Review: Leave the World Behind

Obama is now my second least favorite living ex-President.

I was really, really excited for this movie. Amazing cast, everything about it screamed innovative, original, captivating thriller. The good news is, for like 65% of the movie, that's what we get. The rest, though... ooof. I've preached from my little soapbox that it is far more of a crime to be mediocre than outright bad, and never has that been more true than with Sam Esmail's adaption of Rumaan Alam's novel, Leave the World Behind. Because I have more taglines than the crack about the Obama's XP cred, we're going to break this into parts, like the film itself:

Part I: The Good

Clever taglines come later. For now, I want to address the good parts of this movie - which are, in fact, plentiful, but that's the twist in this review, it actually actually works against the film, because of the massive letdown to come. 

First and foremost: Please let Esmail just... be behind a camera forever. His directing and tone in this are amazing. I believe he will refine the weak parts of his feature-length work, but his use of angles, movement and score are nothing short of brilliant. 

I would watch Mahershala Ali read a phone book (note to young people: a phone book is... never mind. I would watch him read a random Wikipedia page). He, as usual, dominates every scene he is in, with his perpetually-composed demeanor, even tones, and overwhelming presence, which only add to his scenes. Ethan Hawk is his usual fantastic self, and I need to watch Predestination as a palate cleanser. 

Kevin Bacon gets a title card, and is in the movie for ten minutes. WHY

Part II: Let's Talk About Talking About Things

This is a long movie. I don't care about long, I care about runtime suiting the story. There are a lot of "slow" parts that serve the story very, very well, and build tension and intrigue. 

The opening scene is not one of them. 

Instead, we get Clay (Ethan Hawke) slowly waking up, as wife Amanda (Julia Roberts) (who I would have listed up there in "good", because she was fine, but her character...) tells him, in a painfully long scene, that:

• She rented them a house in a small town for the weekend, spur-of-the moment
• She likes the business of the city, but hates people (she says this several times in the movie. This is never reflected in her actions)
• Work is stressful (if your characters say "as you know", find a different way to say it)
• They have kids.

This scene should not exist. Instead, we should pan down from the cool establishing space shot, to NYC, to a road out, to them in the car. Dad says "we needed this" while looking at the house on his phone (with only the name of the lister shown), mom agrees with a comment about how she feels less stressed already, we see the whole family in the car, and the whole thing takes 30 seconds. 

We actually basically get that scene anyway with the car ride, as Amanda has another exposition-heavy phone conversations, and we meet the kids, playing on tablets in the back seat.

If the movie had stuck the landing, this would be fine. Exposition dumps are needed sometimes, or come across ham-fisted. But Amanda serves as a combination of our Cortana, ignorant of a lot of things, giving us these info dumps (or reasons for someone else to), and simultaneously the smartest man in the room. We are reminded of this by comments about what a tech wiz she is and things like that. We never see her do anything like this, though. So we know she is super smart, strong and capable, even though she mostly sleepwalks through the plot as a vehicle for other characters to develop (or explain things to us).

Circling back to her other trait that we are told about - she hates people. She expresses this by:

• Taking her family on a nice weekend getaway when they all seem to need it
• Being suspicious of the people who show up completely unannounced in the middle of the night and can't prove who they are (more on this in the next section)
• Trying to protect her family as the world is ostensibly ending

That's it! It's so goddamn unearned that it's comical. When it gets circled back to in the third act, I had forgotten she had even made that comment, because it's so irrelevant to her character. You live in New York and wanted to get away for a few days, not went full Falling Down. 

This is how the movie communicates things to us.

