Every story has a cast of characters that we follow and watch and come to love… but what about the background characters? The nameless masses who rarely get our attention? This column examines my favorite background characters who deserve a moment in the spotlight.
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The Game:
‘Wolfenstein II – The New Colossus’
The Character:
A tip-toeing Nazi soldier.
The Scene:
(The soldier appears at 2:03)
Why He Deserves A Moment In The Spotlight
In the opening of 2017’s, ‘Wolfenstein: The New Colossus,’ the player’s enormous U-boat hideout is boarded by dozens of Nazi commandos intent on killing him and his allies. At one point, the player meets up with Set, a Jewish scientist, who defends both of them with the use of a microwave-lined hallway, which obliterates multiple Nazis as they blindly run through it. But near the end, one soldier realizes that something’s not right about the hallway and stops to consider his next course of action, which is to carefully – and hilariously – tippy-toe through the hallway… only to be blown up like everyone else.
The common Nazi in ‘The New Colossus’ exists (as they rightfully should) to be mowed down by the hundreds. Players expect them to be little more than cannon fodder, which makes moments like these great because it gives individual soldiers a little personality and makes them stand out in a crowd of characters we’re conditioned not to care about… but because this soldier’s still part of the most monstrous regime ever to exist in human history, we laugh at his explosive death instead of mourning him, because f*** Nazis.
We all have our favorite moments in movies, books, and games, moments that stay with us long after the story is over. This column is my attempt to examine my favorite moments and see why they stick with me.
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The Video
Why it’s great
Nothing story related today; we could all use a laugh, and kazoos make everything better; they can take the most emotional, most stirring, and most heart-wrenching songs and instantly turn them into comedic gold, and God only knows we need more kazoos in a time of rising authoritarianism, a worldwide pandemic, and mother nature conspiring to murder us all.
With that said, here’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’ but with kazoos. I hope it’s played at my funeral.
Super Mario Brothers. The Legend of Zelda. Doom. Metal Gear Solid: throughout the history of video games, certain titles have risen to the top as the titans of the field, champions who will be immortalized forevermore by history. But one title has long been forgotten, one that deserves to be remembered among the likes of Super Mario 64, Duke Nukem, and Grand Theft Auto:
The Flowers of Robert Mapplethorpe.
Released for the Philips CD-i in 1992, The Flowers of Robert Mapplethorpe is a boring, barely-interactive wondrous experience that catalogs Robert Mapplethorpe’s flower photography, allowing us, the unlucky viewers, to admire them at our leisure. After all, after a long, hard, day at work in a soul-crushing job, who wouldn’t want to come home, turn on a video game console, and watch pictures of flowers for hours on end?
So relax, settle down, and join me as we contemplate and admire the virtues of one of the greatest video games ever created by mankind, and what its blessings can do to enrich our efforts to craft stories of beauty and wisdom.
What does the story do well?
It’s simple and focused
The mark of a great story is that it can be summed up in one sentence. The Flowers of Robert Mapplethorpe can be described as, “Enter a virtual museum to learn about and admire a collection of flower photographs.” It’s not flashy, it’s not complex, but it’s a streamlined story that’s easy to understand follow with no fat or unnecessary subplots that need to be trimmed.
It shows the timeless partnership of rock and elegant music
There are many different types of museums around the world – bare ones, colorful ones, and ones decorated to match a certain period in history. The Flowers of Robert Mapplethorpe takes the timeless combination of grey rock with the eternal grace of classical music. If we, as writers, are looking to create a memorable museum for our characters to wander through, we should remember that a simple venue of stone and music can be the most effective, rather than something over-designed that takes away from the priceless art and artifacts on display.
It takes a comedic subject with the utmost seriousness
The Flowers of Robert Mapplethorpe’s greatest virtue is that treats photographs of flowers with the utmost seriousness. From the classical music to the curator trying his hardest to make photographs of flowers interesting instructing us in Mapplethorpe’s use of color and light, the whole game is insane a delight. Yet, this formula of a museum, classical music, and serious curators can be applied to any number of silly subjects to great effect. Consider the sequels we never got:
The mops of Robert Mapplethorpe
The toilet plungers of Robert Mapplethorpe
The flaming oil drums of Robert Mapplethorpe
Now, visualize people in a story wandering the sacred halls of exhibits and admiring these subjects with Beethoven playing softly through the speakers. The image is delightfully absurd and plays with the cliched-but-fun trope of fine art being incomprehensible and/or ludicrous.
What could have been done to improve the story?
