Stars' End

I'd like to be playing Old Republic right now, but for various reasons I'm not, while my computer is cycling through some processes that take up probably too much power for me to feel like it's a good idea (namely, backing up my wife's old hard drive, and transferring it to a solid state drive so I can put it on the new desktop that I got for her.) I've also got my dumb sporadic internet issues worked out, but it required changing our "box" which also made my wife very sad, because she had a good 100+ hours of stuff saved on the DVR that's now lost. It's pretty much all hers, too. She's the only one who watches any TV. I was trying to start two shows with her this season: La Brea and Ghosts, but at most we missed an episode or two, so we'll probably just keep going with those two.

Anyway, while waiting for all the gigs of files to transfer, I started up the Mandolorian soundtrack in the background, and finished reading Han Solo at Stars' End. I have it in the Han Solo Adventures omnibus, but it was first published in early '79. I think, other than Splinter of the Mind's Eye, that it's the very first Star Wars expansion project; the very second novel published, and the first prequel (since it takes place earlier than Star Wars the movie.) I've actually had this for some time, but after reading only a couple of chapters, I got distracted and set it aside for months. I finally—belatedly, I admit—blasted through it fairly quickly.

It's an interesting piece. Along with Splinter, it's a small view into what the Star Wars galaxy might have looked like had it remained truer to its roots in "traditional" space opera rather than becoming more ponderous and "mythic" as the critics like to say, mostly so that they can sound like they're saying something important at all. I think the direction that ultimately Empire went with the whole vs. Darth Vader stuff was the right direction for the franchise, in the end, but sometimes I miss the lighter, breezier, swashbuckling Star Wars, and in my opinion, the franchise needs to do frequent roots checks to make sure that it hasn't deviated too far in its diversity from its roots. 

The other interesting thing about the Han Solo novels is that they are a view into a galaxy that has more going on in it than just the Empire and the Rebellion. Han Solo as a scoundrel, rascal and pseudo-privateer against the Corporate Authority has a very different vibe then the fight against the Empire. It also has a very different vibe than the Jedi as Superheroes vibe that ended up becoming especially prominent in the prequel and sequel trilogy eras. 

While there are many things I could complain about with regards to the execution of a lot of things in The Old Republic, I also have to give them credit for remembering this most crucial of details about the franchise, and digging into a lot of classic space opera vibes and recreate or emulate them in the game, when possible. The entire Old Republic franchise; all three games (although the third is, of course, an order of magnitude bigger than any of the stuff that preceded it) are really among the best Star Wars content that the franchise has done in decades. Along with The Clone Wars, The Mandalorian, and a few other video games and novels, it's the only thing that even comes close to being as good as the original trilogy was. 

And as I've pointed out before, although we didn't know it because it's fantastic visual presentation was so much better than novels written in the 30s, 40s 50s and 60s, the reality is that Star Wars from a plot and characterization standpoint, is really a fairly pale imitation of those classic space operas. Oh, sure... it was always cooler looking, because it was a movie with good special effects, even in the 70s. But that's not everything. To be honest, the Old Republic doesn't really look that great for a video game. I mean, it certainly does the job, but I've played Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Ghost of Tsushima, fer cryin' out loud. Compared to those, Old Republic looks positively primitive. And honestly, even though you've obviously got to give it a handicap, if you will, considering that it's ten years old now, the reality is that even at the time the Old Republic wasn't necessarily the best looking game that ever came out.

Now, that said, it does have some great visual design. It's just that technically, it's not a super graphically sophisticated game. Which, I think, is actually fine, because by being less graphically sophisticated, it manages to be a lot more instead. The game is absolutely freakin' huge, for instance, and offers more content than any ten games of its predecessors' caliber. Given that, it can be forgiven, in my opinion, its occasional awkward steps.

