Dragon Age: The Movie-ing

I ended up watching Dragon Age: Redemption last night because it was a movie available on Hoopla. It was exactly as good as I expected a movie released on the web as six episodes based on a fantasy RPG would be.

The premise is that there’s an evil wizard who escapes wizard prison. An elf assassin, played by Felicia Day, is dispatched by the faction I’ll call The Horns.

Here’s one of the problems with the “movie” is that it spams you with title cards packed with exposition to explain what is going on. You’ll be watching the movie and suddenly it cuts to a title card that’s like:

When people say “qunari” they mean the giant grey skinned guys with horns that believe everyone should be the same thing. And then when people refer to “the chantry” they mean some other stuff that we’ll now meticulously define.

It breaks up the flow of the movie and kind of bombards you with blatant exposition which isn’t fun.

The elf assassin, who has a name but I’ll refer to as Ad-Block, tracks down one of the compatriots of the Evil Wizard, but is intercepted by a Templar. What is a Templar? In D&D terms she meets a Paladin. The Paladin is decked out in plate mail, which is a good point to digress about another gripe of mine. The prop design suffers a problem of transferring the video game designs to the real world and the result is jarring. The weapons look like they come from that one store in the mall that sells fantasy weapons (that are just super jagged and weird shaped). The armor looks fake and besides that, I suspect that a person wearing as much plate mail as the Templar would actually have to be riding a horse because it would be too heavy to hike around in. Also I don’t think he could remove it or put it on without help.

Yes, I’m critiquing that in a fantasy movie. I feel weird about that too.

She and the Templar, who I’ll call Brian of Fake Accent, flirt a lot while they track the Evil Wizard to an elf camp. The movie goes out of its way to explain all kinds of details about the elves that clearly matter in game but don’t matter at all in the movie. The elves are unhappy because the Evil Wizard killed a bunch of them and took their magic hockey mask. This is where Ad-Block and Brian recruit their elf cleric, Josh.

I should point out that the acting is pretty bad at this point, though I think Felicia Day is working with a script that demands her to be alternately flirty, hardcore and tortured so has it the hardest. The character of Josh is whiney. Brian is just wooden with a dash of tormented. They continue on and get beat up in a cave by Evil Wizard’s goons, but Evil Wizard decides to just let them live and walk off. That’s when they recruit the “reaver” who I’ll call Carla. “Reavers” are effectively D&D Barbarians.

They go to a nearby inn and get attacked by randos who they kill after exchanging some backstories. Carla seems to be the most well adjusted all considered since she’s pursuing her career by choice, whereas Brian’s family was murdered by Evil Wizard, and Ad-Block was sold into slavery.

They then find out that it’s Brian’s fault that Evil Wizard escaped, and that’s why he’s pursuing Evil Wizard.

Anyway, they finally track down Evil Wizard. Brian and Ad-Block make out, and Carla tries to get it on with super-wimp Josh but Josh wimps out because she’s so literally out of his league that he dies instantly, but the movie propels his corpse onward.

The final fight begins and nothing happens. I mean some zombies jump out of nowhere but it doesn’t matter. Then Evil Wizard turns on the magic hockey mask, kills Brian (who sacrifices himself to save Ad-Block) and then Ad-Block destroys the hockey mask and kills Evil Wizard.

I know what the movie wants me to think about the characters, but there’s a real disconnect between what they want and what they produced. I think it partially comes down to the fact that the movie makers weren’t very skilled at putting together story for a movie.

What’s really unfortunate is that the movie wasn’t bad enough to be great, but not good enough to be great either. It’s just kind of in a limbo. That being said I do feel like the people making the movie had a blast and really cared, it just didn’t come together.

7 Problems I have with the Hobbit (just off the top of my head)

ONE MILLION SPOILERS, IF ANYTHING IS UNSPOILED PLEASE EMAIL ME SO I CAN SPOIL THAT TOO.

#1. It’s way too long

Guys, it’s way too long. Like I can’t believe there’ll be an extended cut, because what could possibly have not made the ut for the theater release? I remember there’s a scene where the characters are just rolling around on an obvious green screen stage while CGI giants punch each other in the face in the background.

