The Fall of the Third Reich

As alluded to in my previous post, I went on a bit of a YouTube bender in the midst of reading Capital and Ideology. This was actually a momentous occasion, as it is the first time in my approximately 14 years of using YouTube that the algorithm did something good. Usually it suggests inane, offensive or redundant content, so it was a pleasant surprise that, for the first time in my entire life, I was actually seeing YouTube recommendations pointing me towards unexpected things that turned out to be delightful.

This all started with the aforementioned short The New Spirit, also known as "Taxes to Beat the Axis". This is a really remarkable piece, filled with education, humor, drama and spectacle. The Sixteenth Amendment was only a few decades old, and the idea of a progressive income tax was relatively novel.



The first section is really funny, with Donald's swings from enthusiasm to sulking and back again. It's really interesting to see historical artifacts in there, like old-fashioned ink blotters. But the most stunning section is the final few minutes. We pull out from Donald's private domestic zaniness and witness his enthusiastic run across America, gaining a broad perspective of the entire continent: all bound together, united, with the mass communication of the radio tying California with the East Coast, seeing the unique beauty of the Rocky Mountains and the Texan desserts and the Louisiana delta. And that dissolves into the awe-inspiring and shocking militancy of the final minutes: we see the fruits of that great united nation, putting to work the wealth of the nation, her factories busy, churning out the weapons to defeat fascism. I think the part of this short that sticks with me the most is the way the narrator says "Guns, guns, all kinds of guns!", his quivering tone suggesting a mixture of reverence and titillation.

That's actually the second video I saw when searching "Taxes to Beat the Axis" on YouTube. The first one I saw is sort of a sequel, "The Spirit of 43". This is the one I vaguely remember seeing at the Ground Round in my childhood, along with a video I can't seem to find anywhere that updated Aesop's Fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper and ended with the Grasshopper relaxing to a luxurious winter thanks to his stash of War Bonds. Anyways, The Spirit of 43 strikes a markedly different tone in many ways from the earlier work. This is a more internal struggle, with Donald reaching within himself to do the right thing instead of responding to an authoritative voice.



I'm struck again and again by the sense of collective struggle in these shorts. The government is us, it's we the people putting our resources together - "Your taxes, my taxes, our taxes" - to accomplish something important. I really wish we could reclaim that sense of all being in this together.

Another interesting artifact is the cartoons of Tex Avery, including Blitz Wolf.  This is less nuanced (who would have ever thought that Donald Duck would be the avatar of nuance?!), but crams in a ton of gags and is really fun to watch. Where Donald appeals to your mind, Avery appeals to your fighting spirit, with tons of slapstick and scenery-chewing. This is nominally a program to sell war bonds, but that appeal feels very perfunctory and tacked-on, not integrated into the story like the Donald shorts.

From here, I took a detour into a longer and more structured form of propaganda: Why We Fight. This amazing series of films from Frank Capra hold up impressively well today, both as history and as art.



So, just to state the obvious: Yes, this is propaganda. It was developed by the United States government to shape public perceptions of the war; more specifically, to convince a generally isolationist populace of the need to fight in Europe and Asia, and to convince conscripted young men that this cause was worth killing and dying for.

That said, it comes off as surprisingly nuanced propaganda. I was kind of impressed at how deeply it delved into the history of the rise of Hitler in Germany: it covers the humiliating terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the punishing payments extracted from Germany, the hyperinflation this led to, and the human misery and desperation accompanying it. The narrator's overall message is along the lines of "The Germans were going through hard times, and they made the mistake of believing that the Nazis had the answers. Of course, we all have gone through hard times. In America we worked through our problems democratically, establishing the New Deal and fixing our economy while continuing to live freely." It carefully threads a needle, the same one Piketty delicately traces, of explaining how the prior actions of the Allies laid the groundwork for Hitler's rise to power, while remaining very clear that his actions were inexcusable.

The big overriding proposition of this series is that World War II is a cataclysmic battle between two incompatible worlds, the Free World of the allies and the Slave World of the axis. The Free World is implicitly denoted by FDR's famous Four Freedoms: Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear. The Axis only promises freedom from want and tramples on all the others. I was struck by how the films stressed America's diversity, making a note that Muslims and Jews and Hindus and Christians and everyone else shares equal rights to practice their faith. It also is (to my ears) surprisingly friendly towards the left, repeatedly decrying how Hitler and Mussolini suppressed socialist movements in Europe and praising the freedoms granted to labor unions in the US.

As history it works well and thoroughly, not starting with the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 or the invasion of Poland in 1939, but the invasion of Manchuria in 1931. We see how long aggression had gone unchecked, how many times belligerent nations broke treaties without repercussions, how often the League of Nations tutted their tongues and did nothing. Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 follows the same vein. The narrator spells it out very clearly and darkly: The people in the United States asked, Why should we care that some Africans in huts have been attacked, or some Asians in rice paddies? The message is clear: we should have cared, we had a moral duty to care, and we're only in this mess now because we neglected to act when the victims were people who didn't look or speak like us.

That narrator is a constant companion through the series. It's fascinating and instructive to compare this to The Triumph of the Will. From what I understand, Capra intended this series to be a sort of response to or antidote for that famous Nazi propaganda movie. They are completely different beasts, though. Triumph of the Will has almost no dialogue, just sweeping and inspiring imagery of crowds and movement, mass roaring chants; there are selections from speeches by Nazi leaders, but the real power is the response to those words, not the words themselves. It's a film designed to overwhelm your senses, to inspire awe.

So, it's interesting that Why We Fight is such a dialogue-heavy series. We're getting a history lesson, and following troop movements on a map, and hearing glosses on major events. It cajoles, it pontificates, it debates, it states. It's doing a lot, but what it's trying to feel most like is an appeal to reason: it lays out evidence, makes arguments, and asks you to accept its conclusions.

The more I think about this, the more perfect this comparison is. When you're producing propaganda in the service of democracy, you're emulating democracy, and making each viewer its own citizen, capable of making up his or her own mind, and hoping we all pull together in the right direction in the end. When making propaganda in service of fascism, though, it's all about the mass movement, about unity, about unquestioning devotion and obedience. One picks you up, the other sweeps you away.

The nature of those arguments is also very well done. The movies frequently quote from Mein Kampf and various speeches from leaders in all three Axis nations, using their own words to illustrate the danger these countries pose. Sometimes it is highlighting the grandiose ambitions and despicable philosophy they hold. Other times it is to highlight their hypocrisy and treachery; one very effective example comes in part two, The Nazis Strike, replaying a speech from Hitler where he makes specific promises against any claim of territory on each of his European neighbors. The film returns to that speech again and again after each new border is breached, replaying his earlier words as an ironic counterpart to his later actions. It's making a clear argument that diplomacy with such a man is impossible. It also is stunningly similar to the technique recently popularized by Jon Stewart and now deployed by a variety of news-oriented comedians, highlighting the hypocrisy of politicians by playing old footage of them stating one thing alongside new footage of them saying or doing the opposite.

The series isn't perfectly high-minded, of course. While the movies rightfully decry the Nazi philosophy of Aryan supremacy, they're completely silent on America's own history of racial injustice, making no mention of the Jim Crow South or the Chinese Exclusion Act or the internment of Japanese Americans. It generally avoids racial and national characterizations, but does slip in a couple of suggestions that, say, the Germans have a history of aggression (while also going out of its way to show that America has been a good home for Germans, highlighting the many ethnic Germans serving in high ranks of American government and military).

Finally, I wanted to note that the editing of these films is really remarkable. It's surprisingly fast and kinetic, with the kind of rapid cuts and disorienting shifts in action that I tend to associate with 21st-century Hollywood movies. The aerial combat scenes as in The Battle of Britain are particularly effective, exhilarating and tense.

It's really interesting to see the shift between high-level and low-level information. Some of the US War Department's films were aimed to educate (or "educate") the populace about the broad contours of the war: why we were fighting, the theaters in which we were operating, what territory had been lost or reclaimed. Others were much more low-level: what you, the viewer, ought to be doing (or not doing). Those Donald Duck cartoons above are a great example of this: you should be paying your taxes to support the war effort. There was similar propaganda around discreet communications ("Loose Lips Sink Ships"), self-sufficiency (Victory Gardens), and volunteering for military or non-military duty.

A particularly fascinating sub-genre were films aimed directly at servicemembers. With a drafted, non-professional military that consisted mostly of young single men, there was a... very particular tone used to impart important lessons. Lewd and funny, it's kind of shocking that these were actual government films, but I can see why they might be more effective than a straight training movie.

I'm mostly thinking of Private Snafu here. The pedigree of these cartoons is kind of insane: Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel) wrote the scripts, Chuck Jones animated them, and Mel Blanc voiced them. Unlike Why We Fight, these were not distributed for broader public consumption, and were exclusively viewed by members of the armed forces.



I think the humor still holds up well, with the unfortunate and major exception of the blatant racism. Unlike the Disney cartoons, which used anthropomorphized animals and vehicles to depict our foes, or Why We Fight, which uses actual footage of foreign leaders and soldiers, the Snafu cartoons include painful racial characterizations, particularly of the Japanese, in a way that will be familiar to anyone who has viewed, say, Buck Rogers comics of the era. It is tempting to contextualize this and point out that we were at war with the Japanese, but you can't escape the major differences between how our European adversaries were depicted compared to our Asian adversaries.

Maybe the biggest impact all of these historical and artistic artifacts have on me is a new appreciation for the massive difference between the pre-1970s civilian army versus our modern professional army. Don't get me wrong, I am extremely glad that we no longer have a draft! But when I look back at history, it's striking how there was such a unified sense of purpose in our conflicts: everyone was serving in the war or directly affected by it; even when opposing war, as in Vietnam, it was a national issue that impacted everyone. Today, it seems like our wars are parceled out and self-contained, with citizens duly funding the expenses via our taxes but having no sense that it is "our" fight, "our" purpose. That seems to me like a dangerous trend. Whether a war is just or not, it is being fought on our behalf even if not by our personal bodies, and I kind of wish we paid the same degree of attention to our missions in Afghanistan that we once did to our missions on Pacific atolls or European beaches.

