Harmony of Heroes: A Nintendo Franchise Fan Spectacular

You can download this massive album here. As it is fan work and therefore free, I have no problem recommending that you search the track names on YouTube if you can't download them.

An awesome, 7-hour-long fan project from 2014, Harmony of Heroes is a collaborative re-imagining of the soundtracks to Super Smash Bros. Melee and Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Like the games themselves, this means the album is a celebration of all things Nintendo, this time from the fan art perspective.

One thing to keep in mind with any fan work is that, as a response to an original work (rather than the work itself) there are lower stakes. At its best, this allows fan work to go places that the original creators won't or can't, whether for the sake of a Brand™ or because the creator simply intends to take their vision in a different direction.

On the other hand, something as popular as Nintendo has as many interpretations as there are people on the planet, so some of these fan responses aren't going to "get" the source material in a way that appeals to everyone. At its worst, you might get something that entirely misunderstands a work.

Lucky for us, Harmony of Heroes is produced by people who really knew what they were doing, all for the love of Nintendo. So let's take a look at this monster of an album, starting with the "Super Mario" tracks.

Super Smash Bros.

1. Challenger Approaching (Rozen et. al.)
This is not actually a Mario track; like an overture, it features the a combination of main themes of the Smash Bros. games as an introduction to the album. The opening echoes Icarus from Deus Ex Human Revolution, which is really epic and atmospheric -- segueing into the thicker, choral style of Nobuo Uematsu's original Brawl theme.

Even though the first three games in the series are represented well, my favourite part is the inclusion of the latest game's theme, which has less operatic flair and instead emphasises the sporty, high-energy nature of Smash Bros.

Super Mario Bros.

2. Sunset at Mushroom Castle (Bernardo Limon)
This track takes inspiration from the orange-and-brown sunset version of the Mushroom Kingdom from Brawl, but while that was still an upbeat piano piece, this interpretation plays like mellow lounge music with a jazzy, improvisational flavour. Very appropriate for Mario music.

3. Stroll through the Mushroom World (Andrew Lim)
Adapting the Super Mario Bros. 3 theme, this track is both the first stand-out and also one of the straightest of the Mario pieces. Not too much variation on the melodic formula and a swinging, big band attitude make it great easy-listening.

4. Sad Underground (Forgotten Dawn)
In contrast to track 3, this track is a conceptual re-imagining of the "underground" theme from Super Mario Bros. for piano and strings. It's a nice idea and executed pleasantly enough, but doesn't really leave much of an impression. This artist's other tracks on the album are much more interesting.

5. A Twisted Carousel (Steampianist)
Another stand-out and one of my favourites because of its use of a Super Mario Land theme (specifically the Pyramids, strangely enough) here instead representing a kind of horrible circus of crazy performers -- hence the Twisted Carousel. Given comments by Nintendo that the Mario series was intended to feel like a troupe of actors putting on the same show in different ways, this Carousel image seems pretty appropriate.

6. Shining Path (prophetik music)
The lead up to the main tune in this track (the Rainbow Ride theme) is quite sedate but as it goes on, it adds interesting layers in techno fashion. Being a bit of a melody hound I'm disappointed there isn't a grander use of Rainbow Ride, but that is no failing of the track.

7. Cleanse the Sun (Dare to Oppress)
This is more like it. A shorter lead up before the main theme (in this case, Delfino Plaza from Super Mario Sunshine) and a more energetic pace make this electronica very worth listening to. As an interesting side note, the original Delfino Plaza music was not as crunchy and electronic, meaning this is the first track on the album that is less natural sounding than its source. On an imagination and listening experience level, this one is highly recommended.

Mario Kart

8. Who Will Win the Race? (Andrew Lim)
Of course a Mario Kart track applies liberal organ and pad sounds. The thrill of the racetrack is plain to hear, but this jazz fusion style sits in a weird half-way space between live and synth, just like the recent Mario Kart scores.  The fact that the Mario Kart Wii themes just aren't the most memorable in the series doesn't help. Over all it's not bad, but it feels less effective than something that tries to sound like a real live performance or entirely synthesised.

9. Baffle Ball (The Fishhead)
Much more overtly synth than the previous track, Baffle Ball is an entertaining listen that doesn't really go anywhere. Probably most exciting for those who love the Mario Kart Wii music and want to hear it with really high quality synthesisers. For the rest of us, it feels like a Sonic the Hedgehog piece. Casino Night Zone, probably.

