Abandoned Stoke

An interesting short from the comrades at WellRedFilms, just ignore the talking head saying things about the passing of Stoke's industry. If you would like more, keep an eye on WellRed's profile page here.

Good and Evil in Star Wars

If you like Star Wars, it's a must-see. If you like space action movies, you should watch it. If you're at a loose end and the kids are mithering, take 'em to the cinema - it'll knock their socks off. Don't go in expecting multi-layered narratives and nuanced characterisation, Rogue One is a disciplined journey from A to B. It's a tightly plotted, entertaining romp with no loose endings, and works fantastically well as the immediate prequel to Episode IV.

Like many millions of people, I'm a fan of Star Wars. Not a superfan mind, I'm not into the expanded universe, the novels and comics or anything like that. After all, since Disney prised Star Wars out of George Lucas's decadent grasp, the new overlords of the universe have declared the films canon, and that's about it. Not that I'm bothered. When I first saw the opening of A New Hope (then plain old Star Wars), you didn't need much to tell you who the goodies and baddies were. The Empire are transparently evil, the rebels unambiguously righteous. There are no greys. I grasped this when I was little, and so did the young 'un sat next to me at the cinema who kept saying "yes!" every time an X-Wing offed a Tie Fighter.

This simplicity is interesting because, ultimately, what makes the Empire 'evil'? What makes the Rebellion 'good'? With the Empire, it's easy. Darth Vader looks like a bad 'un, and within seconds of our introduction in the original film he's throttling a hapless rebel soldier. Palpatine's nefarious scheming sees his immersion in the Dark Side of the Force render him a rubber skinned monster. And in Rogue One, the Empire burnishes its evil creds with wanton acts of murderous destruction thanks to the newly operational Death Star. The main antagonist, Director Krennic is effectively a Nazi weapons scientist with Bond villain tendencies, up to and including the tendency to murder subordinates for little reason. Vader is the same, threatening Krennic with a sticky end if he fails him and the Emperor - a nod to the absurdity of The Empire Strikes Back where he kills off imperial officer after imperial officer for their failings. It strikes one that climbing the career hierarchy to earn the privilege of instant death working alongside the Lord of the Sith can't be a powerful motivator.

And therein lies the problem with the Empire. What is it about? Krennic is portrayed as an ambitious bureaucrat, so much so that Vader chides him for it. But there are no values, no matter how twisted motivating his murderous career path beyond personal advancement. And this is the same with Vader and the Emperor. For all their mystical twaddle about the Force and the power of the Dark Side, what's the point? It's power for power's sake. That's fine for individual motivations, but you can't carry a society on it. The expanded universe suggests the Empire has a whiff of Nazi-style human supremacism about it, but apart from their military personnel being either human clones or droids of some description, there is little in the films to suggest xenophobia and racism toward aliens.

Ditto for the Rebellion. We know from the prequels that they see themselves as heirs to the old republic brought down by Palpatine in Episode III, but apart from that, what are their values? Yes, they're against bad things. They don't like and are persecuted by the Empire's goons. Presumably they'd like to see democracy restored in the galaxy, but beyond that there is very little. They come over like many an earnest anti-capitalist activist. Very easy to identify what they stand against, difficult to pin down their alternative. The Force as practiced by dear old Obi-Wan and Luke Skywalker isn't much of a clue either. It emphasises the manipulation of the unseen forces that bind matter together, and Jedi training involves suppressing and rising above the passions through self-mastery. Selfishness, avarice, desire, jealousy, vengeance - all these are paths to the Dark Side. And, again, for what? To uphold galactic democracy and rescue kittens stuck in a trash compactor?

Where the Rebellion does noticeably differ from the Empire is with the integration of alien races. This theme continues in Rogue One with the Mon Calamari (of Admiral Ackbar fame) spearheading the Rebel assault at the end of the film. And throughout the saga, aliens are integral to military operations (though, bizarrely, none get to pilot Rebel X-Wings, Y-Wings and what have you).

And so what we're left with are incredibly simplistic notions of evil and good. The Empire is the grim outcome of indulging the self to the exclusion of all else, and the Rebellion springs from abstinence and the rejection of this-worldly things. Which is ironic considering the cinematic celebration of these values have created the most bankable movie franchise in existence, and fed the gaping maw of profit-hungry production companies, cinema chains, and toy merchandisers for decades.

Science in The Martian

The Martian has two very unique features not shared by your average big budget blockbuster. First, it has Sean Bean in it and his character lives. Second, as a science fiction piece it is virtually alone in projecting forward a non-dystopian future in which scientific endeavour comes out smelling of roses. Before you read any further, this review is a touch spoilerific, so stay away if you're saving The Martian up for a rainy evening.

That said, I don't think there's any need to dwell on the plot as it's not a particularly deep film. Set at some unspecified point in the near future, Matt Damon gets left for dead on the Red Planet as a dust storm swoops in on a NASA landing site. The next couple of hours are spent trying to get him back home while Damon has to "science the shit" out of his meagre supplies and technology to stay alive. Okay, scraping up vac-packed faeces and mixing it with Martian soil might not produce the kind of potato crop we see in the film, at least not straight away, but it has enough pseudo-realism for it to be plausible. And puncturing one's space suit to use it for propulsion is a bit iffy, but again, it sounds just about right for it to work.

It goes without saying that the wide panoramic shots of the Martian desert (i.e. Jordan) are stunning, yet the sense of desolation doesn't overcome the film, nor is Mars the "real star". Throughout Matt Damon does a good job of playing Matt Damon, so don't expect much in the way of brooding and existential angst. Thankfully his ubiquity doesn't get tiresome as his adventures in the habitat and on the rover are interspersed with ground control action. Overall it's very watchable. Not a masterpiece by any means, but an entertaining enough update of an Apollo 13 (and an Apollo 13)-style space disaster scenario.

The real hero here has to be science. When it suits, which is often, NASA likes to dress its organisation and its mission up as the repository of all that is best about our species. Its official discourse evokes essentialist notions of exploration, that it is in our very nature to strap ourselves atop a rocket and blast off into infinity. And when it's not reworking old American frontier ideologies, it's presented as an instantiation of the absolute, of a manifestation of reason straight from a late 20th century misreading of Hegel. As such, any film that has official NASA involvement - and this does - the agency has to come out of it looking good. Hence Matt Damon was never in any danger.

Putting that aside, anyone whose politics aren't hitched to the primitivist bandwagon has serious respect for the space science NASA does. Even I follow them on Twitter. And that is shown in the best possible light, here. Matt Damon applies his botanist know-how and astronaut training to grow crops, establish communications with Earth, improvise habitat and suit breach repairs, and lots of other gadgety-things. Meanwhile NASA get their heads together to formulate a rescue plan which, in the best tradition of American schmaltz, a lowly underling at the Jet Propulsion Lab manages to come up with. Whenever a problem presents, all concerned apply ingenuity and the scientific method to arrive at a solution, even if the bounds of credulity take a little stretching.

Nevertheless, this is more than just pro-NASA propaganda. The Martian sets its face against the contemporary wave of dystopian sci-fi that delights in creating misanthropic situations to subject our descendants to. Much harder is to produce a compelling, successful, believable film that ignores the zeitgeist. It shows we have the tools and know how to fix seemingly intractable problems, and that our efforts can be successful. In a world haunted by social problems and looming environmental disaster, give me that message over fashionable fatalism any day.

Gender and Ghostbusters

Who you gonna call?



It looks very jolly, doesn't it? I'll more than likely head up 'anley duck to watch it come the release.

As you might expect, a few people have had a moan about the Ghostbusters reboot. Some of it is justified (three white scientists and a "street" black woman, really?), but the big whinges are reserved for the all-female cast. Never mind that comedy action family romps for mainstream audiences have typically centered on the antics of all-male gangs, oh no, the moaning only begins when women-led films dare to venture out of the romcom and super serious character study-type flicks. In fact, trying to think of anything in this genre led by a group of female characters and none immediately come to mind. In 2016.

