The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games is an adaptation of the first of three novels in a series of science fiction books. I have not read the books, but I do know that, like Harry Potter and Twilight before them, they are feverishly popular among young readers. And for a movie created with the express intent of suckering those readers out of billions of dollars worth of their parent’s money, The Hunger Games isn’t half-bad. Which isn’t to say that it’s great. The script presents us with some interesting ideas but doesn’t really engage them, the conclusion is foregone long before the last reel starts to run, and there’s a general sense that some particulars got lost in the transition from page to screen. Still, the movie is a deftly directly, well-acted popcorn flick that bodes well for the future.

The world of The Hunger Games, like so many sci-fi worlds before it, is a bleak one. Our heroine, Katmiss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), lives in District 12, an impoverished, powerless satellite state ruled over with an iron fist from the glitteringly wealthy Capitol City. Every year, each of the twelve Districts must offer up one girl and one boy to participate in the Hunger Games, a televised battle to the death organized by the Capitol to remind the outlying Districts just who’s ruling and who’s being ruled. For a movie aimed mainly at the 12-16 crowd, the whole concept strikes me as pretty ballsy, and the movie shows some follow-through by pushing the edges of its PG-13 rating. Even though director Gary Ross leaves the gorier details to our imaginations, this is still a movie where teenagers get stabbed, sliced, and shot to death.

With an interesting premise and the conviction to see it through, The Hunger Games seems poised to turn into something special, and at times it almost does. In a plea to save her little sister from participation, Katmiss volunteers to represent District 12 in this year’s Hunger Games (the 74th annual, for those counting). She and fellow District 12 denizen Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) are whisked away to the Capitol where they’re told that winning the Hunger Games isn’t just about survival of the fittest; you also have to be liked by the viewing public. The period leading up to the games takes up a surprisingly large chuck of time, and it’s there that the movie is at its best. There are all kinds of parallels, whether intentional or not, drawn between this society and our own. The Hunger Games as a monstrous outgrowth of reality television, the cruel, dandified Capitol dwellers as representative of today’s upper class, and so on. When the actual Hunger Games started up, I found myself wanting to know more about what was happening behind the scenes, more about the public’s reaction, and more about the reasons why this ritual had lasted so long in the first place.

Part of the problem is that we know next to nothing about most of the contestants. We know Katmiss. She’s level-headed, good with a bow, and tough under pressure. Jennifer Lawrence gives a consistent, likable performance that goes a long way toward keeping the movie grounded; that the Hunger Games segments of The Hunger Games are compelling at all is due mostly to her. Peeta gets some screen time but never makes much of an impact; he’s the kind of blandly handsome, non-threatening male lead sure to enrapture tween girls but who doesn’t really stand out to the rest of us. And the rest are a wash. A couple of the contestants are sadistic jackasses, and to say that they die unpleasantly after doing less harm than you might expect should come as no surprise. Mostly the combatants just die off namelessly one by one by one. This comparison has been made before, but it really is borne out: the back half of The Hunger Games plays out like a less exciting version of the Japanese action flick Battle Royale.

In the movie’s defense, I suspect that fans of the book will enjoy these parts more than I did. There are a number of bit players, such as Hunger Games producer Seneca Crane (Wes Bentley) and State stylist Cinna (Lenny Kravitz, for some reason) who felt a bit extraneous from the main action but who I figured had deeper and denser roles in the book. The scope of the movie is quite vast, and it stands to reason that some subtleties got lost in translation. Also, there’s the probability that many members of this gang will get greater development come the sequels, the prospect of which I’m sure has already set Hollywood producers to drooling. I say let them have their fun. The world of The Hunger Games is probably interesting enough to be worth a second visit, and if the filmmakers augment their able workmanship with a touch more daring the trip could be something special indeed.

