Better Narrative, Lower Playability: Destiny 2 Evolves While Fixing What Wasn't Broken To Begin With!

The Good: Graphics, Story/concept
The Bad: Forced multiplayer experience, New shader concept and weapons mods lower the playability
The Basics: The saga of Destiny continues with Destiny 2, which elevates the Cabal, adds new planets and makes it harder to make weapons and armor work efficiently.


I came to Destiny (reviewed here!) comparatively late. Despite that, it did not take me particularly long to get into Destiny and enjoy the worlds, weapons, and adversaries of the game. As rumors swirled about the content of the first sequel to expand the Destiny universe, I was apprehensive. The early release presentations hyped up how Destiny 2 would increase the community aspect of the game. The community aspects, which forced a player to play with others after initially featuring a story that players could play entirely on their own.

I loathed the forced community aspect of Destiny. Of course, by the time I got to Destiny, most of the players were seasoned, arrogant and bored with trying to shepherd newer players through the climactic story adventures that required full six-person fireteams. So, the idea that Destiny 2 would increase and highlight that was not a big selling point for me. Despite the hype of one of the aspects that did not thrill me from the first incarnation of Destiny, I eagerly bought Destiny 2 only a day or two after its official release and I've been playing it for the past two months.

I got Destiny 2 for the Playstation 4 (reviewed here!) and daily play of the new game has illustrated to me that the creative forces behind Destiny created a far more problematic game with Destiny 2, despite there being a stronger narrative for the video game.

Basics

At its core, Destiny 2 is a first-person shooter game in a science fiction warfare setting. The game is broken into three essential modes: Story, Co-operative missions, and player vs. player combat.

The story mode is a single-player experience that has the player portraying a Guardian, one of the last surviving people in the solar system tasked with protecting the remaining human population. The player makes a journey from The Last City on the Traveler to ruined sections of Earth before the player progresses out to Io, Titan, Nessus and then later to the Leviathan, a new massive ship out near the edge of Earth's solar system. As in Destiny, in Destiny 2, the player fights little rogue aliens (The Fallen), massive armored warriors (the Cabal), mindless alien robot drones (the Vex), a race of killer humanoid insects (the Hive) and a sinister race invading the solar system that absorbs entities from all those races and makes them into shadow warriors (The Taken). In the main story mode, the player has to flee The Last City, which comes under attack by the Cabal's elite Red Legion. In a wounded state, the player slowly recovers their light and rescues the leaders of the Guardians from the planets they have scattered to before confronting the leader of the Red Legion to try to rescue the Traveler and The Speaker.

The multiplayer mode allows players to team up to do specific missions that involve bigger bosses than one player could reasonably handle. Players work together to perform complicated story missions that cannot be done by one player and do mini-strikes that allow them to work together in variations of other story adventures. There is also a very basic combat experience where the team of players combats enemies in an arena setting as part of the expanded training.

As with the original, Destiny 2 begins as a single-player game that has the single player moving through the worlds at their own pace, explore aspects of the setting that interest them and accomplish goals in their own desired order. But Destiny 2 includes major events that cannot possible done on one's own. The Leviathan, for example, is a raid that requires multiple players to unlock the puzzle portion that opens the doors that allows the player to progress. There is no possible way to complete the Leviathan Raid without multiple players and completing that raid unlocks several significant things, like the ability for a player to pledge to a Faction.

Finally, there is the player vs. player mode. In the Crucible (player vs. player mode), players either join a randomly assigned team or assemble a team of like-minded murderers and they go out to fight in various settings against other players. The Player Vs. Player modes range from games where the players must collect fallen baubles when they kill ("Supremacy") or take and hold control points around flags ("Control") to free-for-all combat between players. For Destiny 2, there are two new Crucible games - one which involves a four-person team either setting explosives and guarding them (with the opposing team attempting to disarm them) and another one where the players have only a few, shared, lives that they have to preserve before their entire team is irrevocably wiped out.

At the end of virtually every mission or round of combat, players are awarded points, artifacts, and/or weapons and armor to level up their character.

Story

Destiny 2 has a more focused story than the original Destiny. After years of the Guardians re-establishing themselves and protecting Earth's solar system, the Cabal, under the leadership of Dominus Ghaul attacks the Traveler. Ghaul and his Consul abduct The Speaker and enslave the Traveler to tap it for Light. Destroying the power center of the Guardians, the Guardians are forced into retreat while Ghaul interrogates the Speaker.

The Guardian, having lost their Light, crashes down to the abandoned portions of Earth where they slowly begin to regroup. The human survivors of the Last City struggle without a hierarchy and the Guardian (the player) has to protect the humans, rebuild an infrastructure and head out to other planets in the solar system to find the leaders of the Guardians. With their leaders restored and shards of the Light giving them power again, the Guardian has to stop the massive device draining The Traveler before confronting and killing Ghaul!

Game Progression

The main story of Destiny 2 has pretty reasonable progression. The player starts on a map and, while they might explore almost any part of it, there is a pretty linear sense of movement throughout the story. When a player encounters a story node along their current plotline, they begin a well-contained mission, like entering a phantom realm to recover shards of the Light or restoring a communication's device from salvaged parts from a downed colony ship on an outer moon.

The game progression is one of the clear areas where Destiny 2 devolves from its original story. Destiny had a clear, simple, and enduring method of upgrading armor and weapons. In Destiny, one could get shaders, which changed the coloring of one's mismatched armor. It was nice; the player got a cohesive look out of random things they picked up around the many worlds they visited. In a similar fashion, Destiny had a very linear sensibility for upgrading the weapons and the armor, for the attributes and powers they had.

Destiny 2 is a massive step back on that front. First, the shaders are used on each individual piece of armor (helmet, breastplate, gauntlets, leggings, and cloak) and when one upgrades out of the current piece they may have customized, they lose that shader. While this might allow greater customization, it makes creating a look for one's character harder (one must get several copies of the same shader and equip each piece of armor). And once one gets rid of lower-powered armor which the player had shaded the way they liked, they might lose that shader entirely and not be able to get it back. That's annoying, as is not having an overall shader that endures on the character.

The weapons and armor upgrades in Destiny 2 are done with "Mods." Mods are the exact opposite of intuitive; they are supposed to add power and attributes to weapons or armor - equipping to make an otherwise mundane weapon a Solar, Arc or Void weapon, equipping a piece of armor to give the player attributes when equipping a certain type of weapon. These mods, in addition to having the incredibly annoying tendency to reduce the power of certain artifacts (it sucks to finally get an Exotic piece of armor, attempt to equip it with something that should make it more powerful and watch the defensive capacity of the armor actually go down!). As with the shaders, equipping any weapon or armor piece with a Mod becomes problematic in that the lower powered items one equips with them and then later outgrows loses the mod. The upgrade and enhancement process for the weapons and armor in Destiny 2 is needlessly complicated and a dramatic step back from the simple elegance and efficiency of the original game.

