Joker

Title: Joker

Director: Todd Philips

Writers: Todd Philips and Scott Silver

Incels. Misogyny. We live in a society. SJWs. Gun control. Third-wave feminism. Woke culture. Cancel culture. Culture wars. White supremacist violence.

These are just a few of the current hot-button issues and social media keywords that have absolutely nothing to do with the new Joaquin Phoenix movie, Joker.

Not that this has stopped anyone on social media from associating the movie with this or that cultural movement, but the truth is the movie has little on its mind other than letting Phoenix dance down a flight of stairs, baiting the Oscars and taking the odd, weak, mild, aimless jab at income inequality and the plight of the mentally ill.

Ever since Western civilization decided that the most appropriate amount to pay for news and information is zero dollars, pretty much every online media is now at the mercy of advertising revenue, which is in turn dependent on clicks, and every business has by now figured out that the single easiest, fastest and most effective way to get clicks is to package and sell anger, outrage, fear and anxiety. Hence the cynical attempt the label this a controversial, dangerous movie.

When it is actually just, well, a bit of a mess.

All the hot-taking and alarmist yelling obscures the fact that the movie at the center of all this is essentially “Taxi Driver” with clowns, featuring a mentally ill man whose life rapidly goes downhill on account of his illness until he turns to violence, which ironically (and predictably) turns out to be the one thing he can do that earns him social approval. There are some obligatory scenes linking the movie to the wider Batman story and mythos, but frankly they are entirely unnecessary and detract from--rather than add to--the focus of the movie. Add both “Superhero Movie” and “Deconstruction of a Superhero Movie” to the list of things this movie is not.

Phoenix plays Arthur Fleck, a middle-aged man living with his mother, who has a condition that makes him burst into uncontrollable laughter at awkward times. He works part-time as a clown, dreams of one day making it as a stand-up comic and fantasizes about a relationship with his single-mother neighbor. From this bottom-of-the-pole position, Fleck’s life promptly bids whatever tiny shreds of happiness it still had a not-very-fond farewell, flips his hopes and dreams the bird and leaps off the proverbial and dramatic cliff: He’s beaten up, loses his job, has the funding for his medication cut, and is finally assaulted again on a subway by three wealthy, 1% Wall Street bros before finally lashing out.

That feels like it should be some kind of turning point in the movie, but Fleck’s life goes on being ever-more horrible than before, with the added complication that he’s now under investigation by a pair of policemen who are bizarrely laid-back for guys investigating a triple homicide. There’s a vague B plot about how the murders spark an Occupy Wall Street-slash-Anonymous in V for Vendetta masks (only it’s clowns) anti-rich movement, but it just kind of happens in the background without linking to the fact that Fleck was despised for being meek and trying to get by, and lionized when he turns violent.

Phoenix has received a lot of praise for his performance, and I’d agree it’s sporadically magnetic, but a little uneven. The move doesn’t seem to quite know how it wants to show Fleck’s turn from downtrodden loser to violent sociopath. At times, it’s portrayed as a kind of evil butterfly crawling out of its chrysalis, with Fleck becoming surer, sharper and more charming the more he loses his grip on reality, but at others he reverts to awkward insecurity or frothing rage, so you’re never quite sure what the film-makers want to say or what the point of it all is.

Frankly, I didn’t feel there was anything either inventive or insightful about either the treatment of mental illness or the growing inequality of wealth. Much like the Batman tie-in of the plot, the twists (Spoilers!) that Fleck is actually adopted and was abused as a child or that his relationship with his neighbor is entirely imaginary fantasy don’t add to our understanding of either theme, and just feel kind of thrown in there because.

In the end, it’s just a kind of turgid downer, a pretty simple downtrodden man-goes-bonkers tale slathered in grease paint with the name of a beloved comic book character slapped on the poster.

Yesterday

Title: Yesterday

Director: Danny Boyle

Writer: Richard Curtis

It’s 2019 and Nostalgia is king, prince, emperor and all-powerful, all-consuming dictator-for-life. In the months ahead, there’s a new Terminator movie coming, a ninth Star Wars movie, while a new version of Dune is on the horizon, and Disney continues to self-cannibalize by remaking its entire back catalog in terrifyingly photorealistic CGI. It’s as though we’ve agreed that as a culture we’re fresh out of ideas, everything is horrible, and we’d much rather ignore it all and focus on the good old days of approximately 1960 to 1985.