Outfitter 7.0

An interesting tidbit of news just dropped for the 7.0 update of Old Republic; the devs have finally modified the outfit designer (which is now Outfitter) to include not just clothing but also weapons. Now; I have a fair number of cool moddable weapons lined up, but if I'd had this, I just might well have used more of my crafted weapons as cosmetics. I might yet, depending on how much of this I play....

https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=9975594#edit9975594

UPDATE: Apropos of very little, I put two tickets in to the subscriber helpdesk today. Both were, ultimately, closed without any resolution. The first one was for my original Jedi Knight character. I'd been working on the HK-51 unlock quest, which is a very tedious and time-consuming thing to do with the exception of the spooky abandoned space-ship part, which is very atmospheric and kind of cool. However, when I let my subscription lapse, I somehow lost the components that I already had. But the mission log shows that those missions are done, so I can't do them over. Of course, I can reset the entire thing and restart it, which is looks like I'll have to do. But I put a bunch of hours already into that and was looking forward to not doing it again. Sigh.

I also noticed that the Ashfall Tauntaun and Thermal Retention armor set were a reward given to people who entered a code because they had bought a physical copy of Star Wars Battlefront, back when it was new. Hey, I bought a copy of that! (Technically, my in-laws did, and for my sons. But the point is, we have a physical copy.) I asked how I could get that redeemed. Turns out the promotion is over, and they can't manually give me credit for it. It also turns out that it was supposed to be the PC version (of course, we have the PS4 version.) I had thought that this one was a bit more of a long-shot than the first one, although I also thought that the second one would have been a very easy one for them to just push a simple button, or send me a code where I could push it, and be done with it. The mount and the outfit would appear in the mailbox for every character I had on the account, the same way the two pilot outfits do. No such luck. They shut me down on both of them.

To be fair, the thermal retention outfit is kind of silly. It's like Han Solo's Hoth coat, but with skin-tight leggings. I don't know that I'd have used it for anything, except maybe a female character, or a companion. But I do really like the goggles that it comes with, and I'd use them for an alternate outfit on most of my characters, if I could. And for some reason, I love the tauntaun mounts. Not the geared up ones wearing some kind of armor or padding, but the regular ones. I've got my old Imperial sniper, who's story I finished and who is already at level 75, sitting on Hoth running around luring tauntauns so I can buy more and more copies of the mountain and tundra tauntauns to give to my characters so that they can have them early on, instead of waiting until Hoth to get them. The tundra tauntaun is the "basic" one who's main color is light gray, and who looks the most like the movie version. The mountain tauntaun is a brownish color swap. The ashfall tauntaun, which I wanted, is a much darker gray color swap. I would have loved to have all of my characters running around with all three. You can't even get them on the cartel market for cartel coins (i.e., microtransaction currency.) And you can't even get them on the GTN either, and even if you could, the economy there has gotten ridiculously inflated into insane levels in the last few months. Everything is way over-priced.

In any case, while I admit that I certainly a not entitled to have had them give me that, I kind of hoped that they would as a consolation prize for the other issue that they couldn't fix. Blegh. I'd love to sit here and tell you that customer service for BioWare is top notch, that I highly recommend them, that they are above average, that they took care of me, etc. But they didn't. They just were... eh, sorry, mate. You're on your own. In other words; they're customer service for EA now.

Another one goes down

Finished the Sith Assassin last night, kind of early even. Some of the lines of dialogue and other things that this most sarcastic of characters does was pretty funny, and some of the plot points were genuinely sorta clever. That said, the story never managed to rise above average. I think that there are three reasons for this:

• In spite of what the game is telling you, the character isn't very clever. He runs along from one thing that he's told to do by someone else to another, blundering into obvious traps, because the plot demands that he does. He rarely feels "in charge" or active, rather he comes across as very reactive and almost passive even. To be fair, this is very difficult to avoid given the medium in which it's told. Players themselves can't have so much control over the game environment that they really make their own decisions and drive the game, like in a table-top roleplaying game. All computer RPGs have this issue to some extent. But in this case, it's a little bit more obviously executed. The smuggler has this problem too.
• Most of the companion characters were only OK in terms of interest, and few had any real chemistry with the main character. This is especially egregious when the obvious (in fact only, in his case) romanceable option is one where you kind of think... meh. I thought of my playthrough of the Jedi Guardian that that character was really, really bland, but he's kind of saved, if you will, by very interesting companion characters, particularly his love interest Kyra. Of course, I also admit that I'm not hugely interesting in making love to weird alien girls with strange things other than hair on their heads. Which... if you think about it... is true for every single female romanceable non-human character in the main game. I'm not going to get into the weird woketarded romance options of the DLCs, or the one-off flirtation options, because I don't remember them, but of your main story companions, every single time there's an alien girl to romance, she's either bald, or has weird, fleshy tentacles on her head instead of hair. No wonder I can't get into them. In any case, the personality that they wrote for her was only OK, and as with most of the pushier girls in the game, your behavior towards her that is supposed to be successful at romancing is sometimes a bit cringey and beta.
• (Curiously, an exception to the chemistry with the characters is Darth Vash after she gets trapped in the body of your "morose monster." Too bad that wasn't explored more. There was some genuine chemistry there... not romance-like chemistry, but friendzone chemistry... and the whole question of whether she actually wanted you to succeed against her or not was referred to but never developed. Somewhat disappointing missed opportunity there.)
• Another problem with some of these stories is that they are only as interesting as the villain you're chasing for much of the arc. What's going on in the first few planets is actually kind of interesting, but after you're just Darth Thanaton's rival, but where he really comes from or why he cares is never really established to anyone's satisfaction, making him a kind of by-the-numbers villain who never has any charisma or impact. That's another aspect of the Jedi Guardian playthrough that saved it from its boring main character; between his companions and his rivals/antagonists/villains, they make up for it. It would probably be even better if he were a somewhat more interesting character, but it actually works OK with him being the "straight" man in a collection of weirdos who are all more interesting than he is to some degree. In the case of the Inquisitor, he's arguably more interesting than most of the characters around him, but not necessarily, and all of those around him feel like they were thought up by the writers from pretty bland central casting tropes that have little real emotional connection to the main character or the events going on around them. Again, with the exception of Darth Vash, who sadly doesn't feature enough. 

Anyway, because I finished it earlier than I thought I would, I jumped into my Republic commando. I'm pleasantly surprised so far; for some reason, I'd expected that storyline to not be all that great. To be fair, all I've done is Ord Mantell (and even then, I've got a handful of exploration missions to clean up before I leave). But so far, the story has been better than I expected. You don't have to play the cringey "sir yessir!" recruit very much at all, and the whole "the Republic is corrupt and useless and the Separatists are kind of sympathetic" vibe isn't really as bad as I feared. In fact, there's some real interesting twists and irony there. It was done more maturely and less overtly politically than I definitely feared it to be.

There were two moments when I got dark side points for reasons that should not have given them, though. When you decide that you need to bring the stolen medicine back to the base to treat wounded troops, as you're asked, instead of letting the thieving refugees run off with it, that's not dark side. Why should the soldiers be less worthy of being saved than thieves? When you tell the middle school aged kid that he should go back home to his parents who miss him instead of giving him money to run away and leave the planet, that's not dark side either. Both of those boggled my mind. What the devil is wrong with the writers? They have some serious emotional issues. However, those moments stood out because they were so strange, not because that's normal. Plus, both were exploration missions that you can simply ignore, and probably should, quite honestly. I always thought that the lady that wanted you to go back out in to the battlefield to find her grandmothers necklace that she lost was dumb too. Lady, it's a battlefield. Be glad you are alive, not entitled to send someone out to go find some trinket that you took a fancy too for sentimental reasons. But again; an exploration mission, not part of the story per se.

r-selection is a real thing with the Old Republic writers, as I've written about before. Sometimes it's almost painfully obvious, though. Some of the exploration missions on Ord Mantell are among those sometimes.

