation as can be seen by how he has become a reclusive and hiding himself away from his friends and family, and even his fiancée after contemplating the destructive power of such a weapon.  Not unlike real world equivalents of his, such as Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer, who saw their work in the fields of science militarized into the very weapons that caused the destruction that inspired this film.  Unlike those two, however, Seriwaza keeps the only samples of the chemical himself and sacrifices himself whilst using it to destroy Godzilla, so that it's power may never be used again.  It is a sad, but poignant moment as Burr narrates that the monster has died and a great man has sacrificed himself, but the world can at last wake up and live again.

...and, of course, I'm just sitting here wondering why Tokyo Bay isn't filled with hydrogen...but hey, what do I know about science?

So, final verdict on the film? Not that bad.

The effects are pretty good for the time, the newly-filmed footage fits in well with only those few jarring bits, and it's paced well enough.  And the fact is, when Godzilla starts picking up steam it is great.  The tradition of the Japanese monster movie starts here for most and does amazingly at what it's good at.  Again, the effects are good for its time and you can sometimes forget that you're watching a man running around in a rubber suit smashing model buildings and vehicles.

The few places where it falls flat are in the performance of Raymond "These pretzels are making me thirsty" Burr and the dubbing.  But the fact is that this is a Japanese product dubbed into English.  Talk to any anime fan and they'll tell you that the dubbed products are never as good as the original...and dear God, don't try to convince them otherwise (Just trust me, it's a very bad idea). The fact that Burr's acting is so subdued as to make it obvious he was only in this for the paycheck and the dubbing so bad that I've watched episodes of the DIC Entertainment dub of Sailor Moon better done that this are things I can look past. It's really not so much that I can't enjoy the film for what it is.  It's a popcorn movie, but with a message and a grim reminder when nature points out the folly of man...

Godzilla!

...sorry, the new film has gotten me on a Blue Oyster Cult kick lately...

Godzilla, King of the Monsters! is now available from Toho and Jewell Enterprises Inc. and is available wherever movies are sold...and on Netflix!

For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.

MadCap's Game Reviews - "1943: The Battle of Midway"

Now, my dear readers...we can return once more to that classic and timeless era of the arcade machine and...oh, right...Sonic the Hedgehog...I was going to.  But this came up.  So deal.  That being said, 1943.

I’m not going to go into the awkwardness present at the mention of a Japanese game company making a game based around the Battle of Midway (y’know, one of the battles that pretty much turned the tide of the war in the Pacific theatre during World War II), and just get into the game itself.  You’re an American fighter pilot scrolling from the bottom to the top of the screen as you shoot everything in sight.

...no, really, that’s it.

It’s in the style of Galaga or Galaxian, though at a much faster pace.  Even in the beginning, the game can be very easily unforgiving.  The main objective, as I say, is to get through each screen while trying to destroy every single plane on the screen besides your own.  It’s buttonmashing at its finest, but also very satisfying.  Things blow up with an awesome effect and it just feels downright good when they do (proper hit detection is important, after all).  However, it also gets very tiring just pushing down the button to fire.  Again, like my problems with Black Tiger a few weeks back, couldn’t some of these things have been fixed in the port to the 360 - till playing from the Capcom Arcade Cabinet, by the way - so I don’t have to bust my thumbs in order to keep firing?

That’s about the only strategy I can give, either.  Just keep shooting until all the enemies on the screen are dead.  Again, simple, but it can get a little monotonous as all such games can.  So Capcom decided to liven it up.  Must like in Contra, your fire can be changed to several different modes.  There’s a direct shot, a scatter shot, and a a scatter shot with a wider range.  I’ve personally found the direct shot to be the best and just to keep spamming attack until, again, everything on the screen is toast.

But wait!  Capcom decided that that would not simply be enough, and gave some special attacks.  The first, when down into fighting aircraft carriers mode, sees a tidal waves wipe the entire screen clear of enemies.  The second, when up in the sky, unleashes the wrath of God upon anything on the screen, electrocuting them with lightning.  So, basically, God was on America’s side in World War II because he gave them the powers of damnation and craziness...at the cost of fuel.  Huh.