Remembering things has never been more popular, and remembering music is the best kind of remembering there is. There’s nothing that quite conjures the carefree, idyllic, mildly traumatizing, socially awkward and spotty days of youth more than Nirvana, Pearl Jam and, um, Men Without Hats (shit, I don’t know). The entertainment business, its fingers ever on the pulse and wallet of the globe, has taken notice. After the screaming smash success of 2018’s Queen bio-pic slash Live Aid reenactment Bohemian Rhapsody ($900M sales vs. $52M budget) and the, um, existence of 2019’s Elton John soundtrack Rocket Man ($195M vs. $40M), making a movie to flog the music of the Beatles was probably a no-brainer, the lowest of the hanging fruit on the great money tree.

To its great credit, Yesterday manages not to come across as a cynical cash grab, and more of a slightly saccharine, inarticulate fan letter. The story, by screenwriter Richard Curtis, has Jack Malik (Hamish Patel), a struggling songwriter who gets hit by a bus, then wakes up in a world identical to our own, except that nobody knows what Coca Cola, Harry Potter or cigarettes are ... and nobody’s ever heard of the Beatles. Realizing the opportunity he’s been presented with, he promptly sets out to record and sell all the Beatles songs, passing them off as his own.

The set up and opening are charmingly funny and feature some great lines and sight gags, such as Malik getting his two front teeth knocked out by the bus and calling himself a “reverse rabbit”, or Malik Googling Beatles cover-band perfectly legitimate artists in their own right Oasis, and finding they don’t exist either.

However, once Malik finds success as a singer the movie shifts gears to focus all its non-Beatles-singing time on a frustrated romance between Malik and his manager, best friend and unrequited lover, Ellie Appleton (Lily James). It is quite possibly the most boring, predictable love story ever set to film, as simple as Ringo Starr’s drumming, as deep as “All You Need is Love”, as moving as “I Am the Walrus.” As a result, the intriguing premise goes largely unexplored, just the Beatles and a couple of random other things don’t exist, but everything else is exactly the same. But hush now, dear viewer, look: People who should be together not quite connecting!

Danny Boyle, of Trainspotting and Slumdog Millionaire, doesn’t seem to have known what to do with the material, and throws in a bunch of artsy shots like slow-motion and tilted camera angles, which add nothing to our appreciation or understanding of the scenes.That feels kind of symptomatic of the script, not really sure what it should be doing with its premise.

However, Patel plays the slightly bumbling, desperate and lost Malik with a lot of charm, and it’s really his movie, although Ron Weasley-slash-Smeagol impersonator Ed Sheeran does make an appearance, to no great effect other than for people to go, “Huh, yup, that’s him.” Especially in the scenes before Malik hits the big time, the first part of the movie exudes a kind of warm and cozy charm, and I kind of wish the movie-makers had stuck with that.

I do also kind of wonder whether, as the movie kind of hints in its first third, the Beatles would really be successful if they released an album now, in this, the year of our Lord two thousand nineteen, in competition with the Ed Sheerans and Lady Gagas and “Uptown Funks” and “Old Town Roads” of this world. Or is that a silly question? No, they wouldn’t. Of course they wouldn’t. Success in the music business is a crap shoot, a game of luck, a matter of being in the right place and time, and another place, another time, wouldn’t be the right ones. The scenes of Malik rocking Wembley Stadium are far less believable than of him playing Yesterday to an indifferent and inattentive pub crowd.

Were the Beatles even that great? There’s a heretical thought. Stripped of their historical setting and of the boyish charm of the Fab Four, do the songs really stand on their own? In this respect at least, the movie has been a success: I’ve gone back, looked up “Strawberry Fields” and “Here Comes the Sun” and “Back in the USSR” and “Hey Jude” and “Revolution” and found there’s still a lot to like, a lot to appreciate. Score another victory for Nostalgia.

