Released: 9 July 2021 Director: Cate Shortland Distributor: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Budget: $200 million Stars: Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Olga Kurylenko, Ray Winstone, and Rachel Weisz
The Plot: On the run after the events of Captain America: Civil War(The Russo Brothers, 2016), Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Johansson) reunites with her estranged sister, Yelena Belova (Pugh), and discovers a conspiracy tied to her chequered past as a Russian spy.
The Background: Created by the legendary Stan Lee, Don Rico, and Don Heck, the Soviet super spy Natalia “Natasha” Romanova/Black Widow first appeared as a recurring villainous in Marvel Comics’ Tales of Suspense series, where she frequently clashed with Tony Stark/Iron Man. After running across Clint Barton/Hawkeye, however, she eventually shook off the brainwashing she had been subjected to and defected to the United States, becoming a hero and an Avenger in the process. Over the years, the character has become a popular staple of Marvel’s publications and a strong feminist icon who has made numerous appearances in other Marvel media and made her first live-action appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) inIron Man 2(Favreau, 2010). Development of a standalone Black Widow movie, however, was fraught with issues; the film was initially in development back in 2004 and MCU producer Kevin Feige considered exploring the character further in 2014 as the MCU was in full swing. Despite the character being killed off in Avengers: Endgame(The Russo Brothers, 2019), and the sexist machinations of Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter, and repeated delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Widow finally got a solo film that sought to explore her complex past in 2021. Black Widow was released to a modest (if not disappointing) box office compared to other MCU movies, potentially because of the aforementioned pandemic; the reviews were generally positive, with many praising the film’s action and presentation, though some criticised the film’s derivative nature and how long it took for Black Widow to receive her time in the spotlight.
The Review: Black Widow aims to address a lingering issue with the character since her introduction into he MCU, and that is her lack of a detailed backstory. Unlike other MCU heavy-weights, Black Widow’s past has only been vaguely hinted at and is shrouded in mystery. However, as much as I feel the character deserves her time in the spotlight (and honestly should have had her past with other side characters explored in some one-shots years ago), I always found this to be part of the character’s mystique. Not knowing the specifics of her time in Budapest and only vaguely hearing hints of her past (“Drakov’s daughter”, “I got red in my ledger”, “Daughter of Ivan”) made her seem like a very mysterious character who had done some terrible, almost unspeakable things and was trying to atone for them. Thankfully, Black Widow retains much of the character’s mysterious aura while still shedding some much-needed light on her past. As a girl (Ever Anderson) was raised in Ohio alongside her sister, Yelena (Violet McGraw), by her parents, Alexei Shostakov (Harbour) and Melina Vostokoff (Weisz). However, her childhood was nothing more than an elaborate deep cover infiltration by the Soviets and, after Alexei acquires the crucial data her was sent to retrieve, the girls are suddenly ripped from their happy, suburban life and forced into serving the State in the “Red Room”. There, they are sterilised and trained relentlessly to become the perfect weapons, each of them moving and operating identical to the other and, with them at his beck and call, General Dreykov (Winstone) is able to topple governments and societies alike with the merest order.
Black Widow places Nat in a vulnerable position where she’s left alone and forced to confront her past.
The film then jumps ahead to shortly after the end of Civil war; after eluding Secretary of State Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (William Hurt) and being branded a fugitive, Natasha contacts one of her few remaining allows, Rick Mason (O-T Fagbenle), to help her escape from Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division (S.H.I.E.L.D.), her former allies who are now relentlessly hunting her down. having lost her surrogate family (the Avengers), Natasha defaults to her cold, KGB training and is fully prepared to live off the grid and with few ties as possible; she is in a very vulnerable and fight-or-flight position at the start of the film and there’s a very real sense that she feels angry at herself for having grown so accustomed to working with, and trusting, others. She is rattled when she discovers that Dreykov is still alive and that the Red Room is still active, especially after the horrific acts she had to do to bring them down to join S.H.I.E.L.D. and is even more uncomfortable at having to travel back to Budapest and dig up the long-dead ghosts of her past since all she’s tried to do is forget about and atone for her time in the KGB.
Natasha reunites with Yelena, who wishes to free the other Widows from Dreykov’s control.
In the years since Natasha’s defection to the United States, Yelena was subjected to something more than just the psychological conditioning that turned Natasha into a ruthless assassin. Yelena, like her fellow Black Widows, was instead also subjected to a mind-control agent of Dreykov’s design that renders them little more than mindless puppets to carry out his every whim. However, after she is accidentally exposed to a chemical antidote, Yelena regains her senses and begins a campaign to free her fellow sisters from Dreykov’s control. As they were trained in exactly the same manner, Yelena is, in many ways, an exact mirror of Natasha; they move the same, fight the same, and have the same penchant for killing but the difference is that Yelena is noticeably more blunt and bitter since, unlike her “big sister”, she has been trapped in the role of an assassin without any hope of reprieve. Free for the first time in her life, Yelena is still a somewhat excitable and naïve child to many of life’s normality’s but is a formidable foe in battle; indeed, one of the objectives of Black Widow is to sell us on the idea that Yelena is every bit as good as Natasha while also being a distinct and likeable character in her own right. It succeeds in this regard by having her be evenly matched (and even best) Natasha when they fight and through Pugh’s natural charisma and adorable line delivery, which manages to be both blunt and endearing at the same time.
Alexei is a goofy blowhard who is desperate to relive his glory days as the Red Guardian.
Angered to learn that Dreykov is still alive after she risked everything, including sacrificing his young daughter Antonia (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), to kill him and defect to the U.S., Natasha reluctantly teams up with her “little sister” to find the Red Room (which is notorious for being impossible to trace) and bring it, and Dreykov, down once and for all. To do this, they decide to free Alexei from the prison he has been rotting in for over twenty years; having been exposed to a variation of the same super-soldier serum that birthed Captain America (Chris Evans), Alexi had a colourful career as the Red Guardian at some point but is now an out of shape blowhard who loves to drone on about his glory days (even if they don’t necessarily fit in with reality). Honestly, Alexei is one of he many highlights of the film; I have a real affinity for David Harbour and he embodies the role of his big, bear of a man perfectly, able to convey both genuine emotion and also a great deal of laughs with his bombastic nature and exaggerated (or inappropriate) stories of his time as a superhero.
Dreykov sends his best agent, the silent mimic known as Taskmaster, to hunt Nat and Yelena.
The three of them reluctantly reunite with Melina and learn the horrifying truth behind Drewkov’s operation; through an intricate system of mind control, he is able to command his Black Widows and has kidnapped, indoctrinated, and disposed of countless young girls over the years in order to maintain his position of power. Since Yelena has the only sample of the antidote, Dreykov sends his top operative, the silent and intimidating Taskmaster, to track her and the others down and acquire it by any means necessary. Taskmaster is quite the menacing foe, despite being uncharacteristically silent; a natural mimic, he is able to copy and replicate the physical abilities of anyone he watches and also predict and counter incoming attacks thanks to his intimidating skull helmet feeding him constant data. Wielding a sword, shield, bow and arrows, and even talons reminiscent of T’Challa/Black Panther(Chadwick Boseman), Taskmaster is incredibly adaptable and able to mimic Natasha’s most famous moves on the spot as well as possessing all of the fighting aptitudes of the Avengers, making for a relentless and threatening enemy that is made all the more intimidating through the fact that he doesn’t say a word the entire time.
The Nitty-Gritty: Going into Black Widow, I’d heard comments that the same was playing it “too safe”; that is was basically a rehash of Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Russo and Russo, 2014) and I can totally understand those observations. Personally, though, I found this to be a good thing; it’s not the first time the MCU has returned to a more grounded story after a big, cosmic event and hearkening back to one of the MCU’s most entertaining and successful films isn’t a bad thing, in my opinion. Indeed, I imagine when watching the MCU films in order, Black Widow will fit in pretty perfectly as an epilogue to Civil War. Nowhere are the similarities to The Winter Soldier more apparent than in the presence of those annoyingly large location subtitles, the film’s gritty and hard-hitting action, and the character of Taskmaster. Taskmaster’s presentation, demeanour, and even his theme are all highly reminiscent of the titular Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) from that film. Like the Winter Soldier, he has a tendency to ram and shoot at cars, performs a number of nifty knife tricks, and is an inexorable force who appears sparingly throughout the film but makes an impact every time he does.
Black Widow is bolstered by some gritty, hard-hitting, and over-the-top action and fight sequences.
Taskmaster’s story is noticeably different from his comic book counterpart, however, in that “he” isn’t a “he” at all; when I first saw the trailers, I (like many, I’m sure) was fully expecting Melina to be under the skull mask and, while the revelation of Taskmaster’s true identity has a great impact on Natasha, I can’t help but feel like that would have been just as meaningful a reveal and a far better use of Rachel Weisz. The remainder of the film’s action scenes are also instantly familiar to anyone who’s seen The Winter Soldier. Well framed and full of ever-escalating action, fight scenes are as brutal as they are beautiful and entertaining to see (even if Natasha, especially, walks away from multiple situations that should have killed her outright). Natasha and Yelena’s reunion is marked by a fierce bit of melee combat that instantly sells Yelena as Natasha’s equal; their daring helicopter rescue of Alexi was a thrilling sequence as Alexi causes a chaotic prison break and the three are forced to escape from an incoming avalanche; and their final assault against the Red Room is made visually interesting and distinct by the fact that the facility is floating up in the clouds. This results in an explosive and over-the-top finale very similar to when the Helicarriers rained from the sky in The Winter Soldier but, again, I’m convinced that these parallels were a conscious decision and the film certainly doesn’t suffer from them and, I feel, is distinct enough to hold its own.
Essentially, the story is about Nat reconnecting with her family and herself.
A central theme of the film is family. Natasha hides her heartbreak and sorrow at losing her surrogate family behind a cold bravado and resists letting Yelena, Alexi, and Melina into her heart and life as much as she can. We know that this isn’t the entire truth, though, since we’ve heard her talk fondly of her affection for the Avengers are her job as S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and we see at the start of the film how much she cares for Yelena. Natasha insists that her childhood and this hitherto-unknown family unit was all a fake and meant nothing to her and her attitude seemingly reflected by Alexi, who was frustrated at being stuck in a “boring” undercover assignment and desperately wanted to get back into his costume to fight Captain America again. However, just as Alexi felt true feelings of love and fondness for his “daughters”, so too is Natasha unable to deny that she feels a kinship and responsibility towards not just Yelena but all of Dreykov’s Black Widows. Her urge to finish the job and kill the man who ruined her life is motivated not just by her personal need for revenge but also a deep-rooted desire to free the girls under his control and ensure that no others are ever violated in the same way. Along the way, she reconnects with her first family and comes to realise that she isn’t as alone as she once though, setting her on the path towards reuniting with her disparate Avengers comrades.
The Summary: I’ll admit that I wasn’t exactly that thrilled at the prospect of a solo Black Widow film, especially one that came out after she had died in the MCU timeline. I definitely feel like she, and other key S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel should have featured in a one-shot or television movie or even, yeah, a feature-length film a few years ago or had her story folded in with the likes of Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) to appease the more sexist executives at Disney. Still, as the saying goes: Better late than never. Black Widow was an enjoyable romp with some impressive action and fight scenes, some fun humour and heartwarmingly poignant moments. It was great seeing Natasha in a more vulnerable position and to explore her backstory and character in more detail and the film introduces some entertaining and colourful new characters to the MCU, with Yelena and Alexei stealing the show at every opportunity. It seems as though Marvel Studios are pushing forward with a big shake-up in their films and line-up and I fully expect to see these two, at least, play a major role in the coming years.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Great Stuff
Have you seen Black Widow? If so, what did you think to it? Did you like the new character sit introduced and the exploration into Natasha’s past? What did you think to Taskmaster and how the film adapted the character? Do you agree that Black Widow should have had her own solo film a lot sooner or do you think the film was in a good position as a cool down after Avengers: Endgame? Would you like to see more films focusing on this character? Whatever you thought about Black Widow, drop a comment down below.
Released: 9 February 2012 Developer: SEGA Sports R&D/Racjin Also Available For: Nintendo Wii
The Background: During the “Console Wars” of the nineties, there were no truer rivals than Nintendo’s Super Mario and SEGA’s Sonic the Hedgehog; both went head to head as their respective company’s mascots, spearheading the release of some of the greatest and most influential videogames of a generation, and both company’s went to great lengths over the years in a bid to prove that their consoles were the superior. In the end, though, thanks to a variety of expensive and poorly-conceived ideas and an ever-changing marketplace, SEGA were forced to withdraw from developing home consoles; now developing videogames for their competitors, SEGA’s supersonic mascot began appearing in games exclusive to Nintendo consoles and discussions of a long-awaited crossover began between Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto and Sonic creator Yuji Naka. Rather than have their two iconic mascots meet in a merging of their worlds for a traditional platform title, however, the two were brought together in the spirit of friendly competition after SEGA was awarded the 2008 Beijing Olympic licence. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (SEGA Sports R&D, 2007) followed as a result; though little more than a series of mini games featuring Mario and Sonic characters taking part in a number of Olympic events, the game was a commercial success and led to a series of annual titles being released in conjunction with a number of different Olympic events. After many years of putting it off, I finally got around to playing the 2012 edition of the game, which was set in London since we Brits won the right to host the games that year so, since the Tokyo Olympic Games are set to kick off today, I figured this was an ideal time to leech off of that event and share my thoughts about this title.
The Plot: Sonic, Mario, and all their friends have arrived in London for the 2012 Olympic Games; however, annoyed that they weren’t invited to compete, King Bowser of the Koopas and Doctor Eggman join forces to cover London in the “Phantasmal Fog”, disrupting the games and forcing our heroes to battle against fog-based duplicates of themselves to dispel the fog and allow the Olympic Games to proceed as planned.
Gameplay: I’ve played games in the Mario & Sonic series before so I knew what to expect heading into Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games; while the games do generally have a story mode these days to make the gameplay a bit more involved than just a simple party game, it is still, nevertheless, a collection of Olympic-themed mini games. Because I’ve never been a fan of the Wii’s motion controls (or the Wii in general, if I’m honest), I always opt for the handheld versions of these sorts of games in the hopes that they will be less frustrating to play. Sadly, for the most part, that isn’t the case with Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games, a game which, seemingly, goes out of its way to use every single button, control, and aspect of the 3DS for its numerous events. The game features twenty playable characters, each of which falls into one of five different character classes (Heroes, Challengers, Girls, Wild Ones, and Tricksters) and, as a result, each character takes part in different events (Sonic, for example, can be used in the Marathon event, Yoshi in Shot Put, Blaze the Cat in Beach Volleyball, Bowser in Wrestling, and Metal Sonic in Hockey) and you cannot mix characters or classes.
The game’s events restrict which characters you can use according to their specific classes.
The moment you start a new game, Omochao rears his ugly little head to talk you through some of the game’s basic controls; you can then select from a few different customisation options, single or multiplayer events, or the game’s story mode. If you choose the single or multiplayer modes, you can select from all of the game’s many and varied events, each of which comes with an easy, normal, and hard criteria to get bronze, silver, and gold medals, respectively, with different goals, scores, or times to hit for each, as well as a brief overview of the event’s controls and objectives. I skipped this, however, and went straight to the story mode. The story allows you to take control of all of the game’s playable characters and the vast majority of the mini games and events the game has to offer, all while dialogue boxes and some limited voice clips and effects convey the game’s simple story. Generally, the story branches into two separate paths, one that follows primarily Mario characters and one that follows mainly Sonic characters, with the groups mixing up, overlapping, and interacting as they investigate the Phantasmal Fog, battle their shadowy doubles, and go head to head with Bower, Eggman, and their underlings.
Though you’re given a brief overview of each event’s controls, the actual gameplay can be tricky.
It’s a pretty simple story, one that is geared more towards teaching younger players a little about London and the Olympic Games more than anything, and it’s extremely linear. You can jump to a map screen to replay events (or just let the story take you from one episode to the next), skip cutscenes if you’re retrying an event, and are given a number of Challenges to complete to advance the plot. In the story’s early going, you’ll probably only be required to complete one or two Challenges but, as the story progresses, you’ll be asked to more, with each Challenge being comprised of harder or more complex events. Only first place will do here; if you don’t come first, you fail the Challenge and must either retry or choose a different Challenge if you want to see the story through to completion. As you play, you’ll be required to take part in a number of Olympic Games; it’s kind of weird that characters just spontaneously challenge their rivals to these games, and how the stadiums and arenas and locations and crowds and such just “appear” when you need to compete but…what do you expect? This is the best way, though, to experience a variety of the game’s events and get an idea of what is required of you. Sadly, however, many of the game’s events are an exercise in frustration; as I mentioned, you’ll be given a brief overview of what to do before an event but, sometimes, that doesn’t really help prepare you for the actual gameplay of that event. Generally, you’ll be rapidly tapping buttons, inputting specific button combinations, shouting or blowing into the microphone (which I can’t seem to find on my 3DS and which makes me a little lightheaded since I’m so unfit…), moving the 3DS about, or using the stylus to complete these events. Some, like the Pole Vault and 100M Backstroke, aren’t too difficult (you must angle the circle stick in a diagonal direction to charge your vault and release before the hidden meter overfills and your pole breaks or rapidly draw circles with the stylus to swim faster).
