Epic Default Productions

So this week was a slow week, and I’m not necessarily in a full blown ranting mood on anything at the moment. So I bring you, Jonny’s Caption Show!

This week Jack Thompson walked out on his disembarrment hearing in Florida, citing that the judge had no authority over this matter.

And no one was surprised

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls came out

Aliens. Why did it have to be aliens.

BioShock film should be expected around the time BioShock 3 comes out.

There’s actually nothing funny here, I’m just giddy there’s going to be a trilogy.

Duke Nukem Forever footage was released.

It’s Duke Nukem. Hey, I’m not complaining.

So rumor has it that there is a 90 minute cut scene in Metal Gear Solid 4.

Why is there not a movie yet?

One handed controller for disabled gamers

great…now Steven Hawking can tell me how much I suck at Halo (think about it)

LED Pong Table

Once again, no comment. Just awesome!

The most Cosplayers in one place record was broken at AKON

I cannot tell you how proud I am to be in the state that holds the record for most cosplayers. TAKE THAT ENGLAND! (Yes, I know England isn’t a state…but…they had the record…and…well, fuck it)

Sony Home to come as an “Open, Working Beta“
‘slur;os….sorry…tried to catch the keyboard as I fell out of my chair laughing

A code slip in a patch of Age of Conan shrank the breast size of all the female characters in the game

Wow…look at the rack on…wait, this is news?! (To tell the truth, this doesn’t even really need a caption…just a link to the story on Kotaku…read and be merry)

Now some site stuff. We’ve been getting some good feedback on the first episode, and we thank everyone for that. We offered, and it was accepted, for us to do a PSA for the Cross Country Super Trip to PAX in August, so be on the look out for that in the coming weeks.

And BIG NEWS…we’d like to announce two new Fanboys, well, a Fanboy and a Fangirl. Husband and wife team DJ and Jacquie are joining the official ranks of our little establishment here. You may remember DJ as “Dead Body” in the first episode. The next episode will have both of them helping with the writing and performing, with the possible future use of their writing skills for content on the site. Please give them a warm welcome.

**To those that are curious, we were planning on have our first episode up this Friday. Due to our AC being broken from Tuesday through Thursday and my inability to work in a house that becomes an oven when being subjected to 90+ degree and 70% humidity weather, the episode is going to be postponed until next Friday.**

So I recently caught wind… well let me rephrase, Jon recently caught wind of and decided it was a good idea to tell me that they were going to make a feature length film out of Bioshock. Seeing as I enjoyed the game Bioshock, particularly the feel of the environment and the twisted as fuck characters, I was really excited and intrigued as to how it would turn out. Now we are talking Hollywood, an industry plagued with inconsistency from its inception. And if the quality of comic book adaptations is any indication, this could turn out to be an amazingly good movie bordering on quality film (Iron Man) or a blasphemic piece of shit not worth the emulsion it’s exposed upon (The Hulk).

Quick side note, I will say that the only part of the Hulk I could enjoy was the cinematic style of making it look like a comic book, but I guess I’m ridiculously demanding and would actually like to watch my movies with audio and acting. Also, yes, I’ve jumped on the Iron Man band wagon thank you very much. It was a damn good movie and though so many swore up and down that Robert Downey Jr. was a bad choice, I stuck by it and defended him and now I get the supreme pleasure of being able to throw “told you so”s willy nilly at all you non-believers.

Back to the subject at hand though: Bioshock as a movie. As stated before, Bioshock was a fun game, had some great characters, and as I am a twisted and demented individual I enjoyed the general twisted and demented aura of the game. I could have slept that evening with images in my head of masked psychopaths running amuck and slaughtering people left and right while multiple megalomaniacal individuals would use others as pawns for their fight for power, reducing the quality of life in the area to that of a third world African country and the value of life to less then that of a roach. But then I had to put on my stupid hat and ask the next unavoidable but horribly moronic question as to who is directing the film.

Gore Verbinski. I’m going to take a quick note to say that those of you that don’t know who this guy is, look him up on imdb.com before going too much further. Now that we all have an understanding of who Gore Verbinski is, I can progress to the following statement.

Fuck no. No. No. No. No. No. When I heard this, I was livid. I couldn’t imagine a more moronic move. I’d take almost anyone besides Gore Verbinski. Hell, I’d even take Raimi over Verbinski. That’s not to say that Raimi is bad, but he does B “let’s laugh and make fun of it” movies and really only does them well when Bruce Campbell is somewhere on set. He doesn’t really do intense character developing films with complexity, although I will say that Raimi totally pulled off the dark and scary feel of 30 Days of Night and in the end somehow left me having a semblance of respect for Josh Hartnett.

But if there were a just and loving god in this world he wouldn’t allow this shit to go down. But then again god likes to fuck with me so maybe I’ll be spending the time all the way to the theater yelling and screaming about how terrible the movie is going to be and then 2 to 3 hours later be walking away feeling delightfully surprised and joyous. But until pigs fly because all the crap we keep feeding them ended up being fairy dust in the end, I’m going to begin my campaign from this point forward. Fuck you, Verbinski! Fuck you and all you stand for!