Anthem

Picked up BioWare's Anthem for $20 and just finished the main campaign. This game gets a ton of bad press, but if you just play it as Mass Effect in battle armor, it's fine. Not great, but fine.

It definitely feels like a BioWare game awkwardly grafted onto social loot shooter mechanics.

For example, it's got the mission, talk to people at base, mission cycle from ME, but none of the people you talk to go on your adventures or impact the game or campaign in any way, so you wonder why you're bothering.

Dialogues give you a kind of Renegade/Paragon reply option, but again, they don't seem to make any difference (your choices are essentially things like 'agree pleasantly' or 'agree sarcastically'), so again, why bother?

There a some good things. The suits are fun, flying is cool, environment designs are nice.

Combat is okay, if nothing special. Guns are kind of dull, just shotgun, AR, sniper etc archetypes, which makes the loot (ostensibly the motivator in loot shooters) a bit pointless, but at least the special abilities are fun to play with. Combos are a thing, as they were in ME3, so you can play around with freezing, burning and shocking your opponents.

Anyway I suspect the guns all actually perform the same regardless of displayed stats, to allow high and low level players to do missions together. The only thing that seems to matter is the cooldown on your abilities.

Enemies are seriously bland. Missions either defend the point or kill the VIP style, which gets a bit repetitive, but then I suppose the grinding in any social shooter is part of the territory. With the loot being so drab, though, there isn't really much motivation to stick with it.
 
Some of the basic things are pretty bad though. The UI for menus in particular is pretty crap and unintuitive. Inventory is straight out of ME1.  

In general, the game does a very bad job of explaining the mechanics. Like if I level up my "Arcanist" ranking I get access to "blueprints" but I've no idea which ones. Or at a high level you get to use "consumables" but it never tells you what they do or how to access them.

But overall I feel like I got my money's worth. I don't need a game that demands I play forever to keep up. Okay story, kind of fun combat, and I'm satisfied.

Movie Watching: I am Mother, The Nice Guys and Drive

Title: I am Mother

Director: Grant Sputore

Writers: Michael Lloyd Green

Network: Netflix

This is definitely one of the better Netflix originals, after the disappointment of both Titan and Mute. It's kind of a reverse Ex Machina, in which the humans have to convince a robot of their humanity. 

An android calling itself ‘Mother’ raises a lone girl (Clara Rugaard) in an underground bunker after an apocalypse wipes out the rest of humanity. Their relationship is tested when a woman (Hilary Swank) appears at the bunker door, with her own version of what is happening.

The first 2/3 were pretty tight, a bit like Cloverfield Lane, where the two main characters are shut in a box and you don’t know what’s going on in the outside world or who is telling the truth. The movie makes great use of its claustrophobic sets and the revelations unfold in interesting ways, especially once Swank’s character makes an appearance. The last 1/3 are kind of opaque though—the Daughter’s thinking in particular needed to be clearer, or better explained. As it is, her motivations appear to change two or three times without giving us a sense of why.

It’s an exercise in ethics, where in an early scene we see Mother giving the Daughter a class on morality, asking whether it is more ethical to save one healthy patient, or let them die so their organs might be used to save a number of others. This hypothetical scenario then plays out in real life, with the Daughter asked to choose between selfishness and utilitarianism.

Only ... the ‘selfish’ choice presented to the Daughter is fairly awful, and once the reality of the situation becomes clear, then there’s really no dilemma at all.

Still, a well-made and thought-provoking little film, and a step in the right direction for Netflix’s SF offerings.

Title: The Nice Guys

Director: Shane Black

Writers: Shan Black and Anthony Bagarozzi

This movie is sporadically hilarious, but tonally all over the fucking map, flipping from slapstick farce to buddy comedy to heartwarming family drama to black comedy and back to farce again. The plot is overly complex and, frankly, kind of beside the point, but anyway two private investigators in 1970s Hollywood try to track down a missing girl who has become embroiled in a conspiracy involving catalytic converters. Yeah, it’s a little odd. But really it’s just an excuse for the two stars to have some gonzo fun.