Part III: Applying Horror Movie Logic to Horrific Situations

So our Empty Vessels of Exposition protagonists are enjoying their break from the city, kids are in bed, and Amanda and Clay are drinking wine and playing jenga. Before I talk about the next thing, I want to voice my complaint (as long as I am complaining) about a global trend in these types of movies - that is, ones with families that aren't comedies. Families come in two flavors:

1. Sickeningly perfect
2. Overwhelmingly dysfunctional

There's no in between. We get #1 in this picture, and hear about their flaws - distaste for humanity, stress over jobs, kids play games and are obsessed with Friends (this is a real plot point), but again, none of these things are actual problems for the characters. We are told they are - in a movie - but we never see it. It definitely goes out of it's way to show us that it's a happy family, then remembers to inject them with humanity, so (for example), the brother will pick on his little sister, and then everything is fine again.

Just... have normal families, please.

Anyway, they are surprised by a knock at the door, and after discussing how to defend themselves, answer it find people claiming to be the owners of the house. We get some more exposition about how G.H. is George (Mahershala Ali) on the emails with Amanda. He and his daughter (Myha'la) do everything in their power to act as suspiciously as possible, thus showing that there is no way they are who they say they are.

But, twist! They are! There's no secret! They just got wind while they were in the city from G.H.'s client that something was going down, so they came home. But for the sake of tension, he doesn't have any ID on him, because of course he doesn't. That way we get Amanda not trusting them, Clay being super chill about it, and eventually they all sort of settle into getting along. 

Wait, I forgot to talk about the ship. So did they! Yeah, a goddamn oil tanker crashed on the beach the day before, while they were all enjoying their vacation, and that's apparently not causing anyone concern. So as weirder and weirder things happen, they just... go about life? Chill by the pool, let the kids roam way outside of eyesight. And when random suspicious people show up, with more weird things happening, the reason Clay and Amanda give for not mentioning it is that it would confirm something big is happening.

Ignorance is bliss.

Part IV: The One Where Dean Gets Really Yelly

I want to take a moment before I lose my mind again, and remind y'all that for a really, really good portion of this, I really, really, really liked this movie. A little exposition heavy, but the first two acts were so damn good that I was willing to overlook a few flaws. I'm pulling out all the stops for this, so if you don't want the (godawful) ending spoiled, go watch it and come back later. If you're just reveling in reading along as I go insane, here's what you need to know going into the third act:

• G.H. and daughter are who they say they are. It is their house. 
• G.H. is a finance guy for ultra-rich people. He has a client/buddy that goes and hangs out with the "cabal of evil", which is a joke, because the really scary thing is no one is actually pulling the strings of international affairs. We get this in another Amanda-driven exposition dump.
• Oh, yeah, he is married, and his wife is on a flight back from Morocco, and is probably dead, because all navigation satellites are disabled and planes are falling from the sky, LOST-style. This does not affect him at all emotionally except for the scene we learn this.
• Animals are being weird.
• There's a weird noise.
• All freeways etc are jammed up with smart cars gone rogue, I, Robot-style, and just mashing into each other (who had "Elon Musk is behind the apocalypse"? Everyone? Okay, carry on), so they can't go anywhere.
• The daughter is obsessed with the show Friends, and was watching the finale when all internet went out, and she needs to see how that show ends.
• Clay tried to go into town for a newspaper to see what is going on, got lost, because we are useless without GPS, and a bunch of flyers in Arabic were dropped from a drone.
• The son's teeth start falling out
• They still manage to have a glass of wine/smoke some weed and let the kids roam through all of this.

I didn't like this for reasons I am about to hammer on, but I always have to make allowance for the possibility of me being an idiot. So I turn to google, and read interviews with the author. And this is the problem with setting up a premise this tense: you better have a good goddamn explanation.

Guess what?

They don't.

Not the writer, not the director could explain what happens next. They try to play it off as if it's creative and original, but it's a goddamn cop out. 

G.H. and Clay go to visit Kevin Bacon to get medicine for the son (which he has?!), who is a doomsday prepper who also lives in an adorable, well-maintained home in possibly the most incongruent character in cinematic history. Conveniently, he has all the answers G.H. doesn't, and we find out that "Koreans, or maybe Chinese" have dropped similar flyers on the west coast, and G.H. explains to us that 'maybe a bunch of America's enemies got together', because this is apparently a ground-level James Bond movie. Kevin Bacon also explains, like a video-game NPC, that some rich folk have a bunker, and probably aren't there. Why Kevin Bacon is not in the bunker is left to our imagination (in my version, he is an NPC and can't move from where he is).