Of course, anyone who's worried about the franchise "being spoiled" by the replacement of male by female characters need to get a life. But I can understand the anxiety while having zero sympathy for it. 1984's original Ghostbusters is a much-loved film. It's funny, has great effects (for the time), a simple goodies vs baddies story line, and characters an audience can relate to. I can remember the publicity back in the day - the scene where Slimer charges down the hallway toward Venkman (Bill Murray) was heavily trailed. But we never saw the sliming itself - that was left for the movie (unlike now where it appears all the best lines and set pieces make it into the publicity).

Beloved and fondly remembered it is, Ghostbusters was very much a boy's movie. Female characters had inessential walk-on parts as the secretary (Janine) and the love interest (Dana). Venkman practically stalked the latter until she gave into his leery advances. She was possessed by a demon called the gatekeeper while another, called the keymaster (groan), had to get together to summon their big baddie master, Gozer the Gozerian. It's all low-level sexist stuff that was par the course in 80s movies, and despite being very entertaining is hopelessly a product of its time.

Nevertheless, this sort of format was ubiquitous in the 1980s. This was years after the sexual revolution, and women were already present in the workplace in large numbers. Perhaps it was an expression of the revanchist tide of Conservatism that rolled over the United States, and did threaten the gains made by women and gay people. Part and parcel of this is a forgotten aspect of 1980s culture, and that's the permeation of film and music with 1950s nostalgia. Cris-crossing the Atlantic we had films based in small towns that had barely moved on since the days of the Great Society, we had Shakin' Stevens and Jive bloody Bunny exercising the record-buying public, numerous superheroes were revived from the 1950s heyday, there was a teddy boy inflection in the New Romantic scene. It was everywhere and it was horrible (except in Back to the Future, but that's for another time).

This 50s nostalgia of twee white families living in twee white houses with their twee fridges and twee Cadillacs spoke of a simpler time where gender roles were rigidly defined and everyone knew their place. Of course, that 1950s was the experience of a relatively privileged number of Americans, but it was they who came of age in the 70s and 80s and started churning out cultural product for the masses, and no wonder they would visit the (idealised) themes of their childhood. Therefore pally blokey movies, which have always been something of a mainstay, became even more ubiquitous as family-friendly entertainment not simply because of the conservative cultural climate which, itself, was conditioned by the turn to the right in politics, but also the cohort of (mainly) men moving into decision-making roles in the entertainment industry. As such, while Ghostbusters wasn't a retread of a 50s B-movie, it did stick with rigid gender lines and character archetypes. Even the car - Ecto 1 - is a 1959 Caddy.

Going from the trailer of the new Ghostbusters, it looks like the ghost of the 50s has been laid to rest. Good.

Dick Tracy for the Sega MegaDrive/Genesis

As the Genesis started taking off in North America, Sega scoured the land for hot properties it could throw down on its brand spanking new console. At the time, Nintendo's restrictive licensing practices for third party developers meant the big names in games got an outing on the NES and seldom elsewhere. Sega had to rely on a mix of their own exclusives, arcade conversions, celebrity endorsed games, Disney titles, and publishers who, for whatever reason, didn't produce games for Nintendo's system. Despite the odds, Sega's strategy met with success. Its arcade conversions were unsurpassed in the home. Sports titles with star players attached sold bucket loads too. Sega also branched out into licensing film tie-ins. Moonwalker was one, which began an interesting association between the company and Michael Jackson. Another such license was Dick Tracy.

As a life-long fan of the character, Warren Beatty had trailed a Dick Tracy concept around the studios since the 1970s (and he's still at it). For those not in the know, it was a comic strip that began in the Detroit Mirror in the 1930s. Coming off the back of the "golden age" of American gangsterism, pitting a tough-but-honest detective against larger-than-life villains, Dick Tracy has been in continuous print for over 80 years. His box office outing in 1990 came shortly after Tim Burton's Batman sent cinema goers bananas. At the time, you couldn't move for Batmania - but more of that another time. Beatty and Disney hoped Dick Tracy would have a similar impact, and they tried to make a splash with the sorts of promotional tie-ins Batman had. It didn't do anywhere near as well, though the film itself was okay. Nor was it a fantastic hit for the Genesis/MegaDrive, despite Sega giving their interpretation a release in Japan and Europe, and a Master System port. And that's a shame, because it's good.

Yes, there was once a time when tie-in games were often a treat to play. Dick Tracy for the MegaDrive is a (mostly) slow-paced sideways scroller that has you punching and shooting your way through hordes of Big Boy's thugs 'n' hoods. There are some very minor platforming elements, and its design and feel owes a little bit to the original Shinobi and Rolling Thunder, except our Dick is as nimble as neither. One neat and original addition is a splitting of the play area into foreground and background. The former is your standard shooting/punching action, but at various intervals henchmen appear in the background and start opening up. Handily, under that trade mark trench coat Tracy is packing a tommy gun of his own, and you can let rip back. Using the joypad to do this takes some practice, but when you can mow down rows of bodies it does bring a certain satisfaction to proceedings.

As you might have gathered, the end of the level sees you squaring up against a boss. Here, Big Boy's minions from the film take their turn to get killed. These take the form of background shooting as well, and tend not to be terribly onerous once you get the hang of things. That is, until you get to Flattop and then Big Boy himself. It's not that they're difficult - the time limit can be punishing.

And punishing is something the game is. While the bosses are relatively okay, except for the aforementioned, it can get very tricky very quickly. Had I this game 25 years ago, I wouldn't like to think how many hours I would have sunk into it to learn the tricky attack patterns. On the final level, for instance, Tracy is simultaneously assailed by hoods that lie down and jump your bullets, roll in and off screen to avoid them, while coming under fire from the tommy guns in the background. There are the levels where Tracy has to rely on fisticuffs against armed gangsters, and that requires repeated trial and error. And perhaps the most disconcerting are the car chase sequences. Tracy clings to the side of the patrol car while enemies shoot from cars in the foreground and background. I swear there are several motors with a dozen baddies in each. These too require more ducking and a diving than an average Fools and Horses episode. It's a good job that the acquisition of multiple continues via the bonus round is quite easy to do. Nevertheless, I'd go so far to say this is the hardest MegaDrive game I've played that isn't broken. Yet Dick Tracy manages to pull off a gaming experience that, on the surface, should be frustrating but refuses to be.

There is something very arcadey about Dick Tracy meaning it wouldn't look out of place in, well, an arcade. The graphics are well-drawn and follows the aesthetic of the film faithfully. The music is so-so, which is to be expected as North American developers didn't know what to do with the sound hardware, but on the whole it's a fun and well-crafted experience. Plus it has the bonus of not featuring the annoying Kid of the movie. 

Coming back to the two play fields that were "accessed" simultaneously, this might have been the first appearance of such in a 2D side-scroller. As it worked well here (and it was received positively by contemporary critics), it is unusual that it didn't make a repeat appearance in later titles. As with Atomic Robo-Kid, also for the Genesis/MegaDrive, Dick Tracy attempts to inject something new into what was already a tired and highly-standardised game format. In this case the gameplay innovation was a fun addition, but that did not prevent it from being something of an evolutionary dead end.

Generational Conflict in Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I have seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and it was wonderful. That said, I'm not a huge Star Wars fan. There is something jarring about science fantasy that doesn't sit well with my own hard SF preferences. I guess that's what happens when, philosophically speaking, you're a miserable materialist. Yet sitting in the cinema this afternoon, I wasn't prepared for the emotional experience seeing the new film turned out to be.