Ryan Gosling is fantastic as bumbling private eye Holland March, and Russell Crowe looks like he got real comfortable to play muscle-for-hire Jackson Healy, and you get the feeling these two had a blast performing together, but nothing really sticks with you because the movie changes gears every five minutes and kind of throws you around in your seat. 

Fun to watch, but really nothing more than that.

Title: Drive

Director: Nicolas Winding Refn

Writer: Hossein Amini (based on a book by James Sallis)

I’d watched Refn’s “Valhalla Rising” (the world's only 9-hour Viking movie with no dialog) and was expecting something slow-moving and arty, but this movie still managed to surprise me.

Like a piece of orchestral music, it’s got these quiet, idyllic parts that suddenly explode into action—the nameless Driver (Ryan Gosling) sits idly on a motel bed, before a window shatters in a slow-mo shotgun blast, and then we leap into furious violence—later the Driver and his neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan) share a lingering, golden-lit kiss in an elevator, before the Driver turns around and stomps the head of another man into the ground, killing him.

Gosling is a bit one-note in this movie, essentially playing a preview of his character from Blade Runner 2049: monosyllabic, vulnerable yet tough superman. The bit part characters are more interesting: Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston as a shady garage owner, Ron Perlman as a brutal gangster, Oscar Isaac as an ex-con.

My only complaint with this movie is the sound mix—the soundtrack is blaringly loud, the conversations mumbled and muted.

Liveblogging The Addams Family

Here we are again. At first, I thought this might seem a little mean-spirited, making fun of a comedy (it's SUPPOSED to be daft), but let's see how well this 1991 movie has aged...

1:00 carolers? This movie already as creepy af
Wait if they are caroling, why the hell they facing AWAY from the house? Literally unwatchable.
5/7

1:35 *snap snap*
The old boiling oil on the besiegers gag. Just like we used to do ... In the Crusades!
I hope the fuck-off huge scary-looking dude was not typecast as a huge scary-looking dude
(checks IMDb) Well, better luck in the next incarnation, my physically terrifying friend.

2:00 Ooh Christina Ricci.
Oh right she's like 40 now.
And was 12 then.
But in the middle there guys, mmmhmm.
 
3:11 Credits finally over ... Are long credits at the start a 90s thing? Have we as a species evolved beyond that?
Phoned-in credits too, font doing all the heavy lifting. Blow a bit of dry ice smoke, good enough, it's the 90s, these idiots will watch anything.
They can't even beat Saddam Hussein properly ffs
 
3:24 Motorboating grandfather clock. Now that's class.
 
4:22 Ah, disembodied hand, allow me to stand here and explain the backstory, even though you'd already know it.
The only story I know about Raul Julia, the only story I NEED to know is that he would later appear in a Street Fighter movie while dying of cancer, simply because his son loved SF and he wanted to go out on a movie his son would love.
He's like an early Keanu Reeves, only mortal
 
4:27 Christina Ricci! Rawr!
No wait she's still 12 here. Delete, delete
 
5:57 Despite their oddness, they're quite relatable characters really. He seeks to blot out the sun forever, just as I do
 
9:55 I feel like the movie keeps pausing you let you laugh. Only I don't.
I haven't laughed since mother died.
Shit was hilarious.
 
11:54 Pedophilia jokes, ho ho. You couldn't do that in this economy.
"Fine lunge, but your riposte, tut tut."
Dude just stabbed your chair and fell down Addams, WHAT RIPOSTE?
Literally unwatchable. 6/8
 
16:26 One liner. Indifferent action. One liner. Sight gag. One liner.
 
24:47 Keep waiting for Christopher Lloyd to shout "1.21 gigawatts!"
 
27:12 I don't want to know why the disembodied hand was in his room all night, or why he's got such a big smile on his face
 
36:20 Okay the electric chair bit was funny. Even I can appreciate a bit of cruelty to children.
 
54:48 Pyhyonesque combat sequence. It's like if Tarantino did a kid's movie. And how the hell is there still 40 minutes of movie.
 
57:00 Why'd the movie stop for a softcore sex scene? Because 90s G.
 
1:00:32 And now a Bollywood dance number. Movie is treading water.
 
