Prepare to Die (and Not Know Why)

Game: XCOM 2
Firaxis, 2016 (PC version reviewed)

Let’s deal with the elephant in the room first: XCOM 2 is a fucking mess. Continuing the alarming trend of day one technical disasters in high profile releases, at the time of this review XCOM 2 is buggy to the point of brokenness if you’re lucky enough to be able to run it, and reportedly unplayable on a large number of rigs that otherwise ace the listed system requirements. Among the more stable, non-crash-to-desktop bugs are such constant joys as: enemies and allies alike disappearing or teleporting at random. Entire turn phases failing occurring invisibly. Vanishing cursors. Menu items becoming unselectable until a reload. Doors and windows failing to render, leading to your units breaking through them by surprise and eliminating your stealth cover or falling to the fire of hidden foes. Animations hanging constantly and the cinematic camera freezing as often as it functions, sometimes permanently. Clipping errors causing your units to wind up dozens of tiles away from your command point. Items disappearing out of your inventory without a single use.

The lack of an instant-undo button means your only remedy to some of these issues, if any, is a quick quit to desktop. And these are, again, just some of the glitches that don’t result in your GPU melting down to a pool of alien slag. Whether any game is worth putting up with that kind of aggravation, particularly at a $60 launch price tag, is a question very much worth asking.

“Deep Six” refers to the number of point black shots she’s missed in a row.

So why, despite of all that, am I standing at the end of a brutal 45-hour campaign reflecting on how much I enjoyed the experience and whether I’ll play another? Chalk it up to the magic of XCOM, I guess. There’s just something so engrossing in the core formula Firaxis has found in reinventing the series that I find myself sucked into “just one more mission” hours after a squad-wiping series of bugs, personal errors, and trademark XCOM bullshit made me declare that was my last mission, now and forever. And there is oh, so much bullshit to that formula. Part of the weird XCOM paradox is that the things that make it such an interesting procedural narrative experience are the very things that make it a shoddy strategy game. As refreshing as the new squad stealth mechanics are, there’s still a constant element of unpredictability and unfairness in the enemies’ ability to appear out of nowhere and receive a free turn, or the fact that virtually every encounter with a new type of foe ensures you will lose soldiers discovering those foe’s unknown skills, or the glee with which the game flatly refuses to clue you in to which elements of base strategy will lead to a long term win or loss without painful trial and error. Enemy line of sight is a constant mystery. Mission difficulty ratings are largely useless, as a “Very Difficult” op might be a complete breeze if filled only with familiar unit types, whereas an “Easy” one might wipe your entire squad through the appearance of unknown elements without warning. Even many of the more predictable elements seem to have been included frankly just to annoy, such as the stupidity of multi-enemy targeting abilities like the Gunslinger’s “Face Off” forcing you to attack units you have mind-controlled into submission.

Dr. Tygon’s not afraid to let you know how this Archon makes him feel.

The truth is, however, that most of the masochistic pleasures of XCOM 2 are a result of these bullshit elements; some of the most satisfying moments in the game would likely never happen without them. The unpredictability of the abuse is as organic to the player experience as the stories that form around your beleaguered troops and their fallen comrades. You come to value these procedurally generated personalities precisely because of the awful experiences you have “shared” with them, and the constant threat of permadeath lends a weight to your choices even when they turn out to matter less than your luck of the draw (as anyone who’s ever missed an entire turn’s worth of shots can attest).

Bugs aside, XCOM 2’s improvements on the Enemy Unknown and Enemy Within formulae provide a strong framework for those stories to take place in, even if the changes are mostly iterative - and owe an undeniable debt to the fan-made Long War mod for Enemy Within. The base management tools and Pandemic-inspired world map exploration, if poorly explained and overwhelming at first, make for a much deeper and more satisfying strategy experience outside of the missions themselves, to the point where I found myself wishing the battlefield wouldn’t so frequently pull me away from management.

XCOM 2 continues to tease with so many toys and so little cash with which to buy them.

Missions, too, have received major improvements. The new manual evac mechanic not only feels so right but provides a thrilling and life-saving way to pull your team out of a botched mission or rescue incapacitated comrades. Unit skills have been revamped almost completely, with familiar classes progressing in ways that provide much more interesting choices between abilities and team composition. There’s much more variety in the enemies you face as well, with familiar foes showing off reconfigured tactics and newcomers finding all sorts of novel ways to make your life a nightmare.