A story. Star Wars was one of the first films I remember seeing. My parents took me to watch The Empire Strikes Back on its original release. Not long after Return of the Jedi hit the cinemas, a pirated betamax also fell into my family's hands. And like many a family in the early 80s, my mum and dad skimped and saved so Santa could leave my brother and I Star Wars toys. The fixation didn't last but it must have helped shape my earliest years in some way, as it did for millions of others. Until watching the trailer last year, I hadn't realised quite how buried it was in my personality as something evocative of nostalgia and memory. Weirdly, there was none of this when the prequels hit the streets. It might have had something to do with them not building on Jedi and filling out the backstory instead, but those badly-acted CGI-fests left me cold. This time, not only did the trailer establish in advance The Force Awakens as a superior effort, it - at least for me - was a direct bridge across 32 years, from now to the cheeky little kid I was when Jedi's credits first rolled. Powerful stuff, and no doubt Disney were counting on it.

That makes writing about the film in dispassionate tones very difficult, so I won't. Force captured the Star Wars feel perfectly, and was everything it needed to be. Yes, it's derivative but no one was expecting a foray into anything else. It was rammed with fan service, cutting edge visuals, stunning cinematography, exceptional acting, and believable, conflicted characters. The family psychodramas are back along with the original cast, the baddies do a fine job as convincing space Nazis and the plot, while nothing new, ties it together seamlessly. It stands with the three original films, and lords it over the prequels.

While I'm sure film theory-types are going to have fun with the familial entanglements and the signifying chains in which new scenes map onto old scenes and subvert them, there's one line of interpretation I want to throw out there. Perhaps I'm sensitive to this as I approach the outer reaches of middle age, but this is a very young movie or, rather, one about thrusting aside older generations for the new. Some tentative thoughts follow, so spoilers from here on in.

First, there's the disappearance of the olds from the scene. C-3PO and R2-D2 are barely about, with the droid honours going to the brilliant and oddly-charismatic BB-8. Luke's off in hiding, Leia's running the show from base, so it's Rey and Fin doing the ass-kicking honours. Han Solo's return doesn't steal the show, but just in case wayward son Kylo Ren goes oedipal and offs him with his fancy light sabre.

The age/generation thing plays out more interestingly with the dark side. Kylo's obsessed with becoming Darth Vader, who also happens to be grandpapa. As the son put paid to Anakin Skywalker, so grandson wants to wreak generational vengeance against his uncle. Though, interestingly, Kylo's internal conflicts is a moment of The Force's many little reversals. Whereas Anakin and Luke are warned by all and sundry about the temptations of the dark side, in this Kylo wrestles with the impulse to be good. He has "forgotten" the travails of his family and rebelled by teaming up with the new empire, who now fashion themselves as the First Order. And this interests me, too. Apart from their "supreme leader", Snoke (who, sadly, reminds me of Gollum), the troops, the lackeys, the officers, they're all young. Chief among them is General Hux, a nasty piece of work with slicked hair, black uniform, and a dark fanaticism that summons every cinematic Nazi of the last 70 years. In the Star Wars universe, it could be a generation determined to re-enact an empire they grew up without. In real life, it might be a wry comment on the absence of historical memory and the kinds of consequences that result.

Overall, there's generational conflict at its heart, and as it pushes out the old and brings in the new, it appeals across generations to get the bums on seats. As far as I'm concerned, it's a must-see; a cultural moment that will be talked about for decades.

Star Wars for the Sega Master System

I haven't seen the new Star Wars film yet (no spoilers, please), but back in the dim and distant, during the early 1990s in fact, there was a mini-Star Wars revival well before the prequels and special editions were thought of. Spurring this flurry of interest was the release of several Star Wars games across several formats, including this one that hit European shores on the NES and Game Boy in 1992 and the Game Gear and Master System a year later. It spawned sequels for Nintendo's machines, and totally different 'super' games for the brand spanking new Super Nintendo. To be honest, by the time this had come out on the Master System I'd pretty much lost interest in games but just had to have it when it turned up in a lovely stack of carts found by one of my councillor comrades.

This game and I have a little bit of history. Up until 2012 Star Wars held the accolade of being the only NES title I had ever played, and that was briefly in a long-forgotten computer shop in Derby about where M&S currently stands. Or is it Debenhams? The game also kept me company when my brother borrowed it for his Game Boy and ... I was hopeless at it. Back then it was by far one of the hardest console games around. It had slightly slippery controls, the annoying NES "bounce back" (i.e. involuntary leaping backwards when hit/touched by an enemy - a feature of many 8-bit Nintendo games), enemies with annoying attack patterns, and weapons that were distinctly underpowered.

The game starts you off as Luke Skywalker flying about Tattooine in the old Landspeeder. The aim here is to find Obi-Wan, rescue R2-D2 from the Jawas (I don't remember them wielding huge guns in the film), and pick up bits and pieces before heading to Mos Eisley. This is where you hook up with Han Solo and you're off. Unusually for a film license, the levels, with some concessions to video game design, follow the plotting fairly closely. Once you're offworld you have to guide the Millennium Falcon through a first person asteroid debris field, then it's wander-around-the-Death-Star time, deactivating the tractor beam, rescuing Leia, and escaping the trash compactor (unfortunately, you don't replay Obi-Wan's light sabre duel with Darth Vader). With the platforming done, our heroes escape while fending off Tie-Fighters, before switching to the rebel assault on the Death Star and the final trench run - seen from above. It's a game that, rare for the time, brought together different styles under one roof. Nor was it a quick knock-off to capitalise on the lucrative licence; some thought has gone in to reproducing the film's key sequences.

The Master System port, gameplay-wise, is virtually identical to its Nintendo counterparts. The same "challenging" mechanics are present, except the graphics are spruced up and the soundtrack has received a decent makeover. For a system not known for its audio acrobatics, the programmers did a good job of wringing top tuneage out of the MS's weedy sound chip. And yes, it's bloody, bloody hard. It's one of them you would have needed weeks of spare time and infinite patience to get through 20-odd years ago - thank goodness for save states and walkthroughs.

What Master System Star Wars demonstrates, as well as its brethren on the other systems, is yet another marked shift in game culture. These modern views pan it for some distinctly unfriendly features, whereas upon its release Star Wars was very well received. As we've seen before, tough difficulty bordering on unfair was par the course in yesteryear. Thanks to hardware and memory limitations, games had to be relatively simple affairs. And yet they had to command enough attention to prevent the punter feeling ripped off, so a steep challenge was considered an appropriate answer to the challenge of game longevity. There is nothing in Star Wars that hadn't already featured in dozens of other 8-bit platformers. Irksome movement momentum, leaps of faith, unfairly-placed enemies, this was par the course. For players who either didn't grow up with the demands some games made, or if more mature players have grown habituated to having their hands held by modern interfaces, a game like this can appear downright disrespectful. But no, all it required was patience - if you expect instant pow-wow, you will be destroyed.

Overall, there's a good game here if you're prepared to take it on its own terms. Not a timeless classic, but a worthwhile spin.

How Rambo Vs ISIS Could Be Very Good

It says everything you need to know about the state of journalism.

Last week, there was a brief flurry of excitement and incredulity when Sylvester Stallone reportedly announced that he was making a final Rambo movie (dubbed Last Blood) and the baddies he'd be mowing down were to be ... our friends Islamic State. There were a lot of red faces in the news room when a Stallone spinner intervened to deny the announcement. The original source was a spoof news site that ran with the headline "Sylvester Stallone to Employ ISIS Militants for New Rambo Film?". It would have taken but two seconds to note that a) it doesn't actually say IS are going to be Rambo's cannon fodder, and b) that a site running stories like Caitlyn Jenner Innocent; Bruce Jenner Crashed Car, Witness Claims might not be the most credible of sources.

Such touching naivete. Whatever happened to the world-weary cynical hack?

That said, I'm actually a bit disappointed that Rambo V is reportedly socking it to Mexican drug cartels instead, because parachuting John Rambo into IS-occupied Syria might have made for an unexpectedly good movie. Okay, an interesting one. For two reasons.