The player has a constantly depleting fuel meter that drops whether you’re using special attacks or not, though it can be brought back up by taking out an entire group of red fighter planes.  Easy enough in the early levels, though later on the sheer mass of attackers will see you neglecting to do that and wondering just why you’ve blown up.  Luckily, 1943 doesn’t penalize you for dying (except for resetting your high score to “0”, but who really cares?) and you can start right from where you were, no quarters needed.

So your plane magically reappears in the midst of the Japanese fleet for you to lay a smack down on them once more…

...nevermind, without the arcade stuff you really DO seem to have the powers of God.

「こんにちは、男の子は！私は戻ってきた！"

Mind you, this game is dated but then...so is Galaga.  Doesn’t remotely keep them from being enjoyable.  If you’ve got some time to kill, go through the sixteen levels and take on the Yamato (no, not that one!) and save the day.  For America...in a Japanese game about one of the decisive battles of World War II…

...the world’s a very strange place, isn’t it? 1943 is now available from Capcom. It can be played from the Capcom Arcade Cabinet, available on Xbox Live, the Playstation Network, and PC. For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.

MadCap's Comic Reviews - "Original Sin #0"

I’ve been a fan of comics ever since I could first read.  Well, to be more accurate I’ve been a fan of superheroes since I first had working eyeballs and I’ve irregularly kept up with certain titles - most prominently Spider-Man...at least until One More Day, but if I go into that you’ll click off this and go onward on your journey through the web be ever so diligently reading rantings that people have already made since 2007, so I feel we best move on.  Besides, I’m not here to talk about the fallout from one of Marvel’s most ridiculously overblown and really rather stupid crossovers (again, if you’re on the opposite side of a moral debate as Captain America, you are wrong.  Period.), I’m here to talk about the set up to what may be a really rather good crossover - “Original Sin”.

I first heard about this through my friend EpicApathy (That Handsome Devil!™), when he told me about what sounded like a very interesting plot involve the actual death of Uatu the Watcher.  Now, any Marvel fan worth their weight in back issues knows who Uatu is.  For those that don’t, or are just getting into comics, “Original Sin #0” is clear in its intentions with the issue title “Who is the Watcher?”.  Well, to delve into the history a bit, Uatu is a member of an alien race known as the Watchers who...watch.  They’re an immensely powerful race that keeps an eye on the universe as a whole but are sworn never to interfere.

If you’re wondering why I’m not making a Time Lords joke here, it’s only because Uatu predates the Time Lords by about six years.  So, honestly, if anything, Doctor Who is ripping off Marvel.

Much like the Doctor, Uatu is the being that regularly breaks the non-interference rule and has done so a few times in order to save the Earth.  When he first appeared, it was to help the Fantastic Four save the Earth from being consumed by Galactus.  Since then, Uatu has interfered more than a few times in the course of Earth’s history, as well as appeared before several critically important events in the history of the Marvel universe.  However, that’s really been it.  For the very big cosmic events, he’s been known to intervene and even for seemingly minor events he is at least watching.  It’s been this way in Marvel for more than fifty years now.  However, “Original Sin #0” poses a question about Uatu that I don’t think has really been approached before this point.

What is Uatu watching for?

Well, that question gets answered in “Original Sin #0”, which begins with some narration by Sam Alexander aka Nova about his backstory, and his connection to his missing father - who was a member of the Nova Corps (basically Marvel’s answer to the Green Lantern Corps) and worked a janitor at his son’s high-school before mysteriously going missing.  Nova, being a teenaged superhero in Marvel, has no doubt been given the pamphlet by Spidey on keeping your girlfriends away from bridges, not making deals with Satan, and avoiding archvillains that for bizarre and completely out of character reasons feel the need to mindswap with you and be “superior”.

...I said I wasn’t going to rant, didn’t I? Oh, well.

But still, Nova gains his powers from the Nova Corp and - after a battle with the hilariously named villain “Tomazooma”, Nova gets some recognition from the Big Three of the Avengers, and here I’ll take a minute to talk about the artwork.  It’s pretty good.  Cap looks a good deal like his Marvel Cinematic Universe counterpart which is both a good and bad thing.  One of the criticisms I’ve heard for the latest film adaptations is that Cap’s original outfit from the 616 universe wouldn’t translate well to the screen (lampshaded in that hilarious USO scene in the first film).  While I disagree, this issue does the opposite and brings the MCU version into the comics and it looks...out of place.  Not bad, necessarily, and a lot more like a military universe than the classic look...but it just feels rather strange.