Let me get this straight, Peter Jackson, you cut Tom Bombadil (and rightfully so) but you keep the battling Storm Giants? I don’t get your directorial decisions sometimes, man.

There’s just a lot of dead weight in this movie which I suspect could be edited down to a 2-3 hour movie rather than three 3 hour movies. Guys, there’s an entire plot line that involves Legolas and Tauriel going North to see the place where Legolas’s mom died, then coming back with no additional information or character development. It just happens.

Also there’s a lot of Legolas stuff in general that doesn’t really matter, but I’ll get more into that.

#2. Who the hell are these dwarves?

After watching the Hobbit it seems like Gimli is the worst dwarf in the world. Each dwarf in the Hobbit is like a Legolas of dwarves, and casually perform feats that really surpass anything Gimli did. There’s the scene where they’re washing dishes which turns into a superhuman feat of coordination and dexterity.

There’s every time they fight. Why do they bother running from orcs and goblins when it’s clear that they can cut down orcs and goblins with ease? Seriously, I remember realizing that killing a CGI orc just doesn’t mean anything anymore after watching this movie. It undercut all the tension from the movies.

Take the barrel scene. They ride down a river in barrels while effortless slaughtering I assume 50 to 60 orcs. The movie is even self-aware in that respect! There’s a scene in the third movie where two characters look off screen and say, “There’s a hundred goblins, should be easy.” The next scene the goblins are all gone. The two characters killed 100 goblins, guys.

#3. Legolas

I get it, Peter Jackson’s Movie Team, you love Legolas. Seriously, you love him. You’ll love him till the Sun burns out and all life on this world is gone.

I saw it in the Lord of the Rings where Legolas was seriously just better than everyone. He could run on snow. He could kill 1,000 orcs while skateboarding on a shield and he could solo an oliphant. Legolas of the Infinite Arrows was just… so … cool.

So I’m not surprised he shows up in the Hobbit and, if anything, is more powerful? If so that implies a drop off in power by the time of Lord of the Rings. Obviously there has to be some drama right?

So they create some drama. Legolas is in conflict with his dad, the King Fabulous, because King Fabulous is afraid Legolas is in love with the Original Character, Tauriel, but Tauriel is in love with … I want to say Kili? It doesn’t matter. No, seriously guys, it doesn’t matter.

There’s a scene in the second Hobbit movie where Legolas, in a very Hong Kong kung fu movie situation, takes on a ton of orcs and kills like all of them but one. Then in the third Hobbit movie he performs some straight up magic walking on air stuff while battling that same orc that escaped previously.

Oh and that orc kills Kili, probably. Because Tauriel has to be sad guys.

Like 45 percent of this movie is about two characters who aren’t even in the novel. Even King Fabulous can’t save this plotline and he IS this plotline.

Oh and Legolas and Tauriel are like some kind of super parkour gymnasts.

Though you know what’s interesting? Outside of Tauriel, Legolas, and King Fabulous, elves don’t really seem to be that great at fighting. They’re awesome at walking drills and coordinated movements on a mass scale, but really aren’t nearly as good as those three. It’s hard to figure out what’s going on in universe other than the royal bloodlines are just more potent than the commoner bloodlines? That would kind of jive with Tolkien. Oh! Perhaps 99% of the Elves left on Middle Earth are like 4th or 5th generation elves and, like in World of Darkness, that makes them way weaker.

#4. Tauriel

She gets her own section guys. Here’s the thing, I actually like Tauriel. I find her way less annoying than Arwen, and she’s an even more blatant attempt to cram a character into someplace where they’d be relevant. I think what bothered me about Arwen is that they kept trying to say, “She totally matters guys, look how much she matters guys. Guys.” And I’m like… dude, ARARGORNAN son of ARATHORNORNON, did you seriously just have a fake out death scene so you could dream about your girlfriend and make out with your horse?

Tauriel at least could, you know, go places. The romance stuff didn’t work because romances never work in Tolkien? I don’t know. All I know is that Legolas being into her felt totally forced, and her being totally into Kili felt forced too. Everything felt forced.