21 Jump Street

21 Jump Street is a really good movie I had no idea I wanted to see. And I don’t think you could really blame me, either. The movie is an adaptation of a television series from the late 1980s about a couple of mismatched rookie cops who go undercover as high school students in an effort to fight teenage crime. I hear something like that and alarm bells go off. Buddy cop flicks and high school comedies are among the more well-worn and predictable genres knocking around movie theaters today, and the prospect of mashing them together didn’t sound terribly appealing. I think the makers of 21 Jump Street realized this, because their movie makes merry and merciless fun of its many influences in addition to providing a steady stream of inventive gags and adding just enough heart to keep the whole experience from feeling pointless. I get the idea that everyone involved in the movie had a blast making it, and that enthusiasm can’t help but rub off on audiences.

Any discussion of the movie’s many strong points has to start with its playful screenplay, which was written by Scott Pilgrim vs. the World scribe Michael Bacall. The film quickly makes clear that it will not be taking itself or its origins seriously. There’s an early scene where Police Captain Dickson (Ice Cube) decries the media’s attempts to repackage old entertainment and pass it off as new in the hopes to make a quick buck. The moment is played completely straight, as it has to be, and it works. Bacall also has fun toying with the templates of high school comedies past. The two undercover cops at the center of the story, smart but shy Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and dim-witted man of action Jenko (Channing Tatum), are both in their mid-20s and completely flummoxed by how much the high school social scene has changed since they’ve been away. The popular kids are no longer the coasting jocks but are instead the environmentally conscious, Berkeley-bound hipsters. Schmidt’s love interest isn’t a bombshell cheerleader but an earthy, sweetly funny theater-geek. The movie keeps throwing out little curveballs like this all the way up to the closing credits, and it’s a lot better for it.

Bacall places much of the comedy on the shoulders of his stars, and they’re more than up to the task. At this point in his career, Jonah Hill has the endearingly insecure guy-next-door thing down to a science. He’s awkwardly affecting in early scenes that show his geeky high school past and wryly self-effacing for the rest. But the real surprise here is Tatum, who up to now has been known mainly as an action star or That Handsome Guy in sickly sweet melodramas like The Vow. With this movie he shows a real talent for deadpan comedy. Better still, the leads don’t hog all to the laughs to themselves. Like last year’s Bridesmaids, 21 Jump Street makes a point to fill out the minor roles with a host of comedy veterans and, what’s more impressive, to actually give them things to do. Saturday Night Live’s Chris Parnell gets a few laughs as the spaced-out head of the school’s theater program, The Office’s Ellie Kemper amuses as a lusty science teacher, and so on. I think this inclusiveness is one of the reasons the movie feels so damn cheerful so much of the time. Even after the twentieth-odd dick joke, even as a character lay bleeding on the ground with a hole shot through his throat, the whole thing seemed so good-natured that I couldn’t help but like it.

Although the hole through the throat bit was pushing it. The one element of 21 Jump Street that doesn’t work quite as well as the rest of it are the action scenes, which for the most part feel too much like standard car chase n’ shootout fare to make much of an impact. Although at one point there is a killer gag involving an overturned tank trunk that stubbornly refuses to explode. There are also a couple of scenes, like the throat shot one, that feel a shade too violent for a movie that’s normally so easy-going. I like that the movie was willing to go there, but for me those scenes skirted too close to the line between so-sick-it’s-funny and just kinda sick.

But hey, at least the movie’s not afraid to earn its R rating. And the bulk of it is so fresh, so free-wheeling and warmly funny, that it might force me to revise my opinion of all television from the 80s. If this movie is a sign of things to come, why not go ahead and make a Magnum P.I. adaptation? Revive Doogie Howser. Call Chris Rock and get cracking on a Cosby Show flick. Good on the producers of 21 Jump Street for taking a movie people probably didn’t expect much from and turning it into something worth seeing.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

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The Legend of Zelda is a big deal. The first entry in the series came out in 1986 and represented one of the industry’s first attempts to make a game which focused on adventure over action. Nintendo spent several years refining that formula before coming out with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in 1998. That game was one of the first to effectively implement combat in a 3D space and featured one of the richest, most fully realized game worlds of the time. The series has spawned a swath of imitators, made a ton of money, and is partly responsible for Nintendo’s venerability as a developer. It’s a big deal.