There’s a flashy, neo-dischoteque vibe to the alien propaganda materials that would’ve been nicer to see more of in the 3D visual design. 

Some things haven’t changed at all. The writing’s just as earnestly awful as ever - even if it is part of the charm - and the story unfolds in ways not only predictable but downright repetitive of its predecessors. A few of the non-timed mission types still try to bore you out of Overwatch creep into making stupid decisions. Visuals have been touched up only a little, and certainly not enough to justify the new technical problems, but the bigger improvements are stylistic, particularly in the now much more varied environmental design. Mechanical improvements notwithstanding, XCOM 2 is an obvious evolution on Enemy Within, and it can struggle to justify its packaging as an independent, fully-priced sequel rather than the sort of thing a studio like Blizzard regularly puts out as a discounted expansion pack. But if you’re anything like me, you may just find XCOM 2 is exactly what you wanted more of out of the series, and all the bugs in the world won’t keep you from that “one last mission” at 3 AM on a Monday.

The Dark Knight Diatribes

"On a more superficial level, I have to ask the question: how many good third movies in a franchise can people name?" 

~Christopher Nolan

The Dark Knight Rises is not a great film. It is not a great Batman film, nor is it a great summer blockbuster. It is not a bad film, by any stretch, nor even a mediocre film; we may generously even call it "good" if we allow the whole to amount to more than the sum quality of its parts. But shrouded in the shadow of what I might with only minor hesitation call the two greatest superhero films of all time, the latter of which is probably the masterwork of Nolan's career to date, TDKR cannot help but be a disappointment. 

Where to begin? Perhaps it is best to take the worst of the pain from the outset: TDKR is in many ways a sloppy, haphazard, and bloated film from a director (Nolan the Elder, Christopher) and screenwriter (Nolan the Younger, Jonathan) I have often praised for attention to the finer details of the craft and a general coherence of vision, both of which are sorely lacking on display here. The first half of the film in particular is the worst kind of drudgery, reminiscent of nothing more than the Wachowski brothers in its endless, self-important exposition full of sound and fury but signifying nothing; it aches to watch J. Nolan striving for such profundity with every line, hoping desperately to achieve aphorism of grand philosophical portent and instead landing upon grandiosity. TDKR desperately, crudely longs to be Wagnerian but achieves only the Shatnerian; I can think of no closer analog to the failure than that of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and the two films share more in common both structurally and thematically than I am comfortable examining, but I will momentarily force myself to do so anyhow.

At their worst moments here the Nolans achieve near-Schumacher levels of absurdity. The clumsiness is often staggering to the point of camp: when Bane's (Tom Hardy) pet physicist began tinkering with Wayne's Unobtainium Reactor and a single jump-cut later declared "This is now a four megaton NUCLEAR BOMB!" I along with half the theater burst into unrestrained, un-welcomed laughter that would time and again re-emerge at each bout of similarly contrived nonsense. TDKR is no more intellectually insulting than your average Big Summer Movie, but these sorts of hokey hijinks have less place in the moral or physical universe of Nolan's Batman than they do in a Roger Moore Bond film. If Tom Hardy's mustache had been accessible through his oxygen mask as Bane he would certainly have twirled it with impunity, but alas that he is forced to limit himself to faux-Victorian posturing complete with the two-handed "Moriarty Grip" on his upper jacket lining at all times, from which I half expected him to pull a snuff box and monocle at any moment. At Hardy's most restrained he is reasonably intimidating as a faithfully intellectual Frankenstein's monster, but it is impossible to take him seriously when he is tossing quips like "Ask for the devil and he shall appear," "BEHOLD your liberation," and "I AM GOTHAM'S RECKONING!" along with literally dozens of other such Miltonian bon mots on a practically per-line basis, none of which serve to make him even fractionally as frightening as Ledger's Joker at his most banal. Alfred Pennyworth is the next worst offender, and even the incomparable Michael Caine is incapable of convincing us of the sincerity behind his ludicrously over-scripted lectures and lamentations this time around. Beyond that, the less said about Selina Kyle's (Anne Hathaway's) purring pontifications, the better, though the script does at least afford her Catwoman a few crowning moments of confidence in her cracks. 