And then there’s the part where Tauriel, who is basically Legolas Mark 2, gets beat up by an orc and then watches her dwarf boyfriend die. First off, how did that happen? How did any orc manage to even slow down a Legolas level elf? As far as I can tell there’s some serious Hand of Plot going on there and that annoys me because the movie is like, “Isn’t this so moving guys? Guys? Are you crying? I can’t see you so you’ll have to tell me, I’m a movie.”

And anyone expected that to work? Then Tauriel asks King Fabulous about love and nothing matters ever again.

#5. Beorn

Thanks for including the Big B-man. He was always my favorite character and I was always sad he never showed up in the Lord of the Rings books. Who is Beorn? He’s like this giant guy who lives in a pretty sweet mansion who can turn into a giant bear.

That’s pretty much his entire jam, guys. He’s a were-bear guy. And he shows up at the Battle of the Fives Armies, I assume counting as one army himself.

So you keep Storm Giants punching each other, and twenty minutes of wide landscape shots where nothing happens, and include a chase scene outside of Rivendell which also doesn’t amount to anything or matter, but you CUT OUT ALL BEORN STUFF?

Look, I get it, Beorn is silly in the novels. He’s sort of a more sane Tom Bombadil, but guys, Beorn actually does stuff that matters in the books.

And then they make Beorn all grim and dark and Wolverine. Tortured past! Hates orcs! Used to be enslaved!

Whaaa? Like Beorn gets the biggest character alteration since… hmmm. I want to say since Arwen?

And he shows up at the Battle of the Five Armies. Possibly. It’s unclear because it clearly doesn’t matter to the movie makers.

“We need 70 minutes of Legolas for this movie to work! Cut all that irrelevant Beorn stuff!”

-the Movie

#6. The Battle of the Five Hours

The Battle of the Five Armies, which is kind of an awesome super fight at the end of the Hobbit, is the most boring fight in all six Tolkien movies. In-universe it must be like 19 hours long because it feels that way watching it. Let’s watch two CGI armies battle it out and let’s see everyone being cool by killing orcs but it doesn’t matter. Guys, it doesn’t matter.

There’s also a total sidequest where dwarves ride goats up a mountain to kill more orcs and it doesn’t matter. Armies show up and it really doesn’t matter. The weight of it not mattering was dragging my soul down, dudes. It was heavy.

Massive battles are hard to make in film. Sandworms are cool. Computer stuff is cool. I suspect I get the thinking that led people to believe that this boring super fight could be not boring. But it is. Oh my god it is.

The Eagles show up to save us, the Audience, from the Battle. As far as I can tell the fifth army is us, the Audience, and we’re having a real tough time in the fight. Also there are sandworms. Like from Dune.

Beorn is there. For like 5 seconds. Good thing we have all that King Fabulous, otherwise we might have had to have more than 2 minutes of Beorn…

#7. Humans

Humans don’t matter. Humans don’t. Trust me, they do not matter. The Laketowners are basically a refugee camp being fed lettuce by the benevolent Elf White People. Which is extra confusing because King Fabulous was just a super dick to people who needed help in a flashback, so whatever. There’s also like 100 humans in the movie so… yeah, they don’t matter.

Bard also doesn’t want to be king. That I’m just throwing in there because it’s dumb and a waste of time. Bard’s the king after killing the dragon and resettling Dale. Just do it.

But instead we have a human faction that barely qualifies as one of the five armies. In fact, it doesn’t qualify. The movie battle was between orcs, dwarves, elves, and … eagles? It should have been called the Battle of the Three Armies and Eagles and Bats. Oh wait, that’s five…

5 Things I liked about the Hobbit(s)

#1. Thorin

The movies were great at characterizing Thorin and giving some context to things I never really caught on to despite having read the Hobbit. I think the movie was great at making Thorin likable. As a kid I was vaguely aware that Thorin was sort of a king, but in my mind (and in the illustrated version of the Hobbit I had) he just seemed like a short old man with a long gray beard. The movie was good at giving him a dignity and a tragedy that I felt that I missed in the book. I think that was because his entire backstory wasn’t in the book but covered in an appendix, but I’m not sure now.