Be careful not to damage your touch screen trying to get to grips with the game’s controls…
Other events, like Archery (Solo) and BMX are maddeningly frustrating (you don’t just aim and shot in Archery, you need to account for wind currents which can screw up your shot, and BMX requires almost perfect hand co-ordination to tilt the 3DS in the right position to give you a much-needed boost). Almost all of the events have one thing in common and that is that they come down to split second timing as much as skill; if you do not time your inputs exactly right, you’re screwed but, often, the game’s button prompts and directions mislead you and cause you to fail. Take the Triple Jump, for example; it seems pretty easy (tap the touch screen left and right in an alternating pattern and then tap in time with the directions to leap) but if you tap for your first jump when the game/button prompt tells you then you will fail on a foul since you jumped too late! Similarly, Basketball only gives you an aiming reticule in the training mode, which makes landing a shot really difficult with the 3DS’s motion controls, and many games that have you draw on the bottom screen have the directions on the top, which is really confusing as you’d expect to tap targets on the touch screen when playing the Shooting events. Others seem incredibly random or unfair just for the sake of it; the 20km Racewalk event, for example, has you moving the stylus to a tempo at just the right speed. The game helpfully tells you when to speed up and penalises you if you need to slow down but it’s more annoying than anything to try and get the balance just right. The Canoe Slalom (Pair) event has you balancing with the circle pad and tapping A to pass through gates, which sounds easy but is super tricky as the control stick is overly sensitive, and you’ll be jerking your 3DS around like a moron trying to hit targets in the Double Trap event.
Other events are troublesome because of a dodgy camera angle and poor onscreen prompts.
Similarly, in a lot of events are handicapped by poor camera angles; it’s hard to see (or know) what you’re doing in the Sprint event as you’re stuck in a bad position and your opponent just rockets away too fast for you to catch, and it’s very difficult to judge your positioning in the ball-based games like Badminton and Football (to say nothing of the Goddamn Table Tennis (Doubles) event which requires you to switch between two characters but sometimes they swap independently and always right as you think you have the rhythm down). It’s equally difficult to make jumps in the 3000m Steeplechase event as the camera position means you don’t see which sort of button press is required of you until the very last second; the same goes for the Marathon event, where the angle is positioned just annoyingly enough to mean you need split-second accuracy to pick up the water bottle at the right time. It’s not all bad, though; some events (like 25m Rapid Fire Pistol, Trampoline, and Wrestling) can be fun but there’s very little room for error here; it may take some practice to understand exactly what is required of you but, generally, once you get the inputs down you can usually scrape by to advance the game’s story to the next episode. Other times, though, you’ll have to take on a number of quick-fire events in a row, with no way to restart if you fail one until you load into the next event (and then you have to restart the whole Challenge so be sure to retry before you fail), and by the end of it all you’ll be too burned out to really want to try out the other events in the game’s single player mode.
Graphics and Sound: Being that it’s a 3DS game, the graphics are serviceable enough; Mario, Sonic, and all their friends and enemies look pretty good and coexist decently enough thanks to their cartoony aesthetic but it’s a bit weird how some characters (the girls, mostly) are dressed to compete and others are not and how characters like Sonic are suddenly only able to communicate in pantomime.
The game’s presentation is decent enough and mixes cartoony characters with real-world locations.
Otherwise, there’s not much to the in-game graphics; the story mode sees the characters visit a number of iconic British landmarks but they’re mostly lifeless voids or obscured by thick, colourful fog. When you enter the events themselves, there’s a decent amount of detail, with minor Mario and Sonic characters filling out the crowds and the arenas sharing the same bright, cartoony aesthetic of the characters. Musically, though, aside from a few recognisable sound clips and sound effects, there’s nothing really Mario or Sonic about this title as it opts for simple trumpets and fanfares.
Enemies and Bosses: Outside of the game’s story mode, your choices for opponents are dictated by which character, class, and event you wish to play; you won’t be able to pit Sonic against Eggman in a Triathalon, for example, but you can pit Knuckles against Donkey Kong in a Boxing match. In the story mode, you’ll mostly compete against evil fog imposters of Mario and Sonic characters; Amy Rose and Princess Daisy, for example, get to take on the imposter versions of Blaze and Princess Peach in Beach Volleyball and Yoshi will have to compete against imposter versions of Shadow the Hedgehog and Silver the Hedgehog in the 1500m and 10km Marathon Swim events. As you progress, the amount of Challenges you have to clear increases, as does the difficulty of your opponents, and you’ll be allowed to choose between different characters to take on different events and imposters. In the course of the game’s story, you’ll also compete against a number of boss characters; it is only by clearing these challenges that you’ll bring that episode to an end and progress to the next part of the story. The first boss battle pits you (as Mario and Luigi) against the duo of Dry Bowser and Dry Bones and has you frantically blowing into the microphone and awkwardly steering your ship across boost panels in the 470 (Pair) event. This is a pretty ridiculous game as the controls are way too slippery and it’s ridiculously easy to just wander into the path of a whirlpool…yet it’s also stupidly easy to win even with minimum effort.
Time your stylus swipes perfectly to beat the Boos at Badminton.
Next, you’ll take on King Boo and Boo in Badminton (Doubles) as Sonic and Miles “Tails” Prower; this involves sliding the stylus (or your finger) down the touch screen as the shuttlecock comes towards you. Don’t do this too soon, though, or you’ll miss like an idiot; instead, you should aim to hit it when the shuttlecock flashes red but this gets tricky as the rallies get faster and faster and, one time, the ball went between Sonic and Tails and they just stood there like lemons! Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games sees the welcome return of Jet the Hawk as a boss character who challenges Shadow to a 3000m Steeplechase, and also has you competing against Rouge the Bat as Peach in the 100m Backstroke, neither of which are particularly challenging thanks to these events being two of the more user-friendly games. When you take on Bowser Jr, however, you must do so in a three-stage event that sees Yoshi having to fight with the poor game prompts in the Triple Jump, hold the 3DS like an idiot in the 10km Marathon Swim, and struggle through a 3000m Steeplechase, or Silver desperately try to aim for the centre and time button presses correctly in Trampoline, fumble through Basketball, and press and hold the stylus without messing up in Floor. Your best bet to beat Bowser Jr is to pick Shadow, whose events are much easier to get through. You’ll also come up against one of the most wasted characters ever introduced into the Sonic franchise, Eggman Nega, and have to compete against him in a 4 x 100 relay that simply asks you to slide the stylus to pass the baton between Luigi, Tails, Mario, and Sonic. Similarly easy-going is Donkey Kong’s encounter with E-123Ω “Omega”, which sees you timing presses of the A and B button and going for a super tackle in the Wrestling – Freestyle event. Unfortunately, when Sonic takes on Magikoopa, it’s in the God-awful BMX event which literally had me tearing my hair out as I just couldn’t figure out how the tilt the 3DS properly to land correctly!
Eggman and Bowser get a significant power up from their Phantasmal Fogfor the story’s finale.
You’ll battle against both Bowser and Dr. Eggman a couple of times in the story mode; you’ll first face Dr. Eggman with Wario and then alongside Waluigi to take on Eggman and Metal Sonic, but he isn’t really a challenge (the Hockey game you must complete is really just a glorified version of Pong (Atari, 1972)). Similarly, Bowser isn’t too difficult to get past if you choose the right events (the Hammer Throw, in particular, isn’t too taxing as long as you can rotate the 3DS fast enough) but they both get a significant power boost for the game’s final chapter. Here, powered up by the Phantasmal Fog, Bowser and Eggman take on Mario and Sonic in Sprint, 20km Race Walk, Judo, and 100m events. Judo isn’t especially hard (it’s just a question of timing your button presses and being a bit aggressive in your attack) and 100m is fine as long as you charge and release A and can tap the button as fast as possible but both Sprint and 20km Race Walk can crawl into a hole and die. Eventually, after much trial and error, I got Sprint down (ignore the onscreen prompts and don’t move or press anything until you’re sure you can dash past Eggman) but the 20km Race Walk mainly came down to luck.
Power-Ups and Bonuses: Being as this is a glorified collection of mini games, there’s not much on offer here; some events have you rapidly tapping A to recover stamina or splashing water on you for the same effect, or touching dash panels for a boost, and many reward a perfect finish with a fancy special flourish but there’s nothing tangible in-game to help increase your chances.
Additional Features: There are a couple of extra incentives on offer here for repeat and expansive play; first, when you first start the game, you can customise your in-game name, flag, and Badge (which is a nice touch for when you’re playing online, I’m sure). You can also aim to break world records in each event, win bronze, silver, and gold medals, and complete each of the game’s events and story modes to earn tickets and Badges. You can then use these tickets in a ball machine to unlock yet more Badges, all of which can be viewed in the game’s Record Log along with (obviously) your best times and records. After you beat the main story campaign, you’ll unlock a series of additional bonus episodes that see you compete as Bowser Jr, Bowser, Metal Sonic, Dr. Eggman, Peach, Blaze, and Amy in some of the toughest challenges yet. Unlike in the Wii version, there are no “Dream Events” to compete in, though you can cobble together custom events to take on both on and offline if you can bring yourself to play a little longer.
The Summary: When it comes to the Mario & Sonic series, you know what to expect: Olympic-themed mini games involving some of gaming’s most iconic characters. Yet, as inoffensive as these games often are, Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games takes things to the next level by needlessly overcomplicating so many of the events and controls. It’s as though the developers were forced to shoe-horn in everything the 3DS was capable of, which would be fine if there were the option to switch to more traditional controls but, nine times out of ten, there isn’t. Instead, you’re left to fumble about the place, shouting at your 3DS and trying to rotate it while alternating between hitting buttons or drawing on the touch screen and it’s just more frustrating than fun. Because I’m a big Sonic fan, I am kind of duty-bound to own these games wherever possible but I’ve never really been fond of them; I’m sure that for groups of players who like motion controls and unfairly-balanced party games, they’re a lot of fun but it can’t help but feel like Nintendo and SEGA left a lot of money on the table by not also producing a more traditional crossover for their iconic mascots.
My Rating:
⭐⭐
Rating: 2 out of 5.
Could Be Better
How did you find the 3DS version of Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games? Perhaps you also owned the Nintendo Wii version; if so, which was better, in your opinion? How did you find the game’s motion controls, assortment of games, and story mode? How do you feel about the Mario & Sonic series overall? Do you agree that the concept is somewhat wasted on the Olympic Games or have you enjoyed the series so far? Which country are you pulling for in this year’s Olympic Games? Either way, feel free to leave a comment below.
Air Date: 20 October to 15 December 2019 UK Network: Sky Atlantic Original Network: HBO Stars: Regina King, Jean Smart, Jeremy Irons, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Tim Blake Nelson, Hong Chau, Jovan Adepo, Louis Gossett Jr, and Don Johnson
The Background: Since its release, Watchmen (Moore, et al, 1986 to 1987) has become a critical and commercial success and is largely regarded as one of the most influential and significant graphic novels ever created. Although at one point considered to be unfilmable, various writers, producers, directors, and other creative types had attempting to spearhead a live-action adaptation since the end of the eighties, all of which fell apart until Warner Brothers approached Zack Snyder to finally bring the project to life in 2005. Say what you will about Watchmen(Snyder, 2009) but it did a pretty good job of translating Moore’s dense, complex text into a cohesive live-action feature; elements were changed, for sure, but that is to be expected from the adaptation process and, for me, the changes made perfect sense and didn’t detract from Watchmen’s themes or main story. After the film’s release, DC Comics really ramped up the Watchmen spin-offs and merchandise (much to Moore’s chagrin, I’m sure) and this included tentative talks with Snyder concerning a live-action Watchmen television series. After Snyder left the project, the HBO network began developing the series with Damon Lindelof. Rather than being a sequel to the movie, however, Lindelof conceived of the series as a continuation of the Watchmen comic that would jump between the 1920s, 1980s, and then-modern-day 2019, dealing with issues of race and the fallout of Watchmen’s iconic ending. Watchmen was met with widespread critical acclaim and won numerous awards, though Lindelof stepped away from the franchise and HBO reclassified Watchmen as a “limited series” with options of additional instalments and stories under a different creative team.
The Plot: Thirty-four years after the world was united against a perceived alien threat, the Seventh Kalvary, a white supremacist group inspired by WalterKovacs/Rorschach, has risen to prominence in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Because of their actions, the Tulsa Police Department have taken to hiding their identities behind masks and code-names like the long-outlawed vigilantes of the 1960s and 1980s. After Police Chief Judd Crawford (Johnson) is murdered, Angela Abar/Sister Night (King) finds herself uncovering uncomfortable truths regarding her past, the state of the world, and a deadly plot to harness the powers of the long-exiled Jon Osterman/Doctor Manhattan (Abdul-Mateen II).
The Review: A central premise to Watchmen is the idea of a deep-rooted conspiracy; obviously, there’s the primary Watchmen conspiracy involving the sudden appearance of a giant, alien squid in New York City shocking the world away from nuclear Armageddon but HBO’s Watchmen juxtaposes this narrative with one involving a nefarious plot by Senator Joe Keene Jr. (James Wolk) to manipulate a series of violent and discriminatory events that will ensure his seat in the White House. As in the original comic book, the cogs are forever turning in Watchmen and nothing is ever quite as it seems; the majority of those in positions of power wear masks, either literal or metaphorical, and, as always, it is the general public that suffers as a result. Central to the series’ themes of conspiracy and violence is our main character, Angela Abar; in the 2019 world of Watchmen, the police are anonymous individuals who hide their identities behind masks and code-names after a series of mass murders perpetrated in 2016 by the Seventh Kalvary that came to be known as the “White Night”. Abar was one of the few survivors of this atrocity, one who steadfastly stuck by her police chief, Judd Crawford, to rebuild the police department and adopting masked identities as per Senator Keene’s groundbreaking decision to bend the rules seemingly to protect those in law enforcement.
Angela wears a number of literal and metaphorical masks.
As a result, Abar lives a life of lies and deception; to the outside world, she works as a struggling, nondescript baker who has been long-retired from police work but, in reality, she is a tortured soul despite her seemingly perfect family life with her husband, Cal (Abdul-Mateen II) and her adopted children. Not only is she hiding her identity behind that of Sister Night, a masked persona that allows her to exercise her violent tendencies (especially against white supremacists and racists), but she is also largely covering up the specifics of her childhood and troublesome upbringing in Vietnam. In addition to this, her actual origins and true lineage are largely hidden from her and discovered throughout the course of the series, forcing her to confront some uncomfortable revelations about not just trusted comrades like Judd but also herself, her parents, and, most significantly, her grandfather and husband. Consequently, racism is a massively important part of Watchmen; all throughout the series, the narrative returns, in some form or another, to the atrocious events of 1921 that saw racist sentiment in Tulsa boil over to breaking point. Even now, in 2019, there is an air of racism across the board as people resent those of colour, and President Robert Redford, for “taking over” their town, putting down roots, and receiving a series of payouts (known as “Redfordations”) as recompense for their suffering. Racism in Watchmen is mostly personified by the Seventh Kalvary, basically an evolved form of the Klu Klux Klan who have adopted and twisted Rorschach’s diary, appearance, and methods to spread anti-racist and anti-authority sentiment throughout Tulsa.
Many of Tulsa’s police use their masks as an excuse for excessive violence.
For decades, Judd has worked to maintain a rocky kind of peace between the Tulsa police and the Seventh Kalvary to keep events from escalating into full-blown violence; as a result, cops are unable to utilise deadly force (or even draw their handguns) without requesting permission and their firearms being remotely activated and it is forbidden for them to reveal their true identities to the public, all to help ensure that they are protected from reprisals and to keep them from sparking all-out war through needless violence and death. However, anti-authority sentiment remains high amongst the public; many resent the police for using their masks as an excuse to indulge in excessive violence and, in a twist on the anti-mask riots seen in the comics, the public now seem to be far more receptive to the idea of actual costumed vigilantes than masked police officers. However, in 2019, costumed heroes are few and far between; with vigilantism still outlawed, law enforcement agencies track them down and arrest them at every opportunity and all the costumed heroes you knew from the original comic are either dead, retired, in jail, exiled, or have conformed to the new world. The most principal of these is, obviously, the all-powerful Dr. Manhattan, whom the public believes has exiled himself to Mars; Manhattan Booths have been placed all over the city (and, potentially, the world) to allow people to call Mars and leave messages for Dr. Manhattan but, like any self-respecting God, Dr. Manhattan never replies to these prayers and is largely believed to have abandoned mankind.
Time, and life, have not been kind to the former Silk Spectre.
The other costumed heroes haven’t fared much better, either; Laurie Juspeczyk/Silk Spectre (Smart) is now a hard-nosed, cynical FBI agent who is apathetic, pessimistic, and callous. She has a personal dislike for masked vigilantes, regarding them as a “joke”, and meets almost every challenge or obstacle with a mocking indifference. Indeed, it says a lot about Laurie’s mindset that she has adopted the surname of her biological father, Edward Blake/The Comedian, a man whom she hated with a passion for being a cruel and sadistic rapist. Clearly changed after the events of the comic and in the time between the comic’s conclusion and present day (and her knowledge of the truth behind the squid incident, which is unsubtly referred to as “11/02”), Blake is a confrontational, no-nonsense, world-weary woman who has no time for bullshit or games and even less time to indulge those who hide behind masks (again, both literal and metaphorical).