Lordes and Ladies

This was a Pickettyriffic weekend. Thanks to a hot tip from my brother Pat, I was able to join a great live (quarantined) panel discussion with Thomas Piketty, the "rockstar" French economist, and several other great thinkers in a fascinating and wide-ranging discussion that touched in particular on the covid pandemic and the possible futures it may foretell. I also got to watch the new film that panel was ostensibly promoting, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. And I crossed the halfway mark in Capital and Ideology, the latest book from Piketty.

Originally I was planning to wait until I finished this book before writing up all three things; but realistically that will be at least several more weeks, so I wanted to capture the event thoughts while they're still fresh. Then I thought that I might write up my impressions of the book so far, much as I would do with a particularly lengthy novel. But on further reflection I think I want to wait and react to the whole book in one post, not least because of all of his pending promises like "I will have much more to say about it later on" (which has replaced my beloved "I will come back to this point" from the previous book). Instead, let's start with the panel!

Like so much of the entertainment I've consumed over the last two months (The Thrilling Adventure Hour, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Hollywood Handbook), this took the form of a Zoom call. It was hosted by The New Republic and moderated by the editor Chris Lehmann. Piketty fielded most of the questions and got most of the speaking time, which certainly makes sense given the purpose of the event and his stature. As with other interviews I've seen with him, he speaks in strongly accented but clear English. He's interesting to watch, often with brows knit tightly in concentration while someone else talks or jokes, then loose and open while he speaks. Rounding out the panel were two other experts who, I would later learn, are also featured in the movie: the journalist Gillian Tett and the political scientist Ian Bremmer. Both gave good observations and helped drive the conversation. Ian was also surprisingly (and welcomely) active in the Q&A chat, responding to randos like me who had joined the Zoom and were following the conversation or going on tangents.

Lehmann opened the panel with a question about the Coronavirus. Historically, crises have often provided opportunities for making major structural changes: for example, the Great Depression led to the New Deal. He was curious if one possible beneficial outcome of the crisis would be to reorient society in a more just fashion, providing necessary investment in our state's capabilities. Piketty agreed that this is one possible outcome, but warned that it's just as likely that things could go the opposite direction; after all, economic crisis in Germany had led to the rise of Nazism. So there are major risks as well as opportunities to be aware of.

Bremmer eventually articulated a really thoughtful analysis of the overall situation we're currently in, basically with one good trend and two bad trends. On the one hand, the political discussion in the US now is far more advanced than it has been for decades: ideas like the wealth tax that were not even considered just a year or two ago are now polling with absolute majority support and have major political champions. This trend will likely accelerate as a result of coronavirus, as we compare the outcomes in the US to those in other countries and political pressure builds to invest in our healthcare system, our social safety net, and so on. But, on the other hand, the people who are most hurt by the crisis and the accompanying recession are the working class: they're working "essential" jobs, getting sick and dying from exposure to the virus, losing jobs that they can't afford to lose, getting displaced. This is a huge shock to the lower class, which will necessarily blunt their political power: you can't canvas for a candidate if you're starving or traveling for home or work. And, much as we saw in the 2008 financial crisis, the top 1% elites are emerging richer and more powerful than ever: while the real economy is tanking, tech companies like Google are more profitable than ever. So, for at least the next couple of years the upper classes will have even more relative power than they already (which is already a hell of a lot!). And finally there's the external threat of countries like China who have a degree of control over their citizens that allows them to much more easily resolve this sort of crisis. All of these things are accelerating, and it's really hard to say where we will end up.

Tett was unfortunately sidelined by audio issues for some of the program (a problem I've encountered all too often these past few months!), but did make some great contributions early on. Her background is actually in anthropology, and she noted that one of the most important things about anthropology is realizing just how much societies can vary: it's natural to assume that things can only be one way, until you see it being done another way, and suddenly that opens up new ways of thinking about your own culture. This dovetails really nicely with Piketty's politically-oriented view of economies, which are not driven by immutable laws, but rather by the choices people make. This does give much more opportunity for optimism.

In addition to the coronavirus, there was also some good, spirited discussion on another hot contemporary topic, the Green New Deal (and environmentalism more broadly). Tett has apparently written extensively about the GND and helped lay out some thoughts. Most people view global climate change as an existential crisis, one that could permanently cripple human development; many think that we need to tackle both climate change and inequality, while others see a limited potential for political evolution and think we need to focus all our attention on climate change. In previous interviews, I've heard Piketty make an argument along the lines that climate change is the bigger issue, but solving inequality is a prerequisite to solving climate change: we will need massive mobilization of resources to take it on, which will require democratic marshaling of wealth and a broad will to meet the challenge; otherwise, elites will hoard the resources we need to solve the problem, and the less-privileged people will be too focused on meeting their short-term necessities to tackle the looming problem. Tett did share some good news, in that tackling climate change is a less polarizing issue than it was even a few years ago; conservatives use different language, like "Conservation" and "Stewardship," but are now potential allies in this fight.

The panelists also looked at the global dimension of the problem, which is definitely important: not just what happens within countries, but between countries. The US, UK and France became global superpowers in large part because of our unlimited extraction and consumption of resources in prior centuries; when we tell rising countries not to do what we've done, they'll rightly laugh in our faces. The only just and rational solution is for the rich countries to pay the poor countries not to pollute. But, just try telling that to someone wearing a MAGA hat! Once again, the issues of politics, economics and environmentalism are inseparable, but no less important.

Tett and Bremmer in particular shared a lot of interesting thoughts on globalization (or, as Bremmer frames it, globalism vs. globalization). This topic has kind of been in the background of much of the stuff I've been reading and watching lately, but I haven't really seen much heads-on explanation of it, and it was great to see this breakdown. As Bremmer hits hard, the global population has done extremely well over the last several decades, with more than a billion people being lifted out of poverty and into the global middle class; but this has happened at the same time that the first-world middle class has stagnated, which is directly contributing to the rise in nativism we're seeing in the US and Europe.

I have noticed that the "optimism versus pessimism" question seems to arise rather often in live events with Piketty. Lots of people, including myself, saw Capital in the Twenty-First Century as a rather dire warning, with fundamentally pessimistic outlooks on the prospects of future growth. But in person he's always careful to emphasize his optimism: there's more wealth in the world than ever before, and in the past we have demonstrated our capability of using political power to reduce inequality, and nothing is really stopping us from doing so again other than a lack of political will. He sounded slightly more measured in this panel, obviously not wanting to downplay the impact of the coronavirus and being aware that all switch points do not lead to positive outcomes. Bremmer had a more dour perspective, but the interview as a whole ended on a pretty positive note.

I decided to take the plunge and buy a ticket for the movie. I really dig how they're doing this: clearly, the original plan was to release the movie in theaters, but that isn't happening now. Rather than just keeping it in the vault or releasing on a streaming service, though, Kino Lorber has come up with a cool model: you can buy a ticket through your local movie theater. They split the cost between the theater and the distributor/filmmakers, just like you would with a regular physical ticket. The theater then gets income during the time it's shut down so they can continue to pay employees, cover rent, and continue minimal operations; and you as the viewer can watch the movie at home. I was very pleased to see that the Roxie Theater in the Mission District in on the list of distributors, and ponied up for it.

It didn't go as smoothly as I would have liked. I'd tested it out ahead of time by Airplaying the trailer for the film from Kino's site, which worked perfectly. Unfortunately, though, it looks like the actual movie has some sort of extra DRM or something and I was unable to stream it. That was very frustrating! I always hate feeling like I'm being punished for doing the right thing and buying things legally.

This felt kind of ironic because, right before the panel discussion, I'd (privately) scoffed at someone on Twitter who wrote something along the lines of, "It's disappointing that you're charging people to watch a movie about capitalism, it should really be free." One thing I've gained a far better appreciation for in recent years is the value of labor: orienting the economy around fairly compensating people for the work they do, instead of focusing on selling things as cheaply as possible. There's absolutely no contradiction between criticizing capitalism (as currently practiced in the US) and charging for something you made. But here I was, that same night, feeling like a fool for paying money for something that didn't work. I don't know, it's complicated!

I calmed down and watched it the next night: directly on my computer, not as nice as it would have been on my TV, but whatever, it's fine.



So, bottom line: I really liked it! It's a different beast than the book, and I think that ultimately the shared title is probably more about marketing than adapting. But it's getting at the same spirit as Piketty's body of work, and covers an overlapping set of topics and concerns, leaning on cinema's strengths to tell the story its own way rather than try to reproduce the book.

The movie is slickly put-together. A dozen or so interviewees provide most of the content: Piketty (in subtitled French), also Gillian Tett and Ian Bremmer, several famous intellectuals like Francis Fukuyama and Joseph Stiglitz, and many other academics and a few civil servants. We get to see the speakers, but most of the time the audio is spliced over scenes that evoke what they're discussing: homeless people sleeping against Manhattan skyscrapers, or pristine Bermuda beaches, or a sea of people riding a wave in a pool. The music is smart and contemporary, if a bit too on-the-nose: I laughed and rolled my eyes when the movie opened with Lorde's song "Royals" (of course a Kiwi would pick that!), "We're In The Money" plays during the 1920s, "Kids in America" plays when we enter the Reagan years. Though, in retrospect, those songs are cultural artifacts of their eras, and it probably is worthwhile to listen to how people were expressing their thoughts about wealth in different societies.



There are also great, judicious clips from movies and TV shows, which always fit in well with the topics being discussed. Piketty famously admires Jane Austen's depiction of privilege, and it's fun to see how a room orients itself around Mr. Darcy in "Pride and Prejudice". We see a few different depictions of the impersonal forces of capitalism causing specific human misery in foreclosing a specific house, first in "The Grapes of Wrath" and later in an episode of "The Simpsons". And there's some really dark footage of strike-breaking and slave plantations. Probably the most chilling inclusions are scenes from "Triumph of the Will" and other Nazi propaganda.