#2. Casting of Bilbo

Martin Freeman as Bilbo was great casting. Back when I was watching the UK version of The Office I kept calling Martin Freeman’s character a hobbit. I guess I’m a prophet. I’m still used to thinking of the Hobbit as partly from my illustrated novel and partly from that like 70s cartoon where Bilbo was this really fat guy with a huge nose. I like the Freeman interpretation better.

#3. Gandalf’s Boring Work Meeting

There’s this wonderful scene in the Hobbit(s) where Gandalf has to go to a meeting led by Saruman. Saruman just prattles on forever while Gandalf tunes him out and starts texting his girlfriend. And by “texting” I mean he starts telepathically chatting with Galadriel because he’s so bored. It’s pretty sweet and it’s one of those moments where you’re like, oh yeah, meeting suck no matter where you are.

#4. King Fabulous

Legolas’s dad, King Fabulous, was one of my favorite characters of me and the people making the movie but for different reasons I suspect. The moviemakers I feel like were all, “Thranduil is so cool, look at this awesome moose he rides!” And I was all like, “This guy is sooooo fabulous.” King Fabulous was just so ridiculous all the time. When he was being a dick, his dickery was comically off the charts, but then when he was fighting he was an invincible 20th level elf fighter with a war moose animal companion. It’s hard to encapsulate it all, but I’d say he’s just one of those rare characters who shows up, destroys the scenery with his over the top nature, all while the movie says, “Isn’t he cool?”

Basically, King Fabulous is the Jack Reacher of Middle Earth. I kind of wish King Fabulous was the bad guy in Guardians of the Galaxy…

#5. Epic Level Adventuring Party

I loved seeing the Epic Level Adventuring Party (ELAP) get together and do a raid on the Necromancer’s Lair. It was strangely gratifying to see some of the actual powerhouses in Middle Earth do something other than send lackeys to clean up their messes.

For example, movie Elrond, if you had such a problem with Isildur not throwing the Ring into the fire, just take the ring, you’re only a super powerful demi-god half-man half-elf immortal.

Anyway, it was cool for me, and probably just pure fan-service (but you know sometimes fans do want to be serviced), to see Elrond, Saruman, and Galadriel show up and start kicking butt. Then Galadriel went super saiyan and beat the Necromancer, because sure. I’d buy she’s a super saiyan. It does run the risk of making them look a little incompetent in the end, but I admit that in the book the White Circle did take out the Necromancer, so it’s just the action movie version of what happened.

I watched Supergirl at least twice at some point in my life

I saw something about Supergirl (1984) used as an excuse to not make female centric superhero movies so I thought I’d revisit the old movie.

Adventure… runs in the family.

Peter O’Toole is in this movie? Star of such movies as Troy and Lawrence of Arabia? I went to his imdb page and confirmed that I do not recognize almost any other movie he’s done.

Faye Dunaway too, though? Star of Chinatown and that movie Aaron Sorkin apparently loves, Network? Seriously, Aaron Sorkin is in to it.

Looking up Helen Slater I discovered that there’s a Supergirl tv show? Whoa, CBS is making it, and it’s the same team that’s making The Flash. So that’s interesting. I’m not interested, but the news itself is interesting. To be fair, I didn’t watch The Flash either. The only super hero tv show that I’m interested in watching is Aquaman. I never thought I’d ever write those words.

Now it’s time to figure out what is going on in this movie. I think Supergirl shows up on Earth and gets into a fight with a witch, played by Faye Dunaway. That’s all I remember. Good thing the wikipedia article is probably way too detailed…

Ok, I got it now, dawg. So Peter O’Toole destroys Argo City by taking the Macguffin and losing it in space. Supergirl pursues the MacGuffin to Earth, where Faye Dunaway finds it and it turns her into a real witch. Faye Dunaway uses her newfound super powers to roofie some rube named Ethan with a love potion, but he accidentally falls in love with Supergirl. That’s the angle we’re going with? So that’s the angle we’re going with. That’s some kind of plot, yo. I bet that I still like this movie more than Man of Steel…

It doesn’t sound good, but I remember liking it because I was young and had terrible taste. Also I was a little in love with Linda Lee. Don’t judge, man.

DareSentinel

I started watching the Daredevil tv show on Netflix so I thought I’d check out the movie trailer.