Effects

The effects in Destiny 2 are homogeneously amazing. The visuals for the environments look fantastic and the animation is usually clean and flows exceptionally well. Destiny 2 is remarkably glitch-free on the visual effects and it creates an impressive setting that looks great. The fires throughout the Last City, for example, look amazing!

As an older player, it is worth noting that while the speed of the graphics are good and the rendering of adversaries is excellent, the scope, scale and lighting are frequently problematic. To see and, usually, to aim, I almost constantly had to engage the scope on whatever weapon I was using. This has the unfortunate consequence of removing the radar, which informs players where the enemies and goals are! That said, Destiny 2 has superior directional information. Enemies in Destiny 2 can shoot players from a decent distance, outside the effective radar range; the on-screen graphics that indicate where a player is being hit from attacks are excellent.

Arguably the most impressive effect in Destiny 2 is the quality of the voice acting. Bungie employed genre favorite actors like Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Lance Reddick, Lennie James and Bill Nighy to voice non-player characters who pop up during the movie portions of the game. The actors create distinctive characters for the Ghost and the leaders of the surviving factions within the Last City, making for an exciting sense of flow and continuity through the different story elements.

Replayability

Destiny 2 has three different styles of character a player may create - Titan (essentially brute soldiers), Hunters (more mobile and precise operatives, like bounty hunters) and Warlocks (essentially magic-users) - that each have different strengths, capabilities and forms of attack. As a result, players may play through the story portion of the game multiple times and have very different experiences with each run through. Going back through the game, for example, reminded me of one of the irksome aspects of the environment that allows multiple people to be playing in the same spot at the same time; when one is playing their own personal mission and when other players are playing around you, they might might poach your kills to make your goals more difficult to achieve. In areas where there are very few enemies, the game gets bogged down by several people all trying to kill the same enemies to accomplish their goals!

The player vs. player portion of the game changes with each and every attempt. That said, the new player vs. player event that seems like the Trials Of Osiris for Destiny 2 is problematic in that there are not enough players on the platform actually playing to give players access to that new style of game.

Overall

Destiny 2 foreshadows well how the Destiny franchise will continue to expand. This expansion fleshed out the Cabal and made them a lethal enemy to the last of humanity. Perhaps the next expansion will find the Vex traveling through time to undo humanity and make the player into a time traveler or the Taken will possess the leaders of the Guardians and the player will have to find a central controlling power source for the Taken to free all those who are under their influence from them. But the creators of Destiny 2 illustrate the dangers of tweaking a system that was well-made in the first place. Destiny 2 is less player friendly and compelling than the original. While the idea of the Light being corrupted and the Traveler being menaced is an interesting one, players quickly overcome the complications that creates and end up in a world that is partially familiar, somewhat annoying. The result is a game that is quicker to get through and harder to want to stick with afterwards than the original Destiny.

For other game reviews, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
Star Wars Battlefront
Injustice: Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition
Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham

6/10

For other video game reviews, please check out my index page on the subject by visiting my Software Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Third Season Of Rick And Morty Fizzles

The Good: Moments of humor, Good voice performances, Attempts to develop the characters
The Bad: Short, Not very funny, Fewer allusions and clever bits
The Basics: Rick And Morty Season 3 takes a risk on a season that finds the Smith family deeply divided and the adventures Rick Sanchez goes on far darker.


When a show reaches its third season, it often hits a stride that the experimental nature of the earlier seasons might not quite measure up to. Third seasons are usually a place where the characters are established-enough to have traits the viewers instantly recognize and the viewers are invested in the characters and their conflicts. The third season can also be a place where a show manages to course-correct. In the case of Rick And Morty, the long-awaited third season tries to make the show less-repetitive than it was in the prior seasons, but in the process it makes for a darker season and one that is far less funny than the prior two seasons.

The third season of Rick And Morty picks up after Season 2 (reviewed here!) and given where that season ended, it has the immediate burden of rectifying the world-changing aspects of the second season finale. After all, the second season ended with the Earth being taken over by the galactic federation and Rick was imprisoned by them.

Opening with Rick in intergalactic prison, Rick manages to trick his captors into an escape from their version of The Matrix. Slaughtering his way through the government and the Council Of Ricks, Rick manages to thwart the government and liberate Earth and in the process, his daughter and grandchildren side with him over Jerry. In the wake of the family being splintered, Rick takes Morty and Summer on an adventure to a post-apocalyptic style world where Rick robs the people there. Rick turns himself into a pickle to get out of family therapy and joins Morty on an adventure with an Avengers-style super hero group.

Rick takes Jerry on an adventure to the safest place in the galaxy and then he and Morty attempt to detoxify themselves and their toxic incarnations attempt to permanently poison the world. The Citadel Of Ricks is rebuilt, putting a new leader in power based on an election that has a fairly obvious outcome. Rick reveals that he has erased a vast number of traumatic memories from Morty's mind. Rick attempts to bond with Beth in a world he once created for her. And, in the season finale, Rick and Morty confront the President Of The United States over their role in saving the world from various alien threats.

The third season of Rick And Morty features far fewer science fiction concept episodes and a lot more character-based angst. Episodes like "The Ricklantis Mixup" references cop films more than science fiction works. Sure, genre fans might love Stand By Me, but the show's attempt to develop the characters pushes it in both a less-funny direction and one that mortgages its science fiction-loving audience. The real weakness of changing the direction into a more character-based show is that the conceptual change fails based on the season's ten episode duration. In other words, with only ten episodes, none of the characters are given ample time to truly grow and develop. Instead, Rick And Morty Season 3 gets a good start, then works to restore the familiar homeostasis of the series. And doing that with less humor than the prior two seasons feels very unsatisfying.

For those not familiar with the show, it helps to know who the key characters are. In the third season of Rick And Morty the primary characters are:

Morty Smith - The grandson of Rick Sanchez and his sidekick in interdimensional adventures, he is jaded by Rick's actions and indifference. Following his parents' separating, he starts urinating in class. When he uses his adventure coupon, he and Rick end up in deep space with the Vindicators, where his expertise in Rick allows him to save the universe. He has had numerous memories erased by Rick and it horrified when he learns some of the things he has lost,

Summer Smith - After initially believing that Rick is the key to saving Earth, she learns of the world where she was left to die by Morty, who just wants to prove how terrible Rick is. She starts huffing enamel, which results in mandated family counseling. She is irked by how a boy she is interested in chooses a girl with bigger breasts, so she uses one of Rick's devices to get bigger breasts, with horrific results. She is responsible for restoring the mind-wiped Rick and Morty,

Jerry Smith - After adapting to having the world taken over by aliens, he is ditched by his family. While his divorce is pending, he is taken on an adventure with Rick to the safest place in the galaxy. He is willing to set up Rick for murder, but changes his mind. He briefly dates a powerful alien woman. Beth turns to him for the truth about who she is,

Beth Smith - Rick's daughter, she is a horse surgeon who decides to leave her husband instead of exiling her father. She returns to a world Rick once created for her and spends most of her family counseling session doubting Rick is as horrible as Morty and Summer claim he is. She has a crisis of conscience when she believes that Rick may have made a duplicate of her in order to allow the real Beth to go on a journey of self discovery,

and Rick Sanchez - Quickly recognizing that his captors have him in, essentially, The Matrix, in order to get the secret of his portal gun. To escape family therapy, he turns himself into a pickle, which goes on a murderous rampage. He is ostracized by the Vindicators and does more drunk than most people do conscious. He encounters a purely toxic version of himself and fights to get Morty a selfie with the President.