Adopting many of Rorschach’s characteristicsmakes Looking Glass one of the stronger characters.
This naturally means that she ruffles a lot of feathers once she is assigned to Judd’s murder case, believing it to have been the result of vigilante action, and causes her to clash with those in the Tulsa police department, such as Wade Tillman/Looking Glass (Nelson). Looking Glass, who adopts many of Rorschach’s characteristics (his blunt, monotone voice, his stature and body language, his paranoid over-preparedness, and even a similar mask), is a highly perceptive and analytical character who is able to tell what someone is really thinking and feeling (or whether they are lying) through his highly tuned reading of body language. After suffering some of the squid’s violent psychic impact, Looking Glass constantly shields his head and face behind a reflective material to keep himself sane and free from nightmares, meaning he is much more comfortable hiding behind his masked identity. However, while he is the closest thing the series has to an actual Rorschach-like character, he is fundamental different from Rorschach in many ways and is, in a lot of ways, Rorschach’s opposite (Looking Glass, for example, lives in a house, has had various (often disastrous) relationships with women, regularly unmasks to reveal, at least, his face, and is a devoted member of the establishment rather than being anti-authority and uncompromising).
Veidt becomes disillusioned with the state of the worlddespite everything he did to save it.
HBO’s Watchmen is a world very similar to ours but fundamentally different and flawed; far from the utopia that the squid’s presence was meant to inspire, the world has largely grown accustomed to the “new normal” and regularly endures sporadic mini squid showers as though they’re an everyday occurrence rather than a startling reminder of the alien menace that lingers overhead. Disillusioned with the state the world has fallen into despite everything he did to save it, Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias (Irons) jumps at the chance to be transported to Europa, where Dr. Manhattan has created an idyllic paradise populated by endless clones living in a stately manor. As jarring as Laurie’s character changes are, they at least have some basis in her comic book counterpart; Laurie was always a bit of a sharp-tongued, blunt instrument in the comics and age and experience have only served to make her even more tiresome but Veidt is so drastically removed from his original depiction that it is almost insulting. Much of the early episodes revolve around Veidt (then known simply as “The Master”) seemingly trapped in a prison, surrounded by endless, disturbingly polite and helpful clones and unable to escape. Eventually, the truth of his situation is revealed (Dr. Manhattan transported him there at Veidt’s enthusiastic suggestion but Veidt became bored with paradise and Manhattan was unable to retrieve him, so Veidt constructed an elaborate plot to keep him challenged and from going insane) and Veidt is able to send a message to affect his rescue.
Both Lady Triey and Senator Keene seek to steal Dr. Manhattan’s God-like powers.
However, flashbacks to earlier years before his imprisonment and subsequent focus on his current mindset show Veidt as being quite the hypocritical and egocentric character; while this was, to be fair, evident in the comic book, here Veidt actually records a message to President Redford admitting to having concocted the squid as an elaborate hoax and is visibly insulted and frustrated at Redford rebuking his attempts to form a partnership and the fact that he receives no credit for having “saved the world”. As a result of this, and having grown jaded and frustrated at the continued production of weapons and nuclear deterrents (which I find odd as obviously the world would want to arm/prepare itself for a possible alien invasion), Veidt retires to Karnak to live in solitude and is dismayed and affronted to find, upon his return, that the world not only believes him dead but has largely forgotten about him. In Veidt’s place is Lady Trieu (Chau), his unwanted biological daughter, who takes Veidt’s vision for a world united by peace and prosperity and further defiles it through a complex plan to find, kidnap, and destroy Dr. Manhattan so that she can assume his abilities and reshape the world. Senator Keene has similar aspirations, wishing to be the first “superman” in the Oval Office, but only Trieu has the resources and knowledge to actually pull off such a plan. Oddly, her aspirations to assume Manhattan’s Godhood are shocking even to Veidt, despite his attempts to destroy Manhattan in the past, forcing Veidt into an uneasy alliance with Blake, Looking Glass, and Angela to keep Trieu from becoming the new Dr. Manhattan.
The glimpses into Hooded Justice’s backstory are some of the show’s more interesting elements.
It is, essentially, the same fundamental plot of the Watchmen comic and many of the same story beats are evident throughout the series (a newsvendor even pops up every now and then to give his views on the state of society), however HBO’s Watchman sheds a lot more light on the effect Dr. Manhattan’s presence had on the Vietnam War (Vietnam becomes an official state of America and Angela hates Manhattan since his actions led to the death of her parents) and the true identity of the very first costumed hero, Will Reeves/Hooded Justice (Jovan Adepo/Louis Gossett Jr). The subject of much speculation in the comic, Hooded Justice turns out to be a young, angry black man who faces unwarranted prejudice and foul treatment in his youth while working as a police officer; after being briefly hanged by his fellow officers, he adopts a hooded guise to dish out corporal punishment and stumbles upon a plot by a group of white supremacists known as “Cyclops” to hypnotise the black community into attacking their own kind. When he is approached by Nelson Gardner/Captain Metropolis (Jake McDorman), Reeves is initially hopefully that the backing of his fellow masked adventurers will held him uncover the conspiracy ever faster but is quickly dismayed and disappointed to find that the Minutemen care more about publicity and catching “supervillains” rather than conspiracies, especially those against black people. This partnership also causes Reeves further turmoil as he enters into a passionate homosexual affair with Gardner, meaning that he is forced to hide behind a myriad of masks (he hides his true identity from the public with his hood, further masks his true identity by applying white face paint so as to be more “accepted” by his fellow Minutemen, hides his sexuality from his wife, his anger from the world, his true intentions from the police…it’s just mask after mask after mask).
Angela is a complex character but one I find more grating than compelling…
Even in his older years, Reeves is still hiding; he hides the truth of his identity (and the truth about Judd) from Angela, setting her on a difficult and violent path of self-discovery, and then also hides the specifics of his relationship with Dr. Manhattan (at various points he even claims to be the God-like superman, though this is openly debunked by many characters). Angela later gets all the answers she could hope for, and more, when she swallows an entire bottle of Reeves’ “Nostalgia” pills, which allow her to relive his memories and experiences in excruciating detail in order to discover her true heritage as Reeves’ granddaughter. Compared to her grandfather, Angela’s masks are considerably fewer but by no means less complex; she hides her true identity, obviously, and is clearly enthusiastic about putting a hurting on white supremacists but is largely open and honest with her husband (while, understandably, keeping her kids in the dark). Her and Cal have no secrets and he is completely supportive of all of her endeavours and actions, even when they are highly questionable, and cares only for her safety and wellbeing. An angry and confrontational character, the events of Watchmen certainly put Angela through the wringer as she discovers her true heritage, finds out her trusted comrade and friend Judd was secretly a member of the Seventh Kalvary, and finds herself at the center of Lady Trieu’s elaborate scheme to steal Dr. Manhattan’s abilities.
Dr. Manhattan is destroyed but, apparently, passes his abilities on to Angela.
All throughout the series, characters debunk the idea that Dr. Manhattan can disguise himself as a human; at first, this seems a bit weird as Manhattan’s powers are virtually limitless and it’s odd that people would just know that he couldn’t do this but, nevertheless, the seeds are planted throughout the series that this is actually what has happened. And, of course, it turns out to be true; the footage of Dr. Manhattan on Mars is simply another lie to placate the public and Manhattan, despite wishing to “leave this world” and create life, quickly grew bored with the utopia he created on Europa and returned to Earth specifically to meet Angela. After relating to her, in his characteristically pragmatic way, his perception of time, Manhattan sought out Veidt to provide him with the means to adopt the closest thing to a human guise in order to be with Angela; Veidt’s specially-constructed implant disrupts Jon’s memories, giving him complete and total amnesia and allowing him to assume a whole new face and identity, Cal Abar, in order to live a normal life. However, after Angela uncovers the plot against him, she’s forced to literally crack Jon’s head open and remove the implant to try and save his life. Ultimately, though, despite Jon’s vast powers and abilities, he is unable to escape his fate; Lady Trieu’s specially designed technology is enough to capture, entrap, and then disintegrate Jon, effectively killing God before the eyes of our main characters, though Trieu’s goal of assuming his abilities is thwarted and the series ends with the suggestion that Jon has passed them on to Angela instead.
Watchmen looks fantastic, for the most part, but Dr. Manhattan looks like bad cosplay!
Watchmen’s visual presentation is quite impressive; clearly inspired by the aesthetic look of Snyder’s film, the series does a wonderful job of not only rendering comic-accurate costumes for the likes of Ozymandias, Hooded Justice, and Captain Metropolis but also at recreating the look and feel of the Watchmen world. I didn’t actually mind the omission of the squid in Snyder’s adaptation but it was pretty fantastic to see the monstrous, grotesque alien beast a bloodied heap in New York and there are some fun call-backs to other recognisable Watchmen elements, too, such as Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl’s goggles and airship, Archimedes. And yet, despite how impressive much of the costumes and aesthetics of the show look, they completely dropped the ball on Dr. Manhattan; Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is a great actor and certainly has the voice for the role but he never quite exudes that same sense of God-like awe and mystery as in Snyder’s film and is generally, disappointingly, quite nerfed in terms of his powers, motivations, and portrayal. Watchmen works pretty well in terms of its structure; each episode has a quick intro sequence and a fittingly pretentious title, and the series reflects a lot of the structure and narrative flow of the comic book as certain episodes will expand upon one (or more) of the series’ many complex plots while others will focus on specific characters or world-building all while weaving them (however awkwardly) into these aforementioned plots. The series builds its mysteries relatively well; we’re immediately deposited into a world that, for all its similarities to the comic book and the real world, is completely unfamiliar to both, meaning we must re-learn and become re-accommodated with this new Watchmen-esque world where things have changed considerably from what we know but are just familiar enough that we have a vague idea of what characters are talked about and referring to. And then, into this, the series creators inject a whole load of new lore, building upon elements from the comic book, referencing the movie, and then swamping this world (and its narrative) with entirely new, original characters to uncover more of this new world, and the series’ mystery, at the same time as we do,
The Summary: I wasn’t sure what to expect going into Watchmen; I knew it was a sequel series and that obviously meant a lot of the comic characters either wouldn’t be coming back or would be portrayed very differently but I never expected the plot to veer so far off the rails. I thought the series would revolve around a splinter group of vigilantes trying to expose Veidt’s deception but, while the squid is an integral part of the series’ plot and had a profound influence on many characters and events, it may as well have been left out as the series more concerned with telling a story revolving about the atrocities of race hate. This isn’t really a problem in and of itself, as racial tensions and bigotry were quite prominent in the comic, but it kind of overwhelms the plot of the series and doesn’t seem to mesh well with the other competing plots.
The biggest issue for me was that the show just didn’t “feel” like Watchmen that often…
I think the biggest issue I have with Watchmen is that it really doesn’t feel like Watchmen; while you can argue that the series is a lot closer, thematically, to the comic book and much truer to its source material than Snyder’s film, at least the film had characters we recognised and closely followed the events of the comic. Here, we have a whole bunch of new characters, many of whom (including Angela, our main character) just aren’t as interesting as the characters from the comics. Looking Glass is kind of like Rorschach but he’s not Rorschach and neither are the Seventh Kalvary; Sister Night is kind of an amalgamation of Nite Owl and Silk Spectre, I guess, but is her own character, one who I just found to be angry and unrelatable in a way those characters weren’t; and Lady Trieu basically is her father…but is also far less compelling and nuanced. She just comes across as a nutcase whereas Veidt was always scarily logical and sane in his motivations. And then there are the returning characters; Laurie is a thoroughly unlikeable character now (though I did enjoy her calling out everyone around her for their bullshit and for dressing up in masks and costumes), Veidt is little like the highly intelligent and manipulative character he was in the comic, and Nite Owl is conspicuous (and much missed) in his absence.
Watchmen‘s returning characters are all very much worse for wear in the HBO series.
If you’re going to do a follow-up to Watchmen, I’m not sure why you would choose to focus 90% of your story on entirely new characters; a new generation should be included and be a vital part, for sure, but fans of Watchmen were fans of the characters in the book, not a whole bunch of copycats and also-rans who don’t quite match up to the complexities and nuance of their predecessors. Dr. Manhattan is probably the worst of all the returning characters, though; for all his grand-standing and posturing in Watchmen about leaving Earth behind to create life elsewhere, he simply played God, got bored, and then decided to enter into another relationship that was doomed to fail (he even admits this outright to Angela when they first meet) even though he was so far beyond and over such trivialities by the end of Watchmen. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure why HBO’s Watchmen was so critically acclaimed and so well received; while manycriticised Snyder’s Watchmen (and I can understand that given how different it is from the comic’s more subtle approach), it feels, for all its changes and alterations, much more like Watchmen than HBO’s Watchmen, which honestly could have been any old superhero drama. Having the Watchmen title, though, demands a certain level of expectation and, for me, HBO’s Watchmen comes close and is an interesting extension of the lore but fails to really live up to those expectations. It was like I kept waiting for it to kick into a higher gear, to go the extra mile, to tie everything up and really “become” Watchmen and it just never did. As an official continuation of the comic book, I find myself disappointed and apathetic to the world presented by HBO’s Watchmen, which is even more desolate and cynical than the comic (and Moore himself), as if that is even possible.
My Rating:
⭐
Rating: 1 out of 5.
Terrible
What did you think of HBO’s Watchmen? Which of the new characters was your most, or least, favourite and why? What did you think of the show’s mystery and conspiracy elements and the structure it adopted? Do you feel this was a suitable follow-up to Watchmen or, like me, were you disappointed by the show’s treatment of the comic book’s plot and returning characters? Do you think the show would have worked better if it had simply been a new adaptation of the comic book rather than a sequel? What did you think to the show’s exploration of Hooded Justice, its treatment of Dr. Manhattan, and the main plot of the show? Whatever your thoughts about HBO’s Watchmen, feel free to leave a comment below and pop back next Wednesday for one last piece of Watchmen content.
The Synopsis: Stuck in a rut, a young woman accepts a cleaning job working for an elusive urban information storage company. Well paid and working few hours, the job seems too good to be true. Soon she finds herself caught up in a web of lies and deception , party to dangerous information and a conspiracy of secrecy that could threaten her health, her mind, even her very life. How will she escape?
The Review: According to author J.E. Clarkson, The Vanishing Office is a “techno thriller”, which is a genre I can’t say that I’m too familiar with and yet the description conjures an immediate link for me to the works of Philip K. Dick. Indeed, I couldn’t help but think of some of Philip K. Dick’s short stories and science-fiction works while reading The Vanishing Office, which appears to take place in the near future, though it’s hardly a future world dominated by grandiose technology or a barren wasteland.
The Vanishing Office follows an unnamed narrator and is told entirely through her eyes; this lady, whom Clarkson later refers to as “The Cleaner”, signs up to a strangely well-paid cleaning job at Nemo & Co. in order to make ends meet and almost immediately finds that the job is a lot more than she bargained for. The office is a tightly run ship, full of odd routines and rules that ask her not to talk to anyone who works there, not to look at the work the employees produce, and not to talk to anyone outside of the office about the work that takes place there (despite the fact that she has no idea what Nemo & Co. or its employees do).
Soon, she notices some strange events happening around her; her boss, Stella, only communicates with her through text messages and sends her all sorts of weird questions and requests, she is constantly spotting odd people following or watching her, and a number of violent news reports that make her think this mysterious company may have a wider reach than she first thought.
Very quickly, the cleaning lady gets caught up in a resistance movement looking to bring Nemo & Co. down, claiming that the company (and Stella) are all about making people and events “vanish” by manipulating the media or taking much more direct action to shape both governments and society. She meets some equally shady individuals, all of whom seem to be lying to or using her in different ways, and soon ends up suffering from the effects of drugs, bizarre nightmares, and all kinds of different machinations that seek to manipulate her previously dull life.
We don’t really learn a lot about the main protagonist; she has a friend whom she is very close to and is quite an inquisitive individual but, mostly, she just likes to keep to herself and do her work so she can make some decent money. Despite this, and never learning her name, this blank slate approach actually works quite well to place the reader in the cleaner’s shoes. While I do typically struggle with first-person narratives, especially ones of a different gender to mine, I was okay with the author’s approach here as the narrator asked a lot of the same questions I had an was surprisingly adaptable considering she is (by her own admission) not the smartest or capable person.
I mentioned earlier that the book reminded me of Philip K. Dick’s work and, while I definitely haven’t read much of Dick’s sci-fi, I’ve read enough that The Vanishing Office made me think of some of his short stories. There’s nothing massively specific, like The Vanishing Office isn’t about a gritty, lived-in future populated by androids or trips to Mars or precognition but Clarkson definitely (by coincidence, design, or virtue of me not being especially well-read) seems to have captured a lot of the spirit of Dick’s work. The world presented is sparsely described and somewhat bleak and doesn’t seem too far removed from outs; eventually, the story takes a turn into more grandiose sci-fi concepts and these are introduced slowly and with a commendable amount of menace and/or mystery. If anything, these concepts are presented as almost unspectacular, as if they’re just to be expected from this work, which again reminded me of how characters and society had simply accepted lavish sci-fi technologies in Dick’s work to the point where they were just part of everyday life.