I'm also surprised how far I've gotten in terms of level. I still have a few local missions to wrap up even though I've finished the class story, but I'm almost level 20, and will probably be 21 or maybe even 22 by the time I leave the planet. Insane. The game (originally) only went up to level 50, and even now it only goes up to level 75! The double XP event that we're in right now is surely a big part of it. I wasn't going to do it this way, but I have less than a week until double XP ends. Maybe I should do the same thing in the next day or two that I just did with the trooper to my bounty hunter. Play both of them through their starting planet, including all exploration, heroic, etc. missions, using the double XP and the XP boosts that they give you, the flashpoint voyage, and get them to the capital planet before the double XP wears off. That way they'll be starting their second planet at level ~25 or so. A nice kick-off. 

As I get a bit further in, I won't be interested in doing exploration missions, or planet story missions (the starting planets don't really differentiate between class and planet stories) but I like to give starting characters a bit of a good start so I never feel like I'm worried about bumping up. Speaking of which, I've sent quite a bit of money and gear to these guys to start with too. Starting the game off with two alternative outfits of good-looking gear, as well as more weapons than I can shake a stick at has been kind of fun (I crafted every single cannon that you can craft with my smuggler and sent them to this character. Plus, I have a cartel market cannon and sent modifications to him. Every couple of levels I feel like I'm changing out my gun.) I've got some money to burn, so I can have modifications ready to go when I meet the level requirements while on Coruscant, and I'll want to dive into my legacy bank to create a third outfit. I'm going to try to be a little less of a clothes horse this time around; some of my characters I go a little crazy trying out different outfits to try and make the character have the right look. In the end, I almost always seem to settle on two or three that are my favorites, and then use them. I may yet decide that I don't think the ones I have right now are quite as cool as I think that they are now, but I've been playing around with elements long enough now that I'm a bit more settled down. Sure, sure... I haven't actually played a trooper before. But I've played enough other classes that I'm pretty sure I have an idea what kinds of suits will look good on one without having try dozens of options before settling down. Sadly, of all of the Alliance crate armors that I most wanted for the trooper, I still can't seem to manage to get the Remnant Underworld trooper pieces that I want. The helmet and chest piece are gold. 

And although I actually like the color variant of those pieces that you can get as the "concentrated fire" armor set, those pieces cost a million each, I think, and you can't buy or wear them until you're level 75. Isn't that just the thing, though? You trash a dozen copies of something that you already have and don't even want, and can't seem to get the pieces you most want no matter how many Heroics you play with your high level character. I really struggled to get the Remnant Underworld Warrior pieces I wanted too; the gloves and the helmet. And the alternatives are the set-bonus armors that you can't afford and can't wear anyway, unless your character is already maxed out.

Bounty Hunter Week

As an aside, Bounty Hunter week ends today (or tomorrow morning, I think, to be technically correct.) I'd been a bit late getting into that particular track, but I'm doing quite a bit of it now. It's a pretty fun one in terms of the rotating events. Probably my favorite of them, in fact. Almost anyone can turn rogue and hunt bounties, usually for a good cause, as it happens. (Even on Imperial worlds.) I like particularly doing the Tatooine ones, because Tatooine seems like such a bounty hunter world. I'm at Heroic on the reputation tier now, but tomorrow I'll be able to cash in cached reputation chips that I've earned this week too. I also had enough of the BBA currency to buy the really awesome looking bounty hunter pistol for my .... well, for my bounty hunter, who's story I actually haven't started yet anyway. There's more bounty hunter gear that I'm really interested in too. Guess I need to keep earning.

Other than that, I've kind of already bought the rakghoul week stuff that I want, there's maybe a little bit here and there on the Dantooine pirates event that I'd like to earn, and I've found the Gree week and swoop bike weeks kind of frustrating. Bounty has so many items that I'd love to buy; weapons, costumes, companion skins (the HK-51 skin is the best looking droid in the entire game, especially as a companion), pets, mounts, etc. Plus, like I said, of the various weekly events, I think it's actually my favorite to do, now. For now, at least.