TDKR's script is overloaded near to the breaking with enough textbook examples of Telling over Showing to give a high school creative writing teacher an aneurism. I've already heard it argued that the interminable exposition is justified by the expansive number of characters dealt with in the narrative, but that argument fails to hold much water when one considers how much more effectively that same challenge was overcome in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight through establishing imagery and just generally more effective filmmaking, which seems to have been a secondary concern for Nolan this time around the block. The film also fails against its predecessors on a more thematic level in its thoroughly confused philosophy and general disregard for consequences and characters. The more that is revealed of Bane's scheme and motivations, the less they make any coherent sense, especially where a particularly jarring "revelation" is concerned in the final act.

In making TDKR as blatant an Important Message film as it was clearly intended to be, the Nolans manage to subvert the very essence of The Dark Knight's core motifs, taking the basic hope in humanity offered in the Joker's ideological defeat by the conscience of everyday citizens and turning it on its head in a Randian anti-populist diatribe that shows those same Gothamites reduced to mindless mobs in service of Bane's amusement, absent any legitimate behavioral justification beyond the demands of the plot and Nolan's overwhelming desire to evoke Robespierre and the Reign of Terror. It's as bad an example of world-building as it is incongruous with the film's own established moral universe, and that message commitment to a set piece over the concerns of the film's soul muddles Bruce Wayne/Batman's (Christian Bale) own character arc to the point of incomprehension, however hard the screenplay tries to substitute unearned epiphanies for genuine development (going so far in breaking the rules of the world as to introduce crucial plot information otherwise unknown to Wayne through what is immediately established as a hallucination). This kind of writing is as lackadaisical as it is lazy, and the knowledge that J. Nolan is capable of so much better only makes it all the more devastating in its actualization.

I have been harder on the film than it deserves in focusing so intently on its flaws; granted, they are legion, far more abundant than I have outlined here, but for all of them TDKR still retains enough craft to commend it. Its sequences of action, though much sparser and of smaller consequence than their operatic accompaniment tricks us into believing, are as visceral and entertaining as any in the trilogy, and Nolan must still be commended for his commitment to practical – and powerful – effects over typical Hollywood CGI saturation. Most of the actors do quality work given the shortcomings of the script – need I even speak of Gary Oldman's unwavering dedication? –  and if the editing is shoddy it at least serves to showcase their commitment even in the film's excesses. Zimmer does nothing new or interesting with his musical reprisals, but his spartan score is as functionally effective as ever, even if I do wish Nolan had relied less on its shrill, throbbing strings to establish the stakes of the climax.

Though TDKR – loud and proud in its portents as it is – closes with a literal bang, it resonates as scarcely more than a cinematic whimper. Those of us with adoration for its progenitors owe it some measure of respect as a not-disastrous end to the trilogy, I suppose, but I suspect non-fans with less stake in its success will ultimately get more enjoyment from the serviceable final product than those of us with an emotional investment in its endeavors.

Grade: B- (and it feels generous; I am overriding my gut reaction in bumping it above a C letter level)

Great Disposability

By now there's really no point in discussing whether The Amazing Spider-Man was "necessary" or not; "necessary" has never been and will never be a core consideration of Hollywood studio execs, except insofar as it is necessary they continue to make huge piles of money from their property investments – and Spider-Man is nothing if not a lucrative property. There's no arguing against the fact that the new Spidey is redundant, of course, but if that were an unforgivable fault we should have to discard every major superhero tentpole film of the past decade not directed by Christopher Nolan. Let's not pretend, for instance, that CGI technology has not advanced in leaps and bounds since 2002, a time when even the most ardent accolades of Raimi's work were willing to admit that Spidey's visual incarnation rather more resembled a transplanted cartoon than a tangible character, particularly in the embarrassing street fight sequences.

That said, I come to bury The Amazing Spider-Man, not to praise it. Raimi's was and is the definitive version of the friendly neighborhood web-slinger, capturing every ounce of Lee and Kirby's larger-than-life sense of super-powered fun and "gee whiz!" comic pizazz. Certainly, it had it flaws, none the least of which was a perpetually torpid Tobey Maguire who could never quite make believable the transition from pitiable Parker to spectacular Spider-Man, but as a blockbuster based on a beloved American myth it was as complete a package as anyone could have asked for, fan or no, and the fact that at least one of its sequels was every bit as compelling an addition to the genre is of no small note by Hollywood standards of property decay.

