Marvel and why they're going to make history

Marvel has always pushed the envelope with their comics establishing such, now standard, comic conventions as the “normal person” who goes through a “transformation” to become a “superhero”. This was a contrast from the first superheroes such as Superman who was an alien that crashed into earth, Sandman who was a figure taken from mythology and Batman who isn’t really a superhero at all. With more plausible characters appearing more sci-fi than fantasy allowed Marvel to take the next step.

Marvel was the first publisher to set their comics in the real world. Previously, because of the fantastical nature of the characters, made up cities were created such as Metropolis for Superman and Gotham City for Batman. The Fantastic 4 were the first comic book characters who lived in the real world, New York. This was a huge step as Marvel as they then had to acknowledge certain rules and the choice had huge influences on the nature of superheroes as a genre.

The first most obvious question was because the comics were not set in isolated environments, the Fantastic 4 lived in New York and Spiderman lived in New York, why can’t they meet up? Thus the cross over was born, hugely popular and always hugely fun. Cross-sequeling has been part of Marvel since its inception. Of course Marvel never stopped making characters and so an alternate reality was born where superheroes are a common phenomenon and are quite numerous. Superheroes teams were created a la ‘The Avengers’ and superheroes had conflicts between themselves a la the ‘Civil War’ comics.

I’ve always loved this in comics. Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is a notable example elsewhere. For those of you that don’t know all of Terry Pratchett’s novels are set within the Discworld and the more you read of his books the more you become familiar with the world, it has it’s creation story, a very substantial history and it’s apocalypse. Sometimes you can read one book and stumble upon events that happen within another book from another perspective. What’s so great about sequels and spin-offs are that they build on already established set of rules and the more sequels you get the stronger the mythology becomes. Marvel comics have always had an incredibly complex and interesting mythology behind them. Nerd culture dictates one must know everything to become a true nerd and its always fun to see arguments over Marvel stories, you can tell they really got it right.

There have been so many attempts to bring comics into film but what I’m particularly excited about is that only now have Marvel taken the brave step of translating this feature into their films. For those who don’t know the reason there have been so many Superhero films recently is that Marvel are making all of the origin stories and soon ‘The Avengers’ is going to come out with the combination of them all. A few years ago Marvel made a Hulk origin story and it was crap, about a year and a bit later they made another one and it was also crap but with the introduction of this new philosophy of a consistent reality they cannot afford to do that any longer.

So, after this decision the quality of their films have increased enormously. Serious consideration has to be put into the new films as any mistake made will make its mark and stay there. Its hugely encouraging Marvel are able to learn from whats going on around them. Thor is by far the hardest of the superhero franchises to revamp simply because its outdated. Thor is one of the only Marvel heroes that doesn’t conform to the ‘ordinary person’ convention and his whole character is a bit silly really. Not one person looked at the initial trailers and didn’t think it looked terrible. However, Marvel picked a very serious director Kenneth Branagh from all his Shakespeare glory in a response of Nolan to Batman. Branagh was a stunning choice because, as with his Shakespeare films, he has to appeal to the even more vicious nerd purists. He managed to maintain a tone that wasn’t annoyingly self-referential but humorous and genuine when it had to be.

Origin stories have always been really popular with film/comic translation and there’s no doubt why. X-Men did their origins and then 2 and 3 got progressively worse. So they decided to make another Wolverine origin and now X-Men First Class which is the origin story for the first generation of X-Men. Even the Iron Man franchise which everyone thought was infallible made a sequel that was quite frankly a bit shit. This is because origin stories are the only isolated narratives within the comics. To make a financially safe film to make sequels have to be stand alone in some way or another which leads to somewhat shoddy formulaic stories that are just a bit crap.

Taking the Lord of the Rings trilogy as an example. The reasons those books work so fucking well is that you really get the impression that Middle-earth is a real place. Tolkien was so fucking into this place that he wrote history books and folklore for Middle-earth in the form of ‘The Silmarillion’ and ‘The Children of Hurin’. The benefits to having a consistent reality, or disadvantages for a fantasy author, is that you have to conform to a standardized logic. Tolkien wrote ‘The Hobbit’ and there was one point where he used a little narrative cheat available only to fantasy authors. Bilbo manages to escape a really shitty situation with the expense of a ‘get out of jail free card’ in the form of a magical ring. Tolkien felt so bad for this unexplained way out that he dedicated an entire epic trilogy to an insignificant ring. Just happens to have been the greatest fucking trilogy ever created and notice how very little magic happens during the course of it.

Now that Marvel have a similar sort of consistent reality to Middle-earth, with an incredibly rich history, everything is going to be a building process. Nothing will be a sequel but at the same time everything will be a sequel in a Discworld-esque sort of way. Its always the best part in any of their new films when they make cross references to the other films a la ‘Is that one of Stark’s’ ‘Tony never tells me anything’. They have definitely taken the steps to doing so, signing multiple-year contracts with A-list actors including Robbert Downey Jr. and Natalie Portman and establishing a strong foundation with what I hope to be 3 very solid origin stories and plenty of introductory cameo appearances, what I assume to be Jeremy Renner playing Hawkeye. I really hope they don’t fuck it up and director’s massive egos get in the way. Nerd-out.

