Articles by Danny Rupp
Danny works professionally as an architect and serves as managing editor here at CH, which means he shares many of the duties of being an editor but without the fame and recognition. He also writes about RPGs, videogames, movies, and TV. He is married to Sucilaria, and has a personal blog at Incorrect Blitz Input. (Email Danny or follow him on Twitter).
Don't Believe the Anti-Hype
No Random Encounter this week, I’m too busy prepping for next week’s excellence!
‘Nerd Culture’ is a very unique thing; we place much of our spirits upon movies and games, the things which entertain us the most. We become inextricably attached to these things, and we grow to love or nurture them, investing a part of ourselves in them as much as any of the people who have worked to create them. All of these emotions invariably build up to a fall. We’ve seen it time and time again. The Star Wars prequels could not have possibly lived up to the standards they were being held to over generations of anticipation and speculation. They could have been excellent movies, far better and culturally significant then they turned out, but not matter what it would have been impossible for them to fulfill everything they needed to. This is not always the case, however, as many franchises of movies and video games have proven to live up to or even exceed the expectations placed upon them. You can’t always believe the hype, but you should be just as skeptical of the anti-hype.
One of the most common situations this happens with is a franchise. A game becomes so popular that it warrants a sequel, and the quality only continues to improve to the point where you get a series of excellent games all based around similar ideas, characters, or settings. One of the longest running franchises in video games is Final Fantasy. Many of you may remember this, but when an early demo of the latest game Final Fantasy XII was released, public opinion was very withdrawn and hesitant. Many people even went so far as to say it was terrible, and that they’d lost all hope for the final game. Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade were very vocal about the combat system being a travesty, and that they considered the demo to be absolutely horrible. [Read the rest of this article]
300 Week
I figure we might as well call this 300 week, as nearly every post will apparently be about the movie in some way! I wanted to share a couple of the very funny parody images I’d seen around the net, if you find more please share them and I’ll add them in!
Edit by TheGame: The Beat provides us with even more Sparta madness, including this one:
Edit by Bartoneus: Still more hilarity, from AngryZenMaster. Thanks Jami!
Inq. of the Week: For Violence!
Last week’s Inquisition turned out a bit skewed, as some one/thing decided to spam vote for Superman 24 times in a row one morning. Adjusting for this, the end results included 46 votes and I’d like to thank everyone who voted (and didn’t cheat) for participating! It turns out the most of you (28%) would like to see Mr. Twinked Drizzt see a timely end, with Supes and James T. Kirk tied for second place, followed closely by whiney-boy Rand and the unkillable Wolverine in third.
For this week, due to the forgerous events of last week’s poll, we’re going with a classic Inquisition. After seeing 300 on the friday night that it opened, we were strolling out of the theater quite pleased when I noticed an odd pair exiting with us. There I beheld a middle-aged mother walking out of the same theater as us, with a no-more-than 10 year old girl beside her. A flurry of emotions, most of which was disgust, flooded through my mind as I contemplated, “Did that girl really just sit there and watch that movie?”
“Did that mother really just bring her daughter to that movie?!”
These are both quite fair questions, which I’m sure most people would ask (some angrier than others), but they really made me think. I’m the kind of person who grew up watching movies rated for people years older then I was. Predator, Aliens, Terminator, Total Recall, these were the things that I watched through middle school and on. Yes, both of my parents really like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I’m not even going to link his wiki or imdb profiles, because you know who he is. I started to feel like a hypocrite, having grown up watching movies far too violent, sex-filled, and vulgar for my age I don’t seem to have turned out any the more socially-deviant.
There are some clear parallels between this and a lot of the hoo-la-hah going on in the videogame industry, pertaining to the ESRB, politicians, and angry parents the world over. It all leads to the most simple question:
Who’s responsible for censoring what children see/read/play?