Many of the other reputation tracks don't rotate; you can do them anytime (assuming you're high enough level to, of course) and some are very difficult to do at all (gambling at someone's legacy casino in their stronghold was tough, for instance, to even find one you could do) Bounty Hunter, Gree, the two Dantooine events and the rakghouls are the ones to be sure and check out when the come around. But bounty hunter is the one that I've been anticipating the most.

To be fair, I was really anticipating some rakghoul gear, which I have now bought, so I don't care as much anymore. Those black core green crystals on lightsaber blades are sick.

Old Republic new again

Six or seven months or so ago, I was blogging quite a bit about the Old Republic, which I was actively playing at the time. (Curiously, I never made a tag specifically for it. I just made one now for this post.) Then I stopped, because I stopped actively playing and let my subscription lapse. I've recently re-upped my subscription for another two months (which will conveniently end when I'm away and unable to play for the holidays) and then will probably re-up again early next year when I'm back from Christmas and New Years out of state. I've started playing again, blasted through Voss and Corellia (thus finishing his class story) with my Jedi Shadow and went back to my Sith Assassin, where I've recently landed on Belsavis. Five of eight class stories done, and a sixth within easy striking distance, almost certainly this week. 

I had earlier played a Bounty Hunter, but I screwed it up by not knowing how the expansions worked, and locked myself out of two thirds of my class story. Because he was a maxed out level character with Armormech crew skills also at a high level, I didn't want to delete him, but I need to do a whole new bounty hunter, and I've still never done the trooper either. If I finish the Inquisitor this week, then I should be good to go to blast through the class stories, ignoring most of the world story stuff, heroics, and other optionals without too much problem. Especially if I can get the first couple of planets done while the double XP event is still going on. Which may be a bit tight, but we'll see. In any case, by the time Christmas rolls around and my subscription lapses again, I should have finished all eight class stories. Coincidentally, Old Republic will be celebrating its 10th anniversary at about that same time, and will be rolling out a significant upgrade. From a systems perspective and how the game actually plays, it's probably among the most significant upgrades that they've done, on par with launching free-to-play and launching the single-player friendly modes with 4.0. Seems like a good time for a retrospective and brief discussion of my personal experience and future with The Old Republic.

First off, I started playing right away the demo, even though I didn't subscribe until... I dunno, less than a year ago. At the time, you couldn't play more than the first two planets and about twenty levels without a subscription; it really was just a demo, so I didn't play it a lot. I was frustrated, quite honestly, with the fact that it was trying to be an MMO because of management directives when what I wanted as a Knights of the Old Republic customer was an RPG (which I also think is what the developers wanted it to be; the MMO features felt very grafted on.) Whether this was a universal desire among the customers is debatable, but clearly the developers have come out and said that an overwhelming majority of all players play the game as a single player RPG with only occasional MMO-like features being used by them. The percentage that is hardcore into the MMO stuff is relatively tiny; less than 20%, certainly, and maybe closer to 10%.

When free to play launched, I played a bit more, but I had a technical issue where one update no longer worked on my older computer that I had at the time, so I wasn't able to finish. I finally started playing "for real" after getting a new computer early this year and reinstalling. I found that a number of other things had changed with the game too. I was enjoying it enough after a little while that I bought the time-bound (rather than open-ended) subscription, and re-upped it a couple of times. I think I probably had about a six month subscription starting very early in the year (or maybe late last year) and then I've let it sit for about five months since too. I'm back again now. I'll finish all of my class stories, finish my expansion stuff that I still haven't done with my Jedi Guardian (and maybe my Sith Marauder) and then... I'd like to still do my recordings of all of the class and expansion stories, to archive them for the inevitable day when the servers go down and you can't play anymore. Sure, sure... I don't think that that's imminent or anything. The release of a major expansion at the end of the year is certainly the sign of a healthy game, or at least one that plans on being around for a while. But by its nature, it simply can't be forever. Someday the servers will turn off the lights and that'll be that. I'd love to think that they'd make a few changes (really just continuations of what they've already done) to make it capable of being a non-server, closed game that you could just play offline by yourself and continue to sell even after the servers are gone on Steam or GOG or something, but they probably won't. At some point, the game will be gone for good, and when it is, it's gone. So I want to have my archived playthroughs available for me to watch when I'm old(er) and gray(er) and feel like reliving the Old Republic stories again.

