Christopher Nolan: Please stop ruining my favourite characters

Yes I am a massive comic book fan and more so a huge Superman and Batman fan. I have read every one of their comics from Issue one till the issues this month.

And I hate Christopher Nolan's take on my favourite heroes.

Nolan's Batman: I don't kill people.

And yet he blows up anything in his way when his driving from point A to point B.

When he was asked to kill that one guy at the League of shadows place, he says no - then blows up the whole damn place killing everyone in it including the fake Ra's al Ghul... Then he kills Dent in the 2nd film.

Plus I hate how Nolan wants to make everything "Grounded" ... it's a Superhero movie. It's meant to have an element of the extraordinary. You can't look to explain everything and make it plausible. 


Not only did Nolan strip Batman of any of the things that make him a fan favourite; always one step a head, world greatest detective, less brawler more tactician, master of the shadows...

Nolan actually took the idea of a man wearing a bat suit and made it mundane. He sucked the joy out of it and made this "matter of fact" thing, but for all the "realism" he tries to force into his movies he still expects us to suspend our disbelief for bull shit things like Batman escaping that bomb or "Robin" knowing Bruce is Batman because of a stupid look on his face? and what about that broken back that heals in 3 months or how he even got back to Gotham from that damn prison in the ground? ...in time to paint a giant bat symbol that will light up with flames on that bridge.

As for that damn voice; just the fact that Nolan heard Bale do that ridiculous voice and didn't try to change it - is fail.

Most people don't even like the Nolan Batman films for Batman. They like them because of the villains. With Joker being the most loved.

You wanna know why the Joker was so awesome? (Aside from Ledger's phenomenal performance) ... because we don't know anything about him. The mystery to his chaos was the major draw - he was like a force of nature. In comparison to Nolan's neatly laid out Batman he was a breath of fresh air.

Plus the villains are the only ones who actually get any character development in Nolan's films, look at Dent or Ras. At the end of the 3rd film Batman isn't any better at being Batman. In fact in Rises his a freaking joke - especially when he goes up against Bane.

And as for Man of Steel. Nolan completely lost the plot with that one. We know his looked at Superman comics... but has he actually sat down to read one? For all the reason Man of Steel fails as a Superman movie there's one that sticks out like a sore thumb.

Superman doesn't kill people - no matter what the reason.

For everything that has a capacity to do good, it has an equal capacity to do evil.

Superman, through his strengths and attributes has a great capacity for for good... what keeps him from going evil? His morals. We can't just have him killing people, no matter how it's justified. You and I can't kill people, because no matter the reason it's still wrong and we have to answer to it.

Who does Superman answer to if he kills someone? To have him carry out an act like that totally destroys the foundations of his character, because it's a total abuse of his power. And that alone is proof that Nolan and the Man of Steel crew understand nothing about Superman.

And did he have to kill Zod? It's not like Nolan's Superman did anything to show that he cared about the people around him. He trashed half the city and never took the fight anywhere else... like he would have done in the comics.

Why couldn't he just grab Zod and fly away? Why couldn't he just stand in front of the heat rays? Why couldn't he just cover Zods eyes with his hands? Yes he would have gotten hurt - but if he cared so much wouldn't it have been worth the pain? With all his powers and all his "love for humanity" the first thing that came to mind was to snap a living things neck?

Bull shit... complete and utter bull shit.

Yet people eat Nolan's crap up.

And Superman doesn't have to be a "bad ass" - his not edgy or hardcore. There are hundreds of inter-changeable comic characters to fill that niche. Superman IS the boy scout, he IS the naive farm boy with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

And his not just an alien from another planet. He was born and raised an earth kid, a simple farm boy.

The Batman persona is the real Bruce Wayne and the playboy billionaire is the façade. But for Superman - it's the other way around. The godly spaceman is the outer shell, inside Clark Kent - born and raised - is the real person.

This was totally lost with the dull, emo portrayal of Superman in Man of Steel.

Up yours Christopher Nolan - if you don't like making Superhero movies, then stop getting involved with them.

And yes my hate is directed to Nolan because he and David Goyer wrote the script. Zack Snyder should go back to directing music videos. His ruined Watchman - the only comic book to receive a Hugo award and now he helped ruin Superman.

And then?

And then I went to Indonesia to collect my World TV award for the Doco/ drama I made for FBC TV called A Day At the Beach and to attend the Asia Media Summit.

What an awesome experience. You know I've always wanted to travel and more so I've always wanted to travel to Asia. Earlier this year I was fortunate enough to take part in a work shop in Malaysia which was a country I've been longing to visit.  