Perhaps as a sub-question, possibly even a more important one, does violence/sex definitely cause damage to children? Can parents temper this with life-lessons, morals, or simply the understanding that what’s being viewed is fictitious and wrong? I feel that most sensible people agree it is the parent’s responsiblity to control what their children are exposed to, BUT is that said with the unspoken understanding that they’re supposed to prevent their children from seeing the “bad stuff” entirely?
Antarctica: Explored
The Washington Post has put up a very interesting article about one of the Earth’s most over-looked continents, Antarctica. What you will find at the site is a collection of breath-taking images of snow, rock, blue skies, and explorers as well as videos and sound bites from the expedition. Many of which end up looking digitally altered due to the empty and open views created of raw, natural landscapes.
Also of note is the excellent flash presentation of the content, with excellent UI and decent load times it really stands out to me as top-notch. The ability to skip a slideshow and instead scroll through images at your leisure is necessary these days, and I was happy to find it here. In addition there are details of each image to explain precisely what you’re looking at. The entire site really lets you know that Antarctica is one of the most beautiful, and still supremely natural, places left on the planet. While man might go there, with a population of 4,000 in the summer months and only 1,000 during the winter, it will be quite a long time before we’ve managed to desolate it.
There is a lot of fantastical imagery that I really did not expect to see, and I hope you all enjoy it!
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/science/interactives/antarctica/index.html
Nostradamus Called It
A quickie for this week, which disheartens me because of the last two weeks missed, bringing my tally for the year to -3 comics from the goal. I keep not illusions of necessarily ending the year in the positive, simply an improvement over last year will suit me well enough, but I wouldn’t have set the goal if I didn’t want to accomplish it. The thing we sometimes call ‘real life’ craps all over my shite sometimes, but I had a not-so mysterious revelation two weeks ago. When I was frustrated and emotional about life, I got to work and took 5 minutes to write up a quick post on here and share something I’d found, then to great bravado I found that simply writing anything on here had made me feel 5x better. Suddenly the clouds parted, light shone down, and the tiny light-bulb that often glitters but rarely shines took alight. I had realized my motivations for continuing with Critical Hits no matter what was happening in life at the time, it’s because I truly enjoy doing it. I feel that I get more out of it then ever could have been expected, and I hope in the future you all may get as much out of it as I do somehow.
WoW Action Figures Update
To tide you over until the Random Encounter is up later today, I wanted to fulfill one of my promises made back in early February. I said that I would post images of the World of Warcraft action figures as soon as they came out, but as I don’t visit the WoW homepage very often I must have missed the release last week. I highly suggest going over to DC Unlimited’s website and checking out the images of the first four figures from the line.
This first series includes Thargas Anvilmar the Dwarf Warrior, Rehgar Earthfury the Orc Shaman, Valeera Sanguinar the Blood Elf Rogue, and Meryl Felstorm the Undead Warlock (pictured). Overall the figures all look awesome, and I’m thoroughly impressed with DC Unlimited’s work. The weapons and armor chosen for each figure are creative and interesting to look at, and hopefully they deliver on the highly detailed yet inexpensive trend that has blessed action figures lately. I was surprised that they picked a Blood Elf as one of the first releases considering the race is extremely new to the game, but I assume it’s also one of the most popular ones. With the promise mentioned in my last post of “special edition” figures of a Dranei Paladin and Illidan Stormrage I have high hopes for where DC Unlimited can take the line of figures.
The figures are set to be released on October 24th, 2007. You can see some less-dramaticized images here.
Can't Wait for Spiderman 3
My lovely wife pointed the way to some IMDb boards (login necessary) with some killer sneak peaks at Topher Grace as Venom. I’ve been curious since the villains were announced what Venom in physical form would end up looking like, and it appears that now I have my first good glimpses. The IMDb boards point to this photo gallery where you can see several shots of Topher in makeup and looking particularly Eddie Brock-esque, moreso than I bet a lot of people imagined he could.