I don’t know how long Captain Rogers had been rocking the look, of course, but if it’s new because of the recent films, I wouldn’t be overly surprised.  And of course Thor is looking like himself, though not very Chris Hemsworth-y...and Tony Stark is outfitted in Suit #9001, the gold and black look is pretty cool, though.

Getting back to the plot, Nova poses the question of the issue.  When none of the Avengers assembled can give him an answer, Nova decides to take a trip up to Uatu’s home on the Moon.  He even brings Uatu a gift, a piece of the field where the Avengers and the X-Men stopped the Phoenix Force (assuming this was in Avengers vs. X-Men...another overblown crossover) and he is allowed into the Watcher’s compound, where Nova’s helmet begins alerting him to danger, and he sees several versions of Uatu that he theorizes are not duplicates but alternate versions of him, the implication being that they’re all the same man over various potential realities.  This followed up by Nova joining Uatu to review a video record of the event that led to the Watchers declaring their non-intervention policy.

A society that the Watchers gave nuclear weaponry to ended up completely destroying itself.  But the big twist being that the one who managed to convince the Watchers to grant that primitive race the technology was none other than Uatu’s own father.  Huh.  Suddenly, his interest in such a tiny, primitive race as humanity makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?

But it’s even more than that when we learn that Uatu hasn’t just been watching the mainstream Marvel universe but every...single...possibility...that branches off from every...single...choice or event.  As Nova puts it, Uatu literally sees into infinity.  All the time.  And all for the reason of trying to find a single reality where his father was right and interfering didn’t result in the destruction of that race.  Sadly, however, across all of infinity...such a reality doesn’t seem to exist.

Now, a more cynical person might all bull on this.  Then again, anyone who wants to bring up the multiverse theory might want to give Sliders a look.  Trust me, all parallel universes have their own degree of suck. So, if there isn't actually a universe where everything is hunky dory with the Watchers helping a caveman race create the atom bomb, I'm more than willing to believe.

But really, I believe most would describe this as “feels”, and these are Uatu feels of the highest caliber.  The only thing he really wants is to find one reality where his father was right...something that Nova sympathizes with heavily.  Eventually, having learned part of the reason why he had come to visit, Nova gets around to asking about the ultimate fate of his father - really only wanting to know whether he’s dead or alive.  Uatu, speaking the only three words of dialogue that he has, tells him that his father is indeed alive and Nova leaves as he joyfully shouts the words through the void of space...somehow.

And the story ends with Uatu taking the piece of earth that Nova gave to him and setting it on a podium, observing it for a panel before walking away.

“Original Sin #0” is pretty good, and was an excellent doorway to get back into comics with my long absence.  It showed us a side of Uatu not yet seen, and managed to make us empathize with a great and powerful being that is one of the most inhuman things that exists (DC, take note).  It manages to introduce the character of Sam Alexander to the reader as well, which definitely got my attention and personally made me want to pick up his series outside of the “Original Sin” storyline.  And it made a good intro to “Original Sin” itself, even though it’s getting us to care about a character right before they’re killed off, it’s done well and actually manages to succeed in doing that.

And it does pose an even bigger question than simply who would want to kill Uatu and why.  What has he seen that someone thought he shouldn’t have?  I suppose the only way to find out is to pick up the rest of “Original Sin”...which I’ll more than likely be doing...until somebody decides to make a deal with Mephisto to bring Uatu back to life.

...yes, Joe Quesada sucks.  Now shoo!

“Original Sin #0” is now available from Marvel comics wherever comic books are sold.

For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin

MadCap's Game Reviews - "Fable II"

Before the time when the Hero of Oakvale failed to impress me and the Hero of Bowerstone managed to somehow irritate the piss out of me with an interface that a first year game design student would be sobbing in the corner after seeing…there was Fable II.  Fable II happened to be the first game in the series that I picked up, having no prior knowledge of Fable beyond having seen the trailer for it.  Of course, by the time I had actually gotten around to where I could play the original, Microsoft had jumped to the Xbox 360 and Fable II had just come out.

