Totally unnecessary recall, reboot remake, retelling, etc... (Total Recall, Spiderman, Bourne Legacy, Dredd, Fright Night, Scream 4, The Dark Knight, The Thing...)

It’s hard being a film lover when 90 percent of the movies available in theaters seem to be related to a previous story. I don’t think this is a bad thing in itself. There is a reason why many philosophers, writers and storytellers tend to use the same types of plots or narrative situations (follow the link to read about the seven basic plots or 36 narrative situations). They are naturally appealing to every person, and people understand them easily. When the story of a movie is simple enough we enjoy them and that is pop culture entertainment. The problem is that they tend to be very predictable and normally is easy to get distracted if the plot is too obvious. A good balance between history and surprise is hard to master and even harder to perfect. In the end I can tolerate a movie that is predictable if other aspects of the movie are enjoyable enough. 

What is currently bothering me with my recent film going experiences are not reused plots, but the completely reissuing of stories in general. Taking old movies and recalling a previously published material in such an obvious way that is making me harder to go to a movie that is just a plain reboot, remake, retelling, or just plain rip off of a previous movie or in some cases television programs or books. 

I think the last 12 months we had particular bad examples for watching this type of movies. With recent examples being Total Recall, Amazing spider Man and Bourne Legacy, and not too far ago Fright Night, the Thing and Scream 4, this last one making fun of the reboot premise with bad results. Let me make something clear, I don't think that these movies are particularly bad in their own right. It’s just that they feel unnecessary and relay too much to the source material. It makes them feel like you are watching the same old movie again. I don't mind a good story told and retold many times if the execution is good enough to sustain itself in its own. 

I understand the reason why these types of movies are made. They take advantage of good and memorable stories that are easy to adapt to new audiences. The original 10 year old Spiderman movies have certainly not been seen by many kids today and this year movie will be their original Spiderman. Many people in their 20s have never seen the 20 year old version of Total Recall, so the first time they see a three breasted woman will be this year. 

Total Recall, Spiderman and Bourne Legacy are so attached to the original material that feel that you have seen them before because you have ten or twenty years ago, And Bourne Legacy trying so much to stick to recent trilogy that the plot is a convoluted mess of corporations, chemical factories, scientists, and has no real payoff to the story doesn't really honor the directness and storytelling of the previous movies.   

They are not all bad movies. But they’re certainly not the best in their franchises. Of course, remakes don't need to be bad; Nolan’s Batman Trilogy is much better than Tim Burton’s and Joel Schumacher’s movies of decades ago. This year Dredd has much better history and characters than the 17 year old movie with Stallone. Last year Fright Night while still repetitive felt ok because of the lead actors. 

Nonetheless for a 30s year old man like me it felt unnecessary to see all these movies again, but still enjoyed them. 

And in the end this article is unnecessary too!

Internet – Give me More, Please no more

There has been a lot of buzz in the internet in the past few weeks related to one of the writers in TheVerge.com, Paul Miller a somewhat famous technology blogger has decided to stay offline for a year, and will be writing about this experience as a technology writer without the internet. Some people have stated that is a promotional stunt, he is foolish, there is no real reason to do something like that. All I was thinking while this was happening is that, good for him.

The internet is a great tool, it give us access to lots of information, and also lets us stay connected with the world at all times, people can send us email from the toilet, we can read them in the street or have the car read it to us, news feed are instantly updated thanks to tweeter, we know whatever is happening in our friends lives thanks to Facebook. This all sound great, but as is a blessing, it's also a curse. Emails of messages in the middle of the night, hundreds of work related email every day, more email on personal business, people are not thinking about essays, and inspiration is lost. Even I had troubled keeping my goal of writing two articles every week for this Blog; due to overload of information I have been receiving all week. It’s tempting to take a holyday from the internet. Disconnect your ties to the world, just keeping a regular cellphone, without messaging and internet access.

Don't Get me wrong, I love the internet, It has given me opportunities to learn a lot of stuff that in my country I hadn’t access to, comics, literature, music, movies, I am a culture consumist in the end, and that is hard when you don’t have access to culture. But sometimes we also need to disconnect, to be more productive asPaul states in his writing, without the worry to seeing an email that needs immediate response.

Please leave your comments after the article

Read more on Paul’s offline living in www.theverge.com

What Happened to my Adventure Games?

When I started playing PCgames on 1986, my first game was King Quest: Quest for the Crown, a graphic andtext based adventure type of game where all actions where dictated by typedcommands and there was a graphic representation of the space and an avatar thatdepicted you're actions and movements (today is called third action view).There were no pointing and clicking, just typing verbs+nouns. Sierra Online inmy opinion had the best lineup of games and some of these great games were re-released not long ago by www.gog.com to be played on all they're text typingglory.

