T w e n t y S i d e d
Hey, everyone. I hate to have another non-content day, especially with so many things actually in the works. I took a nap and planned to finish up my weekly post afterward. Instead I got hit with a lot of negative stimuli that sent me spiraling. Thankfully I noticed and arrested the fall, but now I have to re-organize and build myself back up.
I have an analysis of Labyrinth in the works, by the way. My spouse and I thoroughly discussed the overt narrative and distinguished that from the sexual overtones. After reaching our conclusions, I spent a bit of time researching to see how much was intentional…how the sexual stuff got in and related to the rest of it. You can step back and go cross-eyed and it all pretty neatly fits together as long as you can’t see the details that interconnect. And don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying it’s a problem or done poorly (not exactly). Just that there are really two stories, or a big story and a little story, that are complementary but don’t really intersect properly.
I have more Villagers & Heroes content, or at least I think I do. I’m not sure how far this stuff is going to play. The game is *fun,* but there’s also no way around the fact that you’re just playing an abstract version of World of Warcraft. Is there a place for that? I think so. I haven’t really made up my mind.
Star Wars: The Old Republic is testing texture updates for the player character models. Updated higher-resolution player characters have been requested for years, of course; but the reviews of the current efforts on the test server are NOT glowing. Everyone is saying (and showing in screenshots) that the cumulative effect of the update doesn’t really seem to do anything more than make almost every character look twenty years older. Now, if that was a *toggle* that you could flip to reflect that your character has aged that much from the beginning of the game, or maybe a character aging option, that would be fine. Neat, even. As the default? I’m not sure that’s the desired effect, and I have a hard time believing that was the intention for every texture. I mean, there *are* people just now coming to the game and starting out with their own twenty-year-old farm boys and girls, you know?
Connelly was cast at 14 years old to play a character listed, depending on the script you reference, as 13, 14, 15, or 16 years old. She was, of course, 16 when the film was released. Henson chose her after several script revisions, and one of three other actresses were on the short-list, none of whom were Connelly. While specific references are hard to find these days, Connelly was selected after Henson chose to bring out more of the sexual elements of the story (this was after David Bowie was brought on to play the Goblin King.) I can’t find the reference anymore, but Connelly’s rapidly maturing appearance when they started filming *was* noted, and it probably highlighted the sexual overtones a lot more than was originally intended. More on that…some other time.
Megatextures
A video discussing Megatexture technology. Why we needed it, what it was supposed to do, and why it maybe didn't totally work.
Trusting the System
How do you know the rules of the game are what the game claims? More importantly, how do the DEVELOPERS know?
The Witch Watch
My first REAL published book, about a guy who comes back from the dead due to a misunderstanding.
Tenpenny Tower
Bethesda felt the need to jam a morality system into Fallout 3, and they blew it. Good and evil make no sense and the moral compass points sideways.
Batman v. Superman Wasn't All Bad
It's not a good movie, but it was made with good intentions and if you look closely you can find a few interesting ideas.
How did they increase the resolution of the textures? I’m curious as to their process and why that led to the result you described here. It’s really unfortunate that it had that result. How much do SWTOR playable species’ age ranges vary, anyway? I know Yoda’s people live a really long time, but as far as I can remember they are not playable in SWTOR. Do we have an “elf problem” here with aging?
From everything I’ve heard, they are actually creating new textures at higher resolution. So it’s new art, but I guess they started with the original texture for the fixed points, as all the pics I’ve seen are clearly recognizable faces from the game. but for whatever reason, the “added detail” the higher resolutions are capable of keeps being wrinkles, folds, and bags.
I will add my own caveat here, because the original SWTOR character designs are….I guess you would say impossibly firm and taut? So any wrinkle or fold stands out in comparison, of course…
Mt D&D friends seems to rave about Labyrinth as a childhood classic, much as they do with that other one, The Princess Bride. Both of them had a similar feel, and watching them as an adult I didn’t really get much from them at all unfortunately. The alleged charm just didn’t feel like it was there. I just saw Jennifer Connelly in Alita Battle Angel actually, an even more underwhelming film than either of those two.
Edit: Also with a suprising sexual undertone in a brief scene between Connelly and Mahershaha Ali’s character where she’s in bed in lingerie – which seemed out of place to me, it wasn’t really followed up on in any way that the two were in any sort of sexual relationship or that that was an element to their power interplay. So it came off as a chance to show off her legs for a bit and be the femme fatale that she really wasn’t shown to be in the film. Very weird film – like a lot of these teen fiction films that try to condense a book into a film, it felt as it a lot of scenes might have been missing.
Edit 2: Actually there was also a weird line from the helper woman to the doctor guy – when Alita is able to mould her own form into her self image, the woman comments to the doctor (Ido?) that Alita is older than he thought. But he knew that she was technically hundreds of years old, and that she had been a fighter. And he had originally put that brain into a body prepared for his late teenage daughter. And Alita didn’t even actually make it look any different to the previous body re: hips or chest or height, she still looked much the same. It comes from an manga I believe, so perhaps in that, she went from being flat chested to having an anime proportioned chest/hips, and they stuck the line in without actually showing it in any way.
I have different thoughts on all three movies. Princess Bride…isn’t really a movie, not in anything other than the technical sense. Kind of like Rocky Horror, if you follow me. It’s an experience, or an idea.
I have to admit I have a hard time watching Labyrinth without connecting it to nostalgia and trivia. It is very much a product of it’s time in many respects. I think the movie can stand alone, but it doesn’t surprise me that someone who doesn’t connect it to all those other touch-points won’t see it the same way, or as favorably.
I actually like the (newer) Battle Angel movie. I would say it is a much more successful attempt at adapting a manga series into one story than, say; Dragonball or Speedracer. But, it still carries some detritus that would have been better left out. I’m a fan of the original animated movie, and beyond that I know the general arc of the manga series. The original movie left everything related to Zalem and the power structure of the world as a far-off concept; nothing more than a MacGuffin. I would have to check the timing, but I think the manga series hadn’t even introduced a lot of the stuff about Zalem and several characters at the point that movie was made. The live-action movie would probably have been more digestible if they would have left Ido’s wife and almost all the Zalem side of the story out. Maybe dropped the hints about Alita being something even more than just some random, special, kick-ass robot, but left that for a sequel.
It’s interesting because I think the elements with Ido’s wife and her history with him and their child, were possibly the most intriguing for me. She had a single line in the film saying something like “you can’t replace us all” to him, after one of the fights, which was quite cryptic and not revisited.
I see what you mean about the Princess Bride. I’d say it was very similar to Willow. From what I’d seen and heard I expected it to be an all out parody or spoof, particularly the “my name is (Hector Livre?), you killed my father, prepare to die”. It sounded like such a comical line, which turned out to actually be quite a serious matter in the end.