G.H. and Clay have a conversation about trust, Amanda and Ruth are in the woods and scare off a bunch of deer who were... standing there, kind of menacingly? They have the aforementioned conversation about Amanda hating people.

The daughter finds the rich people's bunker (EVERY HOUSE IN THE AREA IS MASSIVE AND NICE AND IT'S MADE VERY CLEAR THEY ARE ALL RICH), which has a Friends DVD, and she watches her finale.

That's it. Nothing is earned, just told to us. The only character with any sort of motivation that tracks is the daughter's quest to watch the Friends finale, which, if they had told the whole movie through her eyes, would have been a great tongue in cheek thriller, a la Over the Garden Wall. Instead, we get this dreary nonsense that only would have been worse if the endless exposition was literal voice over - but that barely would have made a difference. Alam and Esmail painted themselves into a corner by having a great premise, told from the ground level, but couldn't get outside of that to show us what is going on - even when they functionally break the fourth wall by having Clay get out of the car, they one time the radio works, so we can hear something that isn't a character just speculating. 

The most egregious failing is that Steven King in The Mist, and 28 Days Later managed to execute in that arena without restoring to cop outs, and the only twist we get is what a letdown it ends up being. They could have gone several ways with it, given the characters agency and motivation and had a conclusion that was satisfying - even if it was tragic. Instead, they did the laziest thing imaginable and tried to pretend it was clever.

The Math:

Baseline Assessment: 5/10 - The good is really good, and honestly the bad could be worse. But it took what could be a classic and made it forgettable. 

Bonuses:

+1 for a brilliant score

+1 for moments of real tension

Penalties:

-1 for endless exposition

-3 for the ending

Conclusion: 3/10. Just bad. 

Dean Smith-Richard is the author of 3204AD, loves to cook, play baseball, and is way too much of a craft beer nerd. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, and likes the rain, thank you very much.

Star Wars Subjectivities: Boba Fett Deserved Better

No, it's cool. It's not like I adored Boba Fett or anything. Just desecrate his corpse on TV. It's fine.

Nothing in the show is as cool as this image leads you to believe

Today is compare & contrast day here at NoaF, as I am handed entirely too much editorial control and you get to read (or, more likely, ignore) two of my essays rants about my favorite fictional universe. One of the questions I ask with any particular piece of Star Wars (well, any) media is "does this need to exist?" - clearly, none of them need to, in the sense of being essential to our survival, but do they add anything to the broader landscape, or simply take up space? I love mysteries and thrillers, but there are a whole host of books, movies and shows that do not need to exist.

Star Wars is much the same - it is deep, and broad, colorful and well-explored, so if you're going to tell a story, make damn sure that story needs to be told. Check back a noon PST for one that wasn't crying out to be made, yet triumphed over that and told a story that did.

The Book of Boba Fett, on the other hand...

I have this recurring nightmare that I am about to be handed the keys to some piece of the Star Wars universe - they're telling me: DESR, go tell the story YOU think needs to be told. And it's gonna be *awesome*. You guys are gonna eat it up. And right before we sign this deal for incredible amounts of creative control that is also incredibly lucrative, they say "hey, you wrote for this Fanzine, right? Ever write anything about Star Wars?"

I begin sweating profusely. "Well, not much..."

They start googling. "Oh, neat you covered The Book of Boba Fett? Twice?"

"I mean, I had some jokes, and..."

"You know I wrote that, right?" [click]

And then I wake up in a cold sweat.

Because, as I state in the linked piece up there, if the best part of a character is not knowing. JJ Abrams has talked at length about the mystery box, and yeah, that's all fine and good, but at some point you gotta open the damn box. And if what's in the box isn't better than not knowing, keep the damn thing closed.