Again, I'm only halfway through "Capital and Ideology", but I feel like the film version of "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" is actually closer to "Capital and Ideology" than it is to the book "Capital in the Twenty-First Century". Which isn't a bad thing! Cit21C is more about economic theory while C&I is more about history, and history can be a lot more engaging. C&I also casts a wider net: while Cit21C is primarily focused on the US and western Europe from roughly 1800-2000, C&I has a more global perspective, and goes deeper into colonialism and the slave trade. The movie more or less follows the same structure as C&I, telling a basically linear and narrative story: how the class systems of feudal societies carried forward into the modern era, how inequality actually accelerated after the legal privileges of the nobility were revoked, how those inequalities led to social stresses within nations and tension over competition between nations, how those stresses led to WW1, how the economic misery of the depression led to ethno-nationalism, how the postwar boom and social-democratic policies led to enormous decreases in inequality, then how those policies were unwound starting in the 1980s and how the reckless actions of bankers and capitalists have led to misery and massive inequality today.

It's a bit of a whirlwind, but a very well-told one; I personally didn't feel like I learned much from this part of the movie that I hadn't picked up from the two books, but that's okay! Again, I think it's really smart to lean on the language and strengths of cinema rather than try to ram hundreds of graphs into 110 minutes.

As the movie goes on, I did come to really appreciate the diversity of voices and the new perspectives it brings in. Piketty is the anchor of the film, but it's not all about him, more about exploring the space he's interested in. A few particular sections really stick out in my mind. One is about the history of the fashion industry (and Christmas!), how need was manufactured and then fulfilled. I've read a lot about textiles (so many textiles you guys), but hadn't heard specifically about the fashion side of it, which provided a fascinating piece to the puzzle. Another is about the psychology of wealth, and some really disturbing (and compelling) research about how strongly behaviors can be driven by the perception of wealth. These sorts of things go beyond the areas Piketty lays out in his books, which makes perfect sense: he's a very cautious and judicious writer, avoiding the temptation to opine on topics outside his area of expertise, so it's great to hear some of those outside experts show how his findings extend to other areas, or can explain the patterns he has discovered.

At the tail end of the movie, the last ten minutes or so finally get around to what the book Cit21C is about: the relationships between growth, return on capital, wealth and inequality; his proposal for a progressive tax on wealth. Unlike in the book, Piketty doesn't build up to these observations and show how they're derived from empirical data: instead, he takes them as givens while making further points. I don't think any skeptics would be convinced by this movie in the same way they might be from his books, but for the vast majority of people who are generally curious about the relationship between wealth and power, what's happening now and may happen in the future, the film does a terrific job at conveying the heart of what Piketty and his colleagues are trying to say.

Wild One

For the second year, I'm temporarily switching out streaming services. The timing worked out pretty perfectly: I blew through Season 2 of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, caught Patton Oswalt's new special on Friday, then canceled Netflix and signed up for HBO Now in time for Sunday's Silicon Valley and Game of Thrones.

I'm primarily motivated by the original series on each service, but the biggest side-perk of switching to HBO is their vastly superior library of movies. At any given time Netflix will have a couple of decent films, but the days when you could reliably find a movie you were interested in have long since passed. HBO, on the other hand, has a ton of movies, and many more recent blockbusters. I've already lined up about a dozen that I want to watch, and more will be arriving in the upcoming months.

I think the system actually encourages switching between services: I'll likely continue paying for HBO Now for the next 3 months, covering the duration of Game of Thrones. This comes at a 50% premium over Netflix, but in absolute dollars it isn't bad at all - $15 a month versus $9. And, once I switch back to Netflix, it will have accumulated 3 months' worth of new movies, increasing the odds that there will be something on there that I'll actually want to watch.

Streaming movies has a few different advantages. It can be a great chance to catch up on gaps in my pop culture resume - it's a little surprising that I haven't seen "Knocked Up" before, and that was one of the first things I watched. It's also perfect for watching movies that came out in the last year or two that had interested me at the time but I'd never managed to see. High on that list: "Wild," which came out recently and stars Reese Witherspoon as a woman who hikes the Pacific Coast Trail.

Through-hiking the PCT has been a long-standing dream of one, albeit one that I perpetually delay. I love backpacking; it's been far too long since my last trip, but my journeys through Henry Coe Park, Yosemite, and The Lost Coast have been some of the happiest times of my life.

From very early on, I was impressed at just how well the movie gets the experience of hiking. Not just the physical aspect, but the mental one as well. I smiled when, shortly after Cheryl gets on the trail, she starts thinking to herself "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." That's fairly common for me as well in my own hikes: not that I'm upset or in pain, but it's a rhythmic phrase that helps me maintain a certain pace.

The way that Cheryl's mind wanders and focuses on her journey rang very true for me. I think that might be my favorite aspect of hiking and why I try to do it so often. As your body is occupied on the trail, your mind begins to wander, jumping back and forth in time. I'll often replay entire scenes from my past, thinking about what they meant and whether I should have done anything differently. And, much like Cheryl, I sometimes manage to find closure and peace about things that have been bothering me.

MINI SPOILERS

Early on, I varied between thinking "Wow, the filmmakers really know a lot about backpacking!" and "Eh, this isn't very realistic." I loved the scene where she empties her food into baggies, reseals them, rolls them, and packs them. That probably doesn't mean a whole lot to non-hikers, but it's a crucial aspect to packing for long trips, letting you efficiently fit a lot more calories into a smaller space.

On the other hand, the pack itself was ludicrous - way too large, way too heavy (albeit with great comic relief when she tries to strap in), and with poor weight distribution, most notably with her canteen and stuff hanging off the back. However, much later in the movie, I finally realized that this was all deliberate: the whole point was that she wasn't packing very well, and one significant step of her evolution on the trail is a scene where she casts off all the things that had been bugging me and gets to a more reasonable weight.

For a while the combination of those things bothered me: why was Cheryl so smart about packing food, and so dumb about bringing paperback books? It finally made sense much later in the movie when she stumbles across a tribute to Jerry Garcia, who has just died. All along I'd been assuming that this was a fairly contemporary movie, perhaps set around 2010; but it's actually set all the way back in '95. The ultralight movement hadn't really come to dominate backpacking yet, and there wasn't yet the huge wealth of online resources and travelogues that we have today. (Heck, Cheryl probably helped get that ball rolling!) If Cheryl was mostly motivated by the paperback books with pretty pictures of the trail, then yeah, of course her knowledge would be spotty. And any books that she read would probably still be influenced from the old-school, 70s-era backpacking ethos, which really was much more about bringing along everything you wanted, as opposed to the minimum necessary to support your adventure.

Once that piece of it clicked, I was able to enjoy absolutely everything about the the movie's portrayal of the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of hiking the trail. For example, I absolutely loved one scene where she encounters a massive boulder that has fallen onto the trail, along a steep cliff's face, and needs to figure out how to get around it. In a Hollywood movie, we would expect there to be a rockslide, a desperate leap to safety, clinging for dear life. What actually happens is much more realistic and much more powerful: she swears, stops, evaluates the situation, comes up with a plan, cautiously executes it, and then happily continues on her way. Those moments aren't all that common on the trail, but they're the things that personally give me the greatest satisfaction: those moments of puzzle-solving, where we figure out how to overcome obstacles and achieve our goals.

Patience and calm are the greatest virtues a hiker can have. When something starts to go wrong, keeping your cool will allow you to quickly recover. However, if you react with anger, fear, or frustration, then you'll almost inevitably make things far worse. Whether it's a problem with your equipment, or your path, it's almost best to stop what you're doing, take a deep breath, and think things through before taking any actions.

We see Cheryl in a variety of tense situations. Sometimes she makes mistakes - wasting the last of her water, angrily chucking a fuel canister. But more often we see her overcoming adversity: dealing with unwanted attention, collecting an alpaca, properly treating impure water rather than immediately satisfying her thirst.

The scene that most struck me, though, was the very first scene in the movie. It starts in media res: we see Cheryl at a beautiful spot on top of a mountain, but also in pain, wrenching off her boots and examining the bloody mess beneath. Something goes wrong (a boot falls down the slope), and she makes it worse (she chucks the other one after it), then bellows her rage at the world. When I initially saw that scene, I winced and thought, "Man, she's being really emotional and irrational."

Afterwards, we go back to the start of the hike, and follow Cheryl along the way. By the time we finally catch back up to that starting scene and see it again, my understanding of it had totally changed. First of all, I now understood Cheryl's mental state. She wasn't upset because her hike was hard: she was upset because her mother had died. Secondly, throwing the footwear wasn't nearly as irrational as it had seemed. Those boots were practically killing her, and, furthermore, she had already lined up a replacement pair for her next stop. I ended up admiring her cleverness with her improvised solution of sandals and duct-tape: they don't offer as much support, but would be much kinder to her toes than the boots.

Heh... in all of my writing above, I've almost completely ignored the real point of the movie, which of course isn't about the minutiae of backpacking on the PCT but about Cheryl's personal story. Artistry and realism combine perfectly to tell this story: the flashbacks aren't just an authorial device to reveal information, but are what Cheryl is actually thinking about at those points in her hike. We gradually come to know the full picture more and more as we watch the movie, but Cheryl is also coming to terms with her history, assimilating her memories and finding meaning in them.

MEGA SPOILERS

Much like the scene with the boots, I found my understanding reshaped and reformed as the movie provides more context. Early on, most flashbacks are very short and emotional, just a few seconds long: it's like Cheryl's mind is too skittish to dwell on painful memories, so she quickly forces herself to move on. In one, we see her riding in the passenger seat of a car driven by her ex-husband, who is yelling at her. We think that it's a scene of an abusive relationship, perhaps leading up to the divorce. Perhaps he is the reason she has fled to the wilderness. By the end of the hike, though, we now know what led up to that scene: Cheryl running away, having sex with a parade of anonymous men, becoming pregnant, having an abortion, becoming addicted to heroin. Now, watching that scene the second time, we can't help but feel sympathy for this man, who came all the way from Minneapolis to Portland to get his ex-wife out of a drug-infested squat and into therapy. His anger now seems protective, rather than dangerous.

