Oh, I could have used this a few days ago - "Best Warren Ellis Stories Ever"

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2010/05/10/the-greatest-warren-ellis-stories-ever-told/

What am I playing? Bioshock 2

I held off on this game until I could get a ‘good price’. A week or so ago it came up as an Amazon Gold Box special for $30 bucks and my brother owed me a bunch of money, so I had him order it for me.

I was so impressed with the opening for the first Bioshock. It was cool enough to the point that I actually showed it to Lauren and others so she could experience it. Hell, it was the game who’s demo blew me away to the point that I finally upgraded past my AMD 3200+ single core processor because it churned my loins so well.

After getting the sequel I was really interested in how cool the opening could be, since the game was supposed to take place about a decade after the first.

Pretty much, you can’t appreciate the opening for Bioshock 2 without having played the first game, so don’t even try. There is none of the splendor of descending down into Rapture for the first time. You just start there and shoot yourself in the head. Literally.

Sure, you get a few moments of a clean Rapture before the civil war in the opening cinematic, but it is so fleetingly brief. Then you’re just inserted into post Bioshock 1 Rapture without context or back story. Sadness.

I hope to play through the game this week, but damn if that opening wasn’t a let down..

Of course, the multiplayer could be the real blowaway part of this game for me as it is supposed to be the civil war in Rapture itself, so you get to see it before the true decay sets in.

Will have more assessment after getting into the game further, but just the opening is a good benchmark, I think.

Iron Man is Tron 2

I would love the first Iron Man movie so much more if it were just Tron 2 and Jeff Bridges' character is still Flynn but old and busted, trying to ride the coattails of Tony Stark in the meatverse.

Although I could live with it if the movie retained the Uruguay title - El hombre de hierro

What am I watching? GI Joe:Resolute

I’ll put it right out there – I haven’t watched a GI Joe cartoon since, probably, the late 80s. It never quite obtained that position in my heart that robots in disguise appeared to fit perfectly. I did end up renting that live action GI Joe movie and, while it was definitely another product(toy) placement movie, it felt like it captured the flavor of what I remembered.

On the other hand, since I was a child, I’ve definitely read a lot of crap(as a unit of measurement) by Warren Ellis. At this point he’s been a surprisingly prolific writer. True, he’s no Brian M Bendis, but I believe that Bendis may be a hive mind of writers to be able to helm so many titles simultaneously. Ellis is responsible for one of my favorite Iron Man story arcs – Extremis. His Desolation Jones has left me desolate over its unfortunate demise mid-arc at issue #7. I may be one of the only people to have enjoyed Global Frequency. He’s even one of the main writers for the game Dead Space. That’s all not even considering the massive oversights in my reading experience – Planetary and Transmetropolitan. So, yeah, Warren Ellis. He’s a guy that knows how to bring the weird and bring the brutal storylines.

I had heard the title GI Joe: Resolute previously, but it’s just GI Joe, right? It wasn’t until I recently heard it was actually Warren Ellis was responsible for the series and the fact that people die instead of being seemingly invincible and laserproof that really grabbed my attention. (bring up browser.. netflix.. search resolute.. queue..)

Confusingly, Resolute was 11 episodes, but is only an hour long. It kicks off letting you know the animation is solid – more Cowboy Bebop level than 80s toy commercial level. There’s even the anime feel from the whole package in a few recognizable voice actors coupled with that modern animation. I’d be willing to put money on the same studio animating this as The Animatrix – The Second Renaissance.

Having just finished watching it, it was a nice, tight hour of action. It feels like what I remember the gist of the show being and the action was definitely a little more adult – the opening shot is of the body of a major character, dead. Snake Eyes left a trail of bodies and they were not shy about showing the kills. The storyline was appropriately epic and there were definitely a few cities wiped off the map during the course of the story.

I’m not sure that I really detected Warren Ellis’ fingerprints on the writing. The writing was tight, but not really out there aside from a high comfort level with blowing entire cities off the planet.. It did happen to capture the GI Joe theme pretty well for a non-American who wasn’t even familiar with the source material. We’ll call the writer a neutral aspect.

Some of the sequences could have used a little decompression and the short ‘episode format’ made the combined product feel a little disjointed with the cliffhanger type moments coming every five minutes or so. They also seemed to keep the instances to a minimum of the “20 guys firing full auto at one or two Joes standing there and apparently firing blanks”, but I still needed to reach for a beer during those points.

I’d say if you ever bought a GI Joe toy, you’re ripe for spending a good hour with this movie. I wouldn’t have the patience for this if it were a series, but as a nicely portioned chunk of updated nostalgia, you’re not going to go wrong. Considering that most of the fans of the original series are at least in their 30s now, the update is well targeted.

Be careful with the extra on the DVD where they interview three of the creators. Those are some gushing fanboys to the extent that I was kind of uncomfortable on their behalf.

Now, if they could do something like this for Transformers instead of those abominable movies..

What am I working on? Reading, watching, interviewing.

Stuff on my plate to watch -> GI Joe:Resolute, Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Oklahoma

Stuff on my plate to read -> Stuff, Bone Omnibus, Watership Down

Stuff on my plate to actually listen to -> She & Him Vol. 2

Stuff on my plate to play -> Dead Space, Bioshock 2

Will be writing on most of these. Resolute is almost done.

Aside from that I mostly have job interviews for the next week. Will have plenty of time for media binging.