#eliot rant

Let’s start with the basics - I get why we use numbers in reviews. It’s an easy system that lets me quickly see, on a pre-specified scale, how “good” something is. I can get behind the idea of a numerical score; it’s fast, I don’t have to read all those words and letters (because my brain), and (in theory) it’s objective. 7 is better than 5, right? If I’ve gotta choose between a 7 and a 5, it’s 7 every time. Makes sense.

Here’s where things go batshit. Let’s start with media powerhouse IGN. In a recent review for an Arkham Knight comic (oh, don’t worry Arkham Knight video game - your day is coming), the reviewer noted the art is “cartoonish” but the writer generally gets by and sometimes tells a good story. He gave the comic a 7.2 out of 10. For an X-Men comic, the same author writes “Fortunately, there's plenty of to like with the new series and creative team, even if this issue isn't quite the rousing start the book needed.“ He gives this a 7.1 out of 10. Of all the comics reviewed this week, only 4 dip below 6/10 and of those, only 2 dip below 5.

This might be a specific-to-IGN issues, but why have a 0 to 10 scale if you’re just going to hang out around 7 or 8. It’s not uncommon to read a review that basically says “This sucked real bad. The writing was terrible, the production was awful, etc - 7.3 out of 10.” A guideline for how these numbers are generated would be helpful. The qualitative review doesn’t always match the quantitative part; if I ignore the number, it sounds a lot worse than what amounts to a 75%.

Another point, which again might be specific to IGN but I’m sure other folks do this too - they use decimals, meaning they’re basically reviewing shit on a 100-point scale. Is this necessary? Do the nuances of the written review necessitate a spectrum of 100 points to choose from? More than that, do these numbers add anything meaningful? How is a 7.5 significantly different in terms of quality from a 7.6? Again, my brain says “7.6 is better than 7.5,” but is it really? In the above example, the X-Men review basically said it was ho-hum, but it was only 1/10th of a point less than the other comic. I’d argue this scale is way too big to be useful in any real way.

Does anybody remember X-Play? It was a show on G4 that reviewed video games in brief segments and discussed gaming stuff. Their scale was PERFECT. 5 points. 1 meant garbage, 2 meant pretty bad. 3 was a big meh (playable, but not great), 4 was good with some minor problems, 5 was great (maybe some problems, but overall a good experience). When they said a game was a 4 or a 5, you knew it was worth checking out. If it was a 3, you could sense it was iffy. Below that, you knew you were in for a rough time. It was intuitive and simple. I’d also like to point out Kotaku’s Yes/No system for “Should you play this?” as a good example of how to do this. Even Angry Joe, who uses a 10-point scale, generally agrees that 5 means “it’s ok” - it’s in the freaking middle of the scale; could be better, could be worse.

Obviously, the elephant in the room is aggregate review sites, like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes. I get it - people just want to be able to look at a quick thing instead of sifting through review after review, and get a sense of whether something’s good or not. But what the hell do these numbers represent? I’m going to show my hand here and say that, in my for real life, I conduct some research, which may have instigated some of these arguments. As part of that background knowledge, I know that it often causes problems when you compare and combine things that are on different scales. They need to be converted so that the numbers are on an even playing field. A 5/5 is not the same as 5/100, even though they’re both 5s. So when RT says that a movie is 78% fresh, I’m not entirely sure what that means. Does that mean 78% of reviewers like it? Is the movie 78% good? How did you get that from a “7.4″,  “Go see it”, “3 stars”, and a thumbs up? It’s needlessly complicated and (allow me to be a cynic here), I’m going to wager that the reason text and number don’t always match is because there’s some kind of kickback for boosting the RT score. Why else would a “this is garbage” review still get somewhere between 7.3 and 8.6? The only thing that number seems to be influencing is the aggregate score.

Consumers aren’t helping. You don’t need to look any further than the comments posted at the bottom of a review to see the savage hounds drooling over the numbers. “YOU GAVE THIS A 7.8 AND COD A 7.6?!?!?! COD IS THE BEST!! KILL YOURSELF!!!ONEONEONE!!!” or “The reviewer obviously sucks. They didn’t like this and gave it a 6.8. This deserves at least a 7.3″ Here’s one actually from the X-Men review: “Disagree with the review of extraordinary X-men issue 3, I think the series is moving along nicely, lots of action so far, full of a nice colourful art style and its building to the return of an old X-men classic villain. Really do wonder if some of these reviewers even read these comics they review.” First, it’s an opinion - just because the reviewer didn’t agree with you doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Second, it still got a 7.1, which, out of 10, is still pretty good. Obviously, every fanbase has its vocal minority, but is the number that important to the typical consumer? Probably not. People just like seeing the things they love get high numbers because it validates their enjoyment of that thing. It didn’t influence the sale, since those rabid folks were going to consume that product anyway, but wars are started over this kind of thing. Digital wars. 

(I also want to take a quick second to say that people online often confuse the number for some kind of scientific measure of how good something is, like it’s a pure science, so when someone doesn’t like something and give it a bad review, they complain that they should’ve gotten someone who likes it to review it. Newsflash, all reviews are subjective. The number isn’t changing the product.)