First, action movies can be a proxy by which audiences vent sublimated frustrations against an enemy - whether real or imagined. Despite IS being on the receiving end of US and UK bombs, there isn't a great deal of news coverage. You can partly understand why when, in north Syria, the Americans are acting as an air force for anarcho-communist Kurdish militias. Hence there is little chance Westerners feel "enough" is being done to curb IS, leaving it free to murder tourists in Tunisia and gunning down Parisian cartoonists. The urge to hit back is understandable, even if misplaced. Likewise, IS feel similarly. They cannot mix it up directly with Western military, hence why they brutally kill hostages. Seeing how Stallone taps into these frustrations would have proved an interesting way into reading Rambo.

What would be much more interesting, however, is if Rambo were to drop into Syria, hook up with someone vaguely palatable to mainstream Hollywood - such as the Free Syria Army. After mucho macho combat, Rambo ends up in a foxhole with an injured IS fighter ... and finds they fought alongside one another in Afghanistan against the Soviets in Rambo III. Together they explore how they went from allies to foes, and it gradually dawns on Rambo that he is but a pawn and his employers - the US government - are unconcerned with freedom per se. They covet regional hegemony. After the Afghan assists Rambo's escape from the predations of Jihadi John, he radios in for a pick up and returns home to raise some very awkward questions.

If Stallone is serious about making a Rambo that is a serious departure from its predecessors, I'd recommend another think about the IS angle.

Feminism and Mad Max: Fury Road

Mad Max: Fury Road is a paradox. A completely overblown, absurd masterpiece of a paradox, but one that balances two seemingly irreconcilables and fuses them astonishingly successfully. On the one hand its an utterly mindless action romp with scant dialogue, a simple plot, lashings of violence, and spectacular vehicles that make for very big explosions. Yet beneath that is a cunning and penetrating commentary on patriarchal (not male per se) violence and feminist struggle. This is what I'm going to take a look at so yes, this piece is rammed with spoilers.

Okay, where to begin. In one of his many asides, this one on the so-called Asiatic mode of production, Marx noted the despotisms of Asia, particularly in the desert regions, rested on control and maintenance of water supplies. Leaving well alone the controversies that ballooned around Marx's statement, in MMFR this is certainly the case. The War Boys, a cultish group ruled by Immortan Joe, keeps its population in thrall by being the only source of water in a parched desert wasteland. Every so often, Joe turns on the immense pipes beneath his citadel and briefly drenches the hundreds of wretched followers gathered beneath his balcony. In so doing, he chooses to lecture them on resisting one's dependency on water. We are taken into his lair. Joe himself is an albino grotesque who relies on a breathing apparatus and a suit that protects his irritable skin. We also get the measure of the kind of society he runs. Sat tethered to milking machines are a half dozen women, and locked up in a vault are his five brides: women he keeps imprisoned and, it is implied, he repeatedly rapes to yield him a son.

Below that are his caste of war boys who are cursed with a 'half-life'. It seems these fanatical followers (and cannon fodder) have some form of cancer that limits their usefulness, and binds them to the father worship of Joe. Faced with a lingering death as the cancer takes hold, they prefer to carelessly throw their lives away fighting in one of the Citadel's war bands.

Here then we have a patriarchy in a classical sense. This is not the rule of women by men, but of women and men by the father. It is for Joe's satisfaction that nearly all the young men are pressed into soldiery, that he keeps a collection of women as, for want of a better phrase, breeders; and that the destitute subjects of his kingdom are kept under his thumb by his ownership and control of the Citadel's hydraulics. The patriarchy - and the filmmakers would have been hard-pressed to have conceived of one more viscerally ugly and brutal than this - controls property, the means of repression, and the means of reproduction.

Imperator Furiosa is a woman who thinks differently. Abducted as a young child, she grew to be one of Joe's trusted lieutenants. Neither cannon fodder or sex slave, she is charged with the task of driving a tanker to the nearby gas refinery run by one of Joe's cronies. Except she has gone rogue. Under Joe's nose she liberates his "wives" and smuggles them into her truck, where she plans to take them to 'the green place', the idyllic matriarchy she was hailed from. The mayhem starts when Furiosa takes the tanker off road and the war band set off in pursuit.

This is where the titular Max properly enters the frame. Having been captured by the War Boys, he's designated a universal blood bank where transfusions of his blood can keep Joe's warriors going a little longer. With the general alarm he's paired with Nux, a particularly fanatical boy not long for this world, and rides into battle with him mounted as a front piece to his car. Eventually Max escapes and teams up with Furiosa, then the fun really begins.

As an action film it is notable for two things. Unlike previous iterations of Mad Max, this is less Max as lone wolf saviour and more as equal help meet. There are times when he saves the day for the band of women he's escorting, but there are others where they save his skin. Far from being helpless, Furiosa is up to her neck in fighting and action. She's the one with the plan, while Max is a drifter just along for the ride. Theirs is a fully cooperative relationship and it's this mutual interdependence that sees them through to victory.

Finally, Furiosa arrives at her former homeland and is greeted by the half dozen remaining members of her tribe. They are a strictly separatist group with one of the women boasting about how many men's heads she's blown off over the years. But ultimately it's bitter sweet. The green land is a poisoned marsh. She may have reached safety beyond Joe's reach, but it's safety in desolation. After despairing an screaming into the wilderness, her alternative plan is to just ride out into the desert - they have enough supplies for 160 days and hope they'll eventually come across something. Max, however, has an alternative suggestion. If Joe's forces can be trapped in the canyon system they battled through on the way in they can return to the Citadel with its water supply and green of its own. Cue more surreal, sumptuous mayhem.

Needless to say, our heroes kill Joe, defeat his army, and make it back to the Citadel in one piece. This is where it takes an interesting turn. So far it's been warrior feminists and male allies who've defeated the patriarchy. When they reveal Joe's torn body to the crowds the old social structure crumbles, and the wretched of this earth celebrate. From a radical point of view, while welcome it nevertheless underlines the myth of the vanguard who, in Guevarist fashion, enter the city and liberate the huddled masses. It's not an act of self-liberation. However, as our heroes start being elevated up to the higher echelons the water starts flowing again. The women strapped to milking machines have seized the moment to liberate themselves and turn on the taps. Our vanguard, sans Max who melts into the crowd, help people up onto the rising platform. It's no accident that the first helped up is a particularly rough looking bloke. The message here is clear: men have nothing to fear from feminism. My destroying the patriarchy, of the rule of men and women by powerful men, then all are liberated. The relationships and social structures that have twisted society into an apparatus of domination can be recast, laying open the road to a better, freer place for everyone.

Hence rather than MMFR being open to feminist interpretation, it itself is a $150m commentary on feminism, by way of ultra violence, the best guitarist ever, and audacious nonsense. Do go for a showing: it will be the best film you've seen this year.

On the Star Wars Episode VII Trailer

Behold.



Okay, so it's not mahoosively spectacular or anything, but when casting my cynical eye over the trailer earlier I was not expecting the kind of gut reaction that came at me. It was a strange tingly blast of nostalgia, something last felt had when I played an old game for the first time in 20 years or have caught an earful of a song that hasn't troubled me for a long time. There was none of this nonsense when the prequels did the rounds in the early 00s, nor did any occasion the special editions upon their re-release back when your author was t'yoof.

Here's the thing. I'm not a massive Star Wars fan. The parents dragged me to the pictures to watch The Empire Strikes Back as a brattish but excitable kiddy-wink. My brother and I were smothered in the toys, and we even had a, ahem, naughty copy of Return of the Jedi before it came out in British cinemas. The simple goodies vs baddies narrative was just the foil for typical boys, which we were, who couldn't get enough of their militarised toys. Though I could never fathom how the plastic rendering of the Rebel Alliance Snow Speeder was half the size of the Imperial AT-AT when the film showed the latter to be many times bigger. But as I grew up the fictive universe never held its appeal. It was all too simple. And besides, as an advocate for sociological realism in science fiction the idea of a Roman-style republic/empire with slaves, magic, spaceships, and sentient robots is complete hooey.