I really enjoyed these aspects of The Vanishing Office as it kept me guessing and learning alongside the narrator. The book is comprised of a great many chapters but each of these are quite short, meaning it’s pretty easy to read a few chapters a day/night or at a time and the pace moves along briskly enough. There are times, though, when the narrative slows down a bit for extended expository dialogue sequences; the mystery aspects of the book and the ongoing twists and turns in the narrative are much more appealing, in comparison, but the expository parts do lend to the overall feeling of paranoia that starts to seep into the narrator as she struggles to figure out who’s who and what’s what.
There was a lot to like about The Vanishing Office, which ends on a bit of a cliff-hanger and with our perception (and that of the narrator’s) of this world turned completely on its head, all of which I am hoping to resolve when I get around to reading the next two books. While I did notice a few grammar, punctuation, and style errors throughout the text, Clarkson kept me engaged enough to follow her narrator on this strange, tumultuous journey and definitely left me wondering what’s next for these characters and this world.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Pretty Good
If you’re interested in checking out The Vanishing Office and learning more about J.E. Clarkson and her journey as an author, visit the links at the top of the page.
Released: 3 November 2009 Originally Released: 6 March 2009 Director: Zack Snyder Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures/Paramount Pictures Budget: $130 to 138 million Stars: Jackie Earle Haley, Patrick Wilson, Malin Åkerman, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan
The Plot: In an alternative version of the 1980s, the world is constantly on the brink of nuclear war between the United States and Soviet Russia and masked vigilantes, once popular in the 1960s, have been outlawed for some time. However, when Edward Blake/The Comedian (Morgan) is found dead, Walter Kovacs/Rorschach (Haley) uncovers what appears to be a plot to kill off former masked crimefighters and, in his efforts to warn his fellow Watchmen, becomes embroiled in a diabolical plot to force the world into unity and peace.
The Background: Published between September 1986 and October 1987, Watchmen(Moore, et al) was the brainchild of noted comic book writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons, who revised their initial concept of a murder mystery involving Charlton Comics characters using entirely new, unique characters. Watchmen’s sophisticated adult narrative subverted the usual expectations of comic book heroes, grounding them in something resembling reality and tackling the genre with a serious, contemplative direction. Filled with dense imagery and complex themes, Watchmen was an influential mainstream success. For the longest time, the text was largely considered to be unfilmable, though a live-action adaptation was in the works as far back as the late-eighties. In 2005, though, the project finally entered production with Zack Snyder at the helm. Featuring a numberof alterations to the source material, and Moore’s characteristic disinterest, Watchmen didn’t exactly set the box office on fire, earning just over $185 million worldwide against a $130 to 138 million budget. Though the film also received mixed-to-average reviews, I actually prefer the movie to the graphic novel, if I’m being honest. An extended director’s cut and this “Ultimate Cut” of the film were also later released, restoring many excised aspects from the source material and providing, perhaps, the most complete live-action version of Watchmen we’re ever likely to get.
The Review: Though not the first scene of the film, Watchmen features perhaps one of the most striking and effective introductions to its fictional world in all of cinema; set to the tune of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin’”, Snyder masterfully condenses some of the denser, more subtle, arguably inconsequential, complex, and intricate side plots and world-building moments of the comic book into one impressive montage which takes us through the early days of the colourful Minutemen and through to the intricacies of this decidedly alternative version of the world, where wars and monumental moments in human history were noticeably different thanks to the presence and influences of costumed heroes, all the way up to the debut of the Watchmen and the later outlawing of costumed adventurers following President Richard Nixon’s (Robert Wisden) unprecedented third term. Of course, the catalyst for the entire film’s events is the murder of Edward Blake, the Comedian. When we first meet Blake, he’s an aged shell of his former self; living alone in an apartment filled with mementos of a life-time of war and conflict, he is both taken off-guard and bitterly unsurprised when he is suddenly and violently attacked in his own home.
Rorschachis a brutal, uncompromising, and inherently flawed protagonist.
Unlike in the comic, where this was a decidedly simple and one-sided affair, this first action scene best showcases the dramatic license Snyder takes with the source material by delivering a bloody, violent, elaborately stylised beatdown in which the combatants are almost superhuman and capable of delivering (and taking) incredible punishment and smashing through objects (and even human bones) with their bare hands. “Stylistic” is a great word to describe Snyder’s Watchmen, which dials up the subdued presentation of the comic book to eleven, both paying homage to Gibbons’ artwork and updating the static panels into incredibly elaborate and visceral. As the sole remaining unlicensed costumed vigilante, Rorschach investigates out of a sense of duty and obligation; while many characters are aesthetically or motivationally altered in some way, big or small, for better and for worse, Rorschach remains extremely faithful to his depiction in the comic. His gravely, monotone voice accompanies many of his scenes, and others, and forms a loose, distorted narration of events and he is, essentially, the closest thing we have to a main character and is our main source of exposition into this vastly different world. Gritty, uncompromising, and paranoid, Rorschach is as crazy as he is dedicated to staying active, even though no one, even former allies of his, really like him all that much.
Dreiberg is a far more assertive, but no less regretful, character.
Speaking of which, the first person Rorschach goes to when he discovers the Comedian has been killed is his former partner and the closest thing he has to a friend, Daniel Dreiberg/Nite Owl II (Wilson); in the comics, Dreiberg was an awkward, unassertive, meek fellow who, for all his former glory, pretty much allowed anyone and everyone to walk over him and take advantage of him. Here, he’s still a shell of his former self and full of both regrets and doubt, but he’s far more assertive; while sympathetic to Rorschach’s condition and respectful of their former crimefighting days to give him the time of day where others wouldn’t, he’s far less patient of Rorschach’s accusations and attitude and far more willing to stand up for himself. In the end, his humility comes from his pining for Laurie Jupiter/Silk Spectre II (Åkerman) and a deep-rooted longing for the thrill of his days as a costumed adventurer.
Laurie’s aggression stems from her troubled childhood and relationships.
Rorschach remarks that Dreiberg is “hiding in plain sight” and this is a recurring theme throughout Watchmen; every character wears a mask, whether literal (like Rorschach’s beautifully realised, ever shifting covering) or metaphorical and they’re all hiding something, whether it be their true intentions or their true feelings. Laurie is one of the most complex characters in that regard; aggressive, repressed, and out-spoken, Laurie has no time for Rorschach’s accusations and hostile nature and is emotionally and mentally strained thanks to her tumultuous relationship with her mother, Sally Jupiter/Silk Spectre (Carla Gugino), and Doctor Jon Osterman/Doctor Manhattan (Crudup). Most of her issues stem from unresolved and half-remembered memories of her childhood; forced into super heroics by her mother, Laurie was obligated to live a life she didn’t necessarily want and constantly struggled with both her mother’s expectations and the reprehensible actions of Blake, who attempted to rape her mother back in the day.
Despite his God-like powers, Dr. Manhattan has grown increasingly distant from humanity.
Of course, another character who is hiding in plain sight (and behind a multitude of metaphorical masks) is Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias (Goode), a man whom Rorschach both respects for his intellect and physical ability but is also somewhat disgusted by since Veidt was one of the first to not only quit his adventuring ways but also shamelessly profit from it. Goode, despite perhaps looking maybe too young for the role, portrays Veidt as a smooth, confident, and wealthy businessman and aristocrat who openly speaks of both his past and his desire to steer the world towards a greater purpose other than warfare and conflict. Veidt plays this public role perfectly, appearing to be just as much of a victim as any of the other Watchmen, and concerned only with the welfare of humanity through his business and critical work with Dr. Manhattan. Speaking of Dr. Manhattan, Osterman is primarily regarded as the sole thing keeping the United States and Russia from engaging in all-out nuclear conflict; an ethereal, God-like character, Dr. Manhattan is the only character in the film to exhibit actual, tangible superpowers and, as if to compensate for this, has been gifted with a vast and seemingly limitless array of abilities, from teleportation, to nigh-immortality, to the ability to manipulate atoms in any way he desires, and a skewed perspective of time. Dr. Manhattan’s unique ability to perceive past, present, and future simultaneously and his extensive abilities have made him more and more detached from humanity, specifically Laurie; despite him assisting Veidt in conceiving of a clean, renewable energy source to unite the world, Dr. Manhattan has little care for the intricacies of mortals and his increasing detachment is a pivotal plot point of the film. Dr. Manhattan is superbly realised in the film thanks to CGI emphasising his otherworldly magnetism; in a film where costume design and aesthetics are impressive from start to finish, Dr. Manhattan naturally stands out and not just because his wang is out half the time; he’s literally a God among men and is portrayed as such throughout.
Watchmen‘sunique visual storytellingemphasises its complex themes of humanity and identity.
Watchmen is, at its core, a murder mystery story that is as much about commenting on society, humanity, and our various failings as it is about exploring the nature of superheroes; as in the comic, every character in the film is flawed, broken even, and is detached from reality in some way. Veidt sees himself as above it all on an intellectual level; Blake believed he was above it since he chose to cynically mock the state of society; Dreiberg chooses to hide from the conflict, and his true self; Laurie is in constant denial about her past and feels suffocated by it; Rorschach has completely abandoned all pretense of his life outside of his mask; and Dr. Manhattan has become completely disinterested and disillusioned in the petty squabbles of humanity. Though Snyder expands upon this narrative with an abundance of gore, expletives, and dramatic visual excess, it still forms the central backbone of the narrative and is just as interesting to follow, if not more so thanks to Snyder’s flair for style.
The Nitty-Gritty: I mentioned earlier that there are numerous alterations to the source material; when I first saw the movie, I applauded this as I found the comic to be quite dense and slow and not the most visually interesting tale. Though I have grown to appreciate the influence and nuance of the comic book, I still prefer the film as Snyder’s attention to detail, stylistic choices, and the epic quality of the film make it far more interesting and engaging for me. Of course, one of the major changes Snyder made was to dramatically elaborate upon the few fight scenes of the comic book; fights are now heavily choreographed, greatly stylised sequences featuring an abundance of slow motion, blood, and violence. Characters exhibit near-superhuman levels of strength and durability, which goes against the purposely grounded nature of the source material, but I can forgive this as it lends a level of spectacle and gratuity to the film that not only appeals to me and my baser instincts but also, I would argue, makes the film and the story more accessible to a wider audience.
Watchmen‘s costume design and aesthetic choices are absolutely top-notch.
Plus, it’s not as if the base themes of Moore’s original story aren’t still present; if anything, they’re more explicit than ever thanks to Snyder’s decidedly unsubtle style of filmmaking and, yet, the film still replicates many of the slower, more subtle and nuanced character moments from the source material. Snyder’s attention to detail is absolutely flawless; every scene is crammed full of faithful recreations of the comic book and the lengths he went to replicate the costumes and aesthetics of Gibbons’ artwork is impressive. At the same time, Snyder uses the film as an opportunity to comment on and reference the many years of superhero cinema just as Moore paid homage to a bygone era of comics books; as a result, Nite Owl’s costume is a heavily armoured homage to the various Batsuits, Silk Spectre is literally poured into a super sexy leather number (as was the style of the early 2000s), and Ozymandias is purposely decked out in rubber armour reminiscent of Joel Schumacher’s Batsuits (it even has the much-maligned nipples). While I can understand people getting a bit upset about some of these changes as they seem superfluous in some ways, I honestly thought it really worked and helped emphasise the film’s extravagant aesthetic style.
Snyder’s attention to detail and fidelity is astounding, especially in the Ultimate Cut.
Continuing on the theme of attention to detail, Snyder includes, or straight-up adapts, entire sub-plots and story beats from the source material that, one could argue, others might have cut for time; as a result, we get a startlingly brutal recreation of Rorschach’s time in prison, therapy sessions, and character-defining moments as well as a great deal of time spent exploring Dr. Manhattan’s time on Mars, his origin, and his subsequent heart-to-heart with Laurie. This means that, rather than only paying lip service to what makes these characters tick or briefly touching upon it (or removing it entirely), Snyder is able to properly delve into the psychology of his versions of these characters through his distinct visual style. Even in the Ultimate Cut, which is unquestioningly the most definitive version of the film you’ll ever watch, some concessions had to be made, though; the most obvious of these is that Snyder is completely focused on the current story of the Watchmen rather than exploring the intricacies of their predecessors, the Minutemen, but, even then, this extended version goes to the trouble of including the tragic fate of Hollis Mason/Nite Owl (Stephen McHattie).
The allegorical Black Freighter story is interspersed throughout the Ultimate Cut.
Watching the Ultimate Cut of the film also means that the main story is interlaced with an allegorical side story, Tales of the Black Freighter (DelPurgatorio, 2009), at key moments; originally excised from the main film and released as a separate feature on home media, Tales of the Black Freighter has been largely restored to serve much the same purpose as in the comic book. The side story, which is told in startling gory animated sequences, follows a shipwrecked sea captain (Gerard Butler) who is driven to madness and obsession following a disastrous encounter with the demonic Black Freighter. Desperate to get back home to his wife and children and to warn his hometown of the freighter’s threat, he ultimately becomes the very monster he is trying to fight against when he unwittingly bludgeons his family in a fit of madness. As in the original comic book, Tales of the Black Freighter acts as an allegory for Veidt’s despicable actions and the story of Watchmen in general, with its themes of obsession and performing unspeakable acts in the name of good though, while I enjoy the animated version far more than its comic book counterpart, I can see why it was omitted from the original film as these themes are, by the very nature of Watchmen’s narrative, largely explicit regardless.
I was honestly okay with the changes to the story and ending, especially as they made contextual sense.
Of course, the big twist is that Veidt is actually behind everything, literally “hiding in plain sight”; though the execution of his plan to save humanity significantly differs from the source material, his motivations remain largely the same (having predicted the downfall of society, the inevitability of war, and the limitations of fossil fuels, Veidt engineers an elaborate and complex plan to fool the world into unifying against a common enemy). A big source of contention was Snyder’s decision to omit the iconic giant squid that Veidt genetically engineered to fool humanity into believing in an impending and ominous alien threat. While I really admired how the Watchmen television series (2019) managed to pull this grotesque creation off, I never really minded all that much that the squid was missing from the film. Not only is there a cheeky reference to it (Veidt’s machine is called a “Sub Quantum Unified Intrinsic field Device”) but the idea of Veidt replicating Dr. Manhattan’s powers and then attacking multiple cities across the world, rather than just New York City, and pinning it all on Jon actually makes far more sense and keeps the film from wasting time in explaining and setting up the squid. Could they have done that? Sure, and probably pretty easily, but, while it’s disappointing to not have the image of the squid’s bloodied and gruesome corpse draped throughout Times Square, I can live without it if it makes sense in the context of the narrative and, thanks to how prevalent Jon’s fragile grip on humanity is to Watchmen’s story, I would argue that it does.
The Summary: It’s probably sacrilegious to say it but I still prefer the movie version of Watchmen over the comic book; while my appreciation for the source material has grown, especially after re-reading it recently, it was only after watching the movie that I actually became interested in the concept. Sure, it might be very different from the source material in a lot of ways but I’m okay with that because everything looks so slick and stylish and has a real cinematic grandeur to it. While Snyder’s unique cinematic style may not be for everyone, and it’s probably still seen as somewhat blasphemous that he stripped most of the subtlety and nuance from Watchmen, it really works for me and results in a bold, striking, and aesthetically pleasing superhero film that is truly unique among the genre. I feel what really makes Watchmen work is how accessible Snyder makes the source material; I can definitely say that it’s probably best to watch the film first and then explore the graphic novel and see if it’s just as appealing to you. Die-hard fans of the comic may have been annoyed and insulted by Snyder’s creative license but I wanted to see a gory, thought-provoking, and visually entertaining film and that’s exactly what Watchmen delivers. Watchmen delves into a completely different side of the superhero genre while paying homage to it through fantastic costume design, brutal action sequences, and an engaging narrative and the Ultimate Cut goes one step even further to deliver extended scenes that further expand this unique world and incorporating an allegorical tale to the main plot to provide the definitive Watchmen experience.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
Fantastic
So, what do you think about Watchmen? Were you a fan of the graphic novel before seeing the film or did you, like me, gain a deeper appreciation for the source material after watching the film? Which version of the film do you prefer, the theatrical, director, or ultimate cut and why? How do you feel about Snyder’s visual and filmic style and the alterations he made to the text? Which of the titular Watchmen is your favourite and why and how do you feel about their costumes and characterisations in the film? Did you enjoy the animated Black Freighter segments, or do you feel they distracted from the already bloated narrative? Would you like to see a new adaptation of Watchmen, one perhaps even closer to the source material, and, if so, who would you cast in the various roles? No matter what you think about Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, feel free to leave a comment below and check back in next Wednesday for more Watchmen content!