1:04:00 Kenny from South Park puts in an appearance. Think It just said "I'm an admirer of Hitler".
Strong stuff for a PG movie.
 
1:08:00 Ok 'nother dance number, this time a cossack dance. It ain't treading water, it's drowning.
 
1:10:16 One minute he's chasing the daughter, then just like forgets and gets his sovietski groove on.
THIS ISN'T S8 OF GAME OF THRONES WE DEMAND CONTINUITY
 
1:20:40 He got a hand job. GET IT, A HAND JOB. AHAHAHAHA. Also he just rammed a stack of FedEx boxes up some lady's skirt.
 
1:34:12 1.21 Gigawatts!!!
Necromancy is a perfectly valid school of magic.
 
1:35:25 Hmm, overly long, reliant on sight gags and one liners. Would've worked better as some sort of visual medium, such as a prewar comic strip
 
8/11

Exhalation: Stories, by Ted Chiang

Title: Exhalation: Stories

Author: Ted Chiang

Publisher: Knopf

This is the second collection of short stories and novellas by American author Ted Chiang, probably best known for his short story "Story of Your Life", which the movie "Arrival" was based on. 

"Story of Your Life" was breathtakingly good, one of those rare stories that just powers straight through your eyeballs and blows apart your brain even as it puts your heart back together again. A linguist learns an alien language, and forcing herself to think like them enables her to perceive time the way they do--which leads/will lead/has always led to her realizing the trajectory of her life, and of her daughter's.

That's a pretty good taste of what Chiang is like. In the first collection, “Stories of Your Life and Others”, Chiang's stories often featured people's ideals or beliefs—especially religious beliefs—getting challenged or thrown out of whack by scientific discoveries or new technologies. For example, in “Acts of God” a recently-bereaved widower struggles with the meaning of devotion and faith in a world where the existence of God is an observable fact. In another story, the builders of the Tower of Babel discover their cosmology is all wrong—but not in the way you’d expect.

The collision of humanity and science continues to be a strong theme in this new collection, "Exhalation: Stories". The title story, for example, is about a race of automatons dealing with the knowledge of the inevitable destruction of their world. How do you go on living when you know nothing will last? In another, on an alternate Earth where humanity has found objective scientific proof that the universe was created by a god (nothing older than 8,000 years old exists) they then have to confront the fact that their planet is moving with respect to background radiation—meaning their planet is not the center of creation.

Generally, the collection is up there with his previous work, if not quite as good, but remaining both touching and thought-provoking. There aren’t any space battles or marauding aliens or killer viruses, it’s all low-key, very internal stuff, featuring people struggling to come to terms with what it means to be human (or automaton) in a complex, technologically-mediated world.

At the same time, Chiang remains an author much better at concepts and ideas than characterization and dialog, but maybe with the popularity of books like “Three Body Problem” or “Ancillary Justice” stories long on ideas and short on, er, story, are what’s in at the moment.

In particular the longest story in the collection, "The Lifecycle of Software Objects," is also the dullest and most meandering and could probably have delivered the same punch in a quarter of the length.

I must confess my main gripe with this collection is economic rather than stylistic, though. I'd already read many of the stories as they're available online from various sites, including both "Exhalation" and "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" and a couple of other stories, so the $20+ price tag for the Kindle edition felt a bit steep. I think only two out of the nine stories in the collection are actually original, with the others all published sometime between 2005 and 2015. They're good stories, but maybe wait for this one to go on sale?

In the meantime, here’s where you can read some of the stories in this collection:

The Lifecycle of Software Objects

Exhalation

What’s Expected of Us

 

The Great Silence

The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling

Driving in Tokyo One Night

Sitting in a car, wrapped in aluminum and plastic and glass, on an elevated highway that itself sits below yet another highway, the middle slice of a sandwich of concrete and asphalt, canyoned on either side by monolith office towers of steel and glass, vacant floors awash in incandescent light.

Little driver of flesh and bone, warm and dry despite the evening rain. Shielded, swaddled. Cocooned.

Liveblogging Krull

My unsolicited commentary on Conan was such a roaring success* that I've decided to follow it up by bringing to you, for the first time ever in history, my real-time reactions to the 1983 blockbuster "Krull"! Watch along above, read along below.