All that said, come Christmas a sad sack collection of 30-something Stokie comrades shall duly traipse to the nearest big screen for the thrills 'n' spills on offer. And among them I will be.

Michael Jackson's Moonwalker for the Sega MegaDrive/Genesis

If you weren't a certain age in the late 1980s, it's difficult to describe how massive Michael Jackson was. Almost six years dead, he's a bit of a joke. The man with the plastic face and an alleged unhealthy interest in children. Yet at the peak of his powers in the late 80s Jackson was part of the elite of megastardom, a space he occupied with few figures - Madonna, perhaps Prince, assorted bankable Hollywood folk. He carried about him a venerable aura. The press, of course, had a field day with Jackson before those allegations came to light but then, rumours of oxygen tanks, purchases of the Elephant Man's remains, Bubbles, and the fairground attraction on his ranch made him all the more beguiling. Especially to kids.

The back-to-back success of Thriller and Bad was followed in short order by Moonwalker. As a film, I remember thinking it an unholy mess, an opinion that hasn't been assuaged with the passage of time. It's a series of extended videos threaded together without any narrative fidelity, except for the figure of Jacko getting into scrapes and capers. Most will remember Moonwalker for its bizarre main segment, a wee adventure that sees Jackson defeat an evil plot. A Mr Big (not that Mr Big) wants to conquer the world, and plans to do it by getting children addicted to drugs. Queue some dancing and bad guy killing that sees Jacko transform into a death-dealing robot.

As per most action-oriented films from the late 80s on, the license went out to tender and it was promptly snapped up by Sega. They churned out a creditable arcade game, and the topic of this very blog post. Moonwalker landed on the MegaDrive not long after its North American launch. As Nintendo had all the big stateside publishers locked down with a dodgy and subsequently illegal set of agreements that prevented them producing the same game for rival formats, Sega attempted to command attention by getting top celebs (mainly, nay almost exclusively major sports stars) to put their name to their games. Who then bigger than the King of Pop?

If anything, Moonwalker the game works much better than it ever did as a film. Based loosely around the Shinobi engine that was getting an outing in the contemporaneous E-SWAT, Dick Tracy, and, unsurprisingly, The Revenge of Shinobi, Sega's interpretation of Jacko's hubristic masterwerk is actually a jolly, competent and (whisper it) good action platformer. You take on the role of Jackson in his Smooth Criminal get up over five levels, offing goons, dogs, spiders, and zombies. You have to explore every nook and cranny, because you won't be allowed to progress unless you collect all the, um, children. Each level borrows a theme from the flick, with the exception of the third, which is inspired by the grave yard featured in Thriller. As per gaming conventions Jacko has to face a not-terribly taxing boss before progressing to the next stage. Four or five swipes with your magic powers normally does the trick. And then, with level five done and dusted Jacko morphs into a spaceship(!) and you do battle with Mr Big in a first person dog fight. All the while, the MegaDrive does an admirable job of rendering his big hits chip tune-stylee.

This wasn't the first game to be based around a celebrity or pop star. That accolade probably belongs to Frankie Goes to Hollywood, but what Moonwalker managed was the capture of an artist's image. In contrast to other film adaptations, this was a slickly programmed affair full of fantastic - and even then unintentionally hilarious - little touches. Contemporary reviews waxed lyrical about Sega's rendering of the smart bomb mechanic, which by then was a staple of gaming. Keep your finger down on the magic bottom and boom! Jackson leads the assembled bad dudes in a synchronised dance performance, after which they all drop dead. Brilliant. Even dogs and spiders merrily join in too.

It couldn't be any other way, really. Jackson was reportedly consulted on the development of Sega's titles so, if you like, the progammers had to work towards his ego. When you've collected the children, Bubbles appears and guides you to the end-of-stage face off. Attacking in the air sees Jacko striking a trademark supercool pose. Hold down the magic button without setting the dance bomb and your hat turns into a deadly projectile that can slice through several enemies. And there are a few moves that serve no game mechanic at all. You can grab your crotch, stand yourself on your tippy toes and, yes, moonwalk. In fact, there is an argument for regarding the Jackson sprite as the most studied avatar up to that time capable of multiple animations. Regardless of what he's doing he always looks effortlessly cool, a lesson Sega took and applied later to Sonic the Hedgehog.

The second point is the in-game scenery. Being able to manipulate your environment is standard in modern games, but back then, not so much. Sure, Mario was able to bump along breaking open boxes with his bonce. Players were familiar with traversing obstacles and the like, but interacting directly with it was less common. Not so in Moonwalker. It sees you opening doors and windows, breaking into car boots, and smashing down walls of rock all in the background scenery. What is better though are small, unnecessary, but delightful touches. Walk on the baby grand on the first level, and you get the plinky-plonk of random piano notes. Stand on a fire hydrant and spin, using the water to kill off your enemies. And why not smash up Mr Big's computers just for the hell of it? Okay, such interaction with the backdrop is strictly limited, but it was virtually unseen in 1990. If environmental manipulation had an originating point, this was it.

Moonwalker these days is one of the more sought after titles for the MegaDrive and Master System, possibly because of the notoriety attaching to Jackson's name as it isn't particularly rare. Au contraire, it sold well in all of Sega's key markets. For my money, Moonwalker is an important game, though not recognised as such by the keepers of the video game canon.

Terminator Genisys Trailers

Bad spelling is never a good sign. Neither is getting an over-the-hill Hollywood mainstay to reprise the action role that made him massively famous over 30 years ago. And yet ... yet ... going on the two trailers so far released Terminator Genisys might just turn out to be an enjoyable romp.





Come July your scribe will be heading to the cinema for this and shall report back his findings.

Battleship

Few things say family entertainment more than "I've sunk your battleship!". Plenty of times during the course of the 80s my brother and I would disinter our Battleship set. It wouldn't be long before each of us were plugging red hit pegs into our beloved aircraft carriers. But could we ever hunt down each other's two-hit destroyers? If the devil was an ocean-going vessel ... Yet not in my wildest imaginings, being as it was encumbered by Transformers and dreams of a computer of one's own, did I entertain the possibility Battleship would warrant a movie based on the game. Besides, wasn't basically every WWII American movie set in the Pacific theatre an exploration of the theme? Apparently not. So 2012 came and instead of giving us the end of the world, we got the weirdest licence in Hollywood history.

The plot, such as it is, deserves as much of a cursory mention as the film gives it. Some years after NASA (foolishly) beams a message at a promising-looking extra-solar planet, aliens land in the Pacific and start laying siege to Hawaii. Because their own communications ship hit a satellite on entry and was destroyed, so they need the radio telescope arrays dotted atop O'ahu's peaks to summon the rest of the invasion fleet. Standing in their way are three (summarily despatched) destroyers, the battleship Missouri and a bucketful of cheese.

To say Battleship is a terrible film is like ticking the government front bench off for lack of real world experience. The effects stand in for the acting and the whole thing doesn't make sense. Of course, the humans USA wins the day through grit, sacrifice and bloody-minded determination but the end is so disjointed from the action that had you turned on two minutes before the credits, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a hokey romantic comedy with Liam Neeson.

The big mystery is why Battleship was made at all. Well, apart from the obvious one. On a budget of $209m(!) it managed worldwide box office takings of $303m. Who cares if a film's rubbish if it brings in the dosh? Simply put, there is a ready market for unchallenging military romps with the razzle and dazzle of the latest special effects. On that score, Battleship does well. In a cinema the explosions and intricate alien technology would have been a spectacle. It also sits very firmly within the current climate of US culture. A declining global hegemon it might be, but its cultural anxieties are offset by a firm reliance on the capacity of the military to deal with any and every eventuality the world (or the universe) can throw at it.