Mention Mapplethorpe’s extensive BDSM photography
If you’ve never heard of Mr. Mapplethorpe, you’d be forgiven for thinking that his career consisted entirely of flower photographs. But in reality, most of his work was focused on BDSM pictures, many of which included himself. For obvious reasons, The Flowers of Robert Mapplethorpe doesn’t mention this, but it makes the whole game funnier when you think that the photographer spent most of his time photographing gay men wearing bondage gear. The contrast between such different subjects (with classical music, no less) is hilarious. Too bad the Phillips CD-i was never blessed with The BDSM photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe
Include some sort of action involving the flowers
While the elegance, beauty, and grace of the game cannot be denied, it also cannot be denied that it’s… well, not the most engrossing of video games to play as you click from one photograph to the next. This could have been avoided if there had been a campaign mode where you sent Mr. Mapplethorpe’s flowers into battle against giant robots, or something. That alone would have turned this into the greatest video game ever.
Conclusion
Though it is one of the most ludicrous videogames ever made not the most exciting videogame, The Flowers of Robert Mapplethorpe is a shining example of how taking the most boring mundane subjects with the respect and seriousness you’d find in a fine art gallery is comedic gold. Yet, we must not also forget there there needs to be some sort of context or reason for people to pursue instead of the simple pleasure of looking at pictures when playing a videogame. If the game was about, say, a highly-trained operative traveling the world to rescue the stolen photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe from North Korea, Al-Qaeda, escaped Nazis, and other nefarious forces to return them to the museum, it would have been much more interesting to play.
Perhaps one day, The Flowers of Robert Mapplethorpe will be given a high-definition treatment to upgrade the graphics, the presentation, and finally allow a new generation of gamers to experience the beauty of flowers. But until that day comes, we can be content with the lessons it teaches storytellers… and admire the flowers, too.
When it comes to fan theories, nothing’s off-limits. Are the characters in a show all dead? Are they aliens? Is everything happening in the show a dream? Is Jar Jar Binks a Sith lord who secretly masterminded the events of the entire Star Wars saga? There’s no limit to the creativity that fans can come up with, which leads to one of my favorite theories: that Rexy – the Tyrannosaurus Rex from the first ‘Jurassic Park’ film – is God.
No, of course not. It’s ludicrous. But for the fun of it, let’s take a look and see what conclusions we can draw, based on the evidence seen in the films.
In analyzing this theory, we need to lay out some ground rules about God. The most common characteristics of God are:
*God is everywhere.
*God is all-powerful and can do anything.
*God knows everything.
We also need to figure out what God wants. This is perhaps one of the most unanswerable of all questions, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s guess that God wants us to be good to each other. Therefore, we can assume that if God did come down to earth and took physical form, God would spend the lifespan of that body trying to help people live better lives and become more moral and fair.
Now, let’s apply all of these interpretations to Rexy, starting with God’s traits.
1. Is Rexy everywhere at once? No; she can be confined to paddocks, cages, etc.
2. Is Rexy all-powerful? No; she can break through fences, is quite strong, and surprisingly healthy as an old individual (Rexy is about 30 years old in ‘Fallen Kingdom’; the oldest known T-rex, Trix, died around the same age), but she cannot fly, shoot lasers out of her eyeballs, or summon black holes at will.
3. Does Rexy know everything? No. Rexy may be intelligent enough to test an electric fence when its power goes out, cooperate with other dinosaurs to kill even bigger and more dangerous dinosaurs, and destroy important objects that evil people want or need, but she is still distracted by flares and flashlights swung about by obnoxious children.
On the surface, these three points prove that Rexy is not God. To further prove this, let’s take a look at what she does in all the films:
‘Jurassic Park’
*Hides from the tour group
*Breaks out of her paddock after the power goes out
*Attempts to eat Tim and Lex
*Destroys one tour vehicle and shoves another off a cliff
*Gets distracted by a flare
*Injures Ian Malcom
*Eats a lawyer
*Sniffs Grant and Lex, but doesn’t eat them when she easily could
*Chases Ellie Sattler, Robert Muldon, and Ian Malcom in the jungle, presumably to get them out of her territory
*Eats a gallimimus.
*Saves Alan, Ellie, Tim, and Lex in the visitor center, which allows them to escape the island
‘Jurassic World’
*Eats a goat in her enclosure
*Follows Claire out of her paddock without trying to eat her
*Battles the Indominous Rex
*Gets injured fighting the Indominous Rex
*Teams up with Blue the velociraptor to defeat the Indominous Rex by shoving it towards the Mosasaurus paddock, where it is eaten
*Allows Blue to live, despite their species being mortal enemies
*Roars at the abandoned park.
‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’
*Attacks a team of mercenaries trying to salvage a DNA sample of the Indominous Rex.
*Tries to yank down a helicopter with said mercenaries as they try to escape.