*One guy commented on it. 

0:47 The score is Jon Williamsing for all its worth, but it's spoiled by the silly murder fidget spinner they got flying all over the screen. 

1:03 LIAM NEESON
Is the only recognizable name. 

1:31 Reusing not only the score but also the sets. The movie appears to be set on Tatooine.

1:59 Krull has the exact same opening sequence as Star Wars, minus all that boring spaceship-battle pyew pyewing but with extra flying-mountain-thingy going on.

OK intro, but needed more faceless people galloping aimlessly about the countryside. 

4:13 Even by the outlandish standards of the 80s the princess has a truly tremendous mass of hair. I would like to see her wield it, Medusa-like, as a weapon. Possibly by smothering her enemies within her bounteous locks.

Also the castle gate appears to be secured with a giant aluminum boomerang.
That's going to COME BACK to haunt them later. Ahaha. Ho ho. Moving on.

5:38 The prince appears to be a wimpier Star Lord. A creepier Chris Pratt.

Ah, time for the space nazis to attack. They appear to have laser guns built into the hilts of their swords. 'Why not skip the sword and just have a far easier-to-use laser gun,' you ask, BECAUSE YOU ARE A FOOL.

I'm guessing there's a reason rifles put the bayonet on the end facing away from you and toward the enemy but oh if I could only think why...
Commit inadvertent seppuku from the recoil every time you fire. That might be it.

12:06 Whoops, prince Pratt is dead. The end. Directed by George Lucas, etc.

BUT WAIT. He's not dead, merely shirtless. Sideburns Gandalf is here to save him, and ogle his voluminous chest hair.
Seriously, this guy and the princess's kids are going to be the most hirsute people in the galaxy. 

14:30 THERE IS NO TIME OR ACTING ABILITY FOR GRIEF!
Sidewhiskers Gandy is giving him shit for not getting over the death of his father in under 20 seconds. 

If I had an ultimate weapon, I'd keep it somewhere a little more accessible than the top of the highest mountain in the country. You know?

The music SWELLS as our hero ... does a bit of not very difficult free climbing. Trumpets BLARE as he ... avoids a rockslide by not moving at all. Epic stuff.

He does stick his hand right into a pool of magma, I'll give him that though. 

22:08  Traveling by glowing red firework leaves a little to be desired if you ask me. 

OK, the wizard is basically Jar Jar Binks. Got it. I hate it, but I got it. 

25:25 So does the bad guy's castle (Castle Black, how original) fly or teleport? Seems like one would be redundant if you can do both. 

27:13 L I A M  N E E S O N

Prince Pratt is trying to brazen his way out, but the bandits aren't having it. Liam doesn't know who you are. Or what you want. What he does have is a set of skills. 
And an axe, and a stylin' chin beard.  

34:41 For help, they've gone to speak with Irish Dumbledore. We get it dude, you're into green. 

39:00 Bad guys just conveniently chillin' in the swamp ambush our heroes. 

Quick suggestion bad guys: If you have ranged weapons and your opponents don't, how about NOT charging them? Just a thought. 

And why do they explode like R2D2 and slugs come out of their heads when hit? Oh right, because it's fantasy and they don't gotta explain shit.

41:23 Quicksand starts sucking one dude under. "It is the power of the Beast!" 

No, you drunken Irish tit, it's a SWAMP.  

Honestly, if it wasn't for Cyclops dude, these heroes would be forked. 

43:16 This is getting out of hand. Now there are two of them. 

Cyclops to the rescue again. Pretty good aim, despite the whole lack of depth perception thing.

59:42 Sideburndalf keeps pulling McGuffins out of his arse. Here's a superweapon, here's a seer, here's a wise woman in a web. 

The Beast is shown able to blow someone literally off the screen via Skype chat so, um, why not just do that to the good guys? Save yourself some trouble, hey. 

65:04 Ah, and now the McGuffin Stallions. Of course. 

67:01 Not an equestrian expert or anything, but those horses look pretty damn average to me. Think they blew the budget on R2D2 sound effects. 