Much of the third season of Rick And Morty is gross and unsettling, as opposed to funny or edgy. The voice acting is fine, but things like the rape and cannibalism in "The ABC's Of Beth" take the show to a gross level.

Ultimately, the third season of Rick And Morty is a disappointing new direction for the once funny and clever science fiction-driven animated comedy.

For other works from the 2017 - 2018 television season, please check out my reviews of:
"Aruba-Con" - Legends Of Tomorrow
"The Flash Reborn" - The Flash
"Girl Of Steel" - Supergirl
"The Butcher's Knife Cares Not For The Lamb's Cry" - Star Trek: Discovery
"Divide And Conquer" - Inhumans
Twin Peaks - Season 3 ("The Return")
Game Of Thrones - Season 7
The Defenders - Season 1
Friends From College - Season 1

4/10

For other television reviews, please check out my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Rise And Fall Of A Great Video Game: Destiny: The Collection

The Good: Graphics, Playability, Story/concept
The Bad: Story becomes dependent upon multiplayer mode
The Basics: Destiny begins as a compelling solo video game that decends into an unfortunate social exercise that makes it impossible to finish as one began it.


I have, only as I reached middle age, gotten into playing video games. I found I actually enjoy the reinforcement of little goals and playing games that have intriguing stories and good graphics. I never would have guessed that I would have gotten into first-person shooter games, but when the stories are interesting, I find I can get captivated by them. While going through my year of playing Star Wars: Battlefront (reviewed here!), one of my real-life friends recommended that I try Destiny. As Star Wars Battlefront became more of a repetitive exercise for me, I decided to take her advice and my wife picked me up Destiny: The Complete Collection.

I got Destiny: The Complete Collection for the Playstation 4 (reviewed here!) and I have been playing it for the past nine months on that system.

Basics

At its core, Destiny is a first-person shooter game in a science fiction warfare setting. The game is broken into three essential modes: Story, Co-operative missions, and player vs. player combat.

The story mode is a single-player experience that has the player portraying a Guardian, one of the last surviving people in the solar system tasked with protecting the remaining human population. The player makes a journey to Earth, the moon, Mars, Venus, and a massive alien ship embedded in Saturn's rings (the Dreadnaught) to fight little rogue aliens (The Fallen), massive war robots (the Cabal), mindless alien drones (the Vex), a race of killer humanoid insects (the Hive) and a sinister race invading the solar system that absorbs entities from all those races and makes them into shadow warriors (The Taken). In the main story mode, the player explores the remaining habitable portions of Earth and its colonies within the solar system to protect the Visitor and the remaining humans from the invading forces, while collecting artifacts and weapons to level up.

The multiplayer mode allows players to team up to do specific missions that involve bigger bosses than one player could reasonably handle. Players work together to perform complicated story missions that cannot be done by one player and do mini-strikes that allow them to work together in variations of other story adventures. There is also a very basic combat experience where the team of players combats enemies in an arena setting as part of the expanded training.

Unfortunately, this is where Destiny goes horribly wrong. Destiny begins as a single-player game that allows players to move through the world at their own pace, explore aspects of the setting that interest them and accomplish goals in their own desired order. Where I wrote "allows" at the top of the paragraph above, the terminology was imprecise; "compels" is a far more accurate word. Players begin the game and can make the journey as they see fit and take their time. But, at the end of every major map, there comes a point where the player cannot play on their own. Bungie, the makers of Destiny, force players to connect with other players and form a six-person Fireteam to accomplish important story points like killing every major Big Bad. It's like Bungie is the stereotypical doting parent, concerned that their kid is playing too many video games and forces playdates with other children. As a forty year-old, that's pretty shitty to me.

The multiplayer story modes are not labeled and are not intuitive. So, players who come to the game on their own will suddenly get to an important story point (like killing the leader of the Hive or eliminating the Taken King) and find themselves locked out of progressing . . . not through any clear mechanic, but rather taking the next labeled step in the game and finding it impossible to progress. So, for example, after spending hours and hours trying to get to more than three checkpoints on "Crota's End" (called Lanterns) without being blown up, swarmed by so many Hive that no single combination of weapons can thin the herd enough to survive or fall down pits in the darkness, players who have started the game on their own are likely to just give up.

But, alas, to continue playing the game where the single player was the hero in their own story, players must log onto Bungie's message boards on the internet, find a fireteam and join it. I came to Destiny late - the game was released at least two years prior to me even hearing about it - and people who continued to play the multiplayer story modes have, generally, become an intolerant bunch. Whatever process of discovery existed in the early days of Destiny gameplay by which players figured out what the team members had to do in each of the forced team play story adventures - where people had to stand, when they had to move, what order to accomplish things in, etc. - has long since passed. As a result, players who play the multiplayer story modes are (by a vast majority) made up of people who know what they are doing and have very specific goals to accomplish with continuing to play those modes. As a population, as a player community, they are not overly tolerant of newbies or those who have different skill sets. So, for example, I am not a professional player and one of the aspects of gameplay that I tend to have difficulty with jumping. I am not a strong jumper in video games. So, on a multiplayer mission that requires all of the players to cross a massive chasm within the Dreadnaught while avoiding getting knocked into said chasm through well-timed jumps . . . I am a clear liability to the team. One need not possess much imagination to guess how a team of five players who are ready to confront a Big Bad might react to being held up for an hour while the sixth player attempts to jump across a chasm that everyone else has already crossed.

This style of gameplay is incredibly frustrating for new players and players who are not social. The most common result is that the Fireteam leader, fed up with the team's weak link, will simply jettison them from the game. So, a player might begin one of the story missions they require to advance and conclude a level, but will end up entirely at the mercy of other players and their impatience. It's a sucky way to design a game and it is not at all player friendly. Any game that requires solo players to rely upon the kindness of strangers and live up to their standards to conclude the game is poorly designed. It's a system that invites bullying, so it was utterly unsurprising to me as a non-professional player that I would have numerous portions of gameplay where I was unable to complete the story and would be made to feel terrible by other players who accepted my presence on a team for a portion of the story's gameplay, but then threw me off the team because I was not as good as the rest of the team.

Emotionally, the only real recourse a player has is in the player vs. player mode. In the player vs. player mode, players either join a randomly assigned team or assemble a team of like-minded murderers and they go out to fight in various settings against other players. The Player Vs. Player modes range from games where the players must hold control points to "ignite a rift" using a "spark" (it's essentially Capture The Flag with massive casualties when the flag is destroyed) to free-for-all combat between players.