Something else too. As noted in my Godzilla review, big monster/alien invasion movies are tributes to the US military. With the purview of its activity long having wound down from facing a potential existential threat in the USSR to what more or less constitute police actions in the Middle East and elsewhere, movies of this type are able to charge the military with the heroism, valour and hope that current operations do not allow for. Here as in Godzilla and countless others of their ilk, the tiny forces left to face off against the aliens put themselves in harms way almost recklessly. There's no hint of Vietnam Syndrome here - the men and women in uniform go to their inevitable deaths with iron hard square jaws.

Where Battleship differs from the crowd is traditionally the US navy loses out on box office love. What use is a destroyer when tripods are tearing up Boston? What contribution for ageing battleships against monsters indifferent to the comings and goings of marine craft? This film was clearly conceived and written to address that gap, to show they can be as meat-headed but as brave as any other arm of the US military. They can clear up the messes just as the airforce and infantry can.

Yes, an appalling movie by every measure. Still, at least Hasbro shifted a few new branded units off its back.

Fifty Shades of Grey

The trailer for the much anticipated Fifty Shades of Grey adaptation touched down today. Looks stylish. Due for release on Valentine's Day next year, it's getting billed as a "romantic drama". That's like describing Ron Jeremy as "an actor". Whatever. Fifty Shades is a proven literary juggernaut, with some 60 million books sold. Not bad for a trilogy that began life as Twilight fan fiction. And as I was busy doing anything but blogging when the books came out, the trailer's release is the perfect opportunity to belatedly throw down some words.

First off, snooty reviews like Salman Rushdie's and Julie Bosman's spectacularly miss the point. It makes no literary pretensions. EL James wasn't fishing for the Booker or the Orange prize when she wrote it. As a piece of fan fiction it was conceived and written as simple wanking fodder. James used her appropriated characters to explore kinky sex, BDSM and other fantasies she may or may not have. It has always been thus since the earliest days of the internet. The written word is a powerfully erotic but safe way of working through fantasies, in this case with the support and feedback of anonymous and semi-anonymous communities of fans. James's pieces grew because, for whatever reason, her work was passed around, read, and - ahem - used, more than her contemporaries. If you were getting great feedback about your naughty stories, wouldn't you try your hand at a book-length helping of filth?

I know what the literary snobs have in mind when they approach Fifty Shades. James would have had to turn something in like the erotic masterpiece, Delta of Venus. Making such a comparison is stand up ridiculous. Delta is a work of literary fiction. Its eroticism lies in the careful construction and corruption of believable characters, and their negotiation of scenarios involving old taboos around homosexuality and threesomes as well as problematic explorations of incest, abuse, and rape. Nin's collection speaks to sexualities repressed by the times and invites her readers to binge on an orgy of possibility, of letting the libido go and indulging all its fantasies, including (especially including) those dark places no one dared to speak of. All very disturbing and thought-provoking, but that's not where James wanted to go. Such comparisons are as facile as comparing Andy McNab to Leo Tolstoy, as opposing Dan Brown with Umberto Eco. James merely wishes to turn her readers on. Just as McNab and Brown want to thrill and puzzle theirs.

Dialogue and characterisation set the scene and fill the bits before and after erotic encounters. While the term "mummy porn" is problematic for all kinds of reasons, porn is what Fifty Shades most definitely is. Consider your average blue movie. Where they do have some sort of plot, it is almost entirely superfluous to the action that follows. It might establish the parameters of the situation (doctor/patient, teacher/pupil, cop/wrong 'un) to link in with the fantasies of the viewer, but they are relatively brief . Anything not to do with sex is merely filler. Fifty Shades operates on similar principles - scene setting, bonking, scene setting, more bonking, dialogue and development, yet more bonking. And the scenes themselves are written functionally from Ana Steele's perspective. While James fixates on the sex, it's not quite as crude as a crotch shot scene might be. This, for me, is one hook of James's writing. For Ana, sex, sub-play and BDSM (which is merely hinted at in the first book) are part of her process of sexual self-discovery. Christian Grey isn't just a beguiling billionaire with a penchant for kinky fucking, Ana wants him (and has him) as her first. For millions of James's readers part of the erotic charge is the connection between the broadening of the character's sexual horizons and their own early awakenings. It evokes that lost sense of excitement, of when everything was new, fresh, of that time when readers were at it like rabbits with their new and equally enthusiastic boyfriends and girlfriends. What James builds, especially for her core readership of 30/40-something women, is sexual nostalgia, of hot memories long since buried beneath the routine of the weekly fumble and occasional "alone-time". For large numbers of women, Fifty Shades is a welcome tonic.

All just good clean filthy fun? The characterisation isn't great, but that's not a problem in and of itself. It's just a means to a rather naughty end. Yet I'm not the first and I won't be the last to note the troubling gender politics underpinning the book. This owes something to its roots in Twilight, a tired and thankfully out-of-fashion reworking of the damsel-in-distress trope - but with vampires. Give me Buffy any day. However, James is not a prisoner of convention. Her protagonists did not have to be a naive, virginal young woman barely into adulthood, or a worldly-wise, brooding but mysterious billionaire who sweats masculinity. Ana didn't have to be the supplicant, the tool and foil of Christian Grey's sexuality. And yet she is, and this is James's second clever move. 

As problematic the gender dynamics are, the relationship suffuses femininity's conventional subordination to masculinity with a sexual charge. Not every woman wants to be a princess, but gendered messages of that character bombard girls even before their infant minds awaken to consciousness. James's female readers are intimately acquainted with the domineering shadow of the masculine other, even if they consistently resist and reject the dependency it inculcates. Fifty Shades embraces that relation. The constant evocation of Ana's "inner goddess" when Grey is stoking and sating her desires affirms yin and yang gender essentialism, that knowing herself, finding herself, even discovering the pleasures of her own body is possible only by giving herself over to the powerful man. James here has provided an erotics of submitting to male domination. Power play is common in sex games, and by tying it to rather traditional but deeply embedded gender relations James allows her readers to experience its sexual power filtered through the intimate familiarity with growing up a girl.

Then comes the final move at the end of the first novel. There are glimpses of Grey's troubled past, and in the end Ana resists his will to make her his sexual receptacle. Yet she wants to save him. As his outward composure of mystery and demand for control dissolve with some mental disarray, the reader realises long before Ana does that he is equally as needy, that despite himself he can only become the settled man he affects to be if he truly shares with another. It's fairy tale stuff by way of riding crops, blow jobs, and sex in lifts, but provides a conventional narrative, one that is - despite the sex - quite conservative and totally unthreatening. Fifty Shades doesn't have the sophistication and nuance of literary eroticism, but its author's black and white play with the libidinal energies tied up in gender relations connects it to an audience of a size most writers can but dream.

Godzilla's Love Letter to the US Military

Godzilla and I go back. When I were but a nipper in the early 80s, one of my favourite cartoons was this. I used to crouch by the family Betamax and flick the record switch before we left for the Satday morning shopping trip. However, in a confession what may strike a telling blow to my geek creds, I never bothered with the rubber-suited Japanese originals. They just didn't appeal. I did go and see the 1998 Hollywood reboot but it was all very meh. When you can remember the Godzilla toy egg merchandise better than the movie, you know you're dealing with something eminently forgettable. So expectations weren't too high when we went to the multiplex this afternoon to see the latest iteration.

Thankfully, 2014's Godzilla is miles ahead of the late 90s effort. It doesn't have Jamiroquai for a start. Totally mindless, of course. But beautiful mindlessness. As a top drawer blockbuster, it was a tour-de-force of perfect cinematography and special effects. The acting is never allowed to get in the way of the action, as hunt-the-monster gives way to scraps between Godzilla and the baddies. These are the MUTO monsters, giant creatures from the Earth's deep prehistory who consume radioactive materials. Reactors, nuclear warheads, they're cheese straws to these things. The plot, such as it is, involves stopping all three monsters before they lay waste to the USA's West Coast. Only very late in the day do the powers that be realise Godzilla is a good guy - as per the cartoon and original films.