Bad day for boxes

Boba could have stayed in that Sarlaac pit forever and people would have talked about him, wondered if he got out, was he still rotting in there. But no, they pulled what was left of him out, and what we got was tepid, at best, and an exploration of the character that masqueraded as depth and development. In truth, it was none of those things - they tried to make Fett this sympathetic, heart-of-gold crime lord, who suddenly cares for the people of Tatooine and none of it makes any sense. MC Chris better captured the character in four minutes than this show did in its entire run. 

It's truly baffling that this show missed the mark, and missed it so, so badly. The entire show is a fundamental misunderstanding and misuse of the character. We are blessed with some amazing content right now (more on that at noon!), that does an amazing job of broadening the Star Wars universe, introducing great new characters and lending more to familiar ones, so it's tragic that they couldn't do that with someone as iconic as Boba Fett.

-DESR

Dean Smith-Richard is the author of 3204AD, loves to cook, play baseball, and is way too much of a craft beer nerd. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, and likes the rain, thank you very much.

This is Not a Review of The Book of Boba Fett

 

Unlike the other properties which I have written non-reviews of, I actually watched this one. That's just the journalistic integrity you get at an Award Winning Fanzine(tm). I also am eschewing my usual weekly post about shows I love, because, well.... The Book of Boba Fett isn't very good. There, I said it. That's your review.

But this isn't a review, because, for very different reasons than Joker, it doesn't need one. This show, I think, was made for me, because if you take a bad-ass killing machine and put it in some sweet armor, you are like 75% of the way there already. It's not good, but am I going to watch every episode on release day? Absolutely. So I am also unqualified to review it.

The problem with TBoBF (aside from that title, dear lord, careful not to cut yourself on your edge, Star Wars), is that it attempts to cruise on Boba Fett's cool factor.

I actually touched on this early on in my Mondays on Mandalore series, but it bears repeating here: Does Boba Fett work without the mask? Just like the Joker, part of that cool factor comes from mystery, and that is exceptionally true of villains and morally grey characters. Boba Fett became the legend that he is (in real life), because he was mysterious and you could imagine any amount of fantastical back story for him. Then we got his back story, and it was dumb.

***Tangent alert***

There has been a lot of chatter lately about how George Lucas would have done the sequels better, which, ok yeah, they weren't great (more on that in a second), but seriously y'all? Did you watch the prequels? Is that what you want? Trade federations and board meetings? Stop it. 

***End of tangent alert***

I guess that's where I sit with TBoBF - it's watchable, I guess. I actually enjoyed the sequels while I was watching them - there are some great scenes and good characters, it's just edited about as well as Suicide Squad. Two episodes in, and I am hoping for more - although I am pretty sure everything right now is just getting us caught up with where Boba is at, and there will be some big twist shortly.

To me, it's a question of intent vs execution - and what it's standing up against. We have had a run of really great Star Wars shows - the conclusion of the Clone Wars, the Bad Batch, and obviously, The Mandolorian. All of those had deep themes and strong emotional cores. Again, maybe it's coming, and this is all preamble, but so far we have a crime lord who hasn't committed any crimes, and is in the middle of Dances with Tusken Raiders. 

It's not unwatchable, but it took off his helmet, put him in pajamas, and tried to sell us on it being the same Boba Fett. Hopefully they get back to him being cool, and fast.

Sorry for all the Futurama gifs

Dean is the author of the 3024AD series of science fiction stories. When not holed up in his office tweeting obnoxiously writing, he can be found watching or playing sports, or in his natural habitat of a bookstore. 

Two Ships in the Night

 Or, Normalize Platonic Relationships

Every few months, someone tweets/posts/whatever something along the lines of "why are there even sex scenes in movies/shows/books" and then everyone feels the need to pile on because it's a bad take and piling on bad takes is fun and easy. There are a innumerable silly debates regarding media, particularly when it comes to sex and relationships. The TL;DR of it is that all of them can be with merit and worrying about if they are needed is an exercise in futility.

