#mazz asks

Now, onto the long feelings:

Like White on Spy (hereon referred to as LWS) is a technical wonder just like the ones made prior. The polish in the fights and characterisation is a continued development from what Crash has already demonstrated in The Fight for Sawmill (FFS) with clearly demonstrated internal logic that the viewer can easily understand and get invested in without a lick of dialogue. This seems like it should be really easy to pull off but unfortunately, there are stories that fail at this on such a spectacular level like RWBY’s inconsistent magic-not-magic system. You really get the feeling that these characters and fights have been meticulously planned out and scripted with storyboards rather than thrown together. Whatever story Crash wants to tell, it’s being told with careful consideration and it’s a spectacle to watch.

Of course, it isn’t perfect and there are a few moments that really force you to suspend your disbelief. I find it simultaneously hilarious and difficult to believe that a man who dresses as conspicuously and fucks up as much as the White Spy does could possibly remain undetected for any prolonged amount of time. Like, the guy forgets to fill his guns with ammo as he leaps onto the scene in his introduction and falls onto the ground unceremoniously. You’d think his combined clumsiness and hubris would have some out-of-fight consequences. But this is a nitpick at best and probably doesn’t deserve any deeper discussion. I just wanted to point out that while we’d previously dipped our toes into the totally ridiculous in terms of mechanics and world-building with the Rabid Heavy and Epic Scout, it seems Crash has no intentions of making their characters seem any more realistic and I am fine with it. I love TF2’s absurdity as it is, any and all ways of expanding it are greatly appreciated. 

The opening scene is probably my least favourite part of the whole video if only for the aforementioned voice acting. The direction is… fine. The voices are… okay. The boss in particular has a habit of emphasising weird places in the sentence and has a little trouble articulating the words which is a common mistake. There’s this thing that writers and actors often flub, which is cutting off a character’s word in a way that sounds unnatural. When the boss is going to say ‘Cobra’, he is stopped just as he starts the word which results in a jarring Kh sound. In normal conversation, cutting off the first sound in a word like Cobra would probably end up with a much softer Kha or even Koh if you let them hang on the word a little longer. You could even stop before the word itself to make it sound just a little more natural. I’m not sure how well I’m explaining this to be honest. 

I get it, voice acting is difficult and requires lots of experience and training. Crash has limited the dialogue to in-game plug-ins to communicate basic things like ‘the character is annoyed’ so I can understand that jumping to writing actual dialogue between two characters isn’t going to be easy. It doesn’t ruin the whole thing but oftentimes, I just end up skipping the opening scene to get to the fight itself which is a shame. I’m not sure how I’d feel if Crash continued to get voice actors rather than relying on physical acting or in-game voice lines alone but it’s not something I’d jump out of my seat for. If it got better then cool, I guess. If it was dropped, also acceptable. I have similar feelings about Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It’s functional but not great.

As with FFS, Crash’s utilisation of physical characterisation is demonstrated early with the character who I will call ‘Glasses’ simply because he has no name and he wears glasses. There’s some back and forth about this information Glasses has about the White Spy that the boss clearly doesn’t care about so the audience gets to see Glasses’ manipulation tactics with a quick glance away, followed by a smirk, then some dramatic body language and a turn. The boss is facing away from Glasses, there is no reason for the level of attention to Glasses’ acting. This is a moment for the audience. And it works really well! I like these little details.

White Spy’s debut sets the tone early with its snappy editing and… interesting pacing. The whole video is fast paced and very tight with only a few parts that sometimes break the pace a little too much. I think this in part is due to the voice acting problem. Some bits feel really good with the original voice acting for Cobra and can keep up with the action but other bits feel just a few seconds too long. I like Cobra talking to the Yellows gang during the trade before the White Spy royally fucks up his entrance buf I don’t really love her talking to the last guy left right after she’s already shot him in the head. Girl, he’s already dead. He can’t hear you. 

The comedy at the beginning is a little odd to adjust to. It’s different from Crash’s previous work in the sense that it doesn’t flow with the action but rather, it stops it. The humour FFS feels like a drum fill: they add flavour to the piece without stopping dead in its tracks. In this opening, the video stops to have its big subversion, ironically best embodied by the record scratch that plays during the scene. It’s not bad but that’s just how the scene feels after a few rewatches.

But what I really like about this scene is how it establishes the rules of this SFM both in terms of its editing and style, and its characters and world. White Spy is clearly a capable fighter but he has his moments of cockiness which can lead to mistakes. He’s clumsy and forgetful, he doesn’t always move with grace and it seems that he barely escapes situations by the skin of his teeth. The shots of him beating up groups of enemies are impressive and are deliberately undercut by moments of White Spy making a show of his abilities only to then fall over or make a mistake that almost kills him. It’s funny and likeable, definitely a new favourite character in Crash’s canon. 