The part that touched me the most is, of course, Cheryl's mother. There's a lot going on there, but the part that most struck me is a recalled conversation when Cheryl was a teenager. She gets annoyed at her mom, who persists in being happy and goofy, finally snapping with something like "We're both poor, we work as waitresses, we'll never get out of debt, and you were married to an abusive alcoholic asshole. Why are you so happy?" The mother becomes just a little bit more serious, and explains her philosophy (if we can't change our circumstances, we can still control our attitude), before ending with something like, "Yes, I married an abusive, alcoholic man. If I had it to do all over again, would I do anything differently? Absolutely not. Because of that awful man, I now have you."

That's really sweet and powerful on its own, but it also presages Cheryl's epiphany at the end of her journey. Yes, horrible things have happened in her life, and yes, she has made some horrible choices. But, ultimately, those things have all led her to this moment. She wouldn't be on the trail now if she hadn't become addicted to heroin. She wouldn't have met her husband if her own mother's death hadn't driven her to do something new.

It's a radical new way of looking at life and history. Replaying your memories can seem like an act of penance, punishing yourself for past mistakes. Or, it can be a way to understand who you are. Love all the parts of yourself, even the bad parts, because they're all necessary. When things go wrong, trust that they're a step on the way to something good happening. That can be a religious belief, or a secular belief, but either way it's a very powerful mindset to have.

END SPOILERS

Of course, Wild is actually leaving HBO Now today, so this probably won't be relevant to anyone who hasn't already seen it. If you get the chance, though, I highly recommend it. It's a terrific story on its own, and also a great glimpse into the physical and mental states that we backpackers love so dearly.

You And Five Armies

It is finished! By now it’s become traditional for me to watch Middle-earth movies at the earliest possible moment, and I have now completed the cycle with a showing at the Metreon IMAX in San Francisco. On a related note, pre-ordered tickets with assigned seating are the best thing to happen to movies since the invention of digital streaming.

I really liked the movie a lot. This shouldn’t be shocking; I’ve enjoyed all of these films, including the ones that “book fans” have lambasted due to their infidelity to the source material, and those which movie buffs have slammed due to their long running time. I love Middle-earth, and treasure every extra minute I get to spend in that world.

In some ways, The Battle of the Five Armies is an outlier among the six extant works. In particular, it has by far the fewest introductions of new locations. Every other movie has sweeping, panoramic, swelling, majestic unveilings of stunning landscapes: the Shire, Bree, Rivendell, Caradhas, Moria, Lorien, Rohan, the dead fens, the Black Gate, Mordor, Gondor, Minas Tirith, Pelennor Fields, Mount Doom, the trollshaws, the Misty Mountains, Goblintown, Mirkwood, Laketown, the Lonely Mountain. In contrast, TBotFA has a very narrow focus, almost entirely taking place in a limited area around Erebor, and virtually every location we see was previously introduced near the end of The Desolation of Smaug. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but did stand out to me.

On the other hand, the available space is used incredibly effectively, almost entirely with the eponymous battle. I haven’t confirmed how much time it takes up in the movie, but it certainly feels like more than half. I’ve heard some complaints over the length of the battle, but personally, I loved it. Frankly, I think that battle scenes are Peter Jackson’s greatest strengths. Often, when he films short skirmishes, I get disoriented and have trouble following the action. As the scale of an encounter increases, though, he seems to grow more confident and assured. Looking back over his films, I’m really impressed at how artfully and efficiently he’s able to communicate the physical space where a battle is taking place, how the forces are arrayed against one another, and follow the ebb and flow of attacks, retreats, rallies, and routs. More than a decade later, the Battle of Helm’s Deep remains an awesome sequence, and The Battle of Pelannor Fields and Battle of the Five Armies are of the same caliber.

MEGA SPOILERS

In general, the movie is very faithful to the events of the book and the appendices. Everyone who’s supposed to die does so. The White Council’s assault on Dol Goldur was explained but not described by Tolkien, and I was happy with how they portrayed it here: the arrival of the Council, their varied application of martial and magical powers, and their ultimate victory in battle that nonetheless presaged a far more hopeless war. My single favorite part was probably Cate Blachett’s stunning performance as Galadriel, recalling a fantastic scene from Fellowship of the Ring and nicely expressing some great ringlore. I was also happy with how they handled Saruman’s role at the end; I’d been a bit worried that it would be too on-the-nose, either showing his corruption or hammily predicting it. Instead, it was a wonderfully subtle thing, in which we see Saruman’s immense pride, and recognize that it will lead to his downfall even while the remaining council members fail to see it.

In contrast, I was slightly annoyed with Legolas’s ending. The whole “Oh, you should totally go check out this ranger fellow! I have the feeling you two will become GOOD FRIENDS” was too meta and jokey for my tastes. But, again, I’ve just gotten in the habit at rolling my eyes at everything Legolas does and not letting it bother me too much. He has more of those trademark ridiculous action shots here, which by this point are completely expected.

The fate I was most anxious to learn was Tauriel's. Ever since her introduction in the second part, I knew that this was going to be a tragic story: in the book, Kili falls in the battle, and I was almost certain they would keep that in the movie. Since Tauriel is an invented character, though, I was less certain about her: would she and Kili perish in one another's arms for maximum anguish? Or would Kili heroically sacrifice himself to save her? I was happy with how they wrapped up this subplot, glad to see that Tauriel survived and would make her own way in the world, independent of Thranduil and Legolas. (And, incidentally, I will not be the slightest bit surprised if she pops up in a video game in the future, a development I would certainly welcome.)

Probably the most pleasant surprise for me, though, was how faithfully the filmmakers maintained the dark overtones of the book's climax. It's true that, in general, the movie has been much darker than the original children's story. However, the book sets up a really distressing scenario near the end: the dwarves are too stubborn to pay restitution to the men who suffered for their activities; the men and elves seem greedy for the dwarves' treasure; and all of these people who we've grown to like are swept into a pointless war against one another. It's very sad, and also very evocative of what seems like a timeless truth in our world: people and nations who gain power seem to quickly lose their kindness, turning harsh and craving ever more control. And, while it's emphatically not an allegory, I can't help but wonder if Tolkien was influenced, even subconsciously, by the exceedingly pointless First World War in which he himself suffered.

The movie does a great job at capturing this dynamic, focusing much of its attention on Thorin's slide from noble striver to despot. What's so great, and so tragic, about the conflict is that you can see how each faction can believe itself to be in the right. The dwarves were driven from their homes, and simply wish to reclaim what is theirs. The men have lost everything, and simply wish fair repayment for their losses in supporting the dwarves. And Thranduil just wants the gems that he paid for hundreds of years ago.

And yet, the dwarves harbor an eternal grudge against the elves for failing to defend them from Smaug. The elves and men blame the dwarves for inadvertently luring the dragon there in the first place. One can easily imagine a reasonable resolution to the disagreement, with modest payments made and the dwarves still maintaining a ridiculously large sum of wealth; yet extremism has set in, and once Thorin begins denouncing others, it becomes increasingly difficult to back down from his position. And so a war that absolutely should not happen lurches towards its inception.

I had a theory which I developed in junior high, about how the only thing that can convince groups of people to stop fighting and work together is to unite against a common foe. In my favored example, Wales was filled with various tribes, who found against one another until they were threatened by England, at which point they united together. England and Wales shared animosity, until Great Britain started to fight against France and other powers, at which point the two countries became more or less integrated. England and France were famously antagonistic, until World War 2 forces them into an alliance, which definitively ended a near-millennium of periodic wars between them. They formed the basis for an alliance against the Soviet Bloc, including nations such as East Germany. After the Soviet Union fell, the threat of a dominant United States encouraged England, France and Germany to join together to form an economic community. And so on.

All that to say, it's very believable that, while these three factions of the Free Peoples were ready and willing to shed one another's blood, the thing that finally pulled them back together was a foe common to all of them: an army of goblins, which in the movie is explicitly linked to a major push by Sauron to seize territory in the North and open up a route between his southern orcs and those of Gundabad. Once the goblins arrive on the scene, the belligerents instantly realize that their priorities have been wrong, and begin working together against their common enemy.

In an odd way, I think my very favorite scene from this third movie might be Thorin's final duel with Azog: not because it's exciting or climactic (it is), but because of how thoroughly and subtly it unifies characterization, plot arc, and theme. The scene which probably got the biggest reaction from the audience in my theater was when Thorin grabbed the flail's end, then tossed it back to Azog; Azog catches it, there's a beat, and then the ice floe he's standing on slowly tips over and he falls into the water. It got a big laugh because it's so well shot, perfectly timed, and was so unexpected while in retrospect making perfect sense. But I especially love it because of how, with no dialogue, it shows Thorin evolving past his earlier inexorable greed. Thorin was holding on to something that was damaging him. By giving it up, he can save himself.

I would have been happy if Azog had died there. Unfortunately, without significantly altering the ending of the book they had no choice but to kill off Thorin, and so Azog makes a nasty, brutal return to the fight. Here, too, there's no speech, but Thorin's final actions convey so much meaning. He struggles for so long, even though the struggle is hopeless and only brings him pain. In the end, though, he surrenders, ceasing his struggle; and, in doing so, he's finally able to eliminate the source of his trouble. Thorin dies, but at least he dies a good dwarf, completely redeemed from his earlier mistakes.

Final comment: As I seem to constantly insist on noting, Tolkien's stories are not allegories. If they were, they would be so much less. However, since they are written so well and seem to get at eternal truths, they appear endlessly applicable to contemporary situations. Because of the time in which I live and the time in which these movies have come out, I've always been drawn towards seeing in them a reflection of America's military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks of 2001. That analogy hit me particularly hard in this movie, as I suddenly had a near-epiphany: "Oh my gosh, the United States is exactly like the elves of Mirkwood!" As shown in the movie, the elves are a large, strong, powerful force; however, Thranduil is obsessed with protecting his own borders, and reluctant to extend himself abroad. He goes forth in a military adventure initially motivated by economic concerns; allies eventually persuade him to help defend others against a savage foe; but once his own soldiers begin to fall, he immediately loses his nerve, and prepares to fall back to his own land, leaving others to continue fighting in the battle.

Again, Thranduil is not a villain, and his motivations do make sense: he's one of the few to have experienced a true World War, and has no taste for such conflicts. Likewise, the United States has tried to follow a course it believes in, striking a balance between the good it thinks it can achieve and the cost it is willing to bear. And none of this was at all on Tolkien's mind when he wrote his books, and I'm not sure if it was even on Peter Jackson's mind when writing this script, but it affected me much more than any film specifically about the recent wars has.