69:01 "Imma stay here and die," says the Cyclops. Of what, boredom? You're in the middle of a peaceful, idyllic valley mate. 

So THAT's what it looks like* when you fast travel in a video game. More budget blown on Fire even more disappointing than an island party for influencers. Ha. Topical joke already out of date. Ah then they ET it. Why not, at this stage.

*Painfully obvious blue screen and the frame rate slightly sped up. 

73:55 Invest in some freaking bows, guys. 

Ah, but here comes the one-eyed Leeroy Jenkins.

Leroy Jenkins.

Oh no, wait, that'd be one-eed instead of one-eyed. Ahaha.

Thank you, I'll be here ... forever, really.

76:03 Noooooo. Not Neeson! There must be some mistake. THIS ISN'T SEAN BEAN YOU IDIOTS. Let him live to the end. So sad, he was only 66. 

More budget blown on dodgy architecture. Honestly, what is it with fantasy architects and potentially lethal bridges? 'Oh sure I'll build you a castle, evil overlord. Gonna stick a bunch of murder-bridges in it tho.'

That explains it though. No money left for bows.

84:49 Aha! Good ol' magma hand. Knew that would come in handy (har!) some day. Just as well, as the magic superweapon turned out to be super good at nearly getting everyone killed.

Though I don't quite get how the prince is able to do this. 'We kissed once, so now your hand is a flamethrower.' 

... and we end with burning a hole through solid stone and anti-gravity explosions. Sure. Why the fuck not.

'Their children will rule the galaxy' sounds waaay more threatening than they intended. I mean, I didn't vote for them. Maybe this is the Star Wars prequel we deserved.

Uhhh.

Mishmash of genre cliches and tropes/10

Gets several billion bonus points for a young Liam Neeson, but blew them all on shoddy special effects and backwards-pointing bayonets. Not recommended.

Rocketeer next?

A Day at the River

Luke goes down to the river. There are many others there, splashing in the water, swimming, paddling about in boats. They call to him, but he smiles and makes no answer. Luke dips his toes in but the water is cold, and so he sits instead upon the bank. 

The sun rises and warms him and he drowsily watches the others play. They no longer call to him. He's missed his window. Ah well. He'll go in later, he promises himself. No rush. He has a nap instead and lets the waters pass him by. 

When he wakes the sun is low and the wind is cool. The others have gone, and only Luke and the endlessly flowing waters remain. Flowing, flowing, taking away the morning and the people, never to return. 

He stands, stretches, feeling the stiffness set in his bones. He plunges in as darkness sets, strikes for the river bottom, and there finds the largest stone he can. 

He wraps both arms around it and waits, watching the line of bubbles float from his mouth to the surface.

The Bubble

Hello and welcome to The Bubble. Thank you for choosing The Bubble for your extradomular excursion to the surface world. Remember, choose The Bubble or die horribly. "The Bubble! It's what all your still-living friends are using!" 

Please fasten your restraints and do not stand while The Bubble is in motion. Attempting to leave The Bubble while outside the dome will result in immediate TERMINATION ... of your insurance policy. 

Ahaha. 

No but seriously, everything out there will kill you. 

Here we can see the flowering cherry tree. Note the delicate pink flowers, which bloom only for a week or two each year. Inhaling the pollen is like snorting ground glass directly up your nose. So don't do that. Remain in the comfort and safety of The Bubble. 

Underneath the tree you can see a feral example of an animal once known as felis catus. Aww. How cute! An estimated 90% of surviving specimens are infected with an RNA lyssavirus invariably fatal to humans. Do not worry. The Bubble will protect you. Nice kitty. Say bye-bye! 

Is there any other safe method of exploring the surface? Good question, I'm glad you asked. No, there is not. Other companies may claim their products provide protection, but they are lying. Any evidence provided by your own eyes cannot be trusted. Only The Bubble guarantees safety. Do not leave The Bubble. 

Please remain in your seat. Trust The Bubble. Return to your seat. The Bubble is your friend. The Bubble loves you. Do not open The Bubble. Lethal force authorized. Haha, just kidding. 

...

Passenger sanitized. Returning with biomass for recycling. Thank you for choosing The Bubble.