A few other things have changed. When I started playing, there were eight classes. Each class had it's own story. Each class also had two advanced classes; alternative ways of building the character. This didn't impact the story at all, but it did impact class abilities, combat, and what weapons (and possibly armor) your character would wear. Cosmetic changes that included buying modifications for your weapons and gear rather than constantly actually buying new level-appropriate weapons and gear did away with a little bit of that. They also changed the game so that you pick your advanced class right away. While there are still eight stories, each story has effectively two classes that, while similar, also offer marked differences in playstyle. However, there are not sixteen classes, in a manner of speaking. Each class has a mirror on the other faction. Some of the ability names and animations will be different, but effectively, each "advanced" class for each faction has a mirror on the other faction that plays mechanically exactly the same. So there are eight class stories and eight mechanical classes, but they don't line up. The gunfighter and the sniper, for instance, have the same mechanical class (albeit cosmetically different, and with different weapons) but one has the smuggler class story and the other has the agent class story. The scoundrel and the gunfighter are two mechanically different classes, but both have the same class story, on the other hand, the smuggler class story. 

So, I've played (or will have played) one of each class story when I'm done. My initial thought was that I'd play the other mechanical variation on each class story. That way, I'd have played all variations available, at least in terms of story and mechanics (although I've only done male characters, so I've never heard the female voice actor performances for any class.) However, I wasn't completely sure of this. Some classes, I feel, have a more iconic option than the other. Plus, just the way I did it, I may have left off some diversity of cosmetics because of the mechanical choices I made. If I played (and I did) a Jedi Shadow and a Sith Assassin, then I already played all of the characters that have double-bladed Darth Maul style lightsabers, and none of my recorded versions would have that. I also think that the weapons that only one variant ever can use, like the sniper rifle on the sniper and the assault cannon on the commando, are more iconic and unique than using the variables that only use a blaster rifle for both. Yet, I've already played a sniper and will have already played a commando. Should I do those again for my recordings just so I can have the other weapon choices that I otherwise wouldn't have, though? I'll make the characters look really unique to have the sniper and assault cannon respectively rather than just blaster rifles for both, which—less face it—is relatively generic in comparison.

My thoughts about how best to serve those interests have been thrown for an even farther loop by the announcement that the 10th anniversary upgrade, called Legacy of the Sith, will feature an even more significant shake-up to the class structure than making advanced classes something you start at character creation. Now, the class story and class mechanics are going to be somewhat decoupled in a significant way. Advanced classes are now going to be called combat styles, and can be used—with the caveat and force-users and non force-users are still completely split from each other—regardless of which class story you're playing. So I could, for instance, play the Imperial agent storyline, but use the Republic commando mechanics, including the autocannon weapon and all other commando class abilities. This creates a wide diversity of how things can be done. I could decide that if I loved the sniper class, I could play the smuggler, trooper, bounty hunter and agent class all with the sniper class, using the sniper rifle and sniper abilities. Given that this will be launching right about the time I'm finishing up my initial playthrough with every class and will be talking about getting my recordings going, does that impact how I will want to select characters for my recordings? Probably. 

I also, as I said, have no female character. I think the male characters—as human—is the most iconic way to play. So, I played all of my classes as white, human males. And, I'll almost certainly do so again for my recordings, because I would want those recordings to look iconic, I think. Maybe I could introduce a few aliens in there; the agent as a chiss, or the Sith warrior as an ethnic sith, or something (and maybe one or two on the Republic side as well—mirialin or zabrak. And I consider cyborgs to jus be variations on humans too.) I might well do this when the romanceable partner is an alien; I prefer alien to alien match-ups rather than human to alien ones.