But I apparently didn’t miss much, so no harm done.

Fable II begins some five centuries after the events of Fable II, making it even easier to get involved without prior knowledge of the series for newcomers, with a boy or girl living with his/her sister in the city of Bowerstone. When a snake oil salesman comes to town trying to sell cheap knock-off magical merchandise, Sparrow and his/her sister Rose get a nod from the Lady Cassandra O’Brien dot Delta Seventeen to buy a music box that she claims really has magical powers.  After acquiring five gold coins in a tutorial level and buying the box, Sparrow and Rose use it and make a wish…which seemingly does nothing until they are met in the middle of the night by guards sent by Lord “Oh, My God, He’s So Obviously the Villain”.

This results in Sparrow and Rose finding out about their hero heritage before Rose is unceremoniously shot and falls dead on the spot, followed by Sparrow being shot and falling out of a window.  Saved by Theresa, however, Sparrow doesn’t die and lives for the next indeterminate number of years in the peace and safety of a gypsy camp.  Just enough time for them to get to the 18-20 years old range and be ready to pick up a rusty sword, a crossbow, and a spade and go out to kick the ass of the aforementioned Lord Villain.

...oh, and you get a dog. It barks annoyingly and occasionally tells you places where you can dig. Until it gets killed at the end like everything else you've ever loved. Spoiler Alert.

This is what happens when you roll a crit...

Theresa reveals the Tattered Spire, an artifact of the Old Kingdom that was immensely powerful and caused a massive cataclysm in Albion long before the events of the first game.  Now, Lucien’s trying to rebuild it to resurrect his dead wife and daughter…

…at the very least, that’s the implication if you don’t ready the diaries provided later in the storyline.

...obviously (and this does get lampshaded later), he’s eventually going to realize that bringing back his family isn’t all he’ll be able to do, so now Sparrow has even more motivation to stop him…depending on whether or not you get bogged down in the side questing.  In fact, you’re going to have to do some of that in order to get any progression in the storyline at points.  It really just kind of kills the pacing when I have to stop my quest to save the world from the Genocide Tower in order to go hunt down some bandits or dance around like a Russian in front of some villagers to increase my Renown.

Speaking of hunting down bandits, we have the combat. You have Strength, Skill, and Will – which translate to melee, ranged, and magic attacks – and I know that this joke has been made by every single game reviewer and their mother by this point, but with the area of effect spells available you basically pick one, pour points into it and spam until you win…no, really, that’s it.  It’s hilariously easy to pull off.  However, your other choice would be going the melee route and making flourishes your best friend.  Seriously, it’s nearly impossible to block them and will send all by the strongest of enemies flying.  Still, for crowd control, you can’t do much better than the Will area of effect spells.

Speaking of the three forms of combat – the three Hero Skills factor into the plot through three of the main supporting cast that form a strong trifecta.  Those would be Hammer – the Hero of Strength – Garth – the Hero of Will – and Reaver – the Hero of Skill.  Three heroes that Lucian needs for his plans in order to build the Spire…for some reason that isn’t ever really made clear.  Nevertheless, the three heroes make a colorful group and are very interesting characters in their own right – so much so that Reaver showed up in III and will no doubt be in later chapters of the game series.  Then again, when you’re voiced by the magnificent Stephen Fry, you’re worth keeping around.

The Rolling Stones tour in Albion was met with screaming fans...out of fear...

But as the Hero of Bowerstone, Sparrow is the mystical Fourth Hero that Lucien because he/she is the only one who can stop his plans…because…destiny?  There’s really no clear way to understand it – whether it’s just Theresa’s machinations or if there’s actually a prophecy involved, we never really know.  However, it quickly becomes clear that you’re the only one who can stop Lucien. Provided you can get away from the dynamic and in-depth NPCs…who…aren’t…really.

Yes, there’s more variety to the NPCs here, but they suffer the clone brush very fast and it shows when you can actually marry an NPC and have several hot, sweaty love children with them and go off and find three other copies of your beloved in the same area. Of course, you do have to have a house in Albion in order to actually have a wife and family…and it’s surprisingly easy to work up money when you get a set amount every five minutes from shops you own and houses that you rent out.  With enough time and patience, you can very easily buy out every property available in the game.  As soon as you own two million gold pieces worth, you can actually take the title of King or Queen of Albion.