10. A Vivid Cruise to the Finish (Andrew Lim)
The use of Rainbow Road in this track makes it much more delightful than this artist's other Mario Kart track. Otherwise, the techniques applied are much the same. Goes to show how much a great melody helps a composition to rise to the top.

Luigi's Mansion

11. Bros. before Ghosts (Konrad Petersson)
Structured like a program-piece, and including lots of creepy sound effects, this track is a great (if slightly noisy) representation of Luigi's Mansion and its "Resident-Evil-meets-Tim-Burton" ghostly charm. It's the last Mario related track for a while and a good reminder after the synthy Mario Kart tracks that Mario is at its best with jazz and swing.

Next time: Donkey Kong!

Impressions: Salt and Sanctuary

Since about 2013 (around the release of Naughty Dog's genre-defining survival story The Last of Us) I've found more video games that I actually enjoy in the independent releases, rather than the big-budget publishers.

Maybe it was because the clever justification of the player's actions through the narrative of The Last of Us just hasn't been improved upon since. Maybe it's the new generation of consoles and the big-budget developers haven't properly settled in yet. Maybe I'm getting picky as I grow up.

In any case, one exception to this rule has been the Dark Souls series and related titles that From Software has been steadily cranking out (I was late to the party by a few years but I'm catching up with Dark Souls III's release last week). I haven't finished them all, due to their punishing trial-and-error difficulty and monstrous length, but I've put enough time in that I can confidently say I really enjoy their atmosphere, monster design and show-don't-tell style.

Salt and Sanctuary is a tribute to the Dark Souls games, one of several that will release in 2016 including Eitr and Below. It is developed by an independent couple whose previous games I haven't played. Thanks to what I've played so far of this one, they've earned a place on my radar.

For starters, Salt and Sanctuary is without a doubt Dark Souls in 2D. Covenants, messages on the ground, giant bosses, mystery and a helping of horrifying undead are all present and accounted for. The controls are rearranged for the side-scrolling perspective, and jumping on platforms (reminiscent of classic SNES games) ironically adds another dimension to mobility. This is important to keep the positioning challenge that would otherwise be lost in the move from 3D to 2D.

Some aspects don't seem as well translated in the early parts of the game. The game world tries to keep the melancholy and subtle lore of Lordran but also mixes in the more American styles of heavy metal and adult (graphic and gory) animation. Though it's a distinct look and feel, it just isn't as memorable.

So far though, I'm really enjoying the familiar cadence of learning an area, then learning a boss, trying again and again to beat it and being rewarded with a brand new area and even weirder bosses. All of the important parts of this engine still work, even in a smaller, flatter package.

Review: The Huntsman

It's obvious to say it, but expectations can have a huge effect on how we receive a movie. Expectations were not high for the original Snow White and the Huntsman, which may have helped its success -- it wasn't as bad as yet-another-Snow-White-adaptation could have been, and included some really nice visuals around a collection of bankable actors.

Even with low expectations, however, I felt that it was unimpressively bland enough to characterise with the "genie's wish gone awry" kind of story: "Oh, you want more epic fantasy movies? Here's yet another gritty re-imagining of a done-to-death fairytale. You want a strong female lead? Sure, but we'll slather her arc with generic Chosen-One portentousness and cast Kristen Stewart."

As you might be beginning to tell, I wasn't a fan. Still, including the aforementioned big-budget visuals, there were aspects to the movie that were quite good -- such as Charlize Theron's scenery-chewing Evil Queen or James Newton Howard's magical score. Not enough to raise my hopes high for The Huntsman: Winter's War, but enough to get me into the cinema.

The story of The Huntsman opens with a prologue establishing the Snow Queen (a naked attempt to rip off Elsa from Frozen) showing us why she steals children to create an army of huntsmen with which she can TAKE OVER THE WORLD. Going on for about ten minutes too long and broken up with Liam Neeson's overly explanatory narration, the film then awkwardly leapfrogs the events of Snow White and begins in earnest.