At the end of virtually every mission or round of combat, players are awarded points, artifacts, and/or weapons and armor to level up their character.

Story

To its credit, Destiny has a pretty cool story. Opening in the present day, astronauts reach Mars. There, they uncover and encounter the Traveler, a massive satellite that reinvigorates and inspires humanity. Humans spread out throughout the solar system and enter a new golden age. After eons of expansion, The Traveler's enemy finds it and virtually wipes out humanity.

The solar system is overrun by Taken, Vex, Cabal, Hive and Taken forces. But, one day, the little mechanical device known as a Ghost resurrects The Guardian (the player) and helps them to escape the Fallen-infested Cosmodrome. The Guardian is then reunited with the leaders of Earth, who work with the Traveler to retake the solar system.

Game Progression

The main story of Destiny has pretty reasonable progression. The player starts on a map and, while they might explore almost any part of it, there is a pretty linear sense of movement throughout the story. When a player encounters a story node along their current plotline, they begin a well-contained mission, like having to climb up one of the remaining rockets on Earth to recover computer codes for one of the surviving military leaders or bring the Queen in the Rift the head of one of her enemies in order to prove loyalty and competence to her.

In general, the story mode follows a linear progression from Earth to the moon to the planets Venus and Mars before the solar system is invaded by the Taken out near Saturn.

That said, Destiny, at least in the form of The Complete Collection, is severely weakened in its progression by its open format. Destiny has "social areas," where players go to store excess weapons, decrypt found blueprints into weapons and armor and meet with non-player characters who assign missions and goals. Unfortunately, there is no linear progression to the types of missions or goals that the non-player characters give. So, for example, a player who meets with the Titan Leader Zavala and sees that there are missions he has to help one level up might accept them . . . without any indication that a low player-level character cannot possibly accomplish, much less enter, them. So, for example, Zavala has goals pertaining to Nightfall Strikes that a Level 1 player might take on . . . not knowing that Nightfall Strikes are not accessible to anything but the highest-level players. In a similar vein, players might easily pick up weapons from the weaponsmith that are well above their player level to use or involve targets the player does not yet have access to (like a weapon that is to be used exclusively against the Cabal before player has access to the Mars map). Going through the game a second time as a different type of character, I was instantly miffed that in the first group of goals my character was given, two required high-level characters, requiring me to either hold the quests for considerable time before I could attempt them or forcing me to abandon/decline them.

Similarly, Destiny goals are often neither intuitive nor self-explanatory. So, for example, one is given a speeder to move around on and the mechanic in the Last City can assign the players goals. I have had a goal of "Overcharge 3 Reached." I have no idea what "Overcharge 3" is. I've tried many different things; I could find the answer easily enough by looking it up, but the game should not require players to go to a completely external source just to learn about the goals they are supposed to accomplish!

That said, weapons and armor upgrades are entirely intuitive and well-executed. Players are given a lot of direction at the game's outset for how to acquire and upgrade weapons and armor, so as the game progresses, that becomes intuitive pretty fast. . . as does collecting resources so one has the continual ability to upgrade one's weapons and armor.

Effects

The effects in Destiny are homogeneously amazing. The visuals for the environments look fantastic and the animation is usually clean and flows exceptionally well. Destiny is remarkably glitch-free on the visual effects and it creats an impressive setting that looks great.

As an older player, it is worth noting that while the speed of the graphics are good and the rendering of adversaries is excellent, the scope, scale and lighting are frequently problematic. To see and, usually, to aim, I almost constantly had to engage the scope on whatever weapon I was using. This has the unfortunate consequence of removing the radar, which informs players where the enemies and goals are! That said, Destiny has superior directional information. Enemies in Destiny can shoot players from a decent distance, outside the effective radar range; the on-screen graphics that indicate where a player is being hit from attacks are excellent.

Arguably the most impressive effect in Destiny is the quality of the voice acting. Bungie employed genre favorite actors like Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Lance Reddick, Erick Avari and Bill Nighy to voice non-player characters who pop up during the movie portions of the game (Peter Dinklage was originally in the game, but apparently got edited out when the expansions began). The actors create distinctive characters for the Ghost and the leaders of the surviving factions within the Last City, making for an exciting sense of flow and continuity through the different story elements.

Replayability

Destiny was, at least until today when Destiny 2 was officially released, constantly adding challenges, weapons and events to Destiny, so the game appears to have incredible replayability. As well, there are three different styles of character a player may create - Titan (essentially brute soldiers), Hunters (more mobile and precise operatives, like bounty hunters) and Warlocks (essentially magic-users) - that each have different strengths, capabilities and forms of attack. As a result, players may play through the story portion of the game multiple times and have very different experiences with each run through. Going back through the game, for example, reminded me of one of the irksome aspects of the environment that allows multiple people to be playing in the same spot at the same time; when one is playing their own personal mission, they might have specific goals, like "make ten headshots" and when other players are playing around you, they might have similar goals. In areas where there are very few enemies, the game gets bogged down by several people all trying to kill the same enemies to accomplish their goals!

The player vs. player portion of the game changes with each and every attempt and events like the Iron Banner insure that there is always something for a Destiny player to do in the game environment!

Overall

Destiny is an excellent idea for a video game for those who want a role-play first person shooter game. Unfortunately, the forced community quality of it - the way the game abruptly transitions from a solo-player game to one that absolutely forces player interaction without any way to complete the story or have the full player experience without having to join an online community and interact with other people is a serious detraction to casual players and solo players alike and ruins the overall experience of Destiny.

For other game reviews, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
Injustice: Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition
Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham
Middle Earth: Shadow Of Mordor

7/10

For other video game reviews, please check out my index page on the subject by visiting my Software Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Predictably Gross, Surprisingly Funny: Santa Clarita Diet Season 1 Manages To Work!

The Good: Very funny, Well-performed, Interesting characters
The Bad: The gross moments are very gross
The Basics: The first season of Santa Clarita Diet is so funny that the abrupt gore is even more unsettling . . . but Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant pull it off remarkably well!


As Netflix's television division rose in stature, it was easier for Netflix to create original programming using a-list actors. While Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright were the first big names to receive recognition for their work on Netflix Original Television projects, they were not the last and with its latest television outing, Santa Clarita Diet, Netflix managed to instantly raise the stature of the project with the participation of Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant.

It is arguable whether or not the first season of Santa Clarita Diet would have received the attention of genre viewers, much less get greenlit were it not for the participation of Barrymore and Olyphant, as both actors and producers on the show. The premise of Santa Clarita Diet is an ambitious one, as it is a cannibal zombie comedy series and Netflix has a low success rate with horror and a very mixed record with their comedy works. Santa Clarita Diet generally finds the right balance, though with the comedy dominating the show, the quick turns into violence and gore are all the more unsettling.

After nineteen years of marriage, real estate agents Sheila and Joel Hammond experience an abrupt tragedy; while showing a house, Sheila vomits excessively (including what appears to be an organ) and appears to die. Sheila appears to wake up, though she is unable to find her own pulse. Sheila and Joel turn to their creepy cop neighbor's stepson, Eric, for some help in figuring out what might be going on with Sheila. Eric believes that Sheila is essentially undead and when her new coworker, Gary, becomes sexually aggressive, she impulsively kills and eats him.