One thing that fascinates about Hollywood is how it plays fast and loose with real tragedy for thrills and spills. The opening scene has a Japanese power station going into meltdown and collapse after a monster-induced earthquake hits. Fukushima much? Then when the beasties run wild in Honolulu, Vegas and San Francisco, collapsing and pulverised skyscrapers fall with the redolence of a certain pair of towers. However, it's long been observed that the profusion of over-the-top explosions in video games and anime is a trauma that's been working its way through Japanese culture since 1945. Have American studios been more willing to trash their cities since that September morning?

Naturally, there are a number of angles Godzilla could be read from. A cautionary tale of tampering with nature. Of the fear of the atom. Or if you want to get a bit religious, our gargantuan saviour is basically Raptor Jesus. Or are the MUTO's global capital run amok, and Godzilla the great scaly leviathan of Keynesian interventionism? There's something to be said for a feminist reading as well. The earthy Godzilla vs the pregnant MUTO and her weird cravings for fissile materials. And then there is the destruction of her brood by the masculine GI hero.

Ah, the army. You see, if Godzilla is anything, it's a $160m love letter to all three branches of the US military. This isn't because they're particularly effective. Just like the Japanese originals, the puny efforts of humans count for naught. MUTO monsters can take bazooka blasts to the face with nary a scratch. Depleted uranium-tipped shells fired point blank do nothing. You might as well launch candy floss. Nor do the military have a handle on the situation. Their plan is to lure the monsters 20 miles north of SanFran to nuke them, but it goes awry at every step. They're as helpless and they are hopeless. Not a great advert for the armed forces, you might think. On the contrary, the film is stuffed with vignettes of military courage. Faceless GIs are offed by the wagonloads. Ships, jets, helicopters, tanks - someone do a tally of the totalled hardware. But time after time, despite certain death, the military puts itself in harm's way. The MUTO monsters can disable electronics with their own EMP blasts, but still jet fighters fly at them. Ordinance is so much a minor irritation, but tanks and infantry interpose and fruitlessly fire away as those jaws chow down on their positions. The military does not stop. The scenes are slightly reminiscent of Spielberg's War of the Worlds. Taking on the baddies, be they radioactive behemoths or Martians, maybe hopeless for heroes, but they'll gladly do it.

You can't buy spin as good as this.

Robocop - The Official Trailer

Robocop was one of my very favourite movies when I was a kid. I can remember as soon as it came out on rental how practically everyone in my year at junior school just had to see it. But it was more than just the straight action and bad language, we loved the satirical cut scenes. And though we were all between 10 and 11 years of age, we got it.

Always looking for a franchise to reboot, Hollywood have decided to give Robocop the 21st century treatment. Behold:



Unfortunately, and I hate to say it, Robocop is looking decidedly crappy. The phrase 'made for TV' springs to mind as the quality of the acting and effects are, shall we say, decidedly lacking. And what about the satire? I think you'll find more social commentary in the decades-old computer game rendering of the original.

It looks like a poor effort, but we shall see.

RoboCop on the Sinclair Spectrum

It's autumn 1988. My cousins have handed down to me my first computer, a ZX Spectrum 48K. I have a little bit of money in my pocket and fancied something more current than the BombJack, JetPac and Deathchase fare that's had me bashing those infamous rubber keys. What to get? Rifling through the latest Speccy releases, I pick RoboCop up from the shelf. It all looks rather nice - the review in a recent C+VG saw the legendary Jazza Rignall award it 95%. Who was I to argue with such provenance?

RoboCop, published by the late and very much lamented Ocean was that rarest of gaming beasts - a film licence realised as a half-decent game. Released across the UK's big five computer formats - the Amiga, Atari ST, C64, CPC464/6128 and, of course, the Spectrum, the 16 bit efforts were conversions of the fun but unoriginal Data East coin-op. The 8 bit versions were also side-scrolling affairs, but were significantly different games from their technologically sophisticated brethren. These three formats were essentially the same game (though, for some inexplicable reason, you could jump in the C64 version). They mashed together levels inspired by the arcade and mini-games based around set-pieces from the film.

I assume most readers are familiar with the 1987 RoboCop movie. It was a low-budget but well-polished sci-fi action flick with a heavy dose of satire. And it was set in Detroit, so what's not to like? As films go, the points it makes about privatisation, violent culture, masculinity, cyborg bodies, and identity could and probably did fill several special issues of Screen. Unfortunately, the narrative depth and clever intellectual nods were always going to be difficult to realise in a video game, so Ocean didn't even try.

Basically, Spectrum RoboCop is an excuse for a jolly good blast. The levels consist of you as the eponymous hero strolling through a variety of monochrome locations shooting gun-toting, bike-riding and chainsaw-wielding thugs. Power ups are available in the form of a weedy three-way shot, a powerful laser gun, and an awesomely awesome Red Dwarf-style bazookoid. Unlike the film, RoboCop is far from invulnerable and hails of enemy bullets can drain the life meter, fast. Thankfully energy can be replenished by the jars of baby food scattered here and there.

Stitching the side-ways scrolling levels together are the aforementioned mini-games. The first recreates RoboCop's confrontation with a couple of would-be rapists (pictured). However, on this occasion you cannot shoot through her skirt. The second sees you emulate the facial-recognition scene by matching the face of a suspect with felons known to Detroit's Police Department. And the climax of the game is basically a rerun of the earlier level, albeit with the evil Dick Jones holding hostage OCP's 'Old Man'. Special mention has to go to ED 209. While it is a total push over in this iteration of RoboCop (I mean, only three punches to take it out? C'mon), this marked the first video game appearance of a villain who was "borrowed" extensively by many other game designers in subsequent years.

For the Speccy 48K it was relatively impressive. The graphics were very well drawn and the animation and scrolling was as smooth as the hardware allows. There was no awful colour clash nor bleeding of sprites into one another. The gameplay was solid and the loading time wasn't too bad. However, it was afflicted with a three-stage multi-load. If you were unfortunate enough to succumb on levels four through nine, to play again you had to flip the tape to reload the first three stages. It was a nightmare. Thankfully, there was none of this nonsense once I had upgraded to a Spectrum 128K +2a. You popped RoboCop into the tape deck and it loaded in one go. But it took such ... a ... long ... time. In fact, you had to put up with the Speccy's infamous whining and screeching for almost as long as it took you to complete the game.

But for 128K owners, it was well worth it. While visually no different from its 48K sibling, the soundtrack really knocked Speccy owners' socks off. For folk used to the feeble beeps 'n' bleeps of the 48K sound chip, the in-game music was almost up to C64 standards. And the title music was probably one of the best Speccy sound tracks ever. This original composition had something of an oriental flavour - a nod perhaps to the new Japanese consoles starting to menace the British computer scene? And it had sampled speech. Speech!

While RoboCop is a fun if brief slice of retro shooting fun, in many ways it exemplifies the difficulty writing about video games, and early games in particular. It is basically an utterly depthless experience. It is a simple shooting cum puzzle game sprinkled with the gold dust of a hot, licensed property. Only the rudiments of RoboCop's plot make the transition from celluloid to machine code. What was a funny, intelligent and subversive movie is rendered as an entertaining but forgettable computer game - pretty much like most of the 80s action films RoboCop subtly sends up. There are no secrets to discover, no alternate routes through the levels.