There is another element to this argument, though, that brought on a level of anger and frustration equal to the news aforementioned, thusly bringing about in my mind a need for this rant. While searching on certain websites to find out coming movies news, I came across this bit of news again and decided that I would see what people’s reactions were. Some people (I won’t mention names… mostly because there are too god damn many of you) actually thought that this was a good idea. What is wrong with you? I was expecting a campaign of epic proportions to stop this damn thing. Internet movements left and right detailing the human rights violations that this equates to. But no, you guys decided to defend it. Applaud it even.

I will now lay out the invitation for all readers at this point to take a moment to look up Verbinski on IMDb. Go ahead, I’ll give you some time. Look at the collection of fine (insert cursing in Chinese because I’ve been watching Firefly again) movies he’s created. He has eight films that he has directed and I’ll take a moment to review them, starting with the strong points so I hopefully don’t get too much hate mail from Gore-lovers.

Upon a quick scan of the list, it’s easily found that the finest movie of the bunch is Pirates of the Caribbean. Now I’m not saying that I didn’t like the first Pirates movie. It was fun, enjoyable and exciting. But the reason that it was fun, enjoyable and exciting was because of Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush. They are both amazing actors and casting them together in a film was brilliant. I’m talking near Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen brilliant for some movie buffs including myself. The writing for the film was ok, with a few good one liners and the way they pulled it off was by giving those lines to the strongest character actors, Depp and Rush. It worked. Also, they had Keira Knightley in the cast and god damn that woman is attractive. So even if Orlando Bloom was being an idiot fuck on stage trying desperately to simultaneously find more information on his origin, act like a bumbling fool around the love of his life, and learn how to act, I could ignore it because 90% of the time he was talking, Depp or Knightley were around to bring the level acting to the status quo.

Verbinski then decided to nosedive the trilogy by making an atrocious mess out of the second and third movies. For the second movie, he decided to take a leap of logic that Evel Knievel couldn’t walk away from: that by lowering the quality of the writing and turning the script into two-and-a-half hours of plot twists, you could somehow seesaw the movie to even greater heights then ever. And in the third movie, he decided to intermix ridiculous cameos with terrible set designs, random plot leaps, poor character development and resolution, horrendous CG lighting, and a continuation of horrible writing. In the end I hated every character except Johnny Depp’s and swore to never watch the second or third movie again for fear that I might start to hate Keira Knightley and Geoffrey Rush. On a side note, for those that felt this pain as well and wanted to not lose hope for Knightley and Rush, I highly recommend watching Domino, The Jacket, Shine, and Quills.

I will also admit that I have yet to watch The Weatherman, as great as that movie may or may not be. The look and feel of that movie should be vastly different than that of a Bioshock movie. If I saw a Bioshock movie with the feel of The Weatherman, I think I would have to pull a George Lucas/ Star Wars Holiday Special with every copy of the movie I could get my hands on. Also, I’m sure that the only two things carrying that movie were Michael Caine being awesome like he always is and the possibility that Nicolas Cage put on a good show of things.

As for Gore’s other movies: a bunch of god damn jokes! The Ring! Really! Ringu (the original, Japanese version) was made with less then a quarter of the budget and it still beat the shit out of the American atrocity. And I don’t think I need to get too far into my reasoning for not liking The Mexican and Mousehunt.

In the end, when I think Bioshock, I’m hoping for a quality film. I’m hoping for something where you could even wake up the god-damn Oscars with for a supporting actor nomination. I’m thinking scary and gritty and 40’s and beautiful… Then again, this is coming from the guy that wants to have a scene in a movie with a thought-provoking inner monologue while a person is being skull-fucked. So I may be way the fuck off the mark. But I say be wary. Be cautious. And don’t be surprised if I get to start throwing a second round of “I told you so”s your way.

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Okay people, I’m stealing Anthony’s soapbox for a minute.

First, let me give you a little background on myself. I started my gaming life like most people my age (at least I would hope or else this is going to be an exercise of how old I feel) on a Commodore 64. I also started at the end of the Arcade Boom, so I got to see such classics as Pole Position, the entire Pac-Man series (in the US at least), Tempest, and Galaga in their full, unadulterated glory.

My family got the NES a couple of years before they debuted the SNES, and up until the N64 I had every system that they made (yes, even the Virtual Boy…I’m shivering now). I even was an original subscriber to Nintendo Power. I was the proud owner of a Genesis and a Game Gear, and appreciated most of the games that came out, although I thought the Nintendo franchise had better quality games at that time. Don’t bother throwing shit at me for that last comment. It won’t stop me from knowing I was right.

Then, just after Goldeneye, two things happened. I entered high school, and therefore suppressed this particular character trait in order to gain the acceptance that I so desperately craved (a weak moment, I admit, but what can I do about it now). Plus, I began my working life, so I really had no time to play any games except for a racing game here and there on a cheap Playstation that I found at a garage sale, and of course the Guitar Hero series on an equally cheap PS2 I found at another garage sale. I had a three month addiction to War Crack somewhere in there as well, but wasn’t as hardcore as some of the stories you hear on that front.