While Joel copes with his wife's new status by getting high, their daughter Abby starts skipping school and Sheila discovers that she can only eat human flesh to survive. While Joel and Sheila attempt to figure out how to keep Sheila fed while showing houses, the Hammonds adapt to their new reality. Abby and Eric begin to bond, while Sheila starts to feel invigorated by her new diet. Joel works to research exactly what happened to his wife, while keeping Abby in school. But their lives continue to get complicated by things like the Hammonds inadvertently getting to know Sheila's would-be dinner and Eric's step-father, Dan, becoming increasingly suspicious . . . and finding Gary's finger in the Hammond's yard! When Dan tasks Joel with killing a criminal for him, the couple has to try to balance feeding Sheila with not getting caught under the sheriff deputy's thumb!

The first season of Santa Clarita Diet is much funnier than it is gross, though the sheer amount of vomit in the season is unsettling. While the special effect of Drew Barrymore's Sheila projectile vomiting an exceptional amount in the first episode seems like it cannot be topped, by the end of the fifth episode, there's even move vomit! When Santa Clarita Diet is gross, it is truly disgusting. While never quite as gory as The Walking Dead, Santa Clarita Diet is unsettling because twenty-six minutes out of the twenty-eight minute episode will have the viewer laughing and then there will be an abrupt thirty seconds to two minutes of gore that comes up abruptly. As the season progresses, the extortion factor from Dan becomes intense in a different way.

Santa Clarita Diet works to balance humor and horror, but at the core of the first season are the characters. The essential characters from the first season of Santa Clarita Diet are:

Sheila Hammond - Originally a fairly timid realtor, she is not feeling well one day until she vomits something mysterious and appears to be dead. She soon becomes consumed with eating human flesh and then gets controlled by her Id. While she starts to become more empowered and independent - in addition to bloodthirsty and actually thrilled by killing for her own food - she works to keep her relationship with Joel together and raise her daughter right,

Joel - The loving, pot-smoking husband of Sheila, he is instantly supportive of Sheila when she becomes undead. She is witty, fast-talking, but soon starts to feel like her sidekick. He and Abby bond over how weird their lives have become. He researches the Serbian myths surrounding Sheila's new condition and he steps up to be with Sheila when she wants to have help. He is extorted by his crooked sheriff deputy neighbor, Dan, and gets high with his other neighbor, who is in law enforcement,

Abby - Sheila and Joel's sixteen year-old daughter, she begins to skip school when nothing seems to matter after her mother becomes undead. She recognizes that Eric has a crush on her and is upset by how Dan berates his stepson. She becomes much more upset by the fact that her parents are hiding the truth from her, as opposed to the fact that her mother is suddenly a cannibal. She begins to bond with Eric and her father after her mother becomes a zombie cannibal,

Eric - The neighbor boy who has an attraction to Abby, which his mother knows about and embarrasses him about. He is into the paranormal and comic books, which makes him useful in diagnosing Sheila. He starts to slack a bit at school to be closer to Abby,

and Dan - Eric's bully of a step father, he is a nosy sheriff's deputy. He starts to extort Sheila and Joel thinking that Joel killed Gary. He starts to task Joel with killing people he does not like.

Santa Clarita Diet is very well-acted, mostly because Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant have incredible comedic timing. Barrymore and Olyphant are hilarious and they get through some awkward pauses, repeated lines and absurd moments with impressive performances. Barrymore has great physical presence and Olyphant does absurdist deadpan extraordinarily well. Barrymore's facial expressions are precious, most notably the sad expression she has when Shelia splits her little toe!

Equally impressive are the young actors. Skyler Gisondo is perfectly cast to play an awkward teenager and he rises to the occasion without any of the fun that make his youthful performances on Psych seem perfectly in character for that character. Gisondo is much more subdued as Eric. Liv Hewson, who plays Abby, steals every scene she is in. She is funny and plays off all three of her costars expertly. Abby becomes both realistic and angsty throughout the first season of Santa Clarita Diet and Hewson finds the right balance between heart and humor for the character.

The first season of Santa Clarita Diet is exactly what one would expect if one were pitching Dexter and Weeds (reviewed here!) blended with Warm Bodies (reviewed here!). The first season is funny, has moments of clever, and is well-performed, though it lacks a truly universal or enduring quality. While I found myself laughing quite a bit, I was equally grossed out and realized fairly late in the season that I was not really looking forward to rewatching it. Santa Clarita Diet is entertaining, but whether it is truly enduring remains to be seen.

For other works from the 2016 – 2017 television season, please check out my reviews of:
A Series Of Unfortunate Events - Season 1
One Day At A Time - Season 1
"The Return Of Doctor Mysterio" - Doctor Who
Travelers - Season 1
"Happy Fucking New Year" - Sense8
The OA - Season 1
Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life
"Invasion!" - Arrow
"Hot Potato Soup" - Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.
"Dead Or Alive" - The Flash
"The Legion Of Doom" - Legends Of Tomorrow
"We Can Be Heroes" - Supergirl
Luke Cage - Season 1
Stranger Things - Season 1

6/10

For other television reviews, please check out my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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0% Chance Of Success: Firefly The Verse Trading Cards

The Good: Some decent autographs, Some good artwork
The Bad: Missing cast members, Erratic artwork, Basic autograph style, Impossible collectibility
The Basics: Firefly The Verse trading cards partially reward fans of Firefly for keeping the light burning, but then creates an impossible-to-collect art card set.


Every now and then, I review a product that puts me at odds with myself. The Firefly The Verse trading cards are one such product. Firefly The Verse trading cards are an art-themed Firefly trading card set that continue in me the conflict between the trading card collector/genre fan geek and the small business owner. As a small business owner who sells collectibles, I understand the Firefly The Verse trading cards; they have insane rarity to them that leads a handful of collectors worldwide to shell out incredible amounts of money trying to get exceptionally rare cards. Sets like Firefly The Verse are generally good for business for those who manage to pull one of the critically rare cards from the set and can generate a bidding war as a result.

As a collector and genre fan, I hate sets like the Firefly The Verse trading cards. Trading card collecting is one of the few hobbies I picked up as a teenager that stuck with me into adulthood. It is also one of the hobbies I have been a part of where I have witnessed the absolute destruction of the hobby and the industry. Trading cards used to be an amusing diversion that allowed fans to collects something very different from their beloved television shows and films. They take up less space than action figures, are less homogeneous than 8 x 10 photos and have - for years - had a wider variety of subjects and styles than virtually any other collectibles, whatwith foil parallels, autograph cards, sketch cards, and costume/prop cards. And while the concepts of so many trading card sets remain solid and interesting, the execution of some of the new trading card sets are problematic.

Firefly The Verse is one of the most troublingly-executed trading card sets to come out in recent memory with card rarities that make collecting a literal impossibility.