Like many film licenses of the 8 and 16 bit era, and this applies to computers and consoles, the plot of the franchise can be entirely incidental to the game. If you removed the RoboCop and ED 209 sprites, and dropped the facial recognition mini-game from the Speccy version, they could have easily been substituted for intellectual property from another licence, or form the basis for a completely original game. And here lies the crucial difference between what was the 'cultural dominant' in premium video game products then (the platformer/shooter) and now (the first-person shooter) - narrative was previously a bolt-on extra incidental to single-player video game experiences. Now, story lines are engineered in as a key part of a game's appeal. They are crucial to establishing the intellectual properties that compete for attention in the present action-oriented market place. It would be hard to write about the single player campaigns in Gears of War, Resistance: Fall of Man, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Killzone without the fictional worlds they explore. As for RobCop on the Spectrum, a narrative-driven analysis is utterly pointless. It was designed to cash-in on a popular flick, nothing more. But still, "I'd buy that for a dollar!"

Oblivion, or, The Ruins of Future Earth

Oblivion is the next Tom Cruise vehicle. It looks rather nice.

Tom Cruise is a silly man with even sillier beliefs. But he has appeared in some intelligent and relatively plausible science fiction flicks over the years, and this must count as his first foray into the post-apocalypse (War of the Worlds is firmly in 'apocalypse now' territory).

Oblivion is chock full of the sublime aesthetic of reclaimed, deserted cityscapes; and the ergonomically terrific death-dealing drones are suitably Apple-esque. It's the Futurist Manifesto on screen - a cinematic invitation to gawp at the beauty of war.

The plot, such as it is, appears a variation on the Morlock/Eloi theme with aliens and robotic hunter/killers thrown into the mix. Entirely coincidentally I'm sure, it could easily lend itself to a first-person shooter video game adaptation too.

It's due out next April. I think this blog will be going to the cinema then.

Smash TV for the Nintendo Entertainment System

Just as a broken clock is right twice a day, so it is that games companies renowned for manufacturing turgid crap occasionally put out the odd gem. And it came to pass in September 1991 that Acclaim released a fine title amidst their usual tranche of commercially high-profile but utterly abysmal games. That game was a conversion of the successful arcade hit Smash TV for the then-ageing (and now 30-year old) Nintendo Entertainment System.

As you can see from this short video, Smash TV is a kill-or-be-killed shooter in the mould of the classic 1982 Robotron 2084 coin-op. This is no accident - Smash TV first appeared in arcades as a re-boot designed and published by Williams, the creators of Robotron.

Smash TV slotted very nicely into the late 80s/early 90s action schlock that framed the cultural horizon of many a teenaged boy. Taking more than a leaf out of the silly Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle, The Running Man, you are a contestant in an ultra-violent game show. The basic aim is to move from room to room, blast away the waves of enemies the game throws at you and make your way to the obligatory end-of-level boss. Along the way you can pick up a variety of time-limited weapons and power-ups. You rack up the points by collecting cash and prizes - among which include holidays, VCR's, sit-on lawn mowers, and roadsters. All very Bullseye.

The NES version could never hope to hold a candle to the arcade original in terms of graphics and sound, but the gameplay is almost perfectly replicated. The developers really pushed the creaking hardware to ensure mobs of enemies appear on screen at once. At times it can be almost too much as club-wielding thugs, robots, and drones crowd in on you. But there is satisfaction to be had by running over a three-way shot or a rocket launcher and despatching the cloying hordes to silicon hell.

The only real gameplay gripe is the control system. If you have two pads (like me), you can use both - one to control the direction of travel and the other to aim your gun (replicating the dual joystick controls of the arcade). That is the best way to enjoy the game. If you have to rely on one, matters are slightly trickier - one button fires while the other shoots in the opposite direction. It does take some getting used to and works okayish, the results are still playable. However, for some reason a similar method did not work so well for Acclaim's abysmal ports to Sega's Mega Drive, Master System and Game Gear.

Smash TV is a game that relentlessly tests your reflexes. It requires very little in the way of thought, so it's not the easiest to get chin-strokey about (unlike more modern games). But perhaps a deep, subversive comment can be dug out from the NES game's bits 'n' bleeps.

Returning to The Running Man, the film has Arnie fighting the corrupt propaganda machine of corporate capitalism through a series of violently entertaining set-pieces. It's a theme well trodden in American culture - shit happens, and a hero resorts to guns and bullets to restore justice and get the girl back.

Smash TV is a peculiar departure from this tried and tested path. Unlike Arnold, who was a victim in the Running Man's universe, your anonymous character is a contestant. He is not fighting for his and others' freedom. You're guiding him waist-deep through gallons of guts for "BIG MONEY, BIG PRIZES" (as the garbled in-game speech puts it). In other words, the violence is just a means to acquisitive ends. Piling up the bodies = piling up the toasters. What Smash TV lays bare is commodity fetishism, in the non-Marxist sense; of the desire to own more and more stuff simply because owning more and more stuff is good. Given the mindless nature of the gameplay, you unthinkingly accept the parameters of the game to amass that all-important high score, up to and including running from one end of the room to the other to pick up the prize before it disappears - almost regardless of the enemies mobbing you. Your lives (you can acquire up to nine) are entirely subordinate to a process of accumulation that measures success in cash and property collected.

Who knew a little-remembered shoot 'em up on the NES could offer an apposite diagnosis of the psychology of consumer capitalism in the early 90s?

NES Smash TV is available on various emulators. Or, if you're sad (like me), you can trying hunting the original down on cartridge at a car boot sale near you.

A contemporary review can be read here.

Stephenie Meyer: Marxist

A guest post from Brother G on capitalism and vampires in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight. Fangs for the post comrade, this issue's been driving me batty.

Much has been said about the cultural phenomenon that is the Twilight series. Literary critics have snubbed the books for their turgid, uninspired prose. Feminists have attacked the plot as demeaning claptrap which digs up the helpless damsel cliche to stand alongside its undead love interest. And horror fans bemoan the decline of the vampire from demonic creatures of the night to glittering, emo pansies. Despite the assaults that Stephenie Meyer’s novels attract from all sides, shelves continue to empty and cinemas fill up as hordes of teenage girls and the occasional adult who should know better lap up Hollywood's favourite inter-species love triangle.

But amongst all of this, there lies a possibility that remains unexplored. Many have been quick to attack such minor literary misdemeanors as writing style and plot, that the most important point has been lost. I speak, of course, of the fact that Twilight is not merely a teenage gothic romance, but a deep and scathing allegorical critique of capitalist ideology.

It was Karl Marx himself who once said that ‘Capital is dead labour, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks’. Like the nocturnal miscreants who feed off the inhabitants of Forks, capitalism preys upon the working class for their labour power in order to prolong its survival. It is through the reification of human beings, their descent into mere cogs in the machine (or mere flesh in the diet) that advanced capitalism reaches its exploitative apex.

However, capitalism has evolved significantly since the days of the industrial revolution. The creation of the welfare state, the erosion of collective industry and compact workplaces, all these factors have altered the dynamic of labour relations. Paulo Virno, in A Grammar Of The Multitude describes this new dynamic of labour relations as post-Fordist. In the post-Fordist world of advanced capitalism, the division of life and production has become blurred to the point that in many ways life is the very outcome of production. This is exacerbated by the rise of immaterial labour, in which the ‘product’ of labour is no longer a physical product but rather immaterial products such as knowledge, information, a relationship or an emotional response.

One effect of this is to obscure the exploitation inherent to capitalism, by negating the traditional imagery of factories and mines for the soft, flexible labour relations of the 21st century. While theorists such as Virno and Negri have documented this transition within the narrow confines of academia, it was left to the genius of Stephenie Meyer to demonstrate this transformation in simple imagery.

Before:

After:

After 100 days of a coalition government intent on slashing public services and reasserting the dominance of the ruling class, it is easy for socialists to be downhearted. But despite our woes, we can sleep easy in the knowledge that the shallow rhetoric of the Big Society will never grace the Teenage Bestseller chart of Waterstones. And as Stephenie Meyer takes her rightful place alongside Marx, Lenin et al., we in the Werewolf Labour movement can hold our heads high and know that we have the ideas and the literary mastery to bite back.

Join me again next week when I’ll be discussing the pros and cons of appointing Dan Brown as the new ambassador to the Vatican.