Clearing Out My Movie Backlog

Let’s see, we’ve got a couple of documentaries, a couple of holiday specials, and then a stack of superhero/action films.

Earthbound USA - A Kickstarter-funded “biopic” about the founders and denizens of Starman.net, the American fans of Earthbound and the Mother series as a whole. It’s particularly interesting to me as a fan of the game that only had a very peripheral connection to this group (who were all around my age) who formed a strong enough community in the late 90s on this website that they’re still friends today. This isn’t about the games or the making of the games, mind you, and if you want to learn more about the fan-translation of Mother 3 you’re better off with Clyde “Tomato” Mandelin’s book about it. This is about the fans that grew up excited about this series that, back in the day, we got so little of and so many disappointments around. The one big revelation to me was that Tomato apparently got an anonymous letter claiming to be from an industry insider begging him not to release his fan-translation because it would kill the series—and it made me wonder what the hell that guy was smoking or trying to accomplish, given that the fan translation is probably the only reason people are still talking about the series at all.

The Orange Years: The Nickelodeon Story - A documentary about Nickelodeon, from its humble beginnings buying a Canadian show called “You Can’t Do That On Television” through 15 years of original content—or basically, through the entire period when I was aware of it as a network, because I was a key generation for their content. I recognized every single program that was discussed, either because I watched them or my younger sister did. It’s very common for a documentary to feature people gushing about the quality of something; but it’s rare that I consistently nod along with, “Yeah, you’re right, that was brilliant!” Double Dare, Hey Dude, Salute Your Shorts, Pete & Pete, Clarissa Explains It All, the original NickToons, the SNICK lineup—they had some amazing stuff, and apparently the creators had a great time making it. This comes highly recommended if you were a Nickelodeon fan back in the day.

Family Swap - The parents and kids in a family switch bodies at Christmas and must learn to see things from each others’ perspectives. A trope-tastic holiday mess with talented actors hamming up the script exactly as intended. Do you like embarrassment comedy? Because there’s plenty of that. I think my favorite bit was when they discover they’ve swapped bodies and then rattle off a half-dozen other movies where a kid ends up in an adult body or vice-versa; though the dad’s band being named “Dad Or Alive” was a close second.

A Biltmore Christmas – A screenwriter charged with writing the remake of a classic holiday romance gets to time-travel to the original set and learn why the original movie had a happy ending—and find romance along the way, of course. A Hallmark holiday movie we watched because there were Star Trek actors in it: Jonathan Frakes does a workaday job as the hotel proprietor who clearly knows more than he’s letting on; Bob Picardo was clearly on set for one day to chew scenery and have fun. This is formulaic, it’s not particularly witty or memorable, but it’s by no means bad.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 - Another too-long Marvel movie, though it does bring nice closure to the stories of the various characters. (Well, mostly Rocket, but it does bring Drax, Mantis, Nebula and Gamora back around to good places, too. And I honestly don’t really care about Quill.) And Adam Warlock, woo-whee did he get the worst treatment of a “cosmic hero” character I’ve ever seen.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts - Another prequel to the Bay series of movies, this takes place in the mid-90s and the main character development for the series is Optimus learning to trust humans. Clearly made by someone who loves 90s hip-hop music (which drives the score of the film), this was aimed at a minority audience. Our squishy humans are both people of color; and Mirage gets to be the most prominent non-Optimus Transformer, and he spends his entire intro scene acting out “fuck the police” in a car chase scene. Airazor is the only Maximal who really gets any development (and then she dies to show us how terrible Scourge is); Rinox and Cheetor barely get lines, much less personalities. Was this a waste of my beloved Beast Wars cast? Absolutely. Were the action scenes cool? Also absolutely—and unlike anything Michael Bay ever filmed, you could actually tell what was going on!