Firefly The Verse cards were produced by Upper Deck, Inc. in 2015 and it is virtually impossible to define how many complete sets of the trading cards actually exist. Because of the rather obtuse breakdown of sketch cards, it is hard to be certain of how man master sets of Firefly The Verse cards are actually available. With the inclusion of Printing Plate cards for each of the common cards, the Firefly The Verse cards might have only four true master sets that could be created; producing a trading card set that only four people could actually assemble is somewhat ridiculous.

As a collector, as well, the Firefly The Verse cards have mixed execution on two key points. The artwork is decidedly mixed in the set and while Upper Deck worked hard to get participation from all of key people involved with Firefly, they failed. For a set that is bloated with autograph cards (single, double, and triple signature cards), the fact that Upper Deck did not manage to get the entire cast of Firefly to sign cards - and/or get Joss Whedon, the creator of Firefly to sign cards - is a strike against the set.

Basics/Set Composition

The concept behind the Firefly The Verse cards is good. The set is an artwork set which features nine cards of new art for each of the fourteen episodes of Firefly, two sets of nine character based cards and cards of the ship, Serenity. There are incredible amounts of bonus cards in the Firefly The Verse set and the set represents the last (known) collectible for fans of Firefly that Ron Glass was able to participate in.

Like almost all of Upper Deck trading card products, the cards come with a UV protective coating to protect the trading cards from fading over time and to give them a nice satin sheen. This does appear to work as I've not had any cards from Upper Deck, Inc. fade. The autographed cards - parallel and flat-out autographs - and sketch cards do not have the UV coating on the front. Unlike some sets of trading cards, the Firefly The Verse trading cards are not consistently oriented; some are in portrait, some are in landscape orientation.

The Firefly The Verse trading card set is an impossible mess when it comes to attempting to define the number of cards in the set. There is no checklist that reliably defines how many cards are in the set. As near as I can determine, the practical number of cards one might want to collect would net a 986 card collection, though there are at least 1581 cards in what would be defined as an absolute, true, master set (if such a thing was actually possible to collect). Even for those trying to complete 986 card set would find it near-impossible to collect given that such a set would require one to track down one of four of each of the 171 printing plates. As best I can determine, the Firefly The Verse trading card set is 986 (or 1581) cards made up of 171 common cards and 815 (or 1400!) chase cards, all but one found in the packs and boxes of the cards.

Common Cards

The Firefly The Verse common set is a 171 card set of artwork cards that were produced exclusively for the set. Each of the 14 episodes of Firefly are given nine cards, each by a different artist. The nine-card episode cards are stylistically incredibly different from one another, from character-centered iconic shots for some episodes to cartoonish artwork that is a stylized representation of the characters and scenes being depicted. The painting style of artwork for the episode "The Message" by Rupam Grimeurve is some of the most compelling, though Mick and Matt Glebe once again produce incredible artwork for "Bushwacked."

The character shots of the main Firefly cast from David Hindelang and Tim Shay are interesting and they precede new renditions of ships and classic propaganda posters for the Firefly universe. The common cards have varying quality and they also have problematic orientation: cards are scattered between portrait and landscape orientation, which makes for a somewhat sloppy appearance when the cards are in a binder.

Chase Cards

The Firefly The Verse cards are chock full of bonus cards, including three styles of parallel cards. The set has 815 trading cards in the bonus sets (of 1400 if one is a stickler!), only one of which is not available in the boxes and sets. The problem with the 814 card number to try to define the set comes in the sketch cards (we'll get to that!), but the 814 bonus cards seems like the best way to define the set. The Firefly The Verse set is made up of green parallel cards, leather parallel cards, autographed parallel cards, autographs, patch cards, sketch cards and printing plates.

The Firefly The Verse chase cards have a green foil parallel card as the first-level chase set. The parallel set takes almost a complete case to complete as the foil cards are found almost every pack and replicate the common cards with green foil accents. The green foil accents on the front of each card feature a symbol, replace the standard copper colored foil on the common cards and most have an accent of Chinese symbols (which Firefly fans understand, even if they cannot read them.

Found about three per box is another replication of the common set in the form of leather parallel cards. The leather parallel cards are each numbered to 99 on the front of the card, which is very different. The leather parallel cards have a slight texture to them, which is very cool. Given how many cases it takes to assemble the full 171 card leather parallel card set, it is good that this parallel set actually looks cool!

The final parallel set is an art lover's dream, at least for those who appreciate the art for the trading cards. One per box is an uncoated replication of a common card that is hand-signed by the artist or artists who produced the original for the Firefly The Verse card set. Each gold-signed card gives the fans of the artists the opportunity to get their favorite piece in the set autographed by the creator. Personally, I like the fact that those who generated the material for the Firefly The Verse set are given something that shows they are appreciated for their contribution.

The Firefly The Verse set is augmented by 42 patch cards. The patch cards are trading cards, extra thick, that have manufactured patches embedded in them. The patch cards vary between simple patches with the character's name on them to things like a patch that commemorates Shepherd Book's hair, Jayne's Gun Vera, or the Alliance Ship. The patch cards vary widely in quality, though most have truly distinctive moments that they replicate in patch form, like Kaylee's fancy dress. Only Jayne In The Airlock truly stood out as one that I had to stare at and look at from multiple angles before I saw what it was supposed to depict. The patch cards are found one per box, so to complete the set, it takes four cases with ideal collation.

The autograph cards are also found about one per box. The autograph cards were created to mimic identification cards from the Firefly Universe and they feature a variety of main and guest cast members. The autograph cards are very weird in that the thirty main autograph cards are landscape oriented, but most of the autographs are on the side of the card! There are fourteen dual autographs, eight triple autographs and six cards that replicate the character cards from the common set. Herein is the fundamental problem with the Firefly The Verse set: with a slew of autographs, it stands out that the full cast is not represented. While it is wonderful that fans can now get something beautiful signed by the recently-departed Ron Glass, the fact that the Firefly The Verse set does not include autographs by Summer Glau, Gina Torres, or Alan Tudyk is noticeable. Also, with some of the weird dual-autographs, it seems ridiculous that Sean Maher and Jewel Staite were not given a dual autograph in the set.

Then there are the sketch cards and there are further problems with figuring out the Firefly The Verse set. Each of the Firefly The Verse sketch cards are individually numbered and there are thirty different subjects. The problem with the Firefly The Verse sketch cards are that it is impossible to figure out how many actual sketch cards there were for the set. The sketch cards range from characters to replications of moments from the episodes to ships. So, for example, all of sketch card FS-2 are of Zoe Washburn, all of FS-16 have moments from "Jaynestown" as the subject, etc. But, while there are thirty potential subjects on cards specific to the artwork on the front, there are 102 artists who contributed sketch cards. Usually, I define the sketch cards as one sketch per artist, but given that the Firefly The Verse cards include two and they are dramatically different numbers, it is tough for collectors to decide which way they want to collect the set. Does one collect one of each artist, one of each of the thirty cards or one of each card by each artist?! There is no real way to collect them the final way (if each artist even contributed one sketch per card), so the most practical ways for the collectors to collect the sketches is to go one per card, though I'd still say that die-hard collectors will want one sketch per artist, so long as they get one of each of the thirty subjects.