Positives, Mitchell, stay on the positives. Like last time, JNH's original score sets the mood appropriately and has some beautiful stand-out moments. What's more is that, with some exceptions, the colour palette is wider -- including a creative twist on the enchanted forest of the previous film that adds an Amazonian flavour. The costumes again, like last time, are all detailed and interesting in their own ways and the computer generated effects have a baroque kick.

So it's safe to say that the MVPs of The Huntsman are the production designers, because once you move past the look of the film it gets a bit murkier. At times, I would have said this movie felt like it came out of 2008 or 2009 in the wake of the Writer's Guild of America strike: the actual script of The Huntsman feels written without writers. Here and there are some good ideas but they are strung along with the most basic Joseph Campbell drudgery without any of the finesse required to turn it into an actual narrative. Hero? Check. Conflict? Check. Retrieving the Sword (or Mirror, as it is)? Check. Symbolic Death? Check. The Road Back? Check.

These are milestones intended to guide the story, not to make up the substance of it. The Huntsman is clearly trying at points to create a screw-ball rom-com atmosphere a la The Princess Bride, but without compelling characters and the growth thereof, the script is so inconsequential that there is no depth for the leads to find in their roles (Chris Hemsworth and Theron are back as the Huntsman himself and the Evil Queen respectively, with newcomers Emily Blunt as the Snow Queen and Jessica Chastain as Sara, the Huntsman's lover). The fact is, none of the characters have any perceivable character arc.

This is kind of essential in an adventure story.

I don't ask for anything major, just any change at all (and falling in love doesn't count: that's practically law in a fairytale). The Huntsman? Same at the end as he is at the start. Sara? She appears to have been on a journey, but it's just running in place and she ends the movie the same way she started. The villains? Emily Blunt at least has some kind of drama, but it's so telegraphed beforehand that even the characters don't seem to treat the twist as very much at all.

The worst part of this is that it's actually making me pine for Snow White from the previous movie. It may have been a generic Chosen One arc, but at least she grew and changed over the course of the story. Of course, this leads us to the elephant in the room that even the movie thinks is an elephant in the room: the missing major characters from The Huntsman's predecessor. Every time someone mentions Snow White's kingdom, the movie suddenly turns into a made-for-TV spinoff. "That stuff totally happened, it's just off screen!"

Not helping the made-for-TV tone, the action scenes are so perfunctory as to be almost non-existant. Forget the most boring use of a "rickety rope bridge sequence" that I can think of in an adventure film, the fist fights and clashing swords are cut as though to obscure each action as much as possible.

Don't get me wrong: I don't mean the incomprehensible shaky-cam nonsense of dudebro action flicks -- the actual framing of The Huntsman is decent. No, what this film does is more perplexing.

In a normal fast-cutting action scene, the idea is to draw the eye to an action by setting it up, and then follow it through, using the momentum to draw the eye to the next action. What The Huntsman does is like the opposite.

Instead of cutting from action to action, the actual actions themselves take place between the cuts and we're left with just the setup and the results. This seems to be a symptom of the greater issue at play where in The Huntsman there just isn't a lot of variety in shot length -- it's like the filmmakers were worried that the audience would get bored if there wasn't a completely new frame every few seconds.

Even given all these complaints, the movie isn't the absolute worst. It's inoffensively okay, not bad. In a world where Batman v Superman is so divisive, The Huntsman at least tries to please.

I only wish it had tried harder.

Being charitable, I'd say The Huntsman earns 2 / 5 stars.

Schedule Update: April 2016

Now that my final (for now) thoughts on 10 Cloverfield Lane are up, here's a look at what's coming next. 

Rather than giving dates and then posting too late or two early, I'm just going to stick to a regular release of two articles a week, with extras if I have more to share.

Coming up:

Review: The Huntsman: Winter's War

The first movie, Snow White and the Huntsman, felt like a C-minus effort. Not too bad, but not very good either, and mostly inconsequential. Will the sequel improve on the good parts of the original? I was cautiously hopeful that this was the case.

What I Want From Movies -- Part 2

A look at Terminator 2: Judgement Day -- the second of four movies that are currently my "favourites". This is a really fun one.

Bone Recap: The Great Cow Race Chapter 2

"The Cave": Phoney and Smiley's plot to rig the Cow Race is thickening and I'll have an analysis with writing lessons to go with it.

Not Happening:

Review: Agents of SHIELD Season 2

I wanted to review this, maybe even episode by episode, but I need to practice reviewing television shows with something else before I dive into a live action, plot-and-mystery dense second season like this.