The King Quest series has a lot of charm in its story writing that is unmatched today, the first three games are hard to go back and play them again due to the graphic limitations and difficulty of the games, 4 and 5 are great adventures and 6 is really good, and has a very imaginative story and setting. I really want to try again 6 and complete King Quest 7, the only one I didn't had a chance to play when it came out in 1994, and it was really hard to get a copy in my native country (Colombia). By the way, don´t even try King Quest 8, it’s just a terrible try to build an action adventure story on a bad 3d engine. At least they did succeed somewhat in doing a good story in a 3d engine with Gabriel Knight 3.

For me the real Jewel in the crown found in gog.com, is the Space Quest series of games, they are all really funny have perfect comedic timing and are just love to play them again, even if as I mentioned earlier, the first three are games are text adventure games with graphic avatars. They are difficult, I really admire the imagination I had as a child to figure out the puzzles in those games. Space Quest 4, 5 and 6 are just plain funny. Here is a video made about the best moments in Space Quest 4.

I still cannot believe that the series that has endured the most of all the adventure games made by sierra Online is Leisure Suit Larry, the series had some good moments, but the quality of the writing compared to the Space Quest games is not even comparable, this series is above and beyond most of the comic games today. I’m going to try the fan made 7th game in the series and will look with interest if the Kickstarter project initiated by the two guys of Andromeda(how the writers used to called themselves) does in terms of getting a new version of the game.

I know that the old Lucasfilm games of are the most popular right know between adventure gamers, especially since they have recently released special editions of the first Monkey Island Games (that are specially great in the sword fighting parts) and the new releases made by Tell Tale Games of the Monkey Island and Sam And Max universes. These games are much easier to play than the old text adventures but they still have great quality writing.

The genre has evolved much, at first just text, then came the graphic nature with text input developed by Roberta Williams and Sierra Online, then came SCUMM with the release of Maniac Mansion, and was mostly popularized by the Lucasfilms Games, it was the beginning of point and clicking and a trend that really annoyed and pulled away many gamers, pixel hunting. There were great games that came from this system, Day of the Tentacle being probably the best comedy one in my mind, and several smaller studios adapted a similar system, while Sierra developed an Icon Based technology that was used in its adventure games until 1997 were you can point with the mouse and choose an icon to perform an action, like taste, talk, take, among others. Lucasfilms final two adventure games (Grim Fandango and Escape from Monkey Island) implemented GrimE, a better implementation of a 3d adventure that sierra could never master, and is similar interaction as to what the engine of Telltale Games uses for control of the characters or even what you do in Heavy Rain(2010) as one of the last big budget adventure games, created exclusively for the PS3 console.

There has been a resurgence of Adventure games, bringing special editions of the Secret of Monkey Island 1 and 2 in the iOS platform, I have also seen the Broken Sword games there and a DS port called Ghost Trick that is real good, there are a lot of creative talent are trying to improve the genre, Machinarium and Botanicula being resent examples, and if you dig in the internet, there are a lot of remakes for the Sierra Games made by fans. Telltale Games have done a memorable job in bringing the genre back at accessible prices and multiple platforms, I specially like they're last game, The Walking Dead, that inspired me to write this article, it had been a while that I really enjoyed a good adventure game.

It’s not a bad time to try these games, but be prepared to be frustrated, is not an easy genre to love, there is a lot of pixel hunting, confusing puzzles, and sometimes it’s hard to understand the logic of the writers.

PS: There are lots of more adventure games that I haven't try due to the difficult of getting them in Colombia, some of the best regarded games are: The Longest Journey and other European made games like Broken Sword, the Japanese have they’re one interpretation of the genre (mostly dating game, or at least the one’s I have played), and there are lot of independent games like Plan 9 from outer space, Amazon, Goblings, Sex Vixens of Outer Space, Simon Sorcerer, Dragon’s Lair, among others. I have also heard that the Freddy Parkas game by Sierra Online is one the funniest games out there, but I haven't tried it yet, maybe one day I will write about it.

Some links for you to check out about the genre:

http://www.thehouseofgames.net/index.php?t=1&a=2&s=2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_graphic_adventure_games
http://www.gog.com/en/catalogue/adventure
http://www.telltalegames.co


http://guysfromandromeda.com/

http://www.sierragamers.com/

EAT ALL CULTURE

When people ask me if I like to read, I respond yes, I like it a lot.
When people ask me if I like movies, I respond that I love them.
When people ask me if I like video games, of course I do, I play a lot of them.
When People if I like to go to arts and museums, I said I do enjoy it.
When people ask how when do I have time to do all that stuff, I respond that I don´t know, but I do wish I have more time for all of it.


In the end I'm a culture consumist, I try to read a lot, watch lots of movies, play video games, visit countries and go to their museums, I want to know it all, to experience as much as I can while I'm alive, learn what works in culture and makes an art representation a pop, underground or cult hit. I want to keep learning about the whole wide world and what makes it change and evolve.


The Internet gave us a tool for infinite learning opportunities, and I now want to use the Internet as a tool for sharing my vision of the world and the experiences i have consuming all I can while I can.