At the same time, The Legend of Zelda is a chore. The last few games in the series, 2002’s Wind Waker and 2006’s Twilight Princess among them, have switched up the aesthetics but kept the core gameplay more or less unchanged. Add in 2007’s Phantom Hourglass and 2009’s Spirit Tracks, and the Legend of Zelda seems in danger of stagnating.

So comes Skyward Sword, a game which has the unenviable task of paving a new path for the series while remaining faithful enough to its past to please long-time fans. It’s a fine, fine line, and while I don’t think the game always walks it successfully, Skyward Sword is still a full, lengthy adventure with a lot to offer and enjoy.

The more things change…

Although they’ve played it safe in terms of gameplay, the last few Zelda games have at least taken us to some interesting places. The Wind Waker was set on a vast ocean. Twilight Princess took place in a darker, relatively more realistic version of Hyrule. Skyward Sword continues that trend. This time, Link begins his adventure as a citizen of a floating island called Skyloft where he spends his days napping, riding around on the back of a giant bird, called a Loftwing, and hanging out with his best bud Zelda. The game spends quite a lot of time upfront introducing the player to the characters and their world. It’s nice to get an idea of who Zelda is and what she means to Link, but it didn’t take long before I was itching to get to the game part of the game. When a mysterious storm tosses Zelda off the back of her Loftwing and down to the mysterious surface world below, I was more than ready to chase after her and start adventurin’.

Upon reaching the surface, the player starts to realize just how different Skyward Sword will be from past games in the series. First up are the controls: Skyward Sword makes use of the Wii-motion Plus attachment to give the player complete one-to-one control over Link’s sword arm. Move the Wii-mote to the left, and Link moves his sword to the left. Make a downward slash with your arm, and Link makes a downward slash with his. This new degree of control is enjoyable in and of itself. It’s fun to just run around and make Link wave his arm like a lunatic, but Nintendo has also cleverly integrated this feature into the gameplay. Many monsters will block or counter your attacks unless you swing at them from a certain angle. This makes combat a touch more cerebral than in past adventures.

As usual, Nintendo provides Link with a bevy of weapons and tools, most of which make use of the new motion controls. Items like the slingshot and the bow work about how you would expect, but a few of Link’s new toys are pretty inspired. The whip, for example, lets Link swing from banisters and yank far-away switches, while an air cannon allows for some interesting physics-based platforming. Best of all is the Beetle, an airborne, remotely controlled drone that can be used to scout terrain, pick up far-off items, and air-bomb enemies. The dungeon areas, always a highlight of the Zelda games, challenge the player to use these items in inventive ways. Thanks to them, some of the latter dungeons are among the most deviously well-designed in the history of the series. There are a few points where the motion controls come off as gimmicky, such as when Link has to rotate three-dimensional keys to unlock giant doors, but for the most part they breathe interesting new life into Zelda’s puzzle and combat-based gameplay.

The changes don’t end with the controls. The geographical structure of Skyward Sword is markedly different from past iterations in the series. In most Zelda games, Link runs around a vast, interconnected over-world in search of dungeons, treasure, and whatever else. In Skyward Sword, the world is divided into a number of independent sections. First there’s Link’s home in the sky. Here, Link can interact with villages, fly to surrounding islands on his Loftwing, and undertake side-quests. Link is safe in the sky, and eventually it starts to feel like a pit stop between his more dangerous journeys to the surface world, which itself is divided into three discrete areas none of which are accessible from any of the others. Rather than try and compete with open world games the likes of Skyrim, Nintendo seems to have gone in the other direction and compartmentalized its game world to a greater degree than ever before.