There is one relationship that I don't believe gets enough attention, and that is simple, healthy friendship. Obviously, there are multitudinous platonic relationships in every form of media out there - fine and good. But I was struck watching, of all shows, Sons of Anarchy, by the sheer number of times some form of "I love you" was said. Not in a romantic sense, but simply one man to another.

It's interesting, in a show that is about a LOT of complicated relationships, most them fantastically unhealthy, that affection is expressed so directly - especially by men. Because, yes, there is no shortage of male friendships in media, and certainly no shortage of bro type movies, and the term bromance is a thing, yet men are still expected to have this hypocritical and harmful notion of masculinity.

"Sex sells" is the common refrain. That's true - "shipping" is a whole... thing. Which, again, fine- it's not unworthy, and it's definitely a fun exercise. But media is simultaneously a reflection of society, and a driver of it, and in a world where men are often taught expressing emotion or affection somehow makes you less of a man, that you shouldn't act or dress in certain ways - let's normalize all that.

For all the failures of the Star Wars 'Sequel Trilogy', this wasn't one of them. Poe and Finn had an earnest, deep connection. The ship crowd definitely ran with it, and while I would have 100% loved for Star Wars to provide representation on the big screen for a historically underrepresented demographic - I loved that they were friends, that they cared about each other, and they expressed that in tangible ways. 

Fun fact: giving someone your jacket is the greatest expression of love

If I have a point to make, it's this: take the time to tell the people you love that you love them. Be yourself, let your feelings show. And if you write books, movies, video games, comics, whatever - give a moment to ponder the sincerity of the friendships and relationships in your work.

All my love-

-DESR

Dean is the author of the 3024AD series of science fiction stories. You can read his other ramblings and musings on a variety of topics (mostly writing) on his blog (which he hasn't updated in, like, forever). When not holed up in his office tweeting obnoxiously writing, he can be found watching or playing sports, or in his natural habitat of a bookstore. 

Mondays on Mandalore: Star Wars is not the Problem

Welcome back to Mondays on Mandalore, where we usually discuss The Mandalorian. This week is a little different, since another small, live-action Star Wars production was released, called The Rise of Skywalker. You may have heard of it.

THIS IS YOUR OFFICIAL SPOILER WARNING FOR THE LAST JEDI AND THE MANDALORIAN.

J.J. Abrams has spoken several times of the Mystery Box he got when he was a kid. Basically, a prize from an arcade or toy store or something, it was one of those blind bags where you get a random toy. Unlike most kids, though, he never opened it. Because what was actually inside could never live up to what he imagined it being.

I wonder if he wishes he had left Star Wars in the box. Because the fandom tore that box open like a kid on Christmas morning, wrapping paper everywhere, hungry to see the perfect gift waiting inside. And instead of the LEGO UCS Millennium Falcon they were really sure Santa had packed in to a much smaller box, they got a stupid PlayStation (topical analogy, I am nailing this). But if two months ago, they were just given the PlayStation, they would have been over the moon.

That's where we're at with Star Wars. The Rise of Skywalker is a rally good movie. The writing is solid, the pacing is good, especially considering they had a lot to cram in. There is none of the long, side-quest elements of The Last Jedi. There is so much action. There is amazing payoff, from things I honestly didn't expect.

And yet. This spoiled fanbase, which if you are of my age, spent your entire life waiting for these movies, not only has those, you have all this other content and it's great*. Shows. Books. Comics. Video games**. But no, because it's not the fanfic in their head, it's not good enough. Because Disney saved bought Star Wars, somehow that has sullied the brilliant vision that Lucas had and made a movie about space wizards in the future-past.

Wait.

Did no one watch the prequels? Is that what you want? Two hours of exposition about trade contracts and pedigreed actors sleepwalking through their performances***? Was the Expanded Universe so great? Cuz... it super wasn't.

But people talked themselves into what it was going to and should be, and they ripped the box open, and even though what they got is objectively pretty good, it wasn't good enough.

That's not Johnson's fault, not Abrams, not Disney. I'm not saying that you have to like the sequel trilogy, but I am saying if you don't, you should probably look at why.

Also, the Mandalorian was awesome. Best episode yet. Give Deborah Chow her own trilogy. More on that next week.

*The show Resistance… tries.
**I really wish we had gotten the 1313 game we were promised.
***Except Ewan McGregor.

-DESR

 Dean is the author of the 3024AD series of science fiction stories. When not holed up in his office tweeting obnoxiously writing, he can be found watching or playing sports, or in his natural habitat of a bookstore. 

This is Not a Review of The Joker

I have often speculated on why you don't return to America. Did you abscond with the church funds? Did you run off with a senator's wife? I like to think you killed a man; it's the romantic in me.

-Captain Renaut, Casablanca

This is not a review of The Joker because, frankly, it doesn't need one. It has been reviewed, and the people who reviewed had the advantage of seeing it, which I lack - mostly because I don't feel the need to see it. I'm not saying it shouldn't exist, nor that it shouldn't be judged on its own merits, because art does have a right to exist - but the right to free speech doesn't mean people should talk incessantly.

 To be sure, it looks good. Juaquin Phoenix looks the part every bit as much as Heath Ledger did, even as my keyboard itself revolts against the veracity of that statement. I - like most people, I think - expected Suicide Squad 2.0 from this; a hot mess of flaming garbage foisted upon moviegoers who should know better - yet, somehow, against all odds and whatever DC movies have been this past decade, what we received was an ostensibly compelling narrative of the origin of the one of the most compelling villains of all time.

Which raises two questions, at least for me. Indeed, they are both the same question - why?

In the first place, why do we need to know the origin of the Joker? For all his iterations through film, television and comics, what bearing does who he is and where he came from matter in the slightest? He is a villain for the sake of being a villain, which is a luxury most people writing fiction aren't allowed, despite it being allowed in real life 2019. It works for the Joker precisely because he is The Joker - insane, given to sadistic whimsy, crafting ornate plans while simultaneously not having one at all. He works because he doesn't have an origin. His adversary, Better Elon Musk, is all backstory. Rooted in his childhood trauma, he puts on a mask to keep it all out. Joker is what he is, unapologetically, always in pursuit of his mercurial goals, but doing what it takes to achieve them - Bats will give up his to protect a life, never willing to make the sacrifices truly needed.

In short, Joker works narratively because he is the perfect antagonist for Batman.

So if you tell me there is a compelling Joker story out there, I am all in. But this movie leads to yet another why - why does it need to exist? Why does it need to exist, specifically in 2019, where we have villains aplenty, particularly of the variety that this film is asking us to sympathize with? Now, there is certainly a place for a sympathetic villain -  they are usually the most compelling. But when we live in a world where real, actual human beings are holding up the Joker and his ilk as heroes, not because of their struggles, but because of their violence and lack of sympathy for the world around them, why are we making this movie?

There is a lot of validity to telling stories outside the traditional Heroes Journey, gets-the-girl and saves-the-world narrative. The same is true of flawed heroes, something other than perfect knights-in-shining armor. None of those things are real or particularly relatable. People are evil and selfish for a myriad reasons; we don't need to explore their backstory every time. We certainty don't have to empathize with them, or be asked to agree with them, or give tacit approval in the way we are so often in the real world as long as it doesn't affect me.

So why don't we empathize with a flawed hero, who maybe doesn't get the girl, who maybe doesn't win, but instead takes the hand they have been dealt and does the right thing with it? Richard Blaine, to whom Renault is speaking in the quote up top, is that (and one of the many reasons Casablanca is a perfect movie, but more on that another time). His arc is him going from being a cold isolationist, with no regard for the people or world around him, because he Didn't Get The Girl, to realizing there are things larger than himself and making sacrifices for that - including the girl he's been pining after.

Individuals matter. People matter. Everyone should feel loved and accepted for who hey are. But it is all too common to see subsets of humanity care about themselves, how they are treated or mistreated or how they perceive they are, and lash out because of it (instead of, ya know, taking a shower and getting out of their internet echo chambers and doing something with their lives that would lead to them being loved and accepted, but I digress).

Art is simultaneously a reflection of who we are, and an image of what we can be. Let's make art that asks us to be better than we are.

-DESR

Dean is the author of the 3024AD series of science fiction stories (which should be on YOUR summer reading list). You can read his other ramblings and musings on a variety of topics (mostly writing) on his blog. When not holed up in his office tweeting obnoxiously writing, he can be found watching or playing sports, or in his natural habitat of a bookstore. 

A (cranky) Casual Gamer's Manifesto (Updated)

I am a casual gamer. As in, very casual. Like it says in my bio-thing at the bottom, I'll play for a while, and then just sort of forget they exist. I loved Borderlands 2, and it took me, oh, about two years to actually play through it. Video games are in a cool place right now, they look amazing, they tell some amazing stories that are immersive, so I'm not knocking them or saying I have some great position on them.

THESE. I WANT TO PLAY AS THESE.

As that very casual gamer, I am stupid excited for Battlefront 2. The original two may be my favorite games of all time. Not because they are so immersive, tell great stories, etc, but because they don't. The best part, for me, is that you can literally play it for a few minutes, and then walk away, and not have to remember much when you pick it up again a few months later. And while the mutiplayer aspect that nearly every game has that side now, that's the beginning, middle and end of the first couple Battlefront titles. You can't do that with Fallout, Skyrim, etc.

The new one has a campaign, and it looks pretty awesome, but we're here for ground level troops dukeing it out on the best battlefields in the Star Wars galaxy.

At least, I thought that's why were all here. Apparently, I was wrong. It's all about getting the most powerful heroes and being able to wreck shop. If you pay attention to video games even a little bit (like, say, as little as i do), you've heard about this. It takes roughly 40 hours of gameplay (three years in Real Dean Time [RDT]) to unlock Luke or Vader. This I am fine with. Again, Battlefront is supposed to be about the troops, not the Jedi and Sith and whatnot.

The real problem comes in where the game has a micro transaction system wherein you can just buy credits outright, with your real monies, and thus unlock said heroes. All told, it costs about $800 to unlock all the heroes.

Eight. Hundred. Dollars.

In a sixty dollar game.

I have read comments such as: "that's like making me work a second job that pays less than minimum wage!" which, no. It's a game. No one is making you pay for heroes, players just want shortcuts. It's the same mentality that ruined the Old Republic MMORPG - players were so concerned with getting to level whatever as soon as possible, they never, you know, played the game. For me, and others like me, tagging along with our dinky lightsabers and level 12 or what have you, it got boring in a hurry - which is too bad, because the game itself was a delight.

I'm sure some of this sounds very "get off my lawn", and maybe it is. There are a million games out there - good, fun games - that are suited to getting the heroes, the upgrades, the best gun, armor, etc. That's not what this game is, though - or should be. Dice could have easily avoided the whole mess by not having microtransactions at all. By having heroes be earned in a reasonable manner, and not making them such a key part of the game.

And then make a game centered around Heroes that has good lightsaber controls and I am in. For, like, a month at least.

Update: All heroes have had their cost reduced by 75%. Enjoy your instant gratification. Kids these days...

-DESR

Dean is the author of the 3024AD series, is an aficionado of good drinks (extra dry martini; onions, not olives), good food and fine dress. When not holed up in his office tweeting obnoxiously writing, he can be found watching or playing sports, or in his natural habitat of a bookstore.

He also has an unhealthy obsession with old movies and goes through phases where he plays video games before kind of forgetting they exist.

He lives in the Pacific Northwest and likes the rain, thank you very much.