END SPOILERS

Well, this is it! We've had six enjoyable adaptations of Tolkien's books, which is six more than I thought I'd see in my lifetime. The Hobbit has certainly had a rougher path than the Lord of the Rings - due to the differing tone of source material and film, heightened expectations, and significant pushback from fans and the movie industry - but I think it's a remarkable achievement. It has started to bring some of Tolkien's deeper lore out to an audience that has not encountered it before, and given us some wonderful visual realizations of the beautiful worlds Tolkien created with his words.

The most controversial aspect of The Hobbit remains its additions to the source material. Some of these have worked well, some have not, but I think it's something that we'll be seeing more and more of in the future. After all, sooner or later the books' copyrights will expire, and, assuming they're still popular in the future, we might see an explosion of adaptations, not unlike the myriad versions we have of various fairy tales and medieval legends. Time will tell how well these films stand up, but from my perspective, they are destined to become stone-cold classics.

Elves and Hobbits and Zombies, Oh My!

After yet another long delay, I have finished the next act of Neverwinter Nights 2. I’ve put together another of my typical albums with some scattered screenshots from throughout the act.

MINI SPOILERS for NWN Act 2

Now that the plot is coming together, in some ways it seems a bit more cliche than I was hoping. There is an Ancient Evil Force that was Defeated Long Ago but Not Fully Destroyed, and is now Gathering Its Power and will Return to Destroy the World. Only your party - let us think of them as a Fellowship of sorts - can hope to Defeat this Evil before it Reclaims Its Powers.

But, there’s plenty here to keep it from being just another retread of Lord of the Rings. For example, while I’m not through the plot yet and can’t say this for certain, it seems like the reason why you the hero are important is not because of your lineage, or prophecy, or any particular powers you possess: it’s because there’s a SWORD INSIDE OF YOU. (I do kind of like Obsidian’s habit of placing inanimate objects inside of living creatures and vice versa.) That’s something that kind of surprised me, and surprises are always welcome in my fantasy RPGs.

Like I said in my writeup of Part 1, though, it’s really the companions that shine, and elevate this from a game about collecting artifacts and fighting into something really engaging. The party actually continues to evolve more than I expected; you have a core team in place fairly early on, but major new party members are joining you throughout Act 2 as well. Rivalries are always great fun, and ones like the Qara/Sand dynamic add a lot of energy, even though I rarely have those two in my party.

My lineup for Act 1 was usually Toman, Khelgar, Neeshka, and Elanee. In Act 2, Shandra Jerro is a non-removable companion for most of the act, and I really liked having her… she’s both practical and compassionate, exasperated at the craziness around her while also stepping up to deal with it. For the first part of the act, I replaced Khelgar with Sand, who is plot-required for most of the trial-related content. I hadn’t liked Sand much during our interactions in Act 1, but he really grew on me as a companion: you can start to see past his arrogance and see what he cares about.

I go into some more detail on the trial in my album, but basically: it was awesome. I love it when an RPG lets you do something besides fight, and there was a ton of stuff that led into the trial; it’s not quite as complex as the Landsmeet in Dragon Age Origins, but that’s probably the closest comparison I can find, as it draws a lot on various choices you’ve made throughout the game, optional side-quests you might have completed, allies and enemies you’ve attracted, loyalty among your companions, and your specific dialogue choices during the trial itself. I replayed it a few times, not to change the actual outcome, but to see all the ways it would go in different directions as it unfolded.

I’d thought that the trial was going to be my highlight for this act, but it ended up being surpassed by the next major development: taking command of your own fortress. This was a lot of fun to play out. It’s initially held by your enemies, so you join forces with an attack squad and launch a surprise attack during the changing of the guard, then fight your way through the courtyard into the keep, and then break into the basement to defeat your enemies. Afterwards, Lord Nasher appoints you the Captain and grants you funds to begin its rehabilitation.

Now, this isn’t the first time we’ve had a similar concept in an RPG. Baldur’s Gate 2 had the Stronghold system, and the de’Arnise keep was most similar to Crossroads Keep. Dragon Age Origins: Awakening added Vigil's Keep, which you had responsibility for and would make some judgments and preparation. The keep in NWN2 has similar concepts, but executed even better than those two excellent comparisons. You need to constantly juggle priorities and determine the best overall strategy to take towards the keep. Do you follow Lord Nasher’s prerogative and immediately focus on reinforcing the fortress walls? Or do you improve the road quality and safety, in the hopes of attracting more merchant trade and therefore help fund later projects? Do you limit your expenditures to what the realm provides, or do you dip into your personal pockets to expand, or exercise your legal right to tax your subjects for funds? Do you want a large and unruly army, or a small and disciplined one?

In addition to all of these major strategic decisions you make by talking with your advisors, you also have a set of throne room-type conversations that let you make interesting story decisions and rule on controversial issues. Will you allow a black marketer to trade in your keep? Will you offer clemency to a Luskan agent who tried to have you murdered? Will you encourage some reckless adventurers in their quest? (This last bit particularly tickled me, and reminded me of the fantastic encounter in the beholder cave in Throne of Bhaal.)

As of the end of Act 2, my castle still hasn’t seen any action, but I strongly suspect that there will be some sort of battle or siege coming in the endgame, and I’m happily dumping my vast amounts of surplus gold into its improvement. I’ve totally prioritized developing the economy, and only started propping up its military defenses once I exhausted my mercantile base. My guard is currently small, but I’m investing heavily in their equipment and training. At the moment they’re primarily focused on keeping the roads safe. Once their numbers increase some more, I hope to start patrolling the surrounding lands and take care of our bandit problem. I’m looking forward to seeing what develops next!

END MINI SPOILERS

In other nerdy fantasy news, I’m currently working my way through the special features on The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. I am shocked at how in-depth they are; I’ve learned more about filmmaking by watching these features than I have in the entire rest of my life. (To be fair, I’ve never attended film school or made a movie or anything; but given the various documentaries I’ve watched on disastrous movie shoots, I was a bit surprised by how much I didn’t know.)

They go over EVERYTHING. The financing process, the delayed green light they got, the casting process, assembling the crew, all the way down to the details of how they make prosthetics (and why they need to throw them away each day), how they insert CGI creatures into the middle of live-action scenes, how they trained actors to speak Khudzul, and so on. I’m sure most people would be bored to tears by it, but it’s presented very engagingly, with each feature (typically varying from 5 minutes to 1 hour) staying focused on a particular topic or time period, and a combination of terrific behind-the-scenes footage and eloquent talking heads. It’s great to hear from, say, Ian McKellan and Martin Freeman (who is absolutely delightful), but I’ve also kind of fallen in love with the dialect coach, am fascinated by the movement coordinator, and impressed at the small army needed to put everyone in costume and makeup. The biggest impression I’m left with is the sheer scale of effort needed to do this; it seems somewhat similar to ruling a country.

I’d also watched all of the similar features for the Lord of the Rings movies back in the day, and was intrigued by all the things that had stayed the same (the New Zealand setting, the core creative team) and changed (almost all of the technology, most actors, Peter Jackson’s waist size). One recurring theme was how much more digital content was present in The Hobbit, but in many cases, it was only a last-ditch effort after they had started shooting with people in the appropriate costumes (goblins, orcs) and determined that it wasn’t working. It was also interesting to think about how in some cases the progress of technology had made things harder, not easier. LotR used a variety of tricks to establish the different sizes of hobbits and men, one of the coolest of which was the use of forced perspective, where Ian McKellan would be placed much closer to the camera than Elijah Wood and thus appear bigger. However, as Peter Jackson points out, you can’t use that technique when you’re shooting in 3D, because in 3D you know exactly how far both of those actors are from the camera. So, entirely new methods needed to be developed to solve these old problems.

Those methods seemed occasionally painful. Again, I’m a bit surprised at just how in-depth they go in these things: it’s not just a case of “rah rah, look at how great we are”, but they acknowledge the mistakes they made, the roadblocks they ran into, the people they upset. I cringed during one portion where they showed Ian McKellan struggling to adapt to the new system of shooting. McKellan is a fantastic actor, but the style of acting they were asking him to do was unlike anything he had done before, and he couldn’t take any pleasure from it: he had to sit all by himself in a completely green-covered, downscaled replica of Bag End, while all of the other actors were on an entirely separate set. He would hear their voices piped in through an earpiece, but had no eyes to look into, just little colored dots that indicated eyelines. The documentary format doesn’t gloss over his frustration: with himself, with Peter, with the entire project. It’s somewhat salvaged later on by a touching display of affection from the crew, but still, I was impressed at how they didn’t shy away from showing a mini-meltdown of a beloved actor caused in part by the film’s director.

So later, when they advance to shooting the White Council meeting in Rivendell, you can practically feel the waves of relief emanating from McKellan. At last, he gets to interact with other actors, on a stage! And good actors, too; as McKellan observes, he, Cate Blanchett, and Hugo Weaving all started in theater, and they all share a stage actor’s sensibility. It’s fascinating to watch footage of those actors preparing for this scene: in contrast to a lot of other shooting, which seems to consist of the director giving instruction to the actors and the actors carrying it out, these guys drive the process, asking copious questions about their characters’ motivations, background, and thought process, trying to embed themselves within the character.

I could keep going, but I won’t. If you’re interested in filmmaking or the Lord of the Rings, I highly recommend checking these things out!

Other random thoughts, with mild spoilers within each topic:

I quite enjoyed the current season of Sherlock. The current incarnation of the story has been strongly defined by its "modernity": taking many plot and character elements from the original stories, but instead of recreating a Victorian atmosphere, it embraces modern technology, style, and morals. (Leading, for example, to some amusement as to the nature of Sherlock and Watson's relationship. The assumptions one made about two unmarried gentlemen sharing lodgings in the 19th century are quite different from the assumptions one makes today.) However, I've felt like the crimes themselves hew quite closely to the originals: art theft, impossible murders, blackmail. In contrast, the final episode of this season felt like it had a ripped-from-the-headlines quality to its crime. It's impossible to think of Magnusson as anyone other than a Rupert Murdoch stand-in, and I thought they did a fantastic job at tapping into the raw outrage that Britain has felt over the News of the World and similar offenses from the Murdoch empire. It had an immediacy and sense of purpose that felt unusual for this show, but was very welcome.