Released: 18 March 2021 Director: Zack Snyder Distributor: HBO Max/Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Budget:$70 million (on top of the original $300 millionproduction costs) Stars: Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Ray Fisher, Jason Momoa, Ezra Miller, Ciarán Hinds, Amy Adams, and Henry Cavill
The Plot: Following the death of Clark Kent/Superman(Cavill), Bruce Wayne/Batman (Affleck) scrambles to bring together a team of super-powered heroes when the disgraced New God Steppenwolf (Hinds) arrives on Earth and begins violently searching for the mysterious “Mother Boxes”.
The Review: When I reviewed the original, theatrical cut of Justice League (no, I will not call it “Josstice League”), I gave it a ten out of ten. This was primarily because I am a massive DC Comics fan and, after years (literally decades) of DC’s live-action characters always existing in their own self-contained bubbles, I was just happy to see them all onscreen together and co-existing and felt that this was the most positive thing to take away from Snyder’s rushed attempt to build DC’s cinematic universe. Time, however, has changed this perspective; Justice League is by no means perfect but it was honestly never going to be. Warner Bros. scrambled about trying to play catch up to the MCU and, in focusing on cramming everyone together as quickly as possible and sucking the fun out of many of their most popular characters, they lost me a little along the way. So to say I was excited for the Snyder Cut is to lie, honestly. As much as I enjoyed Man of Steel, Snyder really dropped the ball with Batman v Superman, which was more a collection of ideas and themes than a coherent movie, and I took massive issue with his grandiose vision of the DCEU which jumped from Superman’s origin all the way to Multiversal shenanigans in, like, two films. Still, as a rule, I generally do enjoy a longer director’s cut as you get more bang for your buck and, in that regard, Snyder certainly goes above and beyond to present the closest version of his vision for Justice League as possible, even going so far as to present the film in a 4:3 aspect ratio.
Superman’s death cry activates the Mother Boxes and calls Steppenwolf to Earth.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League begins with an egregiously slow-motion recap of Superman’s dramatic (and, in my view, unnecessary) death in battle against Doomsday. His death rattle (which seriously goes on for about six minutes), echoes all around the world, activating the Mother Boxes stored in Atlantis and Themyscira and sending a beacon out into the void of space with a simple message: Earth is vulnerable. Steppenwolf (now dramatically redesigned into a hulking creature wearing razor-sharp armour that honestly looks just as ugly as his original design but for different reasons) once again arrives to reclaim the Boxes; this time, however, his slaughter of the Amazons is much more brutal, featuring far more Parademons and presenting Steppenwolf as a formidable and imposing force. Indeed, compared to his theatrical counterpart, Steppenwolf is a much more well-rounded and interesting character; in the original cut, he was little more than a means to an end, an obscure and generic bad guy for the titular heroes to unite against in order to save the world but, here, he’s a driven, focused, and aggressive foe who is motivated not just by loyalty to his master and devotion to bringing about “the great darkness” but also desperate to regain his place among the New Gods after losing favour centuries before. Owing Darkseid (Ray Porter) a debt of fifty thousand worlds for his failures, Steppenwolf has been ostracised and forced to toil in endless conquest to regain his place at his master’s side; this desperation and motivation transforms Steppenwolf from a mere disposable hulk and into a surprisingly complex villain who seeks redemption and validation in the eyes of his master and will do anything to appease the will of Darkseid.
Superman’s loss affects each of the characters in different ways.
While the Man of Steel’s loss was felt in the theatrical cut, Superman’s death is a much bigger aspect of the Snyder Cut; carrying the guilt of Superman’s death on his shoulders, Bruce Wayne sets out to build an alliance of metahumans to combat this threat. While Diana Prince/Wonder Woman (Gadot) is reluctantly onboard with the plan and Barry Allen/The Flash (Miller) signs up immediately and enthusiastically, Arthur Curry/Aquaman (Momoa) basically laughs in his face and Victor Stone/Cyborg (Fisher) is busy struggling to reconcile his humanity after a horrific accident leaves him part machine. Furthermore, Superman’s loss is embodied here not just in Bruce’s guilt and desire to honour Superman’s legacy with a team of superheroes but in both Lois Lane (Adams) and Martha Kent (Diane Lane), both of whom struggle to adjust to life without Clark. Since Bruce has already been told that “Lois [is] the key” to reaching Superman, it makes sense to give Lois and Martha a little more prominence in the film, especially as her death is what causes Superman’s corruption in the dark future that looms over Snyder’s films.
Batman is now absolutely focused on bringing together a team to honour Superman’s memory.
Bruce Wayne is, of course, extremely different compared to his characterisation in Batman v Superman. Now driven by an obsessive desire to make good on his promise to unite Earth’s heroes in Superman’s name, he works himself tirelessly to track down the metahumans from Lex Luthor’s (Jesse Eisenberg) file, much to the continued chagrin of his faithful butler and father-figure, Alfred Pennyworth (Jeremy Irons). Since he works closely with Diana to find and appeal to these metahumans, there’s even a little (microscopic, even) bit of romantic chemistry between the two and there’s now a nice little scene of Alfred making tea with Diana and showing her Batman’s new Parademon-absorbent gauntlet (which replaces the original cut’s side plot regarding Batman luring the Parademons out with “fear”). Mostly, though, Bruce remains the same character as in the theatrical cut; he’s still blinkered in his focus on bringing the team together, resurrecting Superman, and preparing the world to face escalating threats but all of his weird little attempts at humour are thankfully gone (sadly, that God-awful “I’m rich” line remains but, thankfully, we get the return of his “I’m real when it’s useful” line).
Wonder Woman now warns the team of Darkseid’s intentions for Earth.
Wonder Woman, however, is noticeably different this time around; more time is spent showing her as a willing ally of Bruce’s and she is also part of a pivotal extended scene that explores Steppenwolf’s previous campaign against the Earth. This sequence, which expands upon the prologue seen in the theatrical cut, shows the forces of man, Gods, Atlantis, Themyscira, and beyond uniting not just against Steppenwolf and his Parademons but also their exalted and imposing leader, Darkseid. Darkseid received only a passing mention in the original cut but, here, Diana’s obvious fear of the New God helps to establish early on that an even greater threat looms behind Steppenwolf’s actions. Furthermore, when out in the field with the team, Wonder Woman directs the fledging Justice League in the best way to attack Steppenwolf and his Parademons, which places greater emphasis on her capabilities as a warrior and leader.
The Snyder Cut retains Aquaman’s characterisation but explores a little more of his world.
Aquaman is largely the same as in the theatrical cut except, unsurprisingly, more haggard and bleak rather than being an obnoxious jock. Though he claims to have no interest in Bruce’s crusade or working with others and has turned his back on Atlantis, he continues to do good and help those in need in his own way to get his hands on more whiskey. Bruce’s warning, though, compels him to return to the ocean and converse with Nuidis Vulko (Willem Dafoe), his former mentor, and ultimately to arrive all too late to help Mera (Amber Heard) defend the Mother Box from Steppenwolf. A couple of odd continuity issues are raised with all this, however, that fly in the face of DC’s directors wanting to align their movies with the Snyder Cut; first there’s Mera’s accent, which jumps from British to American to whatever the hell she likes, and second is the Atlantean’s ability to communicate using dolphin squeaks rather than just talking underwater as they do in Aquaman (Wan, 2018). Regardless, this version of Justice League does a far better job of setting up Aquaman’s solo film by showing more hints towards his world and Aquaman remains the film’s breakout character for me for me thanks to Momoa’s charismatic portrayal of the character.
Though still very neurotic, Barry plays a pivotal role in the film’s events and finale.
Barry Allen also gets a bit more time to shine this time around; this includes the restoration of his encounter with Iris West (Kiersey Clemons) and just more time to explore his awkward, energetic, and socially inept character traits. Barry was very much the comic relief of the theatrical cut and those who disliked many of his annoying character traits will be disappointed to find most of them intact and given more prominence in his increased screen time but I can’t fault Snyder’s attention to detail in showcasing Barry’s superspeed: his shoes and clothes disintegrate, the street is wrecked by his footfalls, and he experiences time in extreme slow motion when utilising the Speed Force. While the Flash loses one of my favourite scenes from the original cut (the “Just save one” moment), he plays a far greater role in not just the rescue of scientists from Steppenwolf’s clutches but also the film’s finale where, faced with defeat at the hands of Steppenwolf’s forces, he summons all of his super speed to travel back in time using the Speed Force and ensure that the invasion is halted.
Cyborg’s role is greatly expanded, making him the heart of the film and fleshing out his character.
Of course, the character who benefits the most from the Snyder Cut is Cyborg; in the theatrical cut, Cyborg is a stoic, confused young man who resents his father, Doctor Silas Stone (Joe Morton), for transforming him into a machine-monster in order to save his life. While this remains at the start of Cyborg’s character arc in the Snyder Cut, Snyder restores not just Cyborg’s importance to the film as the “heart” of the Justice League but also his eventual reconciliation with his father and showcases excised scenes of his promising career as a college football player, his natural aptitude for hacking (which he used to help those in need), and the horrific accident which left him near death. While I’m personally not a fan of Cyborg being on the Justice League, it was clear that there was originally more to his inclusion and importance to the film’s plot; since he’s literally comprised on a Mother Box and Apokoliptian technology, he is afforded numerous abilities and insights into the invading New Box forces and, here, Silas actually guides and mentors him in exploring these abilities (which includes his ability to access every technological device and network and essentially makes him the most powerful man on Earth).
Superman returns, now in a black suit, and galvanises the team.
Finally, there’s Superman; as you might expect, Superman is absent for a massive amount of the film on a small account of being dead. Like Darkseid, Superman looms over the film but as a hero lost and much needed as a symbol for the world’s heroes to properly rally behind. Bruce’s plan to resurrect Superman with the Mother Box is discussed (and edited) far more competently this time around; although there’s doubt about the moral and ethical implications of the plan (mainly from Alfred this time around), Bruce and Diana don’t come to blows like in the original film but the outcome remains the same. Like before, Superman is disorientated upon returning to life and attacks the fledgling Justice League in his confusion; his confrontation with Batman is a little different (and not as good as in the original cut, in my opinion) and there’s more to his return to the Kent farm but, upon regaining his senses, he returns to action as the team’s ace in the hole for the finale. Cavill is an absolutely fantastic Superman and Justice League finally got the character to a place where he is the charming symbol of hope and strength that the world needs and, despite his new black suit, Zack Snyder’s Justice League only expands upon that (of course, Cavill’s natural charisma and the absence of a horrible CGI faceplay a huge part in that).
The Nitty-Gritty: One word to describe Zack Snyder’s Justice League (apart from “long”) would certainly be “epic”; Snyder pads the film’s runtime out with not only an abundance of never-before-seen footage, alternate takes, and new content but also an overuse of slow-motion and long establishing shots. To help make the film more accessible to viewers, the film is also split into six chapters, which was probably a great way to view it on HBO Max, and the DVD version of the film is split across two discs but, either way you slice it, this is a slog to get through and I have to believe that Snyder simply milked the extra time and money he was afforded just to capitalise on all the hype surrounding his version of the film. The closest comparison I can make is with his director’s cut of Watchmen (Snyder, 2009), which was similarly epic and ambitious in its scope, presentation, use of music, and its presentation of its costumed adventurers.
Some shots effects, and inconsistencies negatively affect the Snyder Cut.
It has to be said, though, that Zack Snyder’s Justice League has quite a few faults; some of the new special effects shots understandably look worse than others (and Cyborg still looks like dog shit), it’s pretty crazy that Darkseid and his forces just forgot where Earth was for hundreds of years (especially considering how badly he wants the secret of the Anti-Life Equation), the score has been completely reworked to remove Danny Elfman’s contributions (though, thankfully, Wonder Woman’s kick-ass musical theme remains), and many of the new scenes shot exclusively for the film suffer from poor lighting, inconsistent editing, and stand out like a sore thumb to the point where I’d much rather Snyder hadn’t bothered including the likes of the Joker (Jared Leto) when it makes little sense narratively (you’re telling me that in a grim, apocalyptic future where Superman has gone bad the Joker is alive but Aquaman isn’t?) Personally, I have never been a fan of Snyder’s “Knightmare” timeline; it made no sense in Batman v Superman and, thanks to Warner Bros. having no interest in allowing Snyder to fully explore this alternate timeline in Justice League sequels, it makes even less sense to me that he chose to continue pushing this dark vision of a future ruled by Darkseid and a corrupted version of Superman in the Snyder Cut (but, at least, it’s mainly confined to the film’s final moments rather than being awkwardly wedged in the middle of the film like in Batman v Superman).
Snyder’s cut expands and recontextualises many of the film’s existing scenes and characters.
Although many scenes and sequences may be familiar to anyone who has seen the theatrical cut of the film, the Snyder Cut expands upon every single one of these and, in many cases, recontextualises them into this larger narrative. This includes a longer scene of Bruce Wayne meeting and attempting to recruit Aquaman (accompanied by a lengthy song of reverence for the Atlantean), an expanded version of Wonder Woman’s introduction (including the first of a handful of pointless f-bombs), a longer version of Steppenwolf’s attack on Themyscira and the recap of Darkseid’s defeat centuries ago, more scenes of Steppenwolf and his Parademons’ search for the Mother Boxes (including torturing Atlanteans for information and a far better sequence where he acquires the final Box), and even recontextualising the interactions between Lois and Martha with the reveal that General Calvin Swanwick (Harry Lennix) has been J’onn J’onnz/Martian Manhunter all along.
The Snyder Cut restores and dramatically changes excised characters.
One of the main selling points of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, however, is the restoration of scenes and plot threads excised from the theatrical version. This includes characters removed from the original film, like Doctor Ryan Choi (Ryan Zheng), Vulko, Iris, DeSaad (Peter Guinness), Cybrog’s mother, Elinor Stone (Karen Bryson), and more time devoted to side characters like Silas (who now gives his life to mark the final Mother Box) and the origins of the Mother Boxes. One of the benefits of this is that we actually get to see an in-depth look into Cyborg’s expansive abilities (which includes a deep dive into the way he now perceives reality). Much of the Snyder Cut’s hype was also built around the inclusion of Darkseid but, in truth, the character is little more than a cameo; he simply takes Steppenwolf’s place in the flashback of the war between the allied forces of Earth and Apokolips and looms over the film like an ominous shadow as the ultimate threat for the united Justice League. Sadly, despite Snyder choosing to push his Knightmare future throughout the film and concluding it with a tease of Darkseid’s impending retaliation against the Justice League, it seems like we won’t be seeing Darkseid (or any of the New Gods for that matter) in the DCEU again any time soon.
Thanks to the team, and time travel shenanigans, Darkseid is left humiliated.
Snyder’s vision of the DCEU remains extremely bleakin its presentation; for all the characters’ talk of “hope” and the better nature of men, Snyder continues to suck all the life and colour out of these vivid characters. One thing I liked about Justice League was that it did a fantastic job of bringing some life and colour to this world, allowing the costumes to pop out on screen but, here, everything retains the same muted look and sombre tones of Batman v Superman. This is best exampled in Snyder’s instance on garbing the resurrected Superman in his black suit; Superman wore this in the comics after returning to life for about three issues and it was later stated to have helped aid his recovery but, here, no real reason is given for his choice of attire and it honestly would have made more sense for the evil Knightmare Superman to have worn the suit instead. Additionally, Snyder removes the red tint and tumultuous skies from the finale of the film, which admittedly does make the climatic battle against Steppenwolf’s forces easier to see but I feel the original colouring worked a lot better as a reference to the red skies that were are of DC’svarious Crises. Speaking of the finale, Zack Snyder’s Justice League slightly recontextualises the ending. Although there’s still an implication that Batman is heading into battle with the intention of dying, it’s not as explicit as in the theatrical cut; what is much more explicit, though, is the feeling of team work between the Justice League as they each play their part in breeching Steppenwolf’s defences (Flash, again, gets way more to do in using his Speed Force charge to help Cyborg interact with the Mother Boxes) before Superman dramatically shows up to again completely lay waste to Steppenwolf. I’m glad that this beatdown is maintained as it was always a glorious showcase of Superman’s return and of the team coming together against a common enemy but, here, things go slightly differently as the heroes fail to stop the unity between the Mother Boxes and prevent Darkseid’s arrival. With no other choice, the Flash enters the Speed Force and reverses time in a beautifully surreal sequence, allowing Cyborg to reject the Apokolips’ influence and Wonder Woman to decapitate Steppenwolf right before Darkseid’s eyes.