The Amazing Spider-Man, on the other hand, is every bit as turgid as Spider-Man was frenetic, and as bloated in its own self-importance as its predecessor was lackadaisical. Of course, to compare the premier studio work of a novice independent film and music video director like Marc Webb (thrown here into an exceptionally cynical production even by Hollywood reckoning) with the loving craft of a B-movie veteran like Sam Raimi is to invite such contrasts, and I suppose we all knew from the first trailer exactly what we were getting here. TASM is a mess, plain and simple, a textbook example of exactly how not to successfully transcribe a comic to the silver screen, from its painfully familiar opening scenes of Peter's childhood and parental separation (especially now that aping Nolan's Batman saga has become the modus operandi for the genre) to its interminable origin sequences that insist upon gorging a solid half of the film's running time with heavy-handed character development for a character with whom everyone watching the film is already intimately familiar. Granted, Andrew Garfield is better and more rounded in the role than Tobey "walking-lopsided-grin" Maguire ever was, but even his nuanced work is so hampered by the insipid screenplay and shoddy editing as to render him ridiculous in moments that should have been poignant (the entire theater erupted in laughter at his reaction to a certain inevitable family death) and creepy when the camera was clearly going for cute (how many lingering shots of lecherous grins do we really need per love scene anyway?). Emma Stone fares a little better as a Gwen Stacy literally written for her talents, though at times her character seems shoehorned into the narrative by the demands of the inevitable saga-to-be.

After ten minutes of this, trust me when I say
 the "erotic medical treatment moment" is way more awkward than it sounds on paper.

In that regard, she's not the only victim. I've already used the adjective "bloated" to summarize the movie's major issues, and I can think of no better term to invoke again in comparing it to the disastrous third entry of Raimi's original trilogy. Criminally stupid dialogue aside, TASM's script is stuffed beyond capacity with sideplots within sideplots within sideplots, all packed between pell-mell introductory cuts of characters intended for recycling at a later date while largely ignoring the superhero aspect of what is, ostensibly anyway, a superhero film. Parker finally does don the darker-and-grittier suit, but only after a short eternity of tedium culminating in a so-bad-it's-hilarious moment of epiphany that, in ripping off both its predecessor and Batman Begins simultaneously, exemplifies exactly how much TASM is not either of those films and has no hope of being anything comparable. By then it's too little, too late anyway, and we are treated to but a few brief moments of costumed crime-fighting that manage to make a blazing car cliffhanger sequence tedious before being thrust into the showdown with Rhys Ifans's Dr. Connor/Lizard "homage" to both the Jekyll/Hyde story and Defoe's infinitely superior schizophrenic turn as the Green Goblin.

TASM feels like every second of its 136-minute running time, offering reprieve only in a few moments of satisfying arachnobatics and a glut of unintentionally humorous one-liners punctuated by some seriously dedicated mugging. I've already forgotten every note of James Horner's soundtrack (which I'd wager he probably has too), and I have nothing to say about the cinematography except that the team would have done better to have gone for broke with the camera work and filmed all the web-slinging scenes with tracking over-the-shoulder shots; it would have at least carried more of that Cloverfield-esque theme park appeal, because Lord knows TASM has nothing to say for itself as a film qua film.

About the only other thing I can say in its favor is that it avoids recycling Ben Parker's "With great power comes great responsibility" speech, instead substituting a remedial philosophy course summation of Kant's Categorical Imperative peppered with a heavy pinch of Peter Singer's ethics of duty, as peculiar an espousal of morality in a mainstream American movie as I can ever recall having heard. And even that manages to sound pretty insipid in context. The film ends with the now-compulsory mid-credit "bonus" sequence, and the questions this one raises are nowhere half so important as the one on everyone's mind right now: is The Amazing Spider-Man worse than Spider-Man 3? Apples and oranges, I tell you. Granted, a worm-ridden apple and an underripe orange, but at the end of the day I wouldn't recommend eating either unless you're on the brink of starvation. And even then you're likely to get sick off it.

Grade: C-