Archer is back! It looks incredible! That is all.

I belatedly caught up to the current half-season of The Walking Dead. The chronology between the comics and the show never lines up, but I think that it's now definitely past everything that I'd read in the books, so from here on out everything will be a surprise to me. I think I'll keep it that way; I don't have the unreserved love for the show that I have for the Telltale game, but I love it more than the books. Anyways. I was a bit surprised that they brought back the Governor and spent so much time exclusively with his storyline, considering where the story went, but it was also pretty cool, and that actor did a great job at showing the ways in which the character changes, and the ways he still stays the same man.

While on the topic: I'm hearing good things about the next season of the Telltale Games Walking Dead, but I think I'll probably wait for the season to end before buying the pack. Not that I mistrust them, exactly, but they've taken on a LOT more work lately and have already slipped a few dates, which makes me slightly nervous about pre-ordering for the season. I'll do my best to avoid spoilers between now and the end.

The Berlin expansion for Shadowrun Returns should be dropping later this month! I'm quite excited about that. The little I've seen so far looks great, and I dig the stuff they've talked about delivering (more personable companion runners, greater autonomy in determining mission order, etc.)

I've wrapped up Season 2 of Misfits. That show is so ridiculous, I love it. The Christmas Special in particular was one of the most delightfully awful things I've seen.  Season 1 seemed to be mostly about how the characters don't change: they get super-powers, but are still the same lowlifes they always were. Season 2 seems to be about the characters do change: they start to consider whether they have any responsibilities, and how they can use their powers to make changes in the world. I've just started Season 3, and the show seems to be shifting yet again with at least one cast change. It'll be interesting to see the other ways they continue to shake things up.

I may or may not do a full writeup at some point, but I've finished reading RASL, the new comic from Jeff Smith, the creator of Bone. It was awesome, and pretty much the complete opposite of Bone in almost every conceivable way. Bone is fantasy, RASL is science fiction. Bone has a simple art style, RASL has a lush style. Bone starts out with a very straightforward plot and only gradually delves into mythology, RASL starts in the middle of a very complex plot with an elaborate mythology. Bone's protagonists are cheerful and reflexively lovable, RASL's protagonist is kind of a jerk. Of course, both stories are incredible. RASL ends satisfyingly, but there are a few lingering questions left at the end, and I'm curious if we're meant to just ponder them, or if those characters might crop up again in the future.

Now go forth, and do likewise!

Desolation

I realize that I am squarely in the center of the target audience for "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug." I grew up on Tolkien, and credit the book The Hobbit with sparking a lifelong love of reading. I love fantasy, love adventure, love Tolkien, love magic and elves and gorgeous vistas and battle scenes and lore. I'm the kind of person who grows baffled when people complain about how long the Hobbit movies are - who would not want to spend more time in Middle-earth? In the words of Ice T, I don't understand why Peter Jackson made these movies three hours long when they could easily have been nine hours each.

I missed out on the midnight screening of The Hobbit this year, but compensated with a pretty nice back-to-back marathon instead: the extended edition of An Unexpected Journey (thanks to an awesome Christmas present from my brother), followed by a trip to the theater to see The Desolation of Smaug (once again in 3D HFR).

MINI SPOILERS for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Extended Edition)

The extended scenes in AUJ feel less significant than those in the LotR trilogy, but were still really nice additions. For the most part they add more humor and song back into the story; in particular, the stay in Rivendell lasts quite a bit longer, with more sight-seeing, more dialogue, and some fun singing and comedy. It also restores another song that the Goblin King sings in Goblin Town.

The other additions are more minor, and seem to primarily flesh out the lore a bit more: some of these add connections to or foreshadowings of the main plot in LotR, others given some more background, particularly on the feud between dwarves and elves.

END SPOILERS

I'd deliberately avoided all reviews and articles about The Desolation of Smaug, so I went into the movie with no expectations other than those set by the book and the previous movie. And, unsurprisingly, I loved it. The story turns even more serious than the already-somewhat-dark first section, seeming to lose all of the singing and much of the comedy. But it's also more focused, with the quest in full swing, despite a division in the plot (reminiscent of the trifurcation of plot threads after the breaking of the Fellowship in LotR). The story itself is exciting, and at the same time it's sowing some seeds that will pay off explosively in the third movie.

I don't think I can do justice to the beauty of these films. They're absolutely stunning. Even when re-watching AUJ at home, my breath was taken away by the gorgeous sunset lighting that fills the frames at Rivendell and at the climax. Similar beauty surrounds the action in TDoS as the party travels through Mirkwood en route to Erebor. Individual locations are deliberately ugly - Mirkwood has a sinister sheen, and Laketown feels desperately insular - but even these are intricately designed, and help establish the contrast with the heart-wrenchingly exquisite landscapes we see adjacent to them.

While I'm not a musical person, I've steeped myself in these movies enough to have an autonomic response to the major themes written by Howard Shore. I love how he can incredibly subtly drop in a sly reference to the Ring Theme in the scenes where Bilbo is using his ring - it isn't as fully developed here as it will be in the future after its power is revealed, but the insinuations send shivers up my spine. Other old friends return as well, like the sweet Hobbit theme that crops up whenever Gandalf marvels at the courage and resilience of these tiny Englishmen. And, of course, tons of new music has been composed for the new films as well. The Lonely Mountain theme remains my favorite of the new crop, but there are also some cool new pieces set around Dol Goldur and Thranduil's Court.

MINI SPOILERS for The Desolation of Smaug

In no particular order, here are some opinions!

Tauriel is a terrific character. I'm not a huge fan of Evangeline Lilly, but I loved her portrayal of this character, and was really impressed in general by the addition. I should probably note that I have a fairly catholic approach towards Tolkien fandom: the books are my first love, and I'm generally happiest when they're adhered to, but I really enjoy other artists' interpretations of the stories; I tend to tolerate differences from the source material so long as they don't make things actively worse than the original (as in the re-interpretation of Faramir's character). I think that Tauriel is a case study in the right way to adapt a work: she serves a particular purpose, and while she isn't present in the initial lore, she doesn't contradict the rest of the lore.

First, the purpose: clearly the reason Tauriel exists is to add a female protagonist to The Hobbit. That is, frankly, something that's rather sorely needed: if AUJ hadn't had a scene with the White Council including Galadriel (which was also an addition from the book), it would have had absolutely no speaking female roles at all, which is a particular kind of Bechdel hell. Why doesn't The Hobbit have any female characters? Well, one very likely reason is that Tolkien had his three sons in mind when he was writing it: he would tell them stories, and if you're telling a story to a young boy, you'll probably have a young boy as a protagonist. His daughter Priscilla was only three years old when he finished work on The Hobbit. Years later, when working on The Lord of the Rings, Priscilla was a teenager and complained about how the boys had all the fun in the book; so Tolkien, the good father and good writer, created the character of Eowyn, an intelligent and brave young woman who rules wisely and slays the Witch-King of Angmar, greatest of the nine Nazgul. If The Hobbit had been written a decade later, would we have gotten more female characters? I like to think that we would have. (And maybe finally gotten a straight answer as to the identity of dwarven women.)

Anyways: all that to say, I think there are great reasons to add female characters to the movie. It makes the story more interesting, provides a more-relatable role model, and hopefully will make the movie more attractive to potential female fans. Importantly, the idea of a strong female warrior is consonant with other writings in Tolkien's legendarium. Besides Eowyn, Haleth was a famous amazonian warrior chieftess who led one of the tribes of men back in the First Age. In other writings specifically about elves, Tolkien noted that:
In all such things, not concerned with the bringing forth of children, the neri and nissi (that is, the men and women) of the Eldar are equal... There are, however, no matters which among the Eldar only a ner can think or do, or others with which only a nis is concerned.
This isn't to say that it would be wrong to create an awesome female warrior elf if Tolkien didn't have a precedent, but I think it smooths the way considerably.

As you can probably tell just by the number of words I'm writing, this is the sort of thing that creates big controversy among Tolkien fans. Many devotees cringe at any deviation from the canonical text, and tampering with Tolkien's work is often seen as disrespect for the man's great work. So, I think it was not only good, but smart, of the writers to pay so much attention to the lore in crafting the dialogue of her scenes. There are just a couple of sentences exchanged between her and Thranduil, briefly referencing the distinction between the sindarin and the silvan elves; it isn't particularly important for the story, and will certainly fly right over the heads of people who aren't steeped in the lore, but for those of us who have devoured the Silmarillion and pored over pages of charts of geneologies, it's an immediate, soothing reminder that the creators of this movie are also fans, and also know the lore, and are crafting a component that will slip into place, not carelessly ripping apart the story for their own whims.

While book fans appear divided on the issue, it looks like Tauriel is striking a chord among movie and fantasy fans, judging from the excellent fan art and cosplay I've seen. She might end up becoming one of the best legacies of these movies.

Similarly, I was fine with the addition of Legolas. It's well-established that Legolas is the son of Thranduil, and he would almost certainly have been in Mirkwood at the time of The Hobbit. He isn't named in the book, but almost no elves apart from Thranduil are, so it's totally reasonable to imagine that he was present. (The best counter-argument is probably that he would have mentioned in TLotR if he was; but I can certainly imagine why a proud sindar lord would not want to notify his noldor hosts that he failed to prevent the escape of a company of dwarves.)

Legolas's action scenes were as ridiculous as always. It no longer irritates me. By now I'm just willing to accept that that's what he does.

Speaking of which, though, the choreography for the fights in TDoU were incredible. That escape from Thranduil's Court was particularly exciting: almost entirely invented, of course (the barrels leave uneventfully in the books), but it was a really fresh twist on the chase scene trope, and also included some of the most comical sequences in the movie.