The Summary: I went into Zack Snyder’s Justice League with low expectations. Toxic fans and a rabid, almost cult-like online community had beaten any sort of excitement and wonder out of me. I quite enjoyed the theatrical cut; it wasn’t perfect but, news flash: none of the DCEU has been perfect and few films really are. Knowing that Snyder got so screwed over by Warner Bros. stung and it definitely frustrated me that we didn’t get a concise and more accurate version of Justice League years ago so that maybe the DCEU would be in a slightly better place but it was hard for me to feel invested in the film when it was so self-indulgent and so clouded by negativity and entitlement. In this case, though, I am glad to be wrong; there are many benefits to Zack Snyder’s Justice League. For one thing, it actually feels like a coherent story (even more so than Batman v Superman) and each member of the team is given so much more time to shine and showcase their powers and personality. Thus, when the Justice League unite for the finale, it means that much more as we actually get to know them all a little better and see them grow as a team through their interactions; it’s still a rush job as so much had to be crammed into so few films but, as a big fan I am of DC Comics and these characters, it remains a real thrill to actually get to see Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg all in a big budget, live-action film rather than constantly existing in self-contained bubbles (which seems where the DCEU will be heading again going forward). I’m not a massive fan of Snyder’s vision for the DCEU or many of the decisions he made but it’s better than nothing and not seeing an interconnected series of DC films so, while I was initially hesitant to enjoy Zack Snyder’s Justice League, I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised in the end. Had Warner Bros. not interfered and screwed things up, we probably would’ve gotten a two-and-a-half-hour long film that would have satisfied everyone enough to justify at least one more team effort but it is what it as and at least we got to see the closest approximation of Zack Snyder’s true vision of the film in the end and that’s something to be celebrated rather than simply, selfishly, demanding more.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
Fantastic
What did you think to Zack Snyder’s Justice League? Do you think it lived up to all the hype or was it all style and no substance? What did you think to the additional, extended and recontextualised scenes from Justice League and how do you feel the Snyder Cut compares to the theatrical version? Which of the characters was your favourite and what did you think to their extended screen time? How did you watch the film; in sections or as one long movie? Would you like to see more from Snyder’s DCEU or are you happy with the direction Warner Bros. is taking? What did you think to the whole Knightmare timeline Snyder tried to push and were you a fan of Superman donning the black suit? Whatever you thought about Zack Snyder’s Justice League, good or bad feel free to leave a comment below (even if it is super toxic).
In 1981, Shigeru Miyamoto and his team at Nintendo R&D1 created Donkey Kong, an arcade title that was not only one of the earliest examples of the platform genre but also introduced gamers everywhere to two of Nintendo’s most recognisable characters: Mario and Donkey Kong. Mario, of course, shot to super stardom but today’s a day to celebrate everyone’s favourite King Kongknock-off and to say: Happy birthday, Donkey Kong!
Released: September 2018 Originally Released: 15 July 1983 Developer: Nintendo R&D2/Ikegami Tsushinki Also Available For: Game & Watch, Game Boy Advance, GameCube (via Animal Crossing (Nintendo EAD, 2001)), Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Nintendo Wii (Virtual Console)
A Brief Background: Early into 1981, Nintendo had run into a bit of trouble; their plans to expand into North America with Radar Scope (Nintendo R&D2/Ikegami Tsushinki, 1980) had failed and then-president Hiroshi Yamauchi turned to young designer Shigeru Miyamoto to create a new arcade cabinet to turn their fortunes around. When plans to base this new machine on the popular comic strip character Popeye fell through, Miyamoto, inspired byBeauty and the Beast (Barbot de Villeneuve, 1740) and King Kong (Cooper and Schoedsack, 1933), retooled the concept into Donkey Kong, a classic tale of man versus ape that would see gamers guide the character of Jumpman across conveyer belts and up construction sites to rescue Lady from the clutches of a cranky, stubborn ape. Following some suggestions from Nintendo’s American distributors, “Jumpman” and “Lady” were renamed to “Mario” and “Pauline”, respectively, and Donkey Kong was released across the United States in July 1981 and became the financial and critical success Nintendo desperately needed to break into the U.S. Naturally, ports soon followed; versions ofDonkey Kong showed up on the ColecoVision, Atari 2600, and Intellivision as well as other home systems like the ZX Spectrum and MSX. A modified, scaled-down version of the game was also released as one of the launch titles for the NES, the console which dragged the videogame industry out of its darkest hour, and it is this version of the game which was later released for the Nintendo Switch Online and which I’ll be discussing here.
The Review: Donkey Kong is as 8-bit as 8-bit can be; stages consist of a stark, blank black background and are dominated by the iconic red girders and the large, looming, grinning features of the titular ape. While the arcade original was one of the first games to tell an onscreen story through the use of simple animations that we would, today, describe as cutscenes, the NES version omits these entirely but the game is charming enough to look at regardless. Donkey Kong’s genre is a bit difficult to define given that videogame genres hadn’t really been fully established back in the early eighties beyond space shooters and obscure puzzle games but it is, essentially, a vertical action/platformer in which an early iteration of Nintendo’s flagship character and mascot, Mario, must run and jump up and across a series of platforms while avoiding hazards in order to rescue Pauline from Donkey Kong’s clutches at the top of the screen. Generally, I find Mario to be quite a slippery and unwieldy character to play as but, in his debut appearance, he moves more like he has lead weights in his shoes; his default movement is a steady but weighty jog and his jumps constantly feel like he’s struggling against the pull of gravity. The game also employs little to no momentum-based physics, meaning it’s easy to clip hazards and lose a life as a result. Gravity continues to be the bane of your existence as Mario takes a ridiculous amount of fall damage in Donkey Kong; drop from any height, be it one platform above or from the top of the screen, and you’re going to die. Leaping from a moving conveyer to a small platform that’s slightly below you? Instant death. Accidentally fall down a hole when you remove the rivets from stage three? Dead. As a result, there’s little margin for error in Donkey Kong and, if you screw up, you’re gonna die; there are no second chances here.
The game’s three stages loop continuously, getting faster and harder with each playthrough.
As you play, you’ll notice a ‘Bonus’ score counter in the game’s limited heads-up display (HUD). This continuously counts down as you play, reducing the bonus score you’ll get upon completing a stage if you take too long. Also, if it reaches zero, guess what? Yep, you lose a life, making it a combination bonus score/time limit for additional pressure. Unlike the original arcade game, the NES version of Donkey Kong features only three stages: the first is a construction site, the second features conveyor belts, and the third and final stage has you removing rivets to bring Donkey Kong crashing to the ground. Each time you complete these three stages, the game continues on a loop, getting faster and harder with each subsequent playthrough, however there is no true end to the game; Mario simply keels over and dies once you reach stage twenty-two, meaning that your main incentive to play the game again and again is to beat your own personal high score. As you jump your way to rescue Pauline, you’ll be able to earn points by leaping over enemies (whatever you do, don’t jump on to them like you might expect Mario to do!) and collecting (what I assume are) Pauline’s parasol and purse from across the stages, Mario’s sole method of fighting back in this game is his trusty hammer; two hammers can be found in stage one and three (you’ll just have to fend for yourself in stage two) and collecting one will send Mario into barrel-and-fireball-bustin’ frenzy as a frenetic tune plays. The hammer will destroy anything it touches, allowing you to clear the way for your progress, but you cannot jump while holding it which, honestly, makes it kind of useless as hazards will have respawned by the time you’re ready to progress further.
Barrels, springs, and living fireballs are the game’s primary hazards and enemies.
Mario is an extremely simple and yet surprisingly expressive sprite; unlike other avatars like Pac-Man, he has clearly-defined features such as a prominent nose, moustache, and his signature overalls and cap meaning that he easily stands out against the game’s otherwise-limited colour palette. Pauline looks like a bit of a mess but, luckily, Donkey Kong makes up for it by being big and full of character despite his obviously-limited frames of animation. The game features some iconic and simple melodies, boasting such features as separate tunes for the title screen, each of the game’s three stages, and for completing a stage. It’s limited by the hardware of the time, clearly, but it’s enough to have you humming along as you play. Far from the Goombas and Koopas that would later plague Mario’s every waking hour, Donkey Kong mainly has you avoiding barrels tossed at you by the giant ape. These can roll along, drop off ledges, and fall down ladders seemingly at random, meaning you constantly have to be on your toes to make split-second decisions about when to jump or climb a ladder. These barrels can also bounce around the screen, drop down vertically, and take a dip into some oil to transform into anthropomorphic flames. In stage two, Donkey Kong will also toss bouncing springs at you; as the game speeds up, these can be extremely difficult to avoid as the window of opportunity is so small and the game’s hit boxes are deceptively big. In stage three, you’ll also have to watch out for more troublesome balls of fire that wander around the stage seemingly at random, going up ladders and suddenly changing direction to cost you a life. Of course, the game’s primary antagonist is Donkey Kong himself; should you brave his many hazards and attempt to tackle him directly, you’ll lose a life. As a result, the only way to defeat him is to get to the game’s third and final stage. Here, you’ll have to avoid the aforementioned fireballs while jumping over eight rivets. Once all eight are removed, the girders will vanish from beneath Donkey Kong and he will crash comically down onto his head so you can make love hearts with Pauline. Honestly, it’s probably the game’s easiest stage as the first two can get pretty hairy when the game speeds up, making the climax a little anticlimactic even for an 8-bit title.
The Summary: I’ve played Donkey Kong before; I’m pretty sure I had it on the Amiga back in the day and I remember sucking at the version that was included as a mini game in Donkey Kong 64 (Rare, 1999) but this is the first time I’ve properly sat down and put some time into the game. It’s a simple bit of 8-bit fun and an enjoyable slice of nostalgia; gameplay is easy to get to grips with and the controls are responsive even if Mario does feel a bit weighty in his movements. The sprites and music and charming and indicative of their era and the game offers a fair amount of challenge thanks to it speeding up the more you play. Being an 8-bit title, the main motivation for playing is to achieve, or beat, a high score. The game does offer four gameplay modes: two for a solo player and two for two players but I don’t have anyone to play with so I was only able to play the one-player game. From what I can tell, though, the two-player mode is a case of each player taking it in turns to play rather than a simultaneous co-op mode. When playing Donkey Kong on the Nintendo Switch, you get a few extra options that dramatically reduce the game’s difficulty thanks to the Switch’s ‘suspend menu’ mode, which allows you can create a save point at any time and rewind the game back so you can correct any mistakes you might have made. It’s obviously limited in terms of its features and options, which does affect my rating of the game, but it’s a fun enough title that’ll keep you occupied for as long as you feel like playing (in my case…about half an hour or so).
My Rating:
⭐⭐
Rating: 2 out of 5.
Could Be Better
Did you ever own Donkey Kong for the NES back in the day? Perhaps you played the arcade version out in the wild; if so, when and what was that like? Which port of Donkey Kong is your favourite? Which Donkey Kong videogame is your favourite and why? How are you celebrating Donkey Kong’s anniversary this year? Whatever your thoughts on Donkey Kong, feel free to leave a comment below.
The Introduction: Usually, my Back Issues articles are a little more relaxed and sort of like informal mini-essays and musings about single issues or limited runs but Watchmen is going to need a little bit more than that, I fear. I’ve written about Watchmen before, specifically as part of my Master’s dissertation, and it’s no small feat; the maxiseries has been picked apart, scrutinised, and analysed perhaps more than any other comic book or graphic novel thanks to it inspiring “the evolution of comics into ‘graphic novels’. [Ironically,] the creators hoped literally to deconstruct the superhero genre and break its stranglehold on the American industry, but in fact tightened the grip” (Newman, 2009). Watchmen is typically the first, and finest, example of the literary worth of comic books, looming “over the [genre] like the Colossus over Rhodes” (Douthat, 2009: 50), and was not only “chosen as one of the Greatest One Hundred Novels in English from 1923 to 2005” (Shephard, 2009: 213) but also long regarded as unsuitable for other mediums.
So, because of all that, and more, this is easily the most complex edition of Back Issues I’ve had to put together so I think it’s only fair to expand upon my usual format in order to best delve into the intricacies and layers of Watchmen.
Published: September 1986 to October 1987 Writer: Alan Moore Artist: Dave Gibbons
The Background: Published between September 1986 and October 1987, Watchmen was the brainchild of noted comic book writer Alan Moore; Moore, who was born just down the road from me in Northampton, had achieved much success in his home country with V for Vendetta (Moore, et al, 1982 to 1989) and at DC Comics thanks to his groundbreaking work on The Saga of Swamp Thing and, after DC acquired the rights to Charlton Comics characters, devised a murder mystery scenario that would star such Silver Age characters as Vic Sage/The Question and Ted Kord/Blue Beetle. Although DC managing director Dick Giordano was receptive to Moore’s premise, he denied the use of the Charlton characters so as not to damage their reception when they were folded into the main DC Comics lore so Moore collaborated with artist Dave Gibbons to reimagine the concept with an entirely new cast of characters.
With the Charlton characters off limits, Moore and Gibbons created their own.
Lacking the usual advertisements and attractive cover designs (Reynolds, 1992: 108-109), Watchmen incorporated a sophisticated adult narrative in which Moore explored new avenues of the superhero genre; Moore sought to subvert the usual expectations of comic book heroes, grounding them in reality (for the most part), and tackling the genre with a serious, contemplative direction. Filled with dense imagery and complex themes, and despite several delays, Watchmen was a critical and commercial success; it’s still the only graphic novel to make Time magazine’s 2005 list of “All-Time 100 Greatest Novels” and DC have long pursued Moore to produce prequels, sequels, and other spin-offs of his seminal work. Despite Watchmen’s success, though, and DC going ahead with these aforementioned continuations and licensing numerous adaptations of Watchmen, even officially folding it into mainstream DC continuity in 2017, Moore has publically distanced himself from DC’s ventures and even refused to have his name associated with Zack Snyder’s live-action adaptationand theHBO limited series.
The Plot: Rather than portray super-powered heroes, Watchmen focuses on middle-aged, mostly retired, ordinary people and, with one exception, poses the question: “What if superheroes were real?” and its influence on the genre resonated for decades thanks to its stringent focus on dark realism and increasingly complex, adult themes. Watchmen takes place in an alternative version of 1985 where, because of the presence of superheroes in the 1940s and 1960s, the United States won the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon remains as the President of the United States, and the world stands on the brink of all-out nuclear war thanks to rising tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Amidst this bleak alternate reality, Watchmen retains the murder mystery plot Moore originally conceived; the story begins with Edward Blake/The Comedian, one of the few government-sponsored vigilantes still active after vigilantism was outlawed, being hurled to his death. Walter Kovacs/Rorschach, who stubbornly refuses to retire or compromise to any authority, investigates the murder and uncovers what he believes to be a plot to kill off former “masks” but, in attempting to get to the bottom of the mystery and warn his fellow former costumed heroes, stumbles into a plot to cause near-genocide.
The vigilantes of the 1960s were eventually forced to retire from action.
Throughout its twelve issue run, Watchmen alternates between this plot, weaving in numerous side plots and supplementary materials, and exploring the origins of our main characters and the legacy they continue. As a result, the narrative constantly shifts between the present day and the Golden Age of superheroics in America, when ordinary civilians, former wrestlers, and cops took to wearing garish costumes and fighting crime as the Minutemen of the 1940s. Age, however, inevitably caught up with the Minutemen and they either died, quietly (or publically) retired, or disappeared from the spotlight as a new generation of costumed adventurers, the Crimebusters, came to prominence in the 1960s. Unlike their predecessors, however, the Crimebusters were forced to retire by the 1977 Keene Act, with only Rorschach defying this law and government-sponsored operatives like the Comedian and the God-like Jon Osterman/Doctor Manhattan remaining active. Because of the abundance of real-life costumed heroes, and the general disdain of vigilante activities, the world and society is a very different place; comic books retain pulp stories such as horror and pirate tales and there is a bleak feeling of desolation and despair in the general public despite all of the technological advances brought to the world by Dr. Manhattan’s awesome power and the ingenuity of the self-proclaimed “World’s Smartest Man” Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias thanks to Manhattan’s mere presence stunting the aspirations of mankind (to say nothing of the looming threat of nuclear war).
The Characters: Watchmen’s characters, though inspired by numerous classic Charlton Comics superheroes, contain a deep inter- and metatextual insight into the world around us as it is and could be, subverting comic book expectations by portraying flawed heroes who are confused, struggling to define their identities, and quite capable of failing, being seriously injured, or dying, and is a story unbound from mainstream DC continuity. Moore does not have to be concerned about ostracising an iconic character like Clark Kent/Superman from the rest of humanity, for instance, meaning Doctor Manhattan is free to have a complete character arc in one standalone text. In addition, “the superheroes of Watchmen also lack any supervillains to measure themselves against. They are forced to confront more intangible moral and social concerns” (Reynolds, 1992: 115); Watchmen also forgoes the need to trawl through back issues researching each character because exposition is incorporated within each chapter and made readily available throughout. This affords Watchmen many advantages not readily available to other comic books (or their adaptations), with the most obvious being that it brings the constantly malleable comic book medium closer to the static preservation of the literary novel: “With its array of carefully crafted oddballs and interconnected plot lines, [Watchmen] reads like a superhero story filtered through Dickens […] aimed at flaws in the era’s comic books: unchallenging narratives, flat characters, simplistic morality” (Suderman, 2009). Conversely, Watchmen also carries limitations; essentially, Moore had to secure an emotional attachment with the reader without being able to rely on a character’s proven popularity as one could with Superman, for example.
Rorschach is the closest thing Watchmen has to a main character.