Maybe what I'm saying is that I'd almost like more than one recording. But do I really think I'm going to record more than one playthrough with each class? It might well be dubious to think that I'll actually conclude all of this with even the more modest plans that I already have. 

Anyway, lots of thoughts. Not a lot of answers yet, except that in the short term, I'll finish my Sith Inquisitor and then play my trooper and bounty hunter after that. I might start them both at more or less the same time and leapfrog, like I was originally doing, or I might just play one and then the other sequentially. Haven't decided yet.

Anyway, here's the loading screen for the current update, which is new since I played it six months or so ago. Sadly, the big ugly sheboon is still one of the iconic NPCs that they're trying to push on us and they feature her prominently again... in the loading screen. On the other hand, that redesign for Darth Malgus is pretty sweet, and that's now a cartel market purchasable outfit.

Grimdark to superhero with the lights on dim

I've mentioned this before of course, but the biggest disappointment in the change of the Warhammer setting isn't that they replaced it with something bigger and more difficult to get your arms around; it's that they replaced it with something that has a totally different tone.

Curiously (or maybe not), Warhammer's biggest competitor, Warmachine, seems to have undergone a similar trend. I picked up the first Iron Kingdoms modules for Third Edition D&D when they were new. I've been following the setting for a long time. It had the same kind of grimdark feel to it that Warhammer did, at least at first. It later became quite obviously just superheroes in a vaguely fantasy-like setting. The exact same thing that happened to Warhammer, of course. To top it all off, it developed a suspicious grrl-power vibe, which Warhammer is now also emulating; the fantasy space marines faction of Warhammer has a sorta female.... female-ish... character on the main cover and some miniatures here and there show that they think that physically there's no difference between men and women. 

Anyway, this is a pretty cool movie. But it would have made no sense whatsoever in the original tone of the setting. And while I don't think the fantasy Justice League vibe is a problem per se, I do admit that I don't like it as much. And I especially don't like it hijacking settings that I kinda liked specifically because they had a different tone than that.

Movies

I've been very down on Hollywood. Almost happy to see it burn down. But, I've occasionally gotten carried away there, and I've also gotten caught up with other people who are also carried away, like Critical Drinker, Nerdrotic, Geeks & Gamers, etc. about how bad movies are. The truth is, most of the movies that I've seen this year so far haven't been terrible. They also haven't been great; I doubt there are many at all that I'll care to ever even see again much less buy on blu-ray, but there's been few that I really actively hated too. My wife loves movies, and refuses to see the truth that Hollywood hates her because she's the mother of three boys who are as white as she is and that's her identity instead of some kind of Fake Man identity. So, to indulge her, I often go see movies that I'd much rather not go and see. But I find that sometimes they aren't nearly as bad as I expect them to be.

No Time To Die, the newest James Bond is one such. The marketing, the trailers, the comments from the writers, and even the cast, all pointed to a terrible movie. The reality was... not that bad. Actually, most of what they hinted that the movie would be, it isn't. There's a few jarring things, probably the scenes written by Phoebe... whatever her hyphenated name is, that come across as both gratuitous grrl-power petty fantasies and oddly out of place screwball comedy moments at the same time. 

I wonder if the delays that the movie had—over a year, by my count—allowed them to correct for the fan backlash that they were getting with some reshoots or at least some re-edits... although if they re-edited the film and it's still nearly three hours long, that's kind of crazy, honestly. I'd like to think that Hollywood is able to be a little bit responsive to their disastrous and hate-filled binge of whatever the heck it is that they're doing, but I'm kind of skeptical, honestly. They seem to do little other than double down. After all, we saw two trailers for the 355, a terrible looking movie about girls pretending to be men, banding together from their diverse backgrounds to save the world from a new threat—white masculinity, from the looks of it. No, thanks, I think I'll be giving that one a hard pass. It has new Charlie's Angels written all over it, except with more middle-aged women that are even more diverse than the new Angels were.