There’s also this sort of good luck/bad choices cycle. I love lucky characters so this is right up my alley. His incredible good luck stops him from dying in most dire situations but the bad choices stop him from revelling in most of his accomplishments. Like at the very end, he has Cobra pinned, he takes out her gun and removes most of the clip (a bullet flies out as well), gets the briefcase and then just… leaves the gun and bullet next to her as he walks away. We’d seen him taking knives and other weapons and stashing them for later but in this one occasion, the part where it probably matters most, he fucks this up and just turns his back. Of course she just reloads and shoots him, and you can see the look on his face when he realises that he’s fucked up bad. It’s well set up as a part of his character and the payoff is really funny and tense at the same time.

The style of LWS is very distinct from Crash’s other works. I like the way the camera shakes and turns, kinda reminds me of a movie action scene. I like the way blood splatters on the camera at a few really impactful moments. The camera in general is well utilised and makes for really interesting shots. I like how its allowed to just stay and watch the characters’ quick movements without excessively cutting to show each individual gun or knife impact. It feels tight without getting confusing or annoying. White Spy also breaks the fourth wall a lot by looking at the camera, acknowledging the ridiculousness of the situation. It’s great, I love this style.

I usually dislike movies that revolve around car chase scenes ‘cause honestly, I get completely lost. I don’t remember cars as easily as I do faces. They feel like moments where your brain just turns off until one of the cars inevitably crashes and then a winner is declared. I felt this way when I watched the car chase scene from The Batman (2022) and I really liked that film! I liked the shot that came afterwards but in the theatre, I completely spaced out once I’d lost sight of the car Batman was supposed to be chasing. All this to say that once again, Crash has subverted my expectations and made me love a long car chase scene. There’s a good sense of clarity with the distinct vehicles all with different colours and types as well as leaving the highway mostly empty. It lets the audience focus on what they should actually care about and strips away the potential noise of traffic or unimportant characters. At the same time, the background cars that do appear feel very important mostly because they’re absent for the rest of the scene. The characters have to care about random people driving on the highway only when it’s important. This could be seen as a flaw in the writing and presentation but honestly, anything that makes it easier to watch is fine by me. It’s very functional (affectionate). 

I love the constant jumping from vehicle to vehicle and the overall progression of the scene. I gasped the first time White Spy jumped out of his hilariously conspicuous car complete with ‘WHI73 SPY’ number plate seconds before it crashed into a pole. I gasped again when he leapt out of a car seconds before it exploded and it launched him all the way to Cobra’s car. The tension is amazing and the camera and editing did a great job with helping the audience keep track of everyone and everything. On top of that, the fights are geniously crafted and outside of the box. Characters do more than just stick their heads out of windows and shoot which is so refreshing to watch. White Spy surfs on an upside-down vehicle, jams a gun into the wheel to topple it over, flies off of a tank and smashes through the windscreen in the car behind it. And it doesn’t stop after the cars stop moving! Broken doors are used as shields, tight spaces build tension as characters roll in and out of cars to reload their weapons, White Spy turns on the overhead lights to blind one of the lackeys, wheels are tripped over, it’s so good! The design of the fights is so well done, I feel I’m doing it an injustice just describing it via text.

Cobra’s fighting style clashes really well with White Spy’s and if it weren’t for the fact that she’s in jail and probably isn’t going to come back in any major way, I’d be thrilled to see her go toe-to-toe with Bryce. Unlike most of the characters we’ve seen thus far, Cobra fights dirty. She spits on faces and trips legs, she uses her opponent’s clothes against them and she throws her weapons. She uses the same tricks though and much like RED Spy (who we now know as Agent 35) in Rise of the Epic Scout, she starts to become predictable to the protagonist who fights in a much more improvised and fluid motion. White Spy in contrast tries to retaliate with slightly more style and grace which keeps getting interrupted or undermined. I like this balance of competence and shit luck that ups the stakes in this final throw down.

Then there’s a little teaser after the credits that could mean that Rabid Heavy, Engie and White Spy might team up to fight Bryce or something like that. It sounds epic and I’d be happy to wait as long as it takes for it to come out.

While I’d like to see what other characters Crash could create complete with unique fighting styles and expanding the luck system, I wouldn’t hold my breath. This is already quite a roster of characters and introducing an outside force like this probably means that the series is heading toward The Big FightTM soon. There’s a big bad antagonist that needs to be uncovered and defeated. Now everything else is expected to contribute to that end goal. They could certainly add some new characters and introduce them like Rise of the Epic Scout or Meet the Rabid Heavy Taming Engineer but they would have to be pretty well justified in this overarching story.