*Allows the Mosasaurus to escape from Jurassic World and enter the open ocean
*Saves Owen from a Carnotaurus.
*Survives the eruption of Mt. Sibo and the destruction of Isla Nublar
*Seemingly attacks Owen after he and Claire take some of her blood to save Blue
*Eats a goat after arriving at the Lockwood Estate
*Eats Mills who wants to sell dinosaurs on the black market
*Destroys the only DNA sample of the Indominous Rex.
*Roars at a lion in a zoo.
Are these the actions of an incarnated god? No. Rexy destroyed the tour vehicles because they were unfamiliar objects and she considered them a threat. She attacked the Indominous because it was in her territory, and she ate Mills because he was easy prey.
However, it’s interesting to note that, starting with her saving Alan and the others in the visitor’s center, Rexy’s behavior starts to become more heroic as the films go on. If Rexy was God, then it’s logical that she would become a force for justice and righteousness. And with those facts in mind, let’s take another look at her narrative through the series, but rewritten to make her a divine being.
In ‘Jurassic Park,’ Rexy, having been sent by God to act as an embodiment of justice, has grown up and has been placed into a paddock, where she bides her time until she can break free and judge the humans on Isla Nublar. Finally getting her chance when the power goes out, she tests the fence and, confirming that there’s no electricity, escapes. She attacks Lex and Tim, but only because their yells and screeches annoy her. She turns her attention to Malcom, but upon realizing that he was only trying to save the children, she spares his life, and then, realizing how greedy Gennaro is, promptly eats him. She has the chance to easily eat Lex and Grant, but realizing that Grant is only trying to save the children, decides to spare the two. She thinks about trying to eat Tim, but decides to just get rid of them all by forcing them down into the jungle.
Later, she pursues Ellie, Robert, and Ian through the jungle to maintain her cover as an animal, while testing their will to survive. Deciding that they’re worthy, she lets them live.
After roaming the island and eating a gallimimus, she then realizes that the remaining humans on the island are innocent and in danger, and saves them from the pack of raptors at the visitor’s center, ensuring that they can escape to safety.
In ‘Jurssic World,’ Rexy – having been captured and put on display as a zoo exhibit – has allowed the humans to keep her like this, as she knows her presence delights other humans and helps educate them about the wonders of the animal kingdom. Plus, she gets free food, good medical care, and daily exercise and mental stimulation, so it’s a sweet deal.
When the Indominous breaks out, she decides to remain in her paddock to see what humanity will do. Throughout the day, she carefully observes as they try to contain the dinosaur, and then save as many people as they can, and decides that the surviving humans are worth saving. Thus, when Claire finally releases her, Rexy attacks the Indominous without a second thought, seeing it as an abomination to the natural order that must be destroyed.
However, having not gotten into any fights in over twenty years, Rexy is quickly overpowered and almost killed, but manages to turn the tide, thanks to Blue’s intervention. Knowing that she lacks the physical strength to kill the Indominous herself, she instead cunningly pushes it back to the Mosasaurus pen, allowing the larger beast to finish it off. With the battle won, she debates whether to kill Blue, but, seeing as how she, too, is an innocent, she spares her and departs, allowing the humans on the island to flee.
Two years later, however, not all is well. While on a routine patrol in search of evil, Rexy realizes that a group of people have arrived. Hiding in the shadows, she studies them, only to quickly realize that they are mercenaries who have come for a grave and evil purpose: Retrieving a sample of the long-dead Indominous Rex. Furious, she deems them unworthy to live and attacks, trying to bring down their helicopter so she can destroy the sample, taking care to release the Mosasaurus as a backup plan. But unfortunately, she fails, and the Mosasaurus is unable to destroy it, allowing the mercenaries to escape.
Later, during the eruption of Mt. Sibo, Rexy comes across Owen, Claire, and Franklin. Recognizing that all three are fighting to save dinosaurus and live up to their responsibility as their creators and protectors, Rexy saves them all from a carnotaurus.
She allows herself to be captured by yet another mercenary group, pretending to be angry so she can keep up her disguise. When onboard the ship, she’s drugged; upon awakening when she has her blood drawn, she’s confused and angry, and roars at Owen and Claire, briefly attempting to injure Owen as punishment for taking her blood without permission. However, he escapes unharmed.
Rexy decides not to pursue the matter further, as she needs to bide her time for her bigger mission: Finding the Indominus Rex DNA sample, and bringing justice to those who want to create more abominations against God.
Eventually, Rexy arrives at the Lockwood Estate, but can only observe and study what’s going on around her. After managing to escape, she brings justice upon Mills for both murdering Lockwood and selling dangerous dinosaurs and dinosaur genetics to the black market by eating him, and then destroying the Indominus Rex sample, ensuring that no one else will ever be able to use it again.