The impossibility of collecting the Firefly The Verse cards concludes with the inclusion of printing plate cards into the set. Printing plates are a delightful addition in recent sets as they are the original plates used to make the common cards, cut into trading card size and included for collectors in the packs. The printing plates are viewed as either unique or one of four of each of the 171 plates that replicate the common cards. The printing plates were found in black, yellow, pink, and cyan (blue) and there are either 171 printing plates or 684 printing plates, depending upon one's perspective. I've come around to the idea that printing plates are one per card (171 in this set) and that means that there might be only four complete sets of Firefly The Verse trading card sets that could be completed.

Non-Box/Pack Cards

Outside the boxes, there was a San Diego Comic Con promotional card; it is the only card int he set, not found in packs and boxes, which is nice.

Overall

The Firefly The Verse cards are inconsistently produced which is irksome even to common card collectors, incomplete in the way the whole cast was not included in the autographs and irksome in the impossible way the sketch cards were generated. But, the set has some good artwork and some of the signers are truly impressive and a couple of the sketch cards I've seen were actually amazing. But inconsistency and difficulty are keywords for the Firefly The Verse set, which makes them impossible to recommend.

This set is artwork based on images from Firefly, reviewed here!

This is a set of trading cards I sell in my online store (new inventory being added daily!). Please visit and purchase from the current inventory of them at: Firefly The Verse Trading Card Inventory!

For other art-based trading card sets, please check out my reviews of:
Star Trek 50 Years 50 Artists
Cryptozoic Justice League Cards
Marvel Dangerous Divas 2 trading cards

2.5/10

For other card reviews, please visit my Card Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L .Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Waking Nightmare: Why Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox Endures!

The Good: Good themes, Clever character twists, Decent construction and edits from the source material
The Bad: Some less successful edits, Simplistic resolution, Packed with multiple flat supporting characters
The Basics: Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox is a clever adaptation of the Flashpoint crossover event in movie form!


This month is shaping up to be a pretty intensive month for me with reviews of Marvel Comics-based works. To balance that, I figured I should seek out some DC Comics-based works. In advance of the third season premiere of The Flash and with a fascination for the more adult-oriented works coming from DC Animation that I discovered by watching Batman: The Killing Joke (reviewed here!), I figured that it was a good time to take in Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox. Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox is an animated film adaptation of Flashpoint (reviewed here!) and while it has been quite some time since I read that crossover event and its various volumes, I recalled it well enough to look forward to both the animated film and the new season of The Flash.

Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox is a work that bends the traditional DC Comics Universe and offers a glimpse into one of the most provocative alternate universe scenarios that DC Comics ever created. The animated rendition of Flashpoint does a generally good idea of portraying the complexity of the graphic novel crossover event while minimizing the less successful subplots of the books.

Opening with a flashback to Barry Allen's backstory in his childhood with his mother before her murder, Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox leaps back to Barry Allen's adulthood. On his mother's birthday, Barry Allen is called to action when the Flash Museum is attacked by the Rogues, who were hired by Professor Zoom. When Eobard Thawne uses the Rogues to carry the bombs he wants to use to destroy the Flash Museum, the Justice League arrives to stop the bombs from detonating. With the Rogues detained and Zoom being sent to S.T.A.R. Labs for containment, The Flash's success is undermined by a remark from Thawne, so he tries to run off his frustration.

Barry Allen wakes up at his desk at Central City Police Department where no one recalls The Flash and he is devoid of his powers. Outside the CCPD, Barry Allen encounters his mother and he is shocked that she is alive. From Nora, Barry learns that the world is on the brink of war and the only superhero she seems to know about is Batman. In Gotham City, Batman is briefed by Cyborg on the impending war between the Amazons and Atlanteans in the ruins of Europe. Batman refuses to join the war effort and when Barry Allen visits Batman, Allen discovers that in this reality, Thomas Wayne is Batman and Bruce Wayne is dead. As the world falls into carnage as various elements get caught between the building armies of the Amazons and Atlanteans, Allen is convinced that the only way to right the world is to find and thwart Professor Zoom, whom he believes is responsible for the destroyed world on the cusp of war. To find Zoom, Allen enlists Batman's help in recreating the accident that made him The Flash, with initially disastrous results. But in attempting to save the world, Barry Allen becomes deeply embroiled in saving the darkened reality!

Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox does a decent job of illustrating how important Nora Allen was to Barry Allen in order to set up the premise of the film. As well, while the initial incident in Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox seems somewhat pointless, it is enough to sell Barry Allen's assumption in the altered timeline. The Reverse Flash is a time-traveling meddler who seeks to undo all of the heroism of The Flash, so when Allen wakes up without powers in a darkened present, Eobard Thawne is a reasonable suspect from the available evidence.

Flashpoint was an incredibly complex crossover event in the DC Comics books, so condensing it down to seventy-five minutes necessitates cutting quite a bit of material. As one who generally enjoyed the book series, the most glaring and frustrating omission comes in the form of leaving out The Joker. Because Thomas Wayne has such a significant presence in Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox, that his search for the Joker is treated as a very minor tangent and dropped after only the second allusion to the Joker is somewhat disappointing.

What is not disappointing is the quality of the animation. Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox is one of the more consistently well-rendered DC Animation projects and given the scope of it, that is no small task. The character designs are distinctive enough that the bulk of the characters are instantly recognizable in every frame in which they appear and that helps the flow of the film stay tight and taut.

It is worth noting that Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox is very much intended for adults; the on-screen kill count is exceptionally high and several of the character deaths are fairly graphic (as is Barry's first attempt to regain his powers!).

The voice acting in Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox quite good. Led by Justin Chambers as Barry Allen, Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox might be a world-bending war story, but the portrayals of Barry Allen and Thomas Wayne make the film far more relatable and present some more universal themes. It is a bit disappointing, based on the clarity of the voice acting and the themes of Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox that no one seems to recognize that Barry's grandmother was simply reciting the Serenity Prayer from Alcoholics Anonymous. That said, that is not a fault of the actors and their clear, emotive, performances help to create the world of the Flashpoint reality as well as the animators.

Ultimately, Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox is a gruesome exploration of what one man's grief can create and it is well-rendered even if it has to gloss over some of the complexities of the source material.

For other animated films based on DC Comics books, please check out my reviews of:
Wonder Woman
Watchmen: Tales Of The Black Freighter
Batman: Gotham Knight

6/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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If The Avengers Were Made As A Science Fiction Comedy: Guardians Of The Galaxy!

The Good: Good humor, Decent soundtrack, Good plot development
The Bad: Rather obvious (and rushed) character development, Nothing exceptional in terms of performances, Distracting 3-D in several points
The Basics: Guardians Of The Galaxy further expands the Marvel Cinematic Universe while amusing viewers . . . without resonating the same way as the prior installments.