Aquaman - My dad’s original assessment was that every VFX artist in California must have worked on this, and I definitely agree—this is a fancy cartoon action-adventure that happens to have a few live-action scenes, and it must have been amazing on the big screen. Beyond that, though…it’s okay? It’s a very formulaic, overly-long superhero romp that goes through all the usual origin story, will-they-won’t-they, hero’s journey, unlocking his true power, etc etc. Momoa is like Dwayne Johnson in that he’s using all of his good looks and charm to try to carry the movie, but honestly the “reluctant, goof-off hero” schtick they gave him gets old fast, and most of the other acting is wooden and, given the usual quality of these actors, clearly badly-directed. This is a superhero movie for fans of Avatar, because it’s an amazing CGI spectacle but otherwise forgettable.

And then I decided to cull off a few more things from my backlog:

We watched twenty minutes of The Archies, a Bollywood reimagining of Archie comics, which was a cute concept but I wasn’t up for two more hours of it. And speaking of things I’m not up for hours of, I took Wakanda Forever off my backlog because I’m clearly getting tired of too-long heavy-CGI formula movies. I decided that I just don’t care the Reece Witherspoon romcom Your Place or Mine enough to spend the time on it. I got 20 minutes into The Prom (a musical about a brunch of Broadway stars throwing a prom for a lesbian student in Indiana), but it was just too cringe-inducing to finish. And that leaves just a handful of movies outstanding, so hey.

And a few more Retro Games on Emulator Handhelds

Castelvania: Order of Ecclesia (DS, Replayed on Retroid Pocket 3) – I played this more than ten years ago and remembered that it was unfairly difficult, so I went in with the infinite health cheat right off the bat. (The bosses have So. Much. Health. and you can only take a handful of hits while trying to whittle it down.) What I hadn’t remembered was quite how much filler was in it, even compared to other Castlevania games of the era. The first half of the game (before the bad ending) is split up into a series of locations on the map, but a number of them are just straight lines with nothing to find, and others have the exact same room designs repeated several times. The gameplay is padded out with quests from the villagers (who you need to rescue all of to get the second half of the game, Dracula’s Castle), which I think I had more patience for on my first time through the game. And the MP-for-all-attacks system isn’t as impressive now that I’ve seen Timespinner do it better.

Super Mario World (SNES, Replayed on Trimui Smart Pro) - I don’t actually remember the last time I did a real “attempt to play every stage” play-through of this, after countless ones throughout my childhood that the muscle memory still remains from. I had forgotten how incredibly cute the little scenes of Mario destroying the castles are, and how cruel some of the Special World stages are. I got 84/96 exits without touching a guide, which I think is reasonably acquitting myself.

Virtual Boy Wario Land (Virtual Boy, Replayed on R36S) - Easily the best game on the Virtual Boy and certainly the longest and most detailed, this follows the model of Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land for the Game Boy, as a stage-based game where you’re trying to collect both the special treasures and the most coins in each level. Wario has an assortment of power-up helmets (that upgrade each other), but a single hit knocks you all the way down to being small Wario, and you often need the power-ups to get the hidden treasures, so you really need to play perfectly (or have save states). There are 14 levels, though only 10 of them are real stages and the rest are boss battles. The stages each take 10-20 minutes to find everything in, which is ideal on a system that wants you to pause and stop playing every 20 minutes. They also make a pretty good use of the 3D effects, with most stages featuring “close” and “far” layered areas and many obstacles moving in and out of the background. (There are also apparently 6 endings, depending on how many coins you get, if you find all the treasures, and how long you take to beat the game.) I admit, I’m surprised that this stayed locked away with the rest of the Virtual Boy titles and was never remade for the 3DS—while most everything else was either a simple arcade-style game or a glorified tech demo, this was a really solid action platformer that stands up well against the rest of the series.

I also replayed The World is You Weapon on Steam, because I was inspired by a Youtube video and it’s fast, but such ridiculous fun. Literally every object in the game can be wielded as a weapon or sold at your shop, and virtually all of them have special abilities to boot. It’s absurd and totally recommended.