And so, with her task completed, she sets out into the world to continue her divine mission of justice, which we’ll have to wait until 2021 to see.
While the idea that Rexy is God is still ludicrous, the idea that Rexy is divine actually might have some merit. When viewed through the mindset that she’s a divine being sent to enact justice, Rexy’s actions throughout the films, especially ‘World’ and ‘Fallen Kingdom’ give the theory some credence.
Although it’s highly unlikely to become official cannon, I like to think that Rexy is some sort of avenging angel who inhabits the body of a T-Rex and brings justice to all those who defy the natural order, or do harm to others. And indeed, throughout the series, all the humans who are either innocent or good survive every encounter with Rexy, while those who do evil or are greedy meet their demise.
This may be a goofy idea, an implausible one, and something that someone with too much time on their hands comes up with, but it does allow for subsequent viewings of the ‘Jurassic’ films to take on a new light, and help us see them in a new, unexpected way.
We all have our favorite moments in movies, books, and games, moments that stay with us long after the story is over. This column is my attempt to examine my favorite moments and see why they stick with me.
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The Video
Why it’s great
Back in the 90’s, soda ads sometimes went all-out in an attempt to convince consumers how awesome it is to guzzle down a high-fructose corn syrup-ladden carbinated beverage drink. Most of these ads have fallen by the wayside, but I recently had the pleasure of discovering this commercial, and the unimaginably devoted wife who has to go through a ridiculous amount of obstacles to get her soft drink. Still, the impressive production values makes it one heck of an entertaining quest.
We all have our favorite moments in movies, books, and games, moments that stay with us long after the story is over. This column is my attempt to examine my favorite moments and see why they stick with me.
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The Video
‘What if Anakin Liked Sand?’
Why it’s great
One of my favorite storytelling tropes in fiction is the classic, ‘What if?’, where a an already told story is told again, but with different changes:
*What if the protagonist was evil, and the antagonist good?
*What if the protagonist died before the first act?
*What if the bad guy won?
While comics have been playing with this idea for years, Star Wars has done it only sporadically, with a series of comics that re-imagines the original trilogy with some considerable changes, and an adaptation of George Lucas’ original script. But while all of them are straightforward ‘What if?’ ideas, the video above takes a more comedic approach by playing with what is arguably the goofiest line of dialogue in any Star Wars media:
and turning it into a fairly in-depth discussion about how the Star Wars saga would unfold if Anakin liked… no, loved sand.
What I like about this video is the concept. It’s one thing to do a what-if story based on a serious idea, but rarely do we see one done as a joke around how the most feared Sith Lord in the universe hates sand, and it’s even rarer to see one that’s not only funny (Anakin’s love of sand prevents the Empire from ever coming to power), but somewhat plausible… in a very tongue-in-cheek fashion, of course.
We all have our favorite moments in movies, books, and games, moments that stay with us long after the story is over. This column is my attempt to examine my favorite moments and see why they stick with me.
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The video:
Why it’s great:
A while back, I highlighted a video about a guy who was furious at his subpar Pokemon identification skills… but what if that guy was everyone’s favorite rage-duck?
We all have our favorite moments in movies, books, and games, moments that stay with us long after the story is over. This column is my attempt to examine my favorite moments and see why they stick with me.
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The video:
Why it’s great:
While it’s always fun to imagine crossovers with our favorite stories and characters, one crossover that’s rarer is to imagine a writer or director doing a famous film or book and adding their own unique touches to it, such as:
What if George Lucas directed ‘Gone with the Wind’?
What if Steven Spielberg directed ‘Robot Monster’?
What if Michael Bay directed a Teletubbies movie?
Thanks to this hilarious video by PistolShrimps on Youtube, we get a glimpse of what might have happened if JJ Abrams, Mr. Lucas and Mr. Bay directed 1997’s ‘Titanic’. The result: there’d be a heck of a lot more digital effects, lens flares, and explosions (oh gosh, that chair).
We all have our favorite moments in movies, books, and games, moments that stay with us long after the story is over. This column is my attempt to examine my favorite moments and see why they stick with me.
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The movie:
‘The Fate of the Furious’
The scene:
Why it’s great:
There comes a point in every action franchise where the laws of physics are thrown out the window in favor of crazy action scenes that strive to be as fun as possible. The Fast and Furious franchise has gotten to that point, having gone from a simple movie about Vin Diesel participating in illegal street racing, to a movie about Vin Diesel outracing a nuclear submarine, and then proceeding to destroy said submarine with a car.
Imperfect Glass 