I flew into Indonesia through Sydney and then through Singapore which was awesome because I've always wanted to visit Singapore as well. I got spend twelve hours there and though it late when I got with me being very tiered (it was a total of 11 hours flying and 4 hours waiting at Sydney Airport before I got there) I was eager to explore.

The city was amazing - the first thing that struck me was how clean and fresh everything looked. Even for a city that was towering and bright there was a certain air of "zen" about the whole thing. And I use the word zen not because of some hipster connotation to it - but because it just had a great sense of balance to it.

I didn't do much shopping in Singapore though because I was saving my money for my final destination. I did however buy some very awesome Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle figures that I have come to love dearly.

When I got into Manado, Indonesia I thought I knew what to expect. I had saw some pictures of it online and was looking forward to a up and coming tourist town, instead I arrived in a place that was in very early stages of development. In fact despite the tall buildings and enormous number of fast food joints - my home city Suva here in Fiji was actually more modern that it.

On my first night I met up with my CEO who was also there for the Asia Media summit and the two us decided to hit the town. We walked around for about three hours before we decided to just have dinner and head back to our hotels.

I stayed at the Swiss Bell Hotel which was about 2km away from anything interesting in Mando, it had very friendly staff and the place looked great. The food was pretty awesome as well - though a little on the expensive side for our Fijian dollars. Though the Indonesian dollar is a little on the low side of the exchange rate, they make up for it by making most things very expensive.

The next day I attended a work shop on "The Medias role during a pandemic"  which was very interesting. I was very grateful that I had played the Android game Plague Inc because a lot of what I had learned from it actually came in handy. In fact I even suggested that the participants at the work shop check it out.

The work shop was a relief for me because I was suppose to do a talk as well on "How media can help raise awareness on sustainable development" - so I saw the 30 or so people in this work shop and though - I can do this.

The next day I found out that I was actually speaking in the "main convention room" to a Broadcasting crowd of about 300 to 350 people >_<

O boy...

The next day was the big award day - I was asked to sit somewhere in the front so that it would be easier for me to go up to collect the award. The days events started about 9:30am and the awards were at 12:30pm.

I don't know why but I was very nervous even though I already knew that I had won.

Before they called me up they had all the judges come up and talk about what thy liked or what they saw in "A day at the Beach" and to hear all their thoughts was a surreal feeling for me. I've often talked about all the little themes and messages I've found in movies and to have people dissect something I wrote and planned was interesting. I was pleased that a few of the nods I had put in hadn't gone unnoticed. One judge had picked up on my T.S Elliot reference and a few others saw drew some really deep ideas from it.

As I collected the award I was so damn excited that I stood there speechless, though I had prepared a speech I didn't get to read it because of some kind of error on the organizers part. But they apologized after but I didn't mind.

Later that afternoon I met with my fellow panelists to discuss our talk/ presentation.

When it was time to be up on stage I soon became quit comfortable about it. As I heard the panelists talk i knew I had prepared something interesting enough. My contribution to it was more from a production standpoint. How to make programs on any kind of awareness more engaging for the viewer. Coming up with concepts, looking at budgets, considering the mulch-platofroms of new media to get the info out.

A consultant for UNEP and a man who has become a good friend of mine did a nice little blog post about my talk which you can read here. I was pleased that a lot of people enjoyed my talk saying that it was very "practical and real". Which is all I ever wanted it to be.

That night I did an interview on Radio 24 which is a Malaysian station. I talked about my award and what it was like starting off as a radio host before moving in to TV and film production. Later I got a call from a friend I mad on my trip named Chandra, who was from India. He and another cool guy i met named Adam were keen on hitting the night life a bit. So I though "what the heck"


We ended up going to a karaoke bar which was on the basement level of the hotel I was staying at. i walked into the place with a live band screaming out Nirvana's Smells like teen spirit. I was loving the place already. I had a few drinks and stayed for a little over an hour before I decided I'd better get some sleep. 2am in Manado was 6am Fijian for me - and I hadn't totally adjusted to the time difference.

Thursday was the last day of the summit which was wrapped up pretty early so I spent the day with the new friends I had made and just pretty much saying good byes. Bye to Adam and Debasmita, two very awesome people I have to keep in touch with.

That night Chandra and I chit chatted over whiskey and snacks he had brought from India before I head off to bed.

I left Manado at about 1 in the afternoon and took the same route back home through Singapore and Sydney. The flight out of Manado was made interesting cause I got sit next to a very nice young lady from Capetown. Conversations always make the journey better. I hadn't bought anything else on the trip so I picked up some books in Singapore.

I was so pleased to be home after the crazy long flight. Nothing beats Fiji man...

Dark Souls Fun: Artorias vs Manus

The best thing about games on PC are the mods and when a game has a big enough fan base you get all kinds of crazy stuff.

Now the video below might not be of a "mod" but it is a cool example of what you can do with games on PC. Some how this guy got Manus, who is the last boss in the Dark Souls DLC (and arguably the hardest fight in the game) to battle it out with Knight Artorias.

The arena you see is where you clash swords with Artorias; how he got Manus there is beyond me*. But the epicness of this battle is ... Epic.

*Apparently there is a "cheat engine"  that lets you spawn NPCs and such. The owner of the video spawned Manus in the arena and then made him hostile to NPCs.

In Dark Souls Lore Artoias does indeed battle it out with Manus - but we never get to see it.

Well now we can

Loads of fun with Loadout

 
I am a very competitive person.

Some might say that's a bad thing and that I should relax but I enjoy it. It makes games fun for me.

In fact most of the games I'm really into have some sort of competitive component. Dark Souls and World of Warcraft would have to be two games that have totally consumed me.

I PVPed like mad in WoW - in fact my first toon is ranked champion while my last toon, a warlock, spent most of his time poping heads in Athari Basin.And in Dark Souls I love invading peeps and claiming souls. There's something about gearing up and going out of your way to collect stuff which you then use to wreck other players. Now I'm not saying that I'm hot shit at it, in fact I've learned to channel my competitiveness a little, but I do really enjoy playing against other players.

I've never been one for online shooters though until I wrapped my virtual trigger finger around Team Fortress 2. Then I started playing that for hours upon hours. I even got into collecting those damn hats >_<

Well recently I started mucking around on the beta servers for an up coming third person shooter called Loadout, and this thing really has me hooked.

My Loadout home screen

I actually can't remember how I came across this game but I do remember going nuts trying to get my hands on a beta key. It didn't take too long as a simple Facebook message to the games page returned a link to a key for me to grab.

Since then I've been having a blast with Loadout. The best way to describe is that it's like Team Fortress meets Unreal; in that it's very cartoony looking with the action being arcady.

I know these days we judge our online shooters with such games as Call of Duty or Halo, but Loadout is more about casual fun, at least to me.

Rather than trying to be "real and authentic" with its gameplay, Loadout is over the top and frantic.

A typical Loadout match gets very hectic. You might have the occasional sniper with a 10 kill streak but he probably died like 20 times himself. As soon as the countdown timer ends, the screen is splashed with blood and body parts. The death animations are actually a lot of fun to watch and you can't get head shot without letting out a "o shit hahahaha" when it happens.

This is my baby

The biggest pull though is the games loadout system itself. You don't just pick two guns and an item, instead you actually get to craft your choice of weapon right down to what kind of trigger it has to fire. The closest I've come to this would have to be the Free to play shooter Black Light, which has tones of weapon customizing, but Loadout takes that concept and pumps it full of crack - because the results are just insane.

The cool thing is that even though you have people running around with lightening chain guns and 6 barrel rocket launchers that fire like anime mechs, everything is so well balanced. When crafting an item everything has it's pros and cons - so you don't make something that is the best "killer" but rather something that best suits your play style.

Aside from the awesome weapon building you also get to create your toon. Currently the game has two hero characters that you can customize, one of them looks a lot like Rambo and the other Mr T, and the devs have said they'll be releasing a female character as well sometime soon.

The main theme of the game seems to draw very heavily from the action movie culture of the 70s and 80s. Think Terminator, Commando, Cobra or anything else staring the cast of the Expandable and you'll find some reference to it in Loadout. One of the cosmetic options is even the jacket that Arnie takes from the punk in Terminator 1. In fact it's called "stolen punk jacket"

I've got two skins I role with, one being sort of a post apocalyptic theme and the other a rip off of Rick from Splatter House.

I actually cost me game money to take that shirt off.

 Both have the same weapon set up - but I have some other muck around builds as well.

I actually just keep things pretty simple. Yes the weapons with the light shows are fun but nothing beats a slug to the face. But this could change as every time I see someone using an interesting looking weapon I have to try and build it for myself. There's actually an area where you can try out all the guns you've made, but what I would love is a way to share and view other peoples schematics.

There are a few draw backs though as the game currently has a limited number of maps, and in game currency to buy weapon parts and cosmetics are hard to come by. Plus even though there are a huge possible combination of weapons - everyone just uses rockets. Including me :P

At the end of each match you get a wheel to spin, which in turn rewards you with various prizes like weapon parts and "space bucks". So far I've been getting a lot of XP and very little cash. So I went and bought a starter pack.

You're weapons level up as you spend rank points to open up different tiers in the weapons components. The most I've invested in is the Harbinger you can see in the pic up top.

Loadout should be out of closed beta soon and when it hits Steam you should definitely check it out if you're a fan of online play. The community are a pretty cool bunch, but all online groups have the occasional ass, but so far I haven't run into one. The Devs are petty cool to and you can tell they really love what they have and are constantly keeping touch with the fans for ideas and suggestions. You can also catch some live streaming of their games every now and then too.

Now watch this awesome trailer:

A Day At the Beach wins a World TV Award.

And then I won a World TV award.

A short film I did with my FBC TV crew called "A Day At the Beach" won the World Television Awards 2013 Science/environment category for the Best TV Programme on “Creating Ozone Safe Generations".

Now I get to present the Film at the Asia Media Summit, which is a global gathering of broadcasters from around the world, scheduled for the the 29 May in Manado, Indonesia. That's where I get presented with my award too :)

According to the website there's going to be 500 representatives from various broadcasters at the summit so it should be very interesting. 

I was so damn excited when I heard that I had won. It was 1am on a Saturday Morning and I had just finished a few hours of playing Loadout when I got the call from my Boss who had gotten an email telling him I had won. I actually just sat there kinda like "o really... awesome"

Inside though I was kinda in shock because this was my first international award, and a World TV award at that - which is pretty huge.

The film was a made as part of the workshop I had attended in Malaysia.

 As far as films go I never make anything I wouldn't watch. So when I set out to make something on Ozone Depletion one idea just jumped into my head.

After hearing all this talk about stop ozone depleting substances by the year 2050 I started thinking about what kind of effect that would have on us here in Fiji. Can Fiji or the whole Pacific wait that long? What will happen before then? or after that?

Check out the "Boom Mic"

So what came out in scripting was a ravaged Fiji in the year 2063 and the rest just fell into place.

Drawing from such things as Cormac McCarthy's The Road and even a bit of Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories soon the script was locked into place.

I had a great crew working with me too so after about a week of planning and a day of shooting we  knew we had something awesome going. I'm lucky to always have a crew that sort of trusts me with concept and planing and especially direction.

I wanted to make the short informative, while still being accessible, so I had written a father and daughter reflecting on all the things that happened to Fiji for it to be the dry, barren place it was in the script.    

We shot the project down at the Sigatoka sand dunes which gave us the perfect back drop for our story.

Before the actual day of the shoot my buddy Samu Soqoyawa and I went up to the dunes to check out the location. I shot a small video of the location on my handycam just to get a feel for the place. I then cut this into a little "mood video" that I showed the crew to give them a sense of what I was trying to capture. I also used this is a site reference when scripting.

The Day of the actual was shoot was a lot harder as the area gets a lot of rain. So it meant packing equipment up now and then, sometimes in the middle of takes, so we didn't get it wet.

What was also interesting is that I had planned to have a  CGI character in the story as well. A computer that talks to the father and daughter, explaining things about the Ozone and the effects of the depletion.

The design for this A.I was pretty simple but looked great - and I owe a lot of thanks to our graphics guy and my friend David Whiteside for his designs. I'm lucky that he is a huge video game buff like me so he had a lot to draw from. In fact he designed all the graphics I animated based on a few crude sketches I had given him. though our render resources and such was pretty scarce - I thought the end product with the AI turned out great.

Lending her voice to the AI, that we named Jacki-0, was the lovely Jacqueline Speight from our very own FBC TV news desk.

The score for the short was done by our very awesome sound guy Jone Nakasamai, who actually composed the main theme a day before we submitted the film for the award.

Our two leads Peceli Rokotuivuna and Ny Vann were great sports. As we had one camera it meant we had to do a lot of multiple takes to get the different angles. Even Seremaia bui Cabecabe who was our drive for the day helped with carrying equipment up and down those mad high sand dunes.

In the end we had something we were all very proud of and to have something that is essentially a work of passion recognized with an award like this is truly amazing.  

Here's the trailer for the short - which plays on FBC TV on the 15th of May at 6:30pm. I'll have a copy online soon after I get back from Indonesia.