I’m trying this thing where I don’t criticize something unless I have a suggestion for how to make it better, so here goes. Reviewers: keep it simple. Either have a rubric for how your number was generated so that I see there’s a consistent scale for everything you review (even if it’s just yes/no) or simplify your scoring system; otherwise, it just looks like a random, inflated number thrown in there for the sake of padding. Readers: find a person you like. Find someone who generally likes the games you like and someone you trust to tell you whether something’s worth your time. And actually read what they have to say; don’t just skim to the bottom and see how many points it earned.

Let’s start by looking at the general plot of the movie. Johnny (played by Wiseau) is a guy who can’t seem to catch a break. He’s having a hard time at work, constantly turned down for promotion after promotion. We’re told he’s good at his job and the bank that he works for (I think) has put his ideas into action and have generally been successful. That said, he’s unfulfilled and feels victimized. Pretty relatable so far, huh?

His saving grace is his personal life; he’s engaged to Lisa, who on the surface cares about him, enjoys his friends, especially his best friend Mark, and cares for a weird man-child named Denny (we’re constantly told Johnny’s like a father to him; if there’s a cardinal sin this movie commits [as if there’s only one], it’s that it constantly tells us how people are related to each other - “You’re his best friend.” “He’s like a father to you.”). He cares for those around him and is supportive of them. See, still a cliche, but coherent film.

It’s when we get into the other cast of characters where things go wrong. Lisa, unbeknownst to Johnny, has fallen out of love with him. She feels Johnny is going nowhere and she wants more adventure in her life. She’s attracted to Johnny’s best friend Mark and secretly sleeping with him. Now we’ve got some intrigue. Add in a weird throwaway line about Lisa’s mother having breast cancer (in a “twist” that’s never again addressed or resolved) and now you’ve got someone with a life more complicated than just living with a good man. She’s juggling a lot of different emotions and at no time do we see Johnny checking in on her. He’s committed and kind, but not invested in her as a person.

Mark, an idiot, appears conflicted about his affair. When he goes to Lisa’s place, he seems generally confused about her advances (because he’s straight up dumb). He tries to talk with Johnny about his views on women a couple of times in the movie, but Johnny’s unwilling or unable to hear what Mark is trying to say; on some level, Johnny trusts Lisa and Mark so much that he can’t even comprehend that anything would be going on. So now we’ve got a love triangle going on, but in this movie, all three points are idiots.

Then we’ve got Denny....

Goddamn with this guy. At some point in the movie, Denny gets attacked by a drug dealer because he bought some drugs. Again, this is a plot point that comes out of nowhere and then is never resolved. How can we work that into a better movie? Well, at one point, Denny expressed to Johnny that he thinks he might be falling in love with Lisa. How about if he started using drugs either to deal with his unrequited love or as a way to grab Lisa’s attention? That would at least time him into the plot. In fact, in a double twist, not only would this not work to get Lisa’s attention, it could actually make Johnny pay less attention to Lisa because he’s busy caring for his surrogate son. Boom, further wedge driven between Johnny and Lisa.

There’s a lot of bullshit about football and people doing stupid things that could easily be cut from the film. It all culminates in Lisa and Mark being really blatant about their affair and Johnny finding out. As presented, the movie just kinda has them flirting in front of Johnny, but what it Mark drank the Kool-Aid that Johnny doesn’t care about Lisa. He’s spending all his time at work and caring for Denny that Mark’s noticing Lisa’s neglect. Now he feels less guilty about what’s going on because Johnny’s not there for her. This could easily lead to the split.

At the end of things, (spoilers) Johnny kills himself. And why wouldn’t he? His work life is in shambles and everything he thought about his life is a lie. He’s stuck and overwhelmed. He was going to marry someone he thought cared about him, but the two people he cared about most deceived him. There’s some (cliched) angst, but you could see how he’d be torn up about things.

Fifteen years later, Hollywood saw fit to give us another Street Fighter, for no apparent reason other than a new game was being released at the time. This movie had fewer characters, and those few characters were barely recognizable as the characters they’re supposed to be.

Exactly how I remember Bison...

So why make it? What compels movie studios to make video game-based movies if they’re not even going to try to stick to the source material.

I guess to really talk about this, we need to take a quick trip through history and examine the legacy of these movies. Arguably, the granddaddy of this genre of films is Super Mario Bros., starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo, a Brit and a Latin guy, playing two Italian Brooklyn plumbers saving a lizard girl from Dennis Hopper’s hair. In terms of adapting the source, this first game-movie failed horribly. Gone were the recognizable tropes of the Mario series, such as the bright colors, the kingdom, turtles, goombas, and Bowser. Instead, they made Blade Runner with overalls. This thing was seriously so far from the source that it may as well have been another movie. Sure, there was a guy with a mustache named Mario who wore red clothes and he was enemies with a guy named Koopa, but that’s pretty much where the connection ends. I don’t know about you, but the fact that it looked like Hoskins would’ve killed Yoshi by sitting on him crushed the heart of the childhood version of myself.