Not everything was reinvented, though. For example, the Beorn section played out pretty much exactly like it did in the book. They also did a really good job at developing certain themes, such as the tension between elves and dwarves; while not using the exact same techniques as the books, I feel like they landed in the exact right emotional spot in conveying the mutual bad blood between the two groups, the dwarves driven by greed, the elves by pride, and both by stubbornness. Scenes like the confrontation between Thorin and Thranduil were really well done: you can see how each of them, believes that they are right and just, and neither has sufficient empathy to consider the others' desires. (I hate to keep riding this hobby horse, but it's stuff like this that makes me baffled whenever people describe Tolkien's universe as morally black-and-white. Granted, Eru is perfectly good, and Morgoth is perfectly evil, but everyone else is drawn in varying shades of gray, from the greatest of elves to the lowliest of men.)

The casting for the movie seemed really solid. Martin Freeman continues to impress me, and further solidifies his position as the best hobbit, ever. Beorn looks a bit different from how I imagined, but his character's affect was perfect, all suppressed menace. Evangeline Lilly disappeared inside her role and let the fantastic character shine through. Thranduil's role from the first part was greatly fleshed out, and is arguably even a deeper portrayal than the character shown in the book: he isn't just a capricious meany, but a dedicated isolationist (and one we can sympathize with, too, as he's one of the few creatures alive to know first-hand the terrible tolls of war).

Things get really fun in Laketown, which is the first part in the movie where we've had a large cast of Men (as opposed to males). I haven't seen the guy who plays Bard in anything else, and at first I thought it was Kit Harrington (Jon Snow in Game of Thrones). I had heard about Stephen Fry playing the Master of Laketown, and loved him in that role. He's an interesting character, kind of an affably, menially corrupt charlatan. Even the minor characters in Laketown were a lot of fun; the gatekeeper reminded me a lot of Tony Robinson, and the Master's stooge recalled Blackadder in a particularly sniveling role. (Also a nice bit about Laketown: we finally see some people of color! Yet another thing that's been pretty lacking in the films, and that also meshes nicely with the lore. Laketown has active river trade with the Rhun area, and therefore more traffic with the Easterlings, in contrast with the more isolated northerners west of the Misty Mountains.)

Oh, but Smaug... wow! Everyone's been waiting to see him, and it's about five hours into the series before we get our first look at him. He's fantastic. Great and terrible, indeed. I'd been particularly excited to see him ever since I heard that Guillermo del Toro did the creature design for him, since del Toro is almost certainly the best monster-maker of the last two decades. I'd been curious if he would come up with a particularly crazy concept, but it turned out to be an extremely well-conceived take on the traditional idea of a dragon. You've got your serpentine neck, your wings, your talons, your fire, your scales. But... the look of it is awe-inspiring, and grows impossibly more overwhelming as you see more of him in action. They did an incredible job at conveying the scale of the beast, which is incredibly hard: how can you make a mind grasp how much bigger this beast is than the hobbit?

Of course, the voice is responsible for much of the effect, and the terrific Benedict Cumberbatch brings his A-Game; the voice is digitally manipulated to be even deeper than usual, but his precise diction and haughtiness still radiate out from every syllable. I haven't re-read The Hobbit lately, but I'm pretty sure that much of Smaug's dialogue with Bilbo is lifted wholesale from the book, and their exchange really captures all the fraught contradictions of the scene: Smaug is so much more powerful than Bilbo that it isn't even funny, but his vanity and pride urge him to put on a show for his victim. Bilbo's in constant danger, frantically drawing on all his reserves of courage, flattery, guile, and magic in order to survive.

Also on the topic of Benedict Comberbatch: he also did the voice for the Necromancer / Sauron. The scene that showed Gandalf's confrontation with Sauron was fascinating. Sauron has no physical form at this point in history, and is merely a disembodied evil spirit. How does one portray that? Well, the way the movie does is darn impressive, offering a pretty convincing idea of what "darkness incarnate" might look like. Likewise, kudos for being able to portray a struggle against evil, when there is nothing physical to struggle against.

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My biggest complaint with the movie is that - get ready! - it isn't long enough. Or, more specifically, I'm a bit curious why they cut it at the point they did. Assuming that the movies continue to follow the main plot of the book, an excellent climax would have come up in the next couple of scenes. As it is, I'm wondering how the pacing of the third movie is going to feel. I can already imagine how all the critics who complained that the first movie took too long to get going will soon be complaining about how the third movie has too much action.

Be that is it may, middle entries in trilogies are notoriously difficult to manage, and I did enjoy the set piece that the film ends on, even if it ends in a shockingly bald cliffhanger. I'm just not entirely sure why they felt the need to have one. Do they seriously think that we won't be back next year for the third?

Dawn of the Redemption

Okay, I said I was done with Dragon Age 2. I'm done with the game, but I had enough fun playing through it that I wanted to get caught up on some of the ancillary pieces of fiction floating around out there. I've stayed away from all this stuff up until now, out of a desire to avoid spoilers for the game. First up: Dragon Age: Redemption!

Like I said before, Felicia Day's involvement in Mark of the Assassin was possibly the single greatest factor in convincing me to pick up DA2 after all the disappointing things I'd heard about the entry. Her involvement wasn't limited to that game, though: she also wrote and starred in a web series called Dragon Age: Redemption. It's a prequel to Mark of the Assassin, and gives some additional background to her character Tallis. If you're considering picking it up, it does contain a few elements that are introduced in DA2, but it doesn't spoil any plot from the main game or the expansion. You can probably do them in either order.

Felicia was one of the first pioneers in creating web series, and I believe that The Guild is still one of the most-watched online shows ever. She didn't direct or produce Redemption, but I imagine that her experience in telling a compelling story over short chunks with a very limited budget helped a great deal: the series manages to be surprising, exciting, funny, and impressive, even with minimal CGI.

One of the things that impressed me most was how well Redemption integrates Dragon Age's lore. It seemed clear that it was written by a fan who knows the setting and character of Thedas well. Without belaboring the point much, it captures a lot of things like the precarious position of mages, the tension between the various races, and the ominous threat of the Qun. It even manages to work in some of the major character specializations of the game: you can see a templar, a reaver, an assassin, and so on. I mean it as a compliment when I say that the fights in the series reminded me of the fights from the video game: a templar uses his skills to disable a spellcaster, melee fighters help draw aggro to protect a weak healer mage, a rogue dashes into the fray and generates burst DPS against the boss. It was exciting to watch, and also tapped into a lot of residual excitement I feel about playing the game.

The dialog was also very well written. It seemed a bit like a hybrid of David Gaider and Joss Whedon, which sometimes seems a bit odd. I don't generally think of Dragon Age as being very quippy; but, the more I thought about it, characters like Varric and Alistair do joke around and use one-liners, so it's not unprecedented in the world. Tallis is great fun to watch, and comes across as very flirty and deadly. That being said, it still fits within the framework of a dark fantasy, with plenty of tragedy sprinkled throughout.

MEGA SPOILERS for DRAGON AGE: REDEMPTION (mini for DA2)

The prequel helps fill in Tallis's history a bit more, but not completely. We know that she was a slave before she joined the Qunari, and that she had previously been punished and demoted from her position as Tallis. I'm still not clear on whether she actually trained to be an assassin from within the Qun, or if she had those skills from her time as a slave and offered them to her new leaders.

In Mark of the Assassin, I had been a little confused about how Tallis's devotion to the Qun could be reconciled with her clear moral compass. This series makes it a bit more clear that I wasn't witnessing another side to the Qunari, but rather what makes Tallis special: this is a struggle for her, and she is herself aware that her desire to put things right can sometimes contradict the demands of the Qun. (I'm less clear on why the Qunari keep taking her back and giving her more chances - she's certainly good at her job, but the Qunari don't strike me as a particularly forgiving bunch.)

For a little while, I thought that the templar was named Carver, and thought that we were witnessing side-story to Mage Hawke. I was wrong, though. It's Cairn. I really liked how his and Tallis's relationship developed... it seems very modern, but also very in keeping with their characters.

Nyree was awesome. Reavers rule!

Josmael was well-acted, but looked too much like a hobbit to me. Have we ever seen a curly-haired elf in Dragon Age before? (Though, to be fair, I guess we haven't seen many curly-haired humans or dwarves either. Maybe more will start popping up as graphics engines and hair rendering continues to improve.)

I loved all the nice little ways in which this story tied in to Dragon Age 2. Sundermount even had the altar in the graveyard that you see in the game. The rip in the fade seemed very believable, and quite in keeping with what we saw in the Blackmarsh in Awakening.

The special effects seemed very judiciously used, getting maximum impact for fairly small investments. The glowing hands for magic worked quite well, and I adored how Nyree's eyes glowed when she transformed into Reaver mode. The fade rip and blood magic in the climax were also quite impressive; perhaps not quite cutting edge by today's standards, but much better than we would have seen in movies even a few years ago. I was also very impressed with the subtle and effective illusions they used to establish characters' heights. The elves seem to be as small as they should, relative to humans, and the Qunari looms large.

It was a little sad to see Cairn die at the end... but I imagine that Tallis has loved before, and will love again. She didn't seem to be in mourning when she kissed Selene, after all! I do wonder, though, just how honest she was with Hawke during MotA. She makes it seem like she has the trust of the Qunari in following up this threat, but given that she deliberately failed her mission here, I have a hard time imagining that they would give her free reign like that. More likely, she's either holding information back from her leaders (which would break, like, every part of the Qun), or she's over-stating her position to Hawke.

END SPOILERS

And next: Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker. This was an unusual project. Funimation made an anime movie based on Bioware's property and with their full cooperation. I splurged for the Blu-Ray, which was a bit oddly packaged: it comes in a three-disc set, but the other two discs are the English and Japanese DVDs, respectively. I generally tend to watch anime in Japanese with English subtitles, but considering how Dragon Age is an English/Canadian creation, I figured the English dub would be fine.

The animation looks really good. I haven't kept up with anime for the last few years, so I can't really compare it to other contemporary movies, but the picture quality is better than any non-Miyazaki movie that I've seen. Motion is particularly fluid, without the jerkiness that you can often see in cheaper animes. Some scenes that focus on particular creatures, like an insect or a reptile, are practically photo-realistic, so accurate that it's hard to believe it's animated. They make the wise decision to keep the human characters somewhat cartoony-looking, though, so there's no Spirits Within-style uncanny valley effect. The style sometimes looked a bit unusual to me; in particular, the way shadows draw on characters' faces took some getting used to.