That was all until one faithful night when I was hanging out at a friend’s house. He had a 360, an LCD flat screen with Surround Sound, and just picked up BioShock. I had heard about the game, and he let me play a little. Fifteen hours later, gaming and general nerd culture had grabbed me by the ear and dragged me back home, where I belonged, after ten long years. No seriously, ten years…plus a day.† Go ahead and wiki the release dates of Goldeneye and BioShock if you don’t believe me. Since then, I’ve been playing what I could on the little money I could put together in order to feed the addiction.

For those of you wondering what the point of that ramble is, I’m getting to it. Bear with me a few more moments whilst I review what I just said. If you notice, there are only two PC related things in that rant. So, according to some people I’ve met in the past few months, including Anthony, my best friend for six years now, I can sum up those four paragraphs with one sentence.

I’ve never played Doom.

For those of you still reading, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. For those of you who are still reading, just to get ammo of how I’m a n00b, or I shouldn’t be writing anything about games, because I haven’t played the Granddaddy of all FPS’s, shut it, you fucking twat, because I’m about to own you like a 12 year old.

True, I haven’t played Doom, however, I know about the game. As much as it was ahead of it’s time and introduced many things that we take for granted now in video games, it’s not that hard to grasp the concept of it. To this day, I can hold my own in a conversation about the plot (which isn’t saying much) and I have the utmost respect for the aforementioned qualities that it brought to the table. Although I have not played it (relax, I will at sometime), essentially I know my roots. I actively (and knowingly) celebrate what it gave us, all those years ago. Which is a hell of a lot better than a good majority of the gamers you interact with on a daily basis in this time and place.

I guarantee if you poll a number of the “hardcore” gamers of today, a decent amount of them will have never heard of the Atari 2600, hell, more will probably not believe that there was a time where a single dot moving across the screen, brought the same amount of joy that shooting a hooker on the street does today…in Video Game format. I don’t want to hear about an increase in prostitute murders being blamed on me, thank you very much.

Which is fine, really. You’re going to get that in any sort of market that’s been around as long as gaming has. Sure, they are annoying as hell and you feel a lot older, but what’s wrong with that? Getting older means you get to tell stories. You can blow the minds of the little one’s now. Video Games have become the “Twelve miles in the snow, uphill, both ways” story of our generation. And think of it. How annoying is that story the twentieth time you’ve heard it? Go ahead, pass that joy on to the children. They are our future, you know.

Essentially what I’m getting at is, gaming as a culture polarizes itself away from the rest of the world. It’s not the nerds that are socially awkward, it’s the culture. People treat it like some secret society with a handshake that involves fifteen different motions. The problem with that being the case is that it seeps into the culture itself. Look at the console wars. We should be celebrating that there are three console keeping prices down (comparatively, also a concept that Sony should wake up to). But instead, all you hear is this console is better than that console, usually followed by “you’re a fucktard” or something equally moronic.

If you look at each individual console with an open mind, more than likely, you will find something you will enjoy with that particular console. And isn’t that what gaming is about? Well that and enjoying something while you pass the time, either with friends, or alone…for some of us…I mean you. Why must there be a fight? Why does one have to be better than the other? This type of rampant Fanboyism is going to kill the one good thing we have right now, which is the ability to be social. If we keep boxing ourselves in like this, eventually we’re all going to be agoraphobic, virtual pet keeping weirdoes. We’ve already got the weirdo part down, but weird is good, in moderation.

“But Jonny, if you are so against Fanboyism, why is your blog called Fanboys?” Well, ignoring the fact that it’s what the UT television show that we are basing this off of was called, our blog is called that because we are Fanboys. We are fans of gaming, in general, and of all factions. Both Anthony and I are retro gamers, arcade gamers, console gamers, tabletop gamers, PC gamers (Anthony more than myself), and the occasional sports gamer.

Wait a minute, this sounds familiar doesn’t it? Oh that’s right, Wil Wheaton said this in his infamous PAX 07 keynote speech. And, oh yes, people actually applauded him when he stated this, so I know there are gamers out there who agree with me. Why can’t gaming itself be like that? Gaming is aging, there’s going to be a new crop of gamers every generation. Soon, it will become historical; there will be no more working Commodore 64′s, NES’s, Genesis’s, and no more Virtual Boy’s (thank god). The people of our generation are going to be the one’s keeping that part of gaming in the public knowledge, making sure we celebrate the innovations, and keeping the mistakes from being repeated. We need to be a single entity, not separate factions. So put down your rocket launchers, sniper rifles, and gravity guns and start uniting. Acoustic guitars and Kumbayas aren’t necessary but how about a handshake and game without making references to each other’s mother’s love life and our roles in it. *

And for God’s sake, I’ll fucking play Doom at some point!

*Line stolen from Wil Wheaton’s keynote speech, because it’s that damn good.

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