In Development:

The Puppetheads

I said this would start in 2016 and I'm standing by it.

Untitled Serial

The main reason I didn't finish The Puppethead Saga originally was because the story ran out of steam before it reached the end. This new serial will be a single serialised novel with a planned ending.

Genre Thoughts: 10 Cloverfield Lane

Following my comment at the end of the review, the genre and context of 10 Cloverfield Lane is definitely a highlight. Who doesn't want a series of smaller budget, high-concept thrill rides with brand new worlds and characters every time? Of course, these would only be promising if the worlds and characters therein were actually interesting. Had this idea springboarded from the first Cloverfield, I would be worried, as the characters in that film were not particularly engaging.

10 Cloverfield Lane, on the other hand, actively highlights the progression of character arcs in a way that goes above and beyond both its predecessor and plenty of previous "claustrophobic thriller" films in general. 

Howard's back story, both those parts revealed and implied, jointly make him scarier and more human (in a way that might remind one of Norman Bates). Emmett's back story informs a shift in his attitude from having gratitude for Howard, then progressing to survivor's guilt (including his regret for never going far from home), and finally a little idolatry (hey, Michelle might be the last woman on the planet … as far as he knows). Michelle I will save for below in the spoilers.

This focus on characters in 10 Cloverfield Lane also belies its status, joining the modern trend seen in Ex Machina, Chronicle, Safety Not Guarenteed -- and to some extent District 9, among others -- where a B-Movie speculative short story or "Big Idea" is given a level of seriousness and human depth that was previously less prevalent.


*** HERE COME THE SPOILERS ***


What's so exciting about this is that actual, honest-to-goodness Science Fiction (the soft and hard kinds) is here combined with the compelling characters. Any decent film-makers could have aimed to forge their story into something like a competent mainstream thriller -- one that people might call "Hitchcockian" (and while I don't agree with the comparison, 10 Cloverfield Lane has been called such by several reviewers also). 

This theoretical movie would have left our protagonist, Michelle, outside of the bunker and facing only the possibility of a worldwide disaster after the movie's central disaster (her capture by Howard). Throw in some ambiguity (what really happened? Did Howard make it all up?) and you've got yourself a water-cooler ending worthy of discussion. That could have been enough.

But this is not the point! 10 Cloverfield Lane is not yet another thriller of escaping a villain. Remember the multifaceted character arcs? Naturally, Michelle's is the heart of the story, and if it doesn't work the movie falls down. If Michelle had entered the film by running from her boyfriend after the argument as she does, but then exited the film by running from Howard, the cathartic release wouldn't have been nearly as potent – her character was doing the same thing at the beginning as at the end, and we're right back with the character-shallow B-movies of yesteryear, existing mostly for the thrills, violence or sexual content and not actually telling a story.

What does the audience get instead? A well shown, if concise, explanation (oh, no! Aliens!) and a whole ten minutes or more of just how Michelle's experience of surviving the bunker has changed her. She hides, she improvises, and then finally, in a so-classic-that-maybe-it's-quaint-but-who-cares final shot, she comes to a fork in the road and chooses not to seek safety but to join the resistance against the invaders.

This is perhaps so wonderful a decision that it is actually difficult to see why at first. In fact, the original draft of the film was just as I described earlier, without the final confrontation and Michelle simply escaping from the bunker. Instead, as director Trachtenberg himself said, the final movie embraces the idea that

"it would be so cool if this really was … a badass little origin story …"
(io9, The Director of 10 Cloverfield Lane Explains All About That Wild Ending http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-director-of-10-cloverfield-lane-explains-all-about-1764626525)

So let's circle back around to this being "Genre Thoughts". You can pretty much understand the point of the film through Dan Trachtenberg's attitude to creating an interesting hero. Like Bad Robot's other most shining output Fringe, 10 Cloverfield Lane is by-genre-fans and for-genre-fans in a way that understands why we want to watch movies.

It's not about explosions (there are more than one in this film) and it's not about monsters (though it has plenty of those too). It's caring about the human beings enough that what they do matters, whether they are the villain of many stories beforehand (Howard!) or the hero of many stories to come. I really hope, too, that we haven't seen the last of action-hero Mary Elizabