Posted on February 28, 2023 by Darren
I am doing weekly reviews of The Last of Us at The Escapist. They’ll be dropping every Sunday evening while the show is on, looking at the video game adaptation as the show progresses. This week, the show’s seventh episode.
It’s an interesting proposition, adapting a serialised narrative after it has already been completed. In some ways, any serialised narrative is a first draft, a creative team making it up – to one degree or another – as they go along. As such, there is something very interesting in any subsequent adaptation of the work, as the adaptation has the luxury of a vantage point that can take in the completed work as a holistic entity. Left Behind was an add-on to the original video game version of The Last of Us, but the television series has the luxury of folding it into its ongoing narrative in real-time, as it were.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: adaptation, escapist, left behind, the escapist, the last of us | Leave a comment »
Posted on February 2, 2023 by Darren
I published a new piece at The Escapist this evening. With the looming release of Knock at the Cabin in theatres, it seemed like a good time to consider the films of director M. Night Shyamalan, and the director’s interesting redemption arc following his descent into a laughing stock during the 2000s and 2010s.
Since the turn of the millennium, the assumption has always been that directors scale upwards, that filmmakers tend to movie from low-budget projects to big-budget blockbusters, a career arc typified by directors like Christopher Nolan or Ryan Coogler. Part of what is so fascinating about Shyamalan is that his career rejects this logic. Shyamalan had that arc, launching with a series of impressive low- and mid-budget films like The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, but floundering with bigger projects like The Last Airbender or After Earth. He’s instead found redemption working at a smaller scale on movies like The Visitors or Old.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: blockbusters, budget, escapist, hollywood, knock at the cabin, scale, scope, the escapist | Leave a comment »
Posted on January 31, 2023 by Darren
I am doing weekly reviews of The Last of Us at The Escapist. They’ll be dropping every Sunday evening while the show is on, looking at the video game adaptation as the show progresses. This week, the show’s third episode.
The first two episodes of The Last of Us were pretty good, doing a lot of worldbuilding and rule-setting for the series, while also working hard to court fans of the games with very knowing and loving recreations of key sequences and dynamics. However, the show really came into its own in its third episode, Long Long Time. Taking a break away from its central characters, The Last of Us played out a beautiful love story that effectively sets up the show’s emotional stakes.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: escapist, long long time, love story, romance, the escapist, the last of us | Leave a comment »
Posted on January 17, 2023 by Darren
I am doing weekly reviews of The Last of Us at The Escapist. They’ll be dropping every Sunday evening while the show is on, looking at the video game adaptation as the show progresses. To start with, though, a look at the season premiere.
The Last of Us is effectively a survival horror show. It’s very clearly riffing on archetypal zombie apocalypse narratives. The show’s opening scene evokes I Am Legend. Its depiction of the collapse of civilisation recalls everything from Night of the Living Dead to Shaun of the Dead. However, what makes this particular show interesting is the way that its central apocalyptic force, a infectuous fungus, ties into the show’s core themes of co-dependence and mutual support. The fungus at the heart of the show is a monstrous parasite, but The Last of Us argues that the only way human beings can survive is together.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: co-dependence, escapist, fungi, fungus, reliance, the escapist, the last of us, when you're lost in the darkness | Leave a comment »
Posted on January 15, 2023 by Darren
I published a new piece at The Escapist this evening. With the recent release of M3GAN in theatres, it seemed like a good opportunity to delve into the breakout horror success.
Like most stories about artificial intelligence, M3GAN is ultimately a story about parenthood. In particular, it’s a very modern story about parental anxieties, concerning how modern technology has in some ways usurped or replaced the role that parents place in shaping the lives of their children. Central to M3GAN is the idea that the eponymous doll serves as a parental surrogate for its companion, and in doing so makes life easier for parents. However, M3GAN itself is a child without a parent, left to educate and raise itself, with potentially horrifying results. What is M3GAN but a child of the internet?
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: artificial intellegence, Artificial Intelligence, escapist, m3gan, parenthood, the escapist, universal | Leave a comment »
Posted on January 11, 2023 by Darren
I am doing weekly reviews of The Last of Us at The Escapist. They’ll be dropping every Sunday evening while the show is on, looking at the video game adaptation as the show progresses. To start with, though, a look at the series as a whole.
Although it takes a little while to get going, with its first two episodes largely given over to exposition and worldbuilding, The Last of Us is an incredible accomplishment from HBO. The show is clearly the result of a great deal of care and attention, and a substantial investment from the service. It’s a show that benefits from the best possible talent and from the freedom afforded to that talent, to find a distinct angle on the end of the world. It’s a charming, emotional and deeply moving character study at the end of the world.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: adaptation, bella ramsay, escapist, hbo, last of us, pedro pascal, Television, the escapist, the last of us, Video game | Leave a comment »
Posted on January 5, 2023 by Darren
I published a new piece at The Escapist this week. With the recent release of The Witcher: Blood Origin on Netflix and the ongoing arguments about the perceived “faithfulness” around The Rings of Power, it seemed like a good time to explore how the quality of a work relates to its alleged faithfulness.
To put it simply, quality and fidelity are completely different metrics. It is entirely possible for a fiathful adaptation of source material to be terrible, for example the shot-for-shot remake of Psycho. It’s also possible for an adaptation that has nothing to do with even the tone and genre of the original property, such as 21 Jump Street, to be brilliant. Ultimately, The Witcher: Blood Origin and The Rings of Power are adaptations that fail on their own measure.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: comedy, escapist, faithfulness, fidelity, film, genre, new, Psycho, Television, the escapist, the lion king | Leave a comment »
Posted on January 4, 2023 by Darren
I published a new piece at The Escapist last week. With the release of the second season of The Bad Batch, it seemed like a good opportunity to review the series.
The Bad Batch is an interesting series. It is essentially a spin-off from The Clone Wars, but one that rejects the anthology nature of that show for a fixed central cast and a linear series of episodic adventures. This is somewhat frustrating, as it strips the most compelling part of The Clone Wars in favour of a generic riff on The A-Team or Kung Fu. Still, when the show gets out of its own way, The Bad Batch is a surprisingly compelling and thoughtful addition to the Star Wars universe, a meditation on what happens to soldiers at the end of a Forever War.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: clone wars, disney, escapist, star wars, streaming, Television, the bad batch, the escapist | Leave a comment »
Posted on January 3, 2023 by Darren
I am doing weekly reviews of Willow at The Escapist. They’ll be dropping every Wednesday evening while the show is on, looking at the legacy sequel as it progresses from one episode to the next.
The sixth episode of the season struggles to recover some of the ground lost during the season’s fifth episode. Wildwood slowed the series to a standstill in order to run through a checklist of serialised streaming television tropes, in a mechanical and unengaging fashion. Prisoners of Skellin has the burden of getting the show moving again, in a way that is often clumsy and inelegant. That said, Prisoners of Skellin is an episode that has some measure of charm to it, in large part due to a winning guest performance from Christian Slater.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: Christian Slater, divorce, escapist, prisoners of skellin, the escapist, trolls, willow | Leave a comment »
Posted on January 1, 2023 by Darren
I published a new piece at The Escapist this evening. With the year wrapping up, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look back at the year in cinema. In particular, one of the big unifying trends in the year’s blockbusters, which balanced a celebration and a fear of spectacle.
This was the year that “movies were back.” Many of the year’s biggest blockbusters were celebrations of blockbuster cinema in its purest form, from the IMAX cinematography of Top Gun: Maverick to the immersive 3D of Avatar: The Way of Water to the breakout international success of RRR. However, there was also an anxiety about the power of spectacle and the toll that it takes, whether on its audience or on its subject. This played out in movies like Nope or Elvis. There was also a clear worry that this might be the end of it all, playing out in movies like Babylon or even Blonde.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: avatar: the way of water, babylon, blockbuster, blonde, elvis, escapist, Movies, nope, rrr, spectacle, the escapist, top gun: maverick | Leave a comment »
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