For the most part, despite its large ensemble cast, Watchmen is told through the eyes and narration of Rorschach, a brutal and uncompromising vigilante who was heavily influenced by the Question, Rex Garine/Mr. A, and Bruce Wayne/Batman’s more aggressive style of vigilante justice. Indeed, Rorschach has largely been regarded as Watchmen’s most iconic and popular character but Moore rejected the idea that a character as extreme, uncompromising, and right-wing as Rorschach should be idolised: “You’re not going to have any friends because you’re going to be crazy and obsessive and dangerous and frightening” (Reynolds, quoting Moore, 2005: 117). Watchmen contains numerous other characters commenting on Rorschach’s questionable methods, mentality, and sanity; he’s given a distinctive, gravely, monotone voice (one of only two characters to have their own unique speech bubbles), is generally regarded as being rather pungent, to say the least, and doesn’t hesitate to torture or kill in order to advance his never-ending crusade. Aesthetically, Rorschach takes on the suit-and-fedora combination of a cynical noir detective (circa-1950), appearing a lot closer to his closest Charlton counterpart, the Question, than Moore’s other characters. Even their masks are similar, with both the Question and Mr. A hiding behind blank, expressionless visages and Rorschach’s entire individuality expressed through a mimetically shifting inkblot mask (a face-obscuring impediment that uniquely portrays his shifting emotions through a variety of constantly shifting patterns). However, Rorschach’s aesthetic similarity with the Question clouds the definition of Rorschach’s character considerably.
Rorschachis a borderline psychopath but…he gets results!
Certainly, his semi-psychotic personality and unnerving grasp of his duel identities make him a character unique in his own right (while the Question could be more ruthless than other heroes of the Silver Age, Rorschach’s willingness to bludgeon criminals places him more in the vein of the darker anti-hero birthed around the time of Watchmen’s publication). Additionally, Rorschach’s psychosis stems so far that he considers his masked persona to be his “true face”, while his counterparts easily slipped in and out of their duel identities. It could be argued that Rorschach’s aesthetic is a question of homage, perhaps sincere respect for a peer’s work, and a simple case of cultural influence (rather than plagiarism justified by some extreme characterisation and the bleakness of Watchmen’s context) but Rorschach also adopts filmic conventions of the hardboiled noir detective, comic book conventions of the mysterious masked vigilante, and realistic issues concerning identity and purpose, inviting (if not forcing) the reader to look at themselves and the world around them differently. Since “[Watchmen] originated […] as a way of ‘using up’ third-tier characters — Blue Beetle, Captain Atom etc — that [DC] had picked up along with the defunct Charlton company” (Newman, 2009), Moore incorporated those familiar designs into these relatively obscure characters and reinterpreted them into his fictional world in order to depict just how psychologically broken a vigilante would be in real life: “You’re probably going to be too obsessed with your vendetta to bother about things like eating or washing or tidying your room because what have they got to do with the War Against Crime?” (Reynolds, quoting Moore, 2005: 117). Rorschach believes that beating, maiming, and killing criminals will bring about change within society and, as Moore’s template for a real-world vigilante, tells us that society is tainted, corrupted, and poisoned, and that to fight against such vices one must be as uncompromising as possible in the service of justice.
Dreiberg is a shell of his former self and is reinvigorated by donning his outfit once more.
Honestly, I could focus my entire analysis of Watchmen on Rorschach alone but he’s not the only character in the series; in the past, when he was slightly less unhinged, Rorschach worked side-by-side with Daniel Dreiberg/Nite Owl, a character based heavily on Blue Beetle and who also has more than a little influence from Batman in him. Having inherited a modest amount of wealth, Dan put his resources towards continuing the legacy of Hollis Mason, the first Nite Owl and costumed adventurer, buying up numerous properties, designing useful gadgets like night vision goggles and Rorschach’s grapple hook, and even building himself his own Batcave (the “Owl’s Nest”) and a military-grade airship, Archimedes. Nite Owl exemplifies the neutered, powerlessness of Watchmen’s once-lauded costumed heroes; having developed a paunch and a largely lethargic attitude in his retirement, Dreiberg is as pragmatic and realistic as Rorschach is cynical and uncompromising. Surrounded by the dusty relics of his once colourful life, Dreiberg is a man living in a limbo between the past and the future, literally and figuratively made impotent by the changing state of society. Indeed, it’s only when he finally reassumes the role of Nite Owl that Dreiberg finally awakens from his apathy, immediately becoming a more physically and mentally competent character who is morally disgusted by the plot he and Rorschach uncover.
Laurie is happy to have left behind her costumed ways if only to spite her mother.
The only female member of the Crimebusters, Laurie Juspeczyk/Silk Spectre is an angry and repressed woman who was forced into the life of a costumed adventurer from birth by her oppressive and controlled mother, Sally Jupiter, the original Silk Spectre and former member of the original Minutemen. As a result, like many children forced to live their parents’ broken dreams, Laurie carries a lot of repressed emotions and resentment within her; she is the only one of the Crimebusters to be grateful at being forced into retirement but finds herself little more than token baggage due to her relationship with Dr. Manhattan being the last remaining thing keeping the God-like figure invested in America’s interests. Laurie’s boiling emotions and feelings of repression and resentment also stem from her utter disgust and rage at the knowledge that the Comedian once tried to rape her mother and the verbal abuse she suffered at the hands of her stepfather. Though she similarly detests Rorschach, she finds comfort in the presence of Dreiberg, who offers her a sympathetic ear and the attention and respect she so craves. Eventually, she is able to reawaken his passion not just sexually but for life in general and they come to help each other rediscover the thrill of being costumed heroes…sadly, this comes right as the world teeters on the razor’s edge of full-scale nuclear war.
A freak accident bestows Jon with God-like powers and shifts his perception of time.
This is primarily due to the sudden self-imposed exile of Dr. Manhattan to Mars; once a simple, unassuming scientist, Jon Osterman was caught in an “intrinsic field” and ripped apart atom by atom only to reassemble himself into a glowing blue figure who perceives past, present, and future simultaneously can manipulate, create, and transfigure matter in any way imaginable. Effectively a God-like figure, the mere presence of Dr. Manhattan is enough to bring the Vietnam War to an end and to keep the Russians in check as a living nuclear deterrent. However, Dr. Manhattan’s higher state of being eventually renders him emotionally closed off to humanity; able to perceive the future but unable to change it, he describes himself as a puppet who can “see the strings” and comes to regard humanity as a squabbling, self-destructive speck in the grand scheme of the universe. Laurie remains his sole link to his humanity and, when his increasingly detached mentality creates distance between them and he is bombarded with allegations of causing terminal cancer in those nearest to him, he exiles himself to Mars and seems poised to abandon humanity to their fate in order to focus on the chaotic beauty of the universe.
A reprehensible human being, the Comedian chose to be a sick parody of the joke that is life.
While the costumed adventurers of Watchmen exhibit considerable physical ability, none of them are inherently superhuman save for Dr. Manhattan; able to teleport, alter his size, and transfigure atoms, Dr. Manhattan is a literal God walking amongst mortals and his arrival spells the end not only for all-out war against the U.S. but the majority of human achievement, too. His abilities mean that environmentally-damaging fossil fuels will soon become a thing of the past and he is generally heralded as rendering usual notions of costumed heroics completely redundant. Yet, the world still spins and teeters on the edge of global meltdown; the public, initially in awe of Dr. Manhattan, eventually learn to simply co-exist alongside him and take him for granted, meaning that the entire world is sent into a mess of confusion and worry when he suddenly teleports away to Mars. The linchpin of Watchmen is the Comedian; a brutal and violent vigilante who has lived through both generations of costumed heroes, the Comedian is an absolutely reprehensible individual who takes a perverse pleasure in violence, conflict, and war. Blake’s experiences in Vietnam see him killing and torturing countless Vietnamese soldiers (and, he openly admits, children); he even shoots the mother of his unborn child point blank when she scars his face with a shattered glass bottle and delights in bringing his extreme methods to the rioters in the seventies.
As despicable as he was, Blake was clued in enough to see the world was heading for disaster.
Given that the Comedian starts the story little more than a twisted, broken corpse on the streets of New York, much of his story is told through flashbacks and the memories of other characters; an antagonistic individual with a twisted world view, Blake is, nevertheless, the only one of the Crimebusters to recognise that the world is spiralling towards all-out nuclear war and that all of their schoolboy heroics will be rendered meaningless when the world is little more than a burning cinder. Still, he catapults the plot into action when, prior to the story’s beginning, he stumbles upon a mysterious, uncharted island and a plot so gruesome and outlandish in its scope that it breaks even his spirit. While few characters mourn his death, the Comedian’s discovery is directly responsible for his murder and for Rorschach’s uncompromising investigation and is the one thing, in all the atrocities he has both witnessed and willingly taken part in, to bring the Comedian to tears of despair.
Veidt concocts an elaborate ruse to fool the world into peace through mass murder.
His discovery is the private island of Adrian Veidt; Veidt, once the flamboyantly-dressed costumed hero known as Ozymandias, was the only member of the Crimebusters perceptive enough to predict the coming of the Keene Act and to retire two years before vigilantes were outlawed. He then put his incredible intellect and self-made wealth towards building a multimedia empire; he not only publically revealed his identity and capitalised on his popularity with a line of action figures, he also strived to create renewable sources of energy and numerous consumer products, always with the aim of advancing humanity towards a greater destiny. Modelling himself after Alexander the Great and obsessed with Egyptians, their culture and society, and their fascination with death, Ozymandias came to see that it was only a matter of time before humanity destroyed itself, whether through nuclear war or environmental collapse, and thus began a ten year plan to unite the world in a way so ridiculous that it had to be taken seriously. To that end, he commissions scientists, artists, and writers to duplicate Dr. Manhattan’s teleportation powers and genetically engineer a horrific creature with which he can fool the world into uniting against a common, extraterrestrial foe.
The Themes: Watchmen is a dense text, perhaps the most intricate and complex comic book series ever published, reading far more like a visual novel than a traditional loud and bombastic, action-packed comic book. One thing that often puts me off about Watchmen is just how intense its narrative can be; with a detailed, intricate, and deliberately unorthodox art style and panel arrangement, and bolstered by numerous supplementary materials, Watchmen is a slow, methodical tale that emphasises a deconstruction of the genre, character exploration, and contemplative themes on the nature of humanity over fight scenes. Indeed, there is very little in the way of action depicted in the comic at all and, when fights do that place, they’re generally a brief and brutal scuffle than emphasises realism over grandiose action sequences.
The morality of good and evil and the nature of the world comes into scrutiny in Watchmen.
Through its intricate exploration of the morality of good and evil and the deconstruction of superhero conventions, Watchmen poses many unique questions regarding what it means to be human (or superhuman) and how best humanity can truly be saved from both anti-social elements such as petty criminals and organised crime and world-ending threats like war and environmental collapse. Rorschach unflinchingly believes that vigilante actions serve a purpose to the safeguarding of society; together with Nite Owl, he brought down many prominent criminal figureheads, thus sparing countless lives from their influence, and, despite his questionable frame of mind and methods, refuses to compromise this belief even in the face of Armageddon. The Comedian, meanwhile, while sharing Rorschach’s penchant for brutality, views all life as one big, cruel joke and Veidt’s master plan as the ultimate joke, one which would spell an end to his lifetime of conflict, while Dr. Manhattan engages in superheroics simply because he is asked to by the government and takes little to no pleasure in it, or much of anything for that matter, eventually becoming a superman who cares little for the defending out-dated ideals like Truth, Justice, and the American Way.
Watchmen‘s bleak world is populated by numerous supporting characters.
Peppered throughout Watchmen are a number of side plots and supporting characters, all of whom offer differing perspectives on Moore’s world and the politics and costumed individuals who inhabit it. One of the most prominent is Bernard, a widowed newsvendor who offers commentary on the mounting tensions between America and Russia; selling tabloids and magazines with an affable charm, Bernard interacts with many of the other side and main characters without even realising it and represents the “man on the street” throughout Watchmen. Another prominent character is Malcolm Long, a psychiatrist who is given the unenviable task of psychoanalysing Rorschach after the vigilante is arrested; though initially excited at the prospect of working with such a prominent individual, Rorschach’s unflinching and unsettling demeanour deeply disturb Malcolm and lead to a breakdown of his marriage as he slowly becomes obsessed with Rorschach’s twisted perspective on life. Yet, despite this, both Malcolm and Bernard (and other side characters) come together to help break up a fight in the streets; ironically, though, this brief flash of the inherently good nature of humanity comes right as Veidt triggers his horrific master plan to “save” the world.
As ridiculous as the squid is, Veidt’s plan works and only Rorshach refuses to play along.
It is through Veidt that Watchmen so openly deconstructs pre-conceived notions of superheroes; rather than take to the streets and work his way up the food chain of various criminal elements like the likes of Rorschach, Veidt prefers to tackle the route of not only that problem but the problems of the world as logically and directly as possible. While Nite Owl and Rorschach muse that Ozymandias has gone insane, his motivations are meticulously thought out, premeditated, and planned to minute detail; worst of all is that, despite how extreme his plan is, it has an undeniable logic behind it and, most disturbing of all, is that it actually works! Going completely against type, Ozymandias initiates his plan thirty-five minutes before Nite Owl and Rorschach attempt to stop him, meaning he can monologue about his motivations and justify his actions as much as he likes as his grotesque squid-like creature has already devastated New York. As ridiculous as this squid appears, the seeds for its appearance are sown all throughout Watchmen, as are the hints towards Veidt’s involvement; every panel is packed with details, nuances, and foreshadowing towards not just this ending but also the nature of the comic’s various characters and sub-plots, all-but-demanding repeated reads in order to see how masterfully Moore and Gibbons build towards this gruesome conclusion. Every now and then, the narrative shifts to Veidt’s island where we see characters discuss their work on the creature and even sketch a picture of it and its violent appearance in New York does exactly what Veidt set out to achieve; in the face of such a terrifying mutual enemy, all hostilities between the U.S. and Russia immediately end and an era of worldwide unity and peace is ushered in as humanity makes every effort to fortify their defences against Veidt’s perfectly-orchestrated deception. The only character who refuses to keep Veidt’s terrible secret for the sake of world peace is Rorschach, who literally gives his life for his uncompromising moral integrity and yet still threatens to topple Veidt’s utopia after leaving his tell-all journal in the hands of his preferred tabloid, the New Frontiersman.
Watchmen contains an allegorical story-within-a-story.
Perhaps the most prominent side story in Watchmen is “Marooned”, a story within the pulp pirate comic book Tales of the Black Freighter; read by a young boy who frequents Bernard’s newsstand (and who is also called Bernard, indicating the commonalities people can have, however small and seemingly inconsequential or coincidental). “Marooned” depicts a sea captain who is left the sole survivor after his ship is destroyed and his crew killed by the titular Black Freighter, a ghost ship of sorts filled with malevolent spirits. Driven half-bad from hunger, isolation, and paranoia, the sea captain fashions a gruesome raft out of the bloated corpses of his men and the remains of his ship, and endures ravenous seagulls and even sharks in his obsessive quest to return to his family and beloved home of Davidstown. Upon arrival, though, he finds that the Black Freighter has beaten him there, its ghoulish occupants threatening his family and townsfolk, so he resolves to attack and murder them with little hesitation in order to protect his wife and children. However, in that moment, he realises that Davidstown is unmolested, that he has killed both an innocent couple and his wife, and that he is the true monster of Davidstown. Resigned to his fate, he willingly swims out to board the Black Freighter and take his place amongst his own kind. Initially somewhat jarring in its inclusion, “Marooned” directly parallels the story of Veidt’s unwavering obsession with committing unspeakable acts for the greater good and is a subtle allegory towards many of the other stories and themes seen in Watchmen, particularly those revolving around blind obsession and distorted perspectives on morality.
The Summary: Even after all these years, Watchmen continues to be a commendable piece of fiction; by subverting and challenging the norms of both superheroes and comic books, Watchmen tells an intricately-crafted, methodical examination of the genre in a way that is gritty, mature, and entirely relatable. Forgoing bombastic comic action for introspective and unapologetically bleak deconstructions of clichés such as the faultless superhuman and the colourful costumed characters we’ve come to expect from comic books, Watchmen is extremely heavy-handed with its themes of obsession and musings on the morality between good and evil in the face of worldwide conflict. Watchmen is, honestly, a bit of a paradox in that it’s not for everyone but anyone who is a fan of comic books should really take the time to read it to see just what the medium is capable of. Largely considered unfilmable for years, Watchmen has nevertheless been adapted into a live-action feature, an award winning HBO series, and even a pretty simple videogame but, if you’re one of the many who sympathise with Moore’s abhorrence for adaptations of his work or don’t really have the time of patience to tackle this admittedly-dense text, you can always fall back on the excellently produced motion comic (Hughes, 2008 to 2009) which is easily the most faithful adaptation of Watchmen.
It’s not for everyone but you can’t deny the importance and impact of Watchmen.