…and then fork over a million gold pieces for the Castle.

Still, considering that you make however much money every five minutes no matter what, it makes making that money back insanely easily.  Just buy out the Bowerstone Market District and you can pretty much go about shopping at your leisure and have the money back with no issues within a few five minutes stretches.

Of course, if you raise the rent or the shop prices, you risk corruption points – something that gets brought in along with the Good-Evil Scale is the Purity-Corrupt scale, which pretty much just further changes the way you look.  Good luck trying to stay both good and pure, because beyond the neutral look it’s the only one that doesn’t look nightmarish (in the case of corrupt) or hilarious (in the case of evil).

She doesn't look a day over 10,000...

Tone wise, Fable II can be a little jarring.  The tutorial is a delightful romp through the streets of Bowerstone that gets capped off with your sister getting shot and you getting thrown through a window.  You can go about killing civilians, but as soon as you pay a fine or do a community service quest you can play a lute a few times or rip off an extreme powerful fart and the villagers love you again like nothing happened.  Even the art style is very cartoony and over the top and yet can easily sink into very dark and depressing areas – like the Tattered Spire or the soldiers of Lucien therein.  I wouldn’t mind this, variety is the spice of life and all, but it’s hard to get a grip on what they were going for and that distracts a bit.

When I first played this game, I absolutely loved.  Now, coming back to it after having played its sequel and its prequel, I still find some enjoyment out of it.  While not taking the broken promises of Peter Molyneux into account, this game is actually very good and provides a lot to find even within the linear set it has.  Seriously! Six years after this game’s release, I’ve still managed to find and realize things I didn’t before.  Still, though, the world feels open and it lacks that overpowering feeling of linearity that Fable III has, if only because the shackles feel a little looser.  Then again, that might actually be enough and the game does do well for what it is.

Fable II is now available from Lionhead Studios and Microsoft Games for Xbox 360.

For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.

MadCap's Game Reviews - "Rad Raygun"

It is the year 198X at the height of the Cold War.  Ronald Reagan’s in the White House and unfortunately he does not have the elite hacker skills of Ferris Bueller to aid him in defeating a horde of Communist robots that are poised to destroy America.  The answer to this? A Mega Man clone!

I’m not even kidding.  The very title screen is a homage to Mega Man 2, and it’s actually pretty awesome.

But the comparison doesn’t stop there as you take on the role of a robotic soldier named Rad who is charged by none other than the Gipper himself to defeat the Communist hordes in the Middle East, Germany, and other battlefields across the world all in the name of America’s righteous anti-Communist agenda!  After all, better dead than Red, am I right?

That being said, there’s really not a lot of red in this game.  Or any color other than green and black, with the stylistic choice to make this look like an early 1980’s computer game rather than one of the Mega Man games…at least in coloring.  Personally I like the design, though it sometimes makes it difficult to figure out where Rad can stand and where he can’t.  Luckily, there aren’t any insta-kill hazards to speak of in the situation, and the developers do actually poke fun at the style.  And, as we all know, I’m a stickler for games that aren't afraid to poke fun at themselves.

But it’s a platformer, so Rad moves around (usually) from left to right while either blasting or avoiding dangers that present themselves.  You fire bolts from an arm canon to take care of enemies, which can be upgraded with disks that can be found in the game world.  Along with some power ups that allow you to refill your health from the pause menu (like that one game of a similar style…with Sub Tanks…can’t think of the name…).

And really, that’s all there is to it.  You move from left to right taking out enemies throughout a level, then you take on a boss monster at the end of every level.  As far as your mechanics go, standard platformer shooter.  No, more than that, a really good platformer shooter...with some pretty awesome throwback 8-bit music to boot (by FantomenK!)   It has some good humor that pokes fun at the Cold War paranoia of the 1980s, as well as some other political humor.  Like DLC Quest and other games in the vein that I’ve played, it is long enough to get its point across without overstaying its welcome.  It’s only five stages leading up to the ending, but it was only a dollar and I really think it was worth the investment, and I think you will, too.

Rad Raygun is now available from Trufun Entertainment for Xbox 360 and PC.

For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.