Portal 2 Review

Okay so I’ve decided to do a review of Portal 2 just to demonstrate my continued undying love of videogames despite my focus on films. Plus it should be quick and easy simply because ultimately it can be boiled down to one word, awesome

My initial fears were that Valve were going to take their premise established in Portal 1, the portal gun, and simply do what most sequels do- apply the philosophy of “bigger, badder, better”. With the additions of: lasers, laser cubes, light walls, 3 different gels, water, beam rays and for coop another 2 portals to play around with, the worry was that the puzzles were going to become painfully complex rendering what no puzzle game should become- frustrating.

I don’t know how they did it but each puzzle is very, very simple and when you see the solution it clicks and you simply awe in how clever it is. What normally I found was my biggest hurdle was that I always thought the solution was more complicated than it was, there is no convolution in any of the puzzles- everyone is stripped down to it’s essence. Proof of it’s success is that the real achievement of a well-made puzzle game is that it makes you feel like a genius capable of anything- absolute divine, immense satisfaction at completing a chamber. Portal manages this more than anything else. On a tangent, what games tend to do in trying to achieve that sense of satisfaction is just making their game stupidly difficult a la, Super Meat Boy, N+ and Ninja Gaiden and whilst there are benefits to doing so- its always amazing to be incredible at a game- its something very impressive when you can get that same boost from a game that’s relatively easy.

An aspect of this, especially in coop, is that the Valve were too fearful in making the puzzles hard AT ALL. I would have loved to see at least a few where all of the elements were combined in one chamber but I understand the restraint. I’m not sure whether this is a criticism or not but in coop the main challenge was a problem of communication and relation to your partner. You never feel so clearly a sense of teamwork when you’re in a tractor beam heading for some spikes waiting for your teammate to press the button that will reverse the flow. You’re powerless and your life is in their hands.

Despite it being cooperative there is a fierce unspoken competition and the fully concentrated power of two people both trying to solve the puzzle first makes the chambers that much easier to solve. When you fuck up there is a deep seated sense of humiliation that you refuse to let happen again- the worst words to hear are “do you mind if I have a go at your job”?

Portal is absolutely stunningly scripted with a collection of hysterical characters, awesome set pieces (the ending blew my puny mortal mind) and brilliantly, brutally crafted one-liners. Valve has really got a distinct, unique brand of humour that, I’m not sure I’m right in saying this, is targeted at nerds (in the positive sense). All of it seems to be specifically designed to invade the nerd hive mind, sub-culture a la “the cake is a lie”. A side note, by the way, I quote Benji in saying ‘If they mention cake once in Portal 2, it will be ruined’ and thank the Gods (i.e. the people from Valve) they did not.

But enough good stuff right? It’s boring to read. Valve are NOT gods; just extremely clever mortals. Portal is so well scripted because of the fact that it’s a very clever narrative trick. GLaDOS delivers a line, you do a test chamber, GLaDOS delivers another line- rinse and repeat. Portal is about as linear a narrative as you can get an is therefore not particularly ambitious. Yes, the lines and characters are amazing but when you take the leap of faith like Shadow of the Colossus and deliver a narrative with no lines whatsoever but still create a narrative masterpiece; then I will call you gods. I think the distinction can be made with the distinction between a comedy and a (drama, adventure, action) narrative; one you laugh at, one you cry with. In this was SotC takes advantage of games as an INTERACTIVE experience rather than a passive one that washes over you. For how restrictive it was I think it could have done with more of that incredible voice acting, and repeated lines disappointed me fairly early on.

But enough philosophy about the nature of games as a medium. Portal has some issues in terms of having a lot of parts that weren’t puzzles at all especially in the parts that aren’t Aperture Science approved test chambers. I found myself walking, admiring the scenery and then coming to a stand still with no way forward. The solution was always just to look around for ages till you found a spot where you could portal and then move on. In fact, that’s another criticism the Portal test chambers were needlessly massive. Some of the best puzzles were in the smallest rooms where you can see everything all at once and it wasn’t about looking so much as thinking. I think the prime example would be the room with two lasers, one laser box and 3 laser receivers (I think my favourite puzzle).

Talking about just looking- this is another idea from Benji. Portal was sometimes just about observation. Portal 1 gave you a square room and the power of physics to come up with your own solutions (I know this isn’t wholly true but at least that was the illusion). Portal 2 showed you a platform, a button, a box and some propulsion gel. It was obvious immediately that the box goes on the button and the propulsion gel goes on the floor so you can get to the platform. They even throw chequered panels to show you specifically where stuff is meant to go and that ruins part of the magic. Dare I say it- did Valve succumb to a bit of ‘casual gamers make loads of money’ mentality?

I’m being a little cynical and I ‘no’ would be the answer. Portal is a fucking masterpiece that took considerable effort to shit upon. It has revolutionized the way we move around in our levels, and the way we look at levels at all in any game. It took the physics engine from Half-Life that had us gawping at how see-saws work and provided a sandbox experience that didn’t just let you pick the clothing for your shitty avatar but bend the laws of physics to your will.

And fuck this shit, I'm not going to apologise for my grammar any more.