Guardians Of The Galaxy has a number of reasonable comparisons to the giant Marvel film The Avengers (reviewed here!), not just because both are set within the same storytelling universe. The Marvel Cinematic Universe was established in Phase One (reviewed here!) as a surprisingly grounded place: Tony Stark needed time to train within his suit of armor, Steve Rogers was a unique warrior set in place as the only stopgap against an army powered by an extraterrestrial device and for the bulk of his time on Earth, Thor was without his godlike powers. For all of the supernatural and comic book conceits that exist in science fiction and comic book movies, the Marvel Cinematic Universe did not employ most of them (save in the Hulk movies, which is arguably why they failed). In other words, most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe strove to generally recreate the real world and then add slight twists to it and explore how “real people” and the “real world” would react to those twists.

Until the climax of The Avengers, when an interstellar alien force invades, and outside the climactic event of Thor: The Dark World (reviewed here!), the Marvel Cinematic Universe has worked hard to keep a realist sensibility to itself. Taking an entirely different tact is the new addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Guardians Of The Galaxy. Guardians Of The Galaxy, as the name implies, is set (mostly) in the farthest reaches of the galaxy (where a sizable population still looks mostly human) and explores the larger consequences of the artifacts that the other films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have been introducing. Those artifacts, like the Tesseract and the seed in the Thor sequel, are given an explicit name in Guardians Of The Galaxy: they are Infinity Stones (which Marvel geeks knew years ago). Guardians Of The Galaxy introduces another one and reveals what their purpose is . . . along with the motivation Thanos had for hunting the Tesseract in The Avengers. More than just in its outlandish setting, Guardians Of The Galaxy transforms the Marvel Cinematic Universe into a much less grounded place. Guardians Of The Galaxy feels like exactly what it is: a film based on a comic book.

That is not to say Guardians Of The Galaxy is not good. It is. Guardians Of The Galaxy is a fun and funny science fiction comedy, continuing the tradition of the niche genre like Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (reviewed here!) or Men In Black (reviewed here!). Unlike the former, Guardians Of The Galaxy lacks a sense of theme and universal resonance and treads more toward entertainment than enlightenment.

Opening in 1988, Peter Quill’s mother dies and the young boy flees into the night where he is promptly abducted by aliens. Twenty-six years later, Quill is scavenging on a dead world where he recovers an orb from the ruins. Moments after he gets the item he was sent for, he squares off against Korath and his forces. Evading them and retreating to his ship, the Milano, Quill decides to betray his employer and sell the recovered Orb on his own. While Quill heads to Xandar to sell the Orb, the villainous alien Ronan dispatches Gamora (who volunteers) to recover it. When the potential buyer for the Orb freaks out – after learning Ronan is after the artifact – Quill is attacked by Gamora, a sentient genetically-modified, cybernetically enhanced raccoon named Rocket and his humanoid plant companion Groot, and the Nova police force.

The quartet is imprisoned on a remote world, the Kyln, where virtually everyone wants to kill Gamora, especially Drax The Destroyer. Quill manages to save Gamora’s life and refocuses Drax on finding and killing Ronin. The quintet stages an incredible escape from the Kyln by working together, with the four aliens actually waiting for Quill when he goes back for his prized mix tape. Hunted by Ronan, Quill’s regular employer Yondu Udonta and the police force from Nova, Quill and his compatriots become determined to keep the Orb from falling into the hands of Ronan and Thanos when Ronan reveals that the Orb contains an Infinity Stone with virtually unlimited power to destroy. Working together, Quill, Gamora, Drax, Rocket and Groot must protect the citizens of Xandar from the genocidal plans of Ronan and Thanos.

In many ways, Guardians Of The Galaxy is a very typical science fiction film. In fact, its reliance upon humor makes it fun, but also as formulaic as virtually every comedy to grace the big screen . . . ever. Guardians Of The Galaxy transforms the Marvel Cinematic Universe simply by realigning the physics of the galaxy to allow virtually every comic book conceit as opposed to conforming to realistic physics. That makes the fight scenes in Guardians Of The Galaxy extraordinarily dynamic and animated, especially when Groot and Rocket are involved. They hop around without clear boundaries on their abilities (Groot, for example, is entirely inscrutable and only reveals the extent of his powers and abilities when they become relevant and necessary).

Peter Quill is a decent anti-hero; he does the right thing when it suits him, but he is a Han Solo-esque bounty hunter who also strangles small animals to use them as microphones when the mood takes him. In his quest to get respect in the galactic underground as Star Lord, Quill does not actually distinguish himself in any strong or meaningful way. Less the function of his personality or values, Quill manages to survive Guardians Of The Galaxy simply by biology. Heavily alluded to in the film’s very first scene, Peter Quill is not simply a human, but his heritage is only a minor subplot in the larger film.

Far more of a component of Guardians Of The Galaxy is establishing and then defying the premises of the universe and characters Peter Quill is a part of. In this regard, Guardians Of The Galaxy is painfully formulaic. Elements that are established in an obvious way include Groot’s limited vocabulary (he, we are told, only speaks the three words “I am Groot,” though Rocket seems able to interpret what he means by it as the film goes on), Gamora’s absolute refusal to dance, and the obviously seeded gift Quill receives from his dying mother that he has not opened over the lapsed twenty-six years. For sure, viewers need a film with character development to make any movie worth watching, but Guardians Of The Galaxy is like watching a checklist of the elements that are used to establish the characters getting checked off. Virtually everything established about a character, up to and including Drax’s lifelong struggle with metaphor, is defied by the film’s end. Guardians Of The Galaxy is obviously intended to build a franchise, but the way the film ends, there is almost nowhere to go for the characters that will not force the writers to completely redefine them. This would be analogous to Bruce Banner learning to control his ability to transform in Hulk (such an ability would have left the character with nothing compelling for The Incredible Hulk or The Avengers). So, in some ways, Guardians Of The Galaxy undoes its own attempt to build a franchise by making a solid (if formulaic) story.

In a similar fashion, Guardians Of The Galaxy is nothing extraordinary on the acting front. John C. Reilly is (mostly) goofy as the Nova Police Officer Dey and Glenn Close is appropriately authoritative as Nova Prime, the leader of Xandar. Djimon Hounsou plays the villainous Korath with virtually the same presence that he has played many other adversaries over the years. The film’s lead, Chris Pratt, plays Quill as an everyman and he does so with a similarly goofy quality (but without the slouch) to his character from Parks And Recreation. Even Zoe Saldana (who plays Gamora) is used in such a familiar way that director James Gunn doesn’t even bother hiding the allusion to her playing Uhura by throwing her in a miniskirt at the movie’s end.

Guardians Of The Galaxy is charming and worth watching, but it is hardly a great and enduring film the way some other, recent super hero films have managed to be.

For other works in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, please check out my reviews of:
Ant-Man
Captain America: Civil War
Doctor Strange
Iron Fist - Season 1
"What If . . . " - Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.

7/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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