He'd better feel shame

The following year saw the release of two more video game movies - the aforementioned Street Fighter, and Double Dragon. What I never understood about that movie is that if Billy and Jimmy Lee were supposed to be twins, why get an Asian guy and the guy from Party of Five?

Derp

Twins? You can’t even claim fraternal at that point. The movie was trying way too hard to be “bad ass,” which is almost expected if you’ve ever even heard of the ‘90s. Tough kids fighting “the man” while taking crap from no one. Didn’t Double Dragon start with a chick getting punched in the stomach and dragged off?

Yup

I’m not even sure I remember what the game was about. I just know you and a friend beat the hell out of people. Someone saw that and said “That should be a movie.” And then they made it. And then it sucked.

Mortal Kombat followed and, while it should’ve been a total turd, given the fact that it wasn’t nearly as violent as the game it was based on, it was entertaining. It was basically a ripoff of Enter the Dragon, and while there were some cheesy bits (read: anything where Johnny Cage speaks), there were some fun fight scenes. Not the highlight of cinema, but a decent martial arts movie in its own right. Hollywood, not content with leaving their own pool unpissed in, went ahead and made a sequel. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation took everything the first one did right, which was minimal at best, and camped it up. Every single character from the games made an appearance, just to pad out the movie. Sub-Zero made a return, after having died in the previous movie, looking like David Schwimmer.

"No one told me life was gonna be this way"

His purpose? Build an ice bridge, fight Scorpion for a few seconds, and then leave. They even tried to work in the whole Animality crap that was kinda stupid even in the games. They went all out, but without love for the source material, just to rake in more money from the franchise. Hollywood? Money grubbing? Say it ain’t so.

Now that the blood was in the water, Hollywood had to put their golden boy in the game, so to speak. Enter Freddie Prinze Jr and Wing Commander, the movie which literally made me yell in the middle of the theater. I’ll give you context for that. First of all, Wing Commander is boring and the Kilrathi, the alien race that’s supposed to be the villain, are hardly ever revealed, so bored and disappointed at this point. Then you’ve got Freddie “She’s All That” Prinze and Matthew “Scooby Snacks” Lillard trading quips. At one point, Lillard saves Prinze from an airlock that was opened, mugs for the camera and says “What would you do without me?” “HE’D FUCKING DIE! THANKS!” This was the moment I realized bad movies need to be ridiculed to be enjoyed because the people involved in making them clearly don’t care what I think anyway.

THESPIAN!

I never bothered to watch Tomb Raider because I knew it would be nothing like the game, because if it was, the camera would never be where it would be helpful and Lara Croft would’ve fallen into every pit around because of shoddy controls.

Then Doom….sigh…I just want to point out that one of the key plot points of the movie is that having an extra chromosome makes you superhuman if you’re good and a monster if you’re evil, giving the lead character first person vision (which is fucking stupid because he should already have first person vision, being, you know, alive). I also want to point out that, in real life, having an extra chromosome makes you retarded. Perhaps that explains this movie. For anyone who has an extra chromosome, I apologize for comparing you to Doom. Sincerely.

Then there’s the Uwe Boll saga of crap. I’m not even going to go into it, but for the record, I’ll list them off - House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, Bloodrayne, In the Name of the King, and Postal. They don’t deserve to be talked about more than that because they’re terrible.

Why do these movies fail? Well, let’s start by looking at the genres they represent: Action/Adventure: Mario, Tomb Raider, Bloodrayne (kinda) Shooter: Wing Commander, House of the Dead, Postal, Doom, Hitman (not mentioned) Fighter: Double Dragon, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Dead or Alive (not mentioned)

These genres are not conducive to movies. Know why? Because they require that someone PLAY THEM! Does anyone think it’s fun seeing someone climb a mountain? No? How about climbing one yourself? Even if you don’t think it’s terribly fun, it’s more entertaining to do something than to watch something. Putting Doom in first person (ugh) doesn’t engage the audience anymore, it just stresses to them that they’re not playing the game, the game which is more fun. It’s much less fun watching a bald man sneak by security than it is to figure out how to do it yourself. Games are an interactive medium and are engrossing because of that. Eliminate the interaction and you show how bare bones your property really is.

That’s another reason why game movies fail. If the gameplay is better than the story, the movie will fail. Mario is a game where it doesn’t really matter why you’re making it to the end - you just do. The plot is inconsequential, but the jumping and platforming is fun. The same goes for Hitman - the fun is in the sneaking. The same goes for Street Fighter - the fun is in whooping your friend’s ass with Dan. If the reason a property is hot is less because of the story and more because of the gameplay, the movie is doomed to bomb. A God of War movie could work because the story was awesome. Tetris, on the other hand, would not work. Ever.

But still, somehow, this?

I understand why Hollywood makes game movies - hot property with built in audience. It’s about the almighty dollar, but as long as we keep paying to go see garbage, they’re just going to keep rolling it out.

Just saying….