I was actually sad to find out that he was completely missing from all of the early trailers, but fortune smiled on us when we went to see 300 and the Spiderman 3 trailer (which was rumored to have been pulled from the premiere) came on! The trailer was exciting enough without the last 30 seconds where you see an angry Eddie Brock being covered in the black ooze, and then a scene with Spidey looking around all scared and a killer ending with the faintest glimpse of the V-man.
I’ve read a lot of people who are enraged that they decided to give not only Spidey’s black suit webbing, but also Venom. I, on the other hand, think this is a brilliant decision because it provides the actor/costume a much better three-dimensional presence on screen, and allows for movement to be clearer and more visual then simply a black blob of mass appearing on screen. When you consider the differences between movies and comics, the decision makes a lot of sense. A black mass of ink on a page really gets the idea across, but on screen and in motion a large mass of solid color can suck your eyes in and prevent the viewer from focusing on anything else that is going on.
Webbing aside, it looks like the makeup and costume departments have really gone all out and hit the characters of Eddie Brock and Venom dead on. Not to mention the confirmation that Venom will, in fact, be in the movie for a decent amount of time!
You can see some more of the shots after the break.
A Bucket of Bolts Mailbox
Thanks to Jami over at his blog AZM for posting this one; I just couldn’t pass up posting it. Apparently the USPS is celebrating Star Wars’ 30th anniversary by unleashing a mob of R2-D2 mailboxes, which if nothing else look pretty darn interesting.
“There are 80-something postal districts around the country, most of which are getting four of the R2D2 boxes each, so figure 320 or so of these will be spread out across the nation.”
“People won’t be seeing R2D2 on every corner. They will be placed in high-traffic, highly visible locations.”
“hopefully fans will remember that these are real mail boxes, with real mail inside, and will face a serious federal offense if they try to steal one.”
(via TheForce.net)
Hopefully not too many rabid fans will be imprisoned due to attempting to snatch one of these things, then again if they actually succeed I’d say they earned it. I think Jami is spot on when he suggests that the USPS will be auctioning them off at the end of the celebration, but you won’t see me bidding for one. Even though they are quite cool, I just can’t imagine wanting or needing one in the end. You can see more images of them here, and I am very curious where in the area they will actually end up (if at all).
Inq. of the Week: Sparta!
Last week we decided to test another actor vs. self poll, between Saruman the White, Dracula, and Count Dooku. Out of 30 votes, it looks like 40% of you chose Saruman, 40% chose Dracula, with the remaining piddly 20% going to Dooku. I have to agree, while some readers questioned the abilities and frailties of good old fellow Dracul, having personally read both books concerned I’d say the tie is warranted.
This week, with the movie 300 released on Friday and skyrocketing to a $70 million opening weekend, we ask:
"The City is Afraid of Me."
Thanks to TheMainEvent, who showed me this excellent news. Apparently in a trailer for 300 (which I’ll be seeing tonight around 8:15) there is a hidden image of some importance. The image appears at 1 minute 52 seconds (3:38 in reverse time) into the youtube uncut and extended trailer.
Yep, that’s right! It’s pretty much unmistakable as Rorschach from the Watchmen comic.
The image seems to be of Rorshach… a major character from WATCHMEN, Zach Snyder’s next project. Although – there seems to be some question about whether or not that image is genuine.
Well, I guarantee you it is. At Butt-Numb-A-Thon, Zach let me have a peek at his iPod, where that image was stored at the time, with a good deal more images, that I didn’t get a peek at. After BNAT – I asked Zach if I could have a copy of that image for my personal desktop, and Zach being the sweetheart he is, gave in – asking that I not post it, til a later date. Given he’s snuck the image onto YouTube, I guess he won’t mind if I give y’all a better peek.
(via Aintitcool news)
You can see the high-res, excellent quality image at aintitcool – here. What this better quality image provides is a clearer look at the classic Watchmen badge on Rorschach’s coat, which pretty much eliminates ANY doubt (if you still had any at this point). Don’t get too excited, this is just one of the test shots that the director has done in preparation for the film, but still it’s pretty bad ass, and very cool of him to sneak it in there.