Still, I would recommend giving Watchmen a read; while I initially didn’t much care for it and preferred the movie (and, truthfully, I still do), I have come to appreciate it much more over the years for its intricate detail and subtle nuance. Moore may dislike people popularising Rorschach but he’s a fascinating character and easily the most interesting and complex of the comic’s varied and multifaceted original characters and, similarly, Dr. Manhattan is a startling glimpse at what it could mean should an all-powerful superhuman like Superman grow tired and apathetic towards humanity. Watchmen’s depiction of society’s reaction towards costumed heroes continues to be relevant and influential to this day and the comic inspired a wave of introspective, mature takes on the genre and changed the industry forever by actually taking comic books, and superheroes, seriously and propelling them into mainstream attention in a way that had never been done before.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Great Stuff
How do you feel about Watchmen? Did you read it when it was originally published in its twelve issue run or did you first discover it as a graphic novel? Which of Moore’s original characters do you find the most, or least, compelling and why? What do you think of Watchmen’s methodical pace and heavy-handed themes? Perhaps you feel it’s a bit too impenetrable and overhyped; if so, why? Would you like to see a version of the story told with the Charlton Comics characters as Moore originally intended? What did you think to the comic’s sudden and dramatic ending? Did you care for Watchmen’s numerous sequels, prequels, and adaptations; if so, which was your favourite and, if not, why is that and what do you think about Moore’s attitude towards adaptations of his work? Whatever your thoughts about Watchmen, feel free to leave a comment below and pop back next Wednesday for my review of Zack Snyder’s big screen adaptation.
Lee Hall, author of Consistent Creative Content, the Order of the Following series, and others
1. First, introduce yourself a bit. What is your name (or pen name) and where are you from?
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Lee Hall and I am an independently published author from the UK. Indie publishing to me means that I have self-funded my own books from scratch all the way to publication.
2.Next, tell us a bit about your most recent work. Is this your first published book? What is it about and what genre would you classify it as?
My most recent release and seventh book, Consistent Creative Content, is a non-fiction guide for indie authors and bloggers. This part-memoir part-guide lays out my journey as an author and blogger which is full of advice and experiences. Basically stuff I have learned over many years from selling books to social media and blogging success.
3. Tell us a bit about your main character; what are they like, how did they come about, and what are some of their strengths and weaknesses?
Left out because the book is non-fiction.
4. What was your hardest scene to write in this (or any) book?
Probably biggest challenge with this book was collating and presenting the analytical book sales and promotion figures in a way that would be helpful to readers. Over many years I have run several promotional campaigns for my books and while some of the statistics are kept on a spreadsheet, I wanted to present them in more detail. Social media following and amount of book reviews at the time are major factors in selling and they were a challenge to track, but I managed it, somehow. Sometimes it isn’t just about the book being advertised but everything else around it like those numbers.
5.Did you go the traditional route when publishing your book or did you choose to self-publish?
All of my works are self-published or indie published – I consider these the same.
6. What would you say is the most difficult part of your writing journey and what advice would you give to other writers?
Hands down most difficult part of my writing journey is the selling and marketing after a book is released. To be able to sell a book consistently over time from zero is a huge undertaking that many authors never give themselves enough credit for doing. A few sales to me is progress and enough to tell me an author is going in the right direction. My advice: Pick a few social media platforms and dive in, it might appear that you are shouting into the void for a long time but eventually if you keep going and figure it out, someone will shout back from that void. Being consistent in all of your endeavours as an author will eventually work in your favour, perhaps reading a few self-help books might help also. I can think of one…
7. Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book?
My backlist of books have titles that are both standalone and part of a wider series which are then stand alone in their own right – it sounds complicated and for much of the part it is but basically I set out early on to produce as much content in different genres as possible. So the books which are part of my Order of the Following series are occult thrillers with vampires, monsters and witches while I also have a paranormal romance and super hero comedy that are standalone – a real spread of genre and length to maximise readership.
8. What are some of your favourite authors and books and what inspired you to become a writer in the first place?
Probably my all-time favourite author would be Michael Crichton. Most will know him as the writer of Jurassic Park but my first Crichton experience came from Timeline, a book I found while working my first job as an airplane cleaner. After consuming that book within days, I filled my shelves with his works which then inspired me to write.
9. What would you say has been the best way to market your books?
Without a doubt the best way to market my books I have found is to have more books available. Taking inspiration from my own experience after finding Timeline, which I enjoyed, that motivated me to find more books by Crichton. If a reader has a good connection with a book, many of them will at least want to know if that author has any more available. Of course, this is a long term strategy but all good things take time. Along with an ever present social media effort, eventually this worked to sell books for me.
10.Are there any tropes, clichés, or writing styles that you dislike and, if so, what are they and why?
Tropes and clichés are something I sometimes enjoy as a guilty pleasure. They are that for a reason because most of the time they work for me. I haven’t found a writing style yet that I’ve not enjoyed in some capacity although I only tend to pick up books I know I’ll probably enjoy.
11. Do you read reviews of your book and, if so, how do you handle negative feedback?
At the very beginning of my journey I would hang off every review I’d received but eventually I began to care more about the quantity of ratings as opposed to the finer detail. If the review is from someone I know then I might embrace it more. Negative feedback is probably one of the only certainties when it comes to publishing and I’m content knowing that not everyone will enjoy my stuff. After a few 1 star ratings and a few 5 stars, you kind of just go with the flow eventually. Above all, a rating is proof of readership.
12. What are some of your quirks as a writer? Do you like to plot everything out or do you prefer to just “wing it” and see where the story takes you? Do you listen to music when writing and, if so, what do you listen to?
Most of my story ideas spend some time in my own imagination before being written. If the idea sticks around long enough then I’ll be compelled to try and funnel that into a bigger story which will then hopefully grow. By then I’ll at least know the finish and a few major plot points but the rest, that’s where I find the enjoyment of going wherever the story takes me. I prefer to draft in silence but at the final editing stages I’ll throw on some music, Bon Jovi and Guns N’ Roses feature a lot during editing sessions.
13. What is the best advice you’ve ever had when it comes to writing and what advice would you give to new writers?
The best advice I have received is to find your niche. If you can specialise in something only you can do as an author then you’ll have no trouble in finding readers and creating a brand.
Advice I can give to new writers is to dive in and work hard. You can only get better at writing by writing and spending time figuring out how to write. Reading helps also, that’s probably why you’re writing in the first place. Selling is a huge step after writing and to do that you need to earn the trust of people first and foremost.
14. What’s next for you? Are you currently working on any new books or stories?
After recently releasing my seventh book I am now looking towards querying a book project to agents while continuing to support fellow authors by reading and reviewing their work. You can catch me most days over on Twitter trying to be witty and hopefully supportive to others.
15. Finally, feel free to plug your social media, website, and links to Amazon, GoodReads, and other relevant sites below, and detail any current offers available for your book/s:
Thank you for the opportunity to talk about writing.
Released: 3 July 1996 Director: Roland Emmerich Distributor: 20th Century Fox Budget: $75 million Stars: Will Smith, Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum, Judd Hirsch, Margaret Colin, and Randy Quaid
The Plot: When a series of flying saucers suddenly appear over and attack every major city across the world, United States President Thomas Whitmore (Pullman) is forced to mount a desperate counterattack alongside a rag-tag resistance, including ungainly MIT-educated satellite engineer David Levison (Goldblum) and gung-ho Marine F/A-18 pilot and aspiring astronaut Captain Steven Hiller (Smith).
The Background: It’s easy to forget now but, back in the late-nineties, the writer/producer/director team of Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin were a hot commodity in Hollywood, especially after the box office success of Stargate (ibid, 1994); in fact, it was during the promotion of Stargate that the two came up with the concept for Independence Day, an alien invasion movie that they intended to be based more around a large-scale, co-ordinated attack rather than subterfuge. Featuring cutting edge special effects to render the aliens’ devastating attack upon numerous iconic American landmarks, Independence Day (confusingly saddled with the subtitle ID4) was the highest-grossing film of 1996 and made nearly $820 million at the box office. Although receiving some criticisms, the film was generally well-received, won numerous awards, and kicked off a resurgence in blockbuster disaster movies, which quickly became the trademark of Emmerich and Devlin, before finally getting a long-awaited sequel some twenty years later.
The Review: If there’s one thing Independence Day does really well, especially for its first half or so, it’s build up a great deal of tension regarding the alien invaders; we get a sense of the size of the alien mothership right away when it passes by the Moon and causes ripples on the surface. Almost immediately, the alien signal is picked up by the Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence (S.E.T.I.) and the American military begins to mobilise (more like scramble) to figure out what, exactly, is about to enter Earth’s orbit. Though the alien mothership, and the subsequent city-sized saucers, are somewhat simplistic and cliché in their “flying saucer” design, there’s a foreboding, ominous nature to their construction and you can tell, even before they start blasting away at major American landmarks and cities, that these E.T.’s are not here to make peace.
Despite his critics, Whitmore galvanises the nation, and the world, against the alien threat.
Naturally, the U.S. President is the figurehead for trying to calm the nation and sort out first a plan of communication and then, later, a plan of attack. At the start of the film, Whitmore is facing political backlash since he’s been forced to make a lot of compromises since being elected to office; with many in even his cabinet believing him to be a weak and ineffectual leader, Whitmore is eager to keep the peace and to not set off an interstellar war but finds himself caught completely off-guard when the aliens unleash their devastating attack. It’s an interesting leading role for Pullman, one that sees him having to juggle a myriad of conflicting emotions as Whitmore struggles to find a way to please everyone and hold together himself, his family, and the nation in the threat of global annihilation. It also, of course, results in one of the most iconic rousing speeches in all of cinema as Whitmore inspires the last remnants of humanity to strike back against their aggressors in a last-ditch attempt at survival.
David, a committed environmentalist, becomes the unwitting saviour of humanity.
Compounding matters is the personal animosity between him and David; some time prior to the film, David punched Whitmore after suspecting him of having an affair with his then-wife, Constance “Connie” Spano (Colin). David, who is something of a technological prodigy, is able to decode the alien signal and determine that they are planning a co-ordinated attack but, while he is able to ensure that Whitmore, the Joint Chiefs, and Connie are evacuated safely, his warnings come too late to actually stop the initial attack. David, despite being little more than a cable repair man, is constantly portrayed as the smartest person in the room; a committed environmentalist, David is driven to help others and to save the world despite his emotional attachment to Connie and his frosty relationship with Whitmore and, although he’s not a member of the Presidential cabinet, he quickly becomes an instrumental figure in figuring out how to outsmart and outgun the invaders.
Will Smith brings his charisma and sass to the film, which cemented him as a a leading man.
When the aliens arrive, the U.S. military is, understandably, put on high alert; as a direct result, Hiller finds his leave cancelled and he begrudgingly returns to his regiment; in many ways, the aliens’ arrival means big things for Hiller, who wishes to become an astronaut but had his application rejected, potentially because of his relationship with stripper Jasmine Dubrow (Vivica A. Fox). Hiller enthusiastically joins the first counterattack against the aliens and is left the sole survivor from the campaign, which is doomed to fail thanks to the aliens’ superior technology and firepower. It’s important to remember that, at this point, Smith was still largely known for being the goofball Will from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990 to 1996) but Independence Day really helped to cement him as a charismatic leading man, especially in action vehicles such as this film. Though much of his gung-ho character is ripped from the likes of Top Gun (Scott, 1986), Smith brings a magnetism and down-to-earth likability to the role and his sass is, as always, especially on point to deliver some of the more entertaining, and quotable, moments of the film.
Russell, a dishevelled drunkard, turns out to be an unlikely hero.
While there are a number of female characters including in Independence Day, they are all largely there to simply support, and worry for, the men in their lives; even Jasmine, who is briefly seen as being a proactive and adaptable character, is quickly side-lined once the men of the film put aside their issues to formulate a viable counterattack. Compounding this is the fact that Independence Day is also bolstered by several additional characters, chief among them is Russell Casse (Quaid), a drunkard who claims to have been abducted by aliens some years prior. Russell, and his trailer park family, represent the normal, everyday people in a film largely made up of governmental, military, or other specialists but their story is perhaps the least compelling of all the characters in the film since, while it has a redemptive arc to it, they lack the magnetism and presence of the likes of Goldblum and Smith.
Despite how many characters the film has, there’s not a whole hell of a lot for the women to do.
Other supporting characters include General William Grey (Robert Loggia), Whitmore’s chief supporter after Connie, Secretary of Defence Albert Nimzicki (James Rebhorn), the cliché pushy politician who continually clashes with Whitmore and the others and advocates first for an immediate military response to the invaders and for the deployment of nuclear weapons, and Julius Levinson (Hirsch), David’s overbearing and pragmatic father and one of the standout supporting characters for his characteristic Jewish twang, the entertaining banter between him and David, and the brief injection of uncompromising faith he brings to the proceedings amidst all the chaos and technobabble. One of the more emotional sub-plots in the film involves the tragic death of Whitmore’s wife, Marilyn Whitmore (Mary McDonnell), which is one of the few named character deaths that is actually acknowledged and has a lasting impact since the film is full of mass death and destruction and the focus is generally more on soldiering through the tragedy rather than dwelling upon it.
The Nitty-Gritty: Naturally, an important part of Independence Day is patriotism and duty; although other countries are briefly mentioned and even seen much later in the film, it is the U.S. who lead the fight against the aliens and the closest it gets to being any kind of diverse or multinational effort is the inclusion of a couple of Jewish and Mexican characters. Instead, the focus is solely on America and how they deal with the crisis; we only see American cities being attacked and other countries appear to be both clueless and leaderless until David is able to present a viable counterattack option and the U.S. rallies the remnants of humanity across the world into action.
Independence Day set the standard for disaster movies going forward.
Still, if you’re not American or much of a patriot, like me, there’s one main appealing factor to Independence Day that, even now, continues to impress and that is the depiction of wide scale destruction and devastation. As if having gigantic, city-sized spaceships wasn’t bad enough, the invaders also have impenetrable energy shields, massive Death Star-like cannons mounted beneath their crafts that can obliterate entire city blocks in a single blast, and a seemingly endless supply of smaller attack ships that are faster, heavily armed, and also sport their own energy shields. Thanks to a combination of miniatures, cutting edge CGI, and some clever camera tricks, Independence Day delivers some of the most devastating scenes of widespread destruction ever put to cinema, especially at the time; even now, the shot of the White House being blown to smithereens is an effective and iconic effect that every subsequent disaster movie since has attempted to out-do or replicate in some way.
The aliens are a frighteningly aggressive and highly advanced invading force.
Additionally, Independence Day features one of the most unique alien designs in all of cinema; far from the stereotypical “Grey Aliens”, these invaders are large, biomechanical warriors intent solely on conquering the world through brute force. For most of the film, the aliens’ appearance is, smartly, left a mystery; when they are first seen, they are a horrific mess of tentacles and sport a gruesome, skull-like visage. After the story moves to Area 51, we learn more about the alien’s physiology from Doctor Brackish Okun (Brent Spiner in a memorable, scenery-chewing role) and that they are, actually, just as vulnerable and fragile as we are but are heavily protected by their advanced technology. The aliens also exhibit incredible physical strength, durability, and a degree of psychic ability since they can speak through Okun and project images of their intended plans for the Earth into Whitmore’s head.
Their plan might be totally bonkers but the chemistry between these two is undeniably compelling.
So great is the alien threat that they are able to decimate a large majority of the United States (and, presumably, the world) in just a couple of days, reducing humanity to a rag-tag group of survivors with few resources and even fewer chances of survival. Thankfully, the survivors cobble together one of the most ridiculous and convenient plans in all of cinema history when Hiller volunteers to pilot a crashed alien spacecraft (the one from Roswell, of course!) up to the alien mothership so that David can upload a computer virus (using an Apple PowerBook, naturally!) to momentarily disable the otherwise-impenetrable alien shields. Even now, it’s absolutely bonkers and shifts the film from a desperate scramble for survival and into a massive military counterattack but it works purely because Smith and Goldblum have undeniable chemistry together; in fact, their characters are so enjoyable that it’s a shame they weren’t paired up sooner (though, having said that, it almost feels like the two should have given their lives to destroy the mothership as the film suggests purely because their scene in this moment is so poignant and it would have greatly added to the emotional impact of the finale).
The Summary: Independence Day was a massive deal back in the day; the teasers and trailers alone were enough to hype it as the must-see blockbuster event of the year, to say nothing of the toys and various other merchandise made to promote the film. For my generation, especially, there had never really been a film like it; The War of the Worlds (Haskin, 1953) was a bit before our time and disaster movies had pretty much died out by the end of the seventies. Than, all at once, both of these genres came together in an exhilarating way; bolstered by charismatic performances by the likes of Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum (always a personal favourite of mine), Independence Day may seem quite dated and trivial now but it was the real deal at the time and has easily become one of the most influential and memorable alien invasion movies in all of cinema thanks to it kick-starting a resurgence in disaster and alien invasion movies. Obviously, it’s a preposterous, almost nonsensical movie at times that asks for some pretty big leaps in logic and is far more about spectacle than substance but it’s still an impressive and entertaining film in its own right and easily the best production from the Emmerich/Devlin team even today.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Great Stuff
What are your thoughts on Independence Day? Did you get caught up in the hype back in the day? Did you enjoy the mindless destruction and overly patriotic undertones or were you, perhaps, put off by the cliché characters and more questionable plot holes? What did you think to the performances of the lead actors and the depiction of wide-scale destruction? What are your thoughts on the aliens, their design and technology, and the way the film handled the invasion? What are your plans for Independence Day today? Whatever your thoughts, feel free to leave a comment down below.
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