The art direction as a whole is pretty interesting. The artists are clearly working off of the actual Dragon Age designs, and their creatures are instantly recognizable as their in-game counterparts, but they don't just slavishly recreate the character models: this seems more like an interpretation of the same idea. For example, you can immediately tell that the Ogres are Ogres - they have the same height, and horns, and similar-looking faces - but there's a bloodier look about these Ogres, like they've just finished feasting on their enemies. It's touches like that which elevate the movie from feeling like a straight rip-off of the game, and an actual piece of art instead.

MINI SPOILERS (for Dawn of the Seeker and DA2)

Not all the changes are good, though. Mages are one of the most important villains of the movie, and their representation is highly odd. First of all, they all seem identical: except for their leader, all of them have the exact same black cowl, pulled over their heads, and identical staves. The staves are strange, too, unlike anything I've seen in any Dragon Age game: they're more like scythes, with sickles on the end. As if that wasn't odd enough, they seem to primarily fight in melee, slashing at people. This is really weird, since we know that they can cast magic. From the way the movie portrays them, a viewer might think that "mage" is another type of race or species, rather than an individual who can access magic.

Along those lines, my biggest issues with the movie had to do with its treatment of Dragon Age lore. Most of this isn't necessarily bad or wrong, just strange... it doesn't necessarily contradict what we've experienced of Thedas from the games, yet it's an original idea that doesn't seem to quite fit with what we know. Some other examples:

• There's a group of ogres and golems that surround the heroes at one point. That's VERY strange. Have you ever seen them on the same side before? And why would they obey blood mages? I suppose it's theoretically possible that a powerful blood mage could use Blood Control to compel an ogre, and it's theoretically possible that they might have found several dozen golem control rods to animate the golems. But it's still hard to explain. I'd find it much more likely for blood mages to summon undead, or compel an army of humanoids.
• One scene shows a very Catholic-looking confessional booth, complete with screen. Now, to be sure, the Chantry is pretty obviously modeled off of the Catholic Church, and a Chantry building looks similar to a Catholic building (rows of pews, altar up front, etc.). So maybe there really is a tradition of confession in the Chantry. It seems a bit odd that it wouldn't have come up before now, though.

If the lore was slightly disappointing for me, though, the character of Cassandra more than made up for it. She was awesome, a phenomenal presence on the screen, who goes through a pretty believable transformation throughout the course of the story. She's also an incredibly talented fighter, and the most visually enjoyable parts of the movie are the scenes where she's fighting some great evil monster.

MEGA SPOILERS

Much like Dragon Age 2, Dawn of the Seeker is based on a conflict between the Chantry and mages, and more specifically between the Templars and apostates. Early in the movie, it seems overly simplified, with far too many blood mages who are all presented as uniformly bad. It does gradually get a bit more complex as the story continues, though, and we meet Circle mages and get a better view of the tensions they endure. Cassandra initially comes off rather like Fenris, unwilling to compromise her hatred for all mages, but over time she grudgingly comes to accept their role.

Chronologically, Dark of the Seeker is set after the end of the events depicted in DA2, but before the start of the framing device with the interrogation of Varric. There isn't much explicit overlap between the two, but at one point Cassandra does mention the importance of preventing another incident like Kirkwall. I liked her in this movie much more than I did in DA2, which only makes sense... in DA2, her only role was to question and threaten Varric, which doesn't exactly give her much opportunity to show off her personality. The movie does make me retroactively like her better in the game, though... I have a better understanding now of her relationship to the Chantry and her motivation to heal the rift with the Circles.

Other highlights of the movie for me: I loved seeing Val Royeaux, which looks absolutely stunning. I hope we get to visit here in DA3. It may be another case of cribbing too closely from the Catholic Church, since it did seem pretty close in many respects to St. Peter's Square, but the scale and look of it is pretty stunning. I also liked the insight into the upper levels of Chantry leadership: seeing the interplay between the Divine, the clerics, the Knight-Commander of the templars and the Lord of the Seekers of Truth was pretty interesting.

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The disc comes with a few special features that are brief but interesting. There's some great artwork that shows how certain concepts evolved; there's an early drawing of Cassandra with long tresses in front that looks really fetching, although I think her final ponytailed design is much more appropriate for the character. I fast-forwarded through a lot of the creature designs, but the segment ends up with some environmental concept drawings that are stunningly well-drawn. There's also a tour of Bioware's studios. Everything in here is fascinating, and I just wish it would have been longer... in particular, since I've come to recognize the names of many of Dragon Age's writers, I would have loved to know who specifically was shown in that room.

My recommendation for Dawn of the Seeker is more qualified than for that of Redemption. It's a slicker work, and looks fantastic. The story is pretty good, but its treatment of Dragon Age lore sometimes seems confusing or a bit off. That said, the character of Cassandra is one of my favorites from any medium of Dragon Age, and it might be worth picking up just for that.

I don't know if I could necessarily recommend either movie to a neophyte to Dragon Age. I think both projects make a good effort to stand independently, containing within their exposition everything you should need to know in order to follow the plot. However, the fun from the movies comes from the extra light they shed on the world of Thedas, and I still think that the games are the best way to first encounter this world.

The disc of Dawn of the Seeker came with a downloadable code for The Silent Grove, the latest Dragon Age comic. I was mildly bummed to see that this only included the first issue. On the other hand, the remaining issues only cost 99 cents each, so I might pick up the rest of the graphic novel at some point. Or maybe not.

QUICK MEGA-SPOILER for DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS

The story is written by David Gaider, one of the main creators of the world of Dragon Age, phenomenal writer, and all-around great guy. It's a bit of a crossover or transition between Origins and Dragon Age 2, and brings together Alistair, Isabela, and Varric. Gaider created the characters of Alistair and knows his voice better than anyone else.

However, he doesn't know how I played my game, and by telling a story at this point in Alistair's life, Gaider is forced to collapse the quantum of Alistair's existence down to a single truth. As he chooses to tell it, Alistair is now the King of Ferelden. For many players, though, that won't be true. In my case, Alistair renounced all claims to the throne and continues serving the Grey Wardens. In other peoples' games, he may have been executed during the Landsmeet, or have sacrificed himself to kill the Archdemon, or become a wandering drunkard.

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It's a weird thing when a story-based RPG, which can support a multiplicity of meanings and outcomes for the player, is transported to a more authoritative medium, which can only express a single canonical truth. I wouldn't have thought that it would bother me as much as it did.

Part of why I may have been slightly disappointed is because Bioware has historically done a very impressive job of working in the comics medium in a way that expands the story and is also compatible with all permutations of player choice. In some cases, like the great Penny Arcade comics, these are prequels to Origins or Awakening: as such they can provide additional background, and don't challenge anything about what the player will do in the future. (In contrast, their comic for Dragon Age 2 looks great, but presupposes a male Hawke.) In some other cases, comics can be inserted into the middle of a story, thanks to careful use of pronouns and elision of the player character. A great example of this is Dragon Age Revelation, also written by Gaider and with particularly fantastic art for Morrigan. What I love about this comic is that it can be read for any sort of Warden, with different sorts of goals and relationships, and it will still amplify and resonate with your own personal story. Filling in what you know of your relationship with Morrigan, her hesitations come to mean something different. It's quite well done.

Probably the most impressive example comes from another franchise, Mass Effect: Redemption. That comic is surprisingly long, and deals with a very important section of Commander Shepard's life; it wasn't until well after I finished it that I realized that, while I had been picturing "my" female Shepard the whole time, with her particular romance, it would also have "worked" with a male who had romanced someone else or nobody at all. Again, this is something that great art can do: evoke rather than invoke, lay out certain ideas that our minds respond to and then fill in the details.

It's gotta be hard, though, and probably not terribly rewarding for the writers who have to work under those restraints. So, I can totally sympathize with the desire to create a canon, so your story can directly reference the most important characters and events from the biggest story in the universe. After all, many players will play through the game multiple times, and who's to say that their most recent game was any more or less "real" than any other that they could have played? (In fact, if I'd read this comic right after my first play-through of Origins instead of my current one, it would have fit in just fine with "my" narrative.)

So, yeah. I certainly don't begrudge anyone for working in this style, and if anyone has earned the right to create a canon, it's Gaider. At the same time, I don't particularly like it when a passive art form contradicts a participatory art form, so I'll probably be abstaining from the remainder of the Silent Grove for the time being. On the other hand, I'll probably pick up the prequel novels at some point.

One final (I promise!) topic before signing off. The mere existence of semi-official spinoffs for Dragon Age (movies, comics, novels, pen-and-paper RPGs) makes me tremendously excited. It shows that Thedas is evolving beyond a simple game setting, and becoming a world in its own right. It's pretty rare for a fantasy land to make that leap; even some tremendously successful fantasy series like the Thomas Covenant chronicles and Wheel of Time haven't managed it (while others, like Midkemia and Earthsea, have).

Thedas has a talented and enthusiastic fan base, and I've recently come to enjoy looking at all the fantastic fan art people have created. Some of this is humorous, some touching, some dark. Bioware has a great approach to this, encouraging and nurturing the creativity of these talented people. There are some great traditions like Morrigan Monday, which spotlights talented cosplayers portraying one of the favorite characters of the franchise.

It'll be interesting to see where things develop from here. Middle-earth still reigns supreme as the ultimate source of fantasy inspiration, producing not only terrific art but also songs and games, not to mention direct adaptations like the movies. It's the former category that introduces me more than the latter: I love it when a world feels broad and deep enough to support the creation of entirely new stories on top of it, and not merely finding new ways to celebrate old tales. In the long run, this might help elevate Thedas even above my other favorite game-based fantasy worlds: I'll always love the Ultima series, and by extension Britannia, but the name and nature of Britannia's construction will always keep it from supporting this kind of art (with, um, a handful of exceptions). Thedas's originality positions it very well to transcend the games; heck, it already has, and it seems likely to continue inspiring more stories well into the future.