This choice might rub purists the wrong way, but it definitely gives the game focus. You’ll never be confused as to where to go next; a new section of unexplored surface will be all but roped off for you. The world is also far denser than it was before. When getting from point A to point B in Twilight Princess, the player had to transverse a huge but kind of empty area that gave him freedom but didn’t provide much to do with it. The surface areas in Skyward Sword are smaller but are packed to bursting with monsters, terrain-based puzzles, and goodies placed just out of sight or out of reach. In this game, the world is basically an extension of the even denser dungeons. I wish Nintendo had found a way to connect the surface areas into a unified whole, but the smaller scale ensures that minute-to-minute gameplay is faster, more stimulating, and ultimately very satisfying.

But that razor-sharp focus has some unintended consequences. Because the game made my objectives so very clear so much of the time, I started to become very aware of the fact that I was playing out a pre-set pattern rather than embarking on an adventure. Go to a new area. Explore it, make your way through the dungeon, beat the boss, and repeat. This tedious predictability is especially stark in the early goings when the areas explored are most similar to those from Zelda games past, and it takes some of the gee-whiz fun out of the experience.

…the more they stay the same.

That experience is helped and hindered in about equal measure by the game’s story, which is probably among the more robust tales the series has told. That still makes it pretty slim by modern standards, but there are some unexpectedly impactful moments and the principal characters are charmingly drawn. Link remains a mute, but thanks to the game’s effective facial animations he is a very expressive mute. The character of Zelda, who is often relegated to sitting in a tower or getting spirited away to a demon dimension early in the game, is well-developed. I was surprised how easy it was to sympathize with Link’s desire to find her after she is, inevitably, kidnapped.

One character I could have done without is Fi, this game’s version of Navi the fairy. Ever since introducing us to Navi in Ocarina of Time, Nintendo has felt the need to saddle Link with an ever-present partner who occasionally gives unsolicited information about what he should do next. Fi, a spirit who lives in Link’s sword, is easily the worst of this lot. She pops up at the slightest provocation to interrupt the flow of the game and impart incredibly obvious bits of wisdom. A sample: Link enters a room in search of an item. Fi: “The item you seek is in this room. Find it and complete your task.” I loathed her. This is one Zelda tradition I would be very happy to see taken behind a shed and shot.

That tension between tradition and progression is apparent throughout. Skyward Sword’s best sections throw enough new material at the player to make him forget that he’s playing the fifteenth entry in a long-running series, while the worst remind him that parts of the series remain stuck in the past. A section involving a search for a pirate ship on a time-traveling ocean is unexpected and delightful, while an Ico-inspired protect-the-tag-along trek up a familiar mountainside is deeply tedious. One water-based dungeon features eastern-inspired architecture, a giant statue that figures prominently in several puzzles, and a mysterious lower level that gives it a real sense of place. Another dungeon, the fire one, doesn’t do much to stand out and feels like an excuse to present us with yet more blow-up-the-false-wall puzzles. Nintendo made some brave choices with this game, but I think they should have made even more.

One tradition I do support is Nintendo’s continued commitment to excellent production values. The game’s score, which is fully orchestrated, sounds very rich and features a number of memorable tunes. Graphically, the game is bright and bold with more than a few artistic flourishes. The art style is a combination of the Saturday morning cartoon look from Wind Waker and the relatively realistic vibe from Twilight Princess. I think it’s a good look for the series going forward.

It feels a bit petty to complain about Skyward Sword’s failure to reinvent the wheel when I know that, shortcomings aside, it’s still a excellent game. It’s consistently entertaining, polished to a shine, and in some respects is very inventive. But I know Nintendo is capable of more. They CAN reinvent the wheel; I’ve seen them do it, and if they want the Legend of Zelda to remain the big deal it is they may have to do it again. Skyward Sword isn’t quite up to that challenge, but it remains a fine, fun game more than worth your time and money.