Wow, Jon Favreau is in this movie? That’s interesting, I didn’t realize he was in Marvel movies other than the Iron Man movies.

Oh yeah, Michael Clarke Duncan as Kingpin and Colin Farrell as Bullseye. What a strange movie.

This movie is pretty bad and I remember not liking it but I’m slow to remember why. If I recall, Daredevil is fighting crime and then meets Elektra McLoveInterest. Daredevil LawyerGuy falls in love with Elektra McLoveInterest, and they both want to fight Michael Clarke Antagonist.

But Michael Clarke Antagonist hires Jesus Irish Assassin (who… kills racists?) and Jesus Irish Assassin then kills Elektra McLoveInterest, leading to an emotionally charged fight in a Catholic church, where Daredevil LawyerGuy crucifies (symbolically) Jesus Irish Assassin with … glass, and then goes and fights Michael Clarke Antagonist in the rain.

The ending is probably exactly like a Nicolas Sparks movie.

There’s some cool ideas. Like, he sees better in the rain because the ambient rainfall related noise highlights the entire environment for him. His superpowers are pretty zany all considered. I think I’ve heard interpretations where his physical abilities were augmented by the toxic waste that gave him superhuman disabilities.

I don’t know. I think one thing the tv show is doing really well is making him both blind, but also amazingly powerful. The tv show is kind of a better The Sentinel. Remember that tv show? Well, obviously. Who could forget:

There. We’re all better for having seen that. I didn’t just steal 35 seconds from your life, like some kind of time vampire. Coincidentally, I just de-aged 35 seconds. Don’t question it, man.

John Wick(ed Witch)

I’ve been thinking about John Wick and one thing I think is interesting is that the John Wick world is a kind of fairy tale land. There’s a literal underworld that you can enter if you pay the price, a reference to the fee due to Chairon to cross the river Styx I suspect. There’s a scene in a hotel where John is shown to be descending down and down beyond the regular world until he finally reaches a door that can only be entered after first paying with a gold coin. And there he meets Ian McShane, who I assume is a kind of Hades figure.

Note: A bartender in the underworld tells him that she’s never seen him as vulnerable before. This is something that I think comes back later.

The movie drops clues about the fairy tale nature, though at the time I just thought it was hyperbole on the characters’ part:

They, these Russian mobsters, refer to John Wick as Baba Yaga. I thought this was an odd choice because Baba Yaga is a witch from Russian folklore. She is a hideous figure, apparently at times benign and other times malevolent, who lives in a house that walks on chicken legs. Why choose a female demi-god from Russian mythology for John Wick?

Then there’s the dissonance around the character of John Wick himself. Part of what I enjoyed about John Wick is the comedy around the character the audience knows as John Wick and the John Wick everyone else is reacting to. John Wick that the audience observes is a quiet unassuming man, almost a blank slate really. Everyone else seems to recoil in horror to him, though, and that just seems so at odd with what we observe that it’s hilarious.

But then there’s the scene where John Wick is tied to a chair and he tells his former boss that he’s back and to give him his son. That’s the Baba Yaga! That’s the person everyone was so scared of. He’s the man who will take your children away. He will force you to sacrifice your own children. I think John Wick was like that all the time in the period before the movie. So when the bartender says she’s never seen him vulnerable it’s because he was too busy doing the assassin equivalent of eating babies to stop and care about anything. Suddenly the movie cleverly reveals that John Wick is monstrous to the point of mythological being. They call him Baba Yaga because there’s nothing else that comes close to representing him.

Then the rest of the movie fell into place for me, in the fairy tale sense. A bad little boy went into the woods and broke into the house of a witch who lived there, waking the witch. Then the witch came and ate him. The cleverness of the movie is that we don’t realize that John Wick is the monster because for most of the movie we only know him as a pretty mellow guy.

I think that this is further emphasized by how John will spare “good children” from his wrath: specifically Aurelio the chop shop owner and Francis the door guard. Both are contrite and respectful to John, and so are spared. But the unrepentant son of the mob boss is hunted down and mercilessly killed. The entire movie is a two hour action movie equivalent of “be good or Santa Claus will shoot you in the head.”