The African sheboon that gets the 007 designation isn't nearly as abrasive and obnoxious as she appeared she was going to be, and while I still don't like her, I didn't find her to be even half as unlikable as they made her out to be, her role was seriously downplayed and she didn't appear on screen nearly as much as they made her out to in the trailers, and she didn't really ever get around to upstaging Bond after all. There's a brief hinted implication that Q is gay, although I didn't even catch it until I saw someone mention it after the fact. On the other hand, given that he's a completely beta-looking British guy who probably was molested in boarding school as a kid, that isn't even shocking, to be honest. And they already race-swapped Moneypenny. I'm actually more or less gratified that they corrected the sex-swapping of M in the Craig series. The fact that the brought Voldemort on to be a more traditional M actually makes Judi Dench's earlier M seem more likeable and interesting in retrospect than had they simply sex-swapped the role and never acknowledged that they'd done so. All in all, anything bad in this movie is mostly (mostly, mind you) a continuation of other woke moves already done in the Craig run of movies. And ultimately, it was designed so as to get Craig out of the way to they can reboot and do something else. Presumably with LaFhonda Lynch, or whatever other caricaturish black name she actually has. That wasn't strictly speaking necessary; they've changed the actor many times in the past. But because they want to do a much harder reboot, where "James" Bond comes back as a black woman, or whatever the devil they think that they're going to do next, they wanted to kill off the past more authoritatively. 

Narratively, this is fine. The idea that both James Bond and his enemies just continue to exist completely as is, static and unchanging, is kind of absurd. If there are going to be enemies and conflicts, there should be resolution to those enemies and conflicts. Not sure why some see that as a controversial statement. If they're going to be killed off or ended, doing it in a respectful way, utilizing good storytelling, is certainly preferable to the Rian Johnson-style alternative. And disliking this movie because of things that were already done a decade ago, or which are likely to happen in the next few years hardly seems fair. Sure, sure... this movie is probably only as good as it is because they had time in between the original release date and the actual release date to react to the fan backlash against the direction that they were telegraphing. And yes, the franchise will probably be unwatchable going forward. But does that really have anything to do with this movie? I'm not sure. Nerdrotic made the tongue-in-cheek yet interestingly telling comment that "No women were harmed in the making of this movie." He seemed to be more put out that Bond didn't hook up with any hot chicks in bikinis than anything else. (Again, maybe he never watched The Living Daylights, one of my favorite of the pre-Craig movies in the series.)

Maybe my expectations for a Bond film are a little different than most, too. Kinda sounds like it given some of the things that I've heard youtube talking heads complain about.

After James Bond, we had a small break to refill our drinks and take a leak, and then we walked over to a different screen and watched Teen Suicide: The Musical. My wife is very sympathetic to such things as depression and anxiety disorder, so I knew what she'd want to see the movie for and what she'd think about it even before we saw it or I knew much about it, to be honest with you. And it was very much as I expected; except that the emotional manipulation was even more over-the-top than I thought it would be. 

I couldn't help, on looking at the most stereotypically Jewish looking kid that they could get to play Evan whatshisface, the main character, reading about how the twin genetic signatures for psychopathy and neuroticism are more common in the Ashkenazi population than in any other population group on earth. And I remember reading about how most of Freud's theories are based on projection of the ills that he found in his primarily Swiss Jewish clientele on to the Gentile population that surrounded him, whether it applied or not (it didn't.)

Check out the list of staff on the movie; the writers, the director, etc. 

Anyway, it wasn't a terrible movie either, and maybe there's a decent message buried in it, if you can get past the aggressive unlikableness of most of the main characters. And I know; that's kind of the point; the characters aren't likeable because they're all struggling with mental or emotional issues. Unfortunately, they did it in such a way that it's hard to feel too much sympathy for them, because they're too unlikeable. Anyway, it was hardly the kind of movie that I expected to like, and I didn't really, but it also wasn't terrible. And the main guy actually growing up enough to face his issues, as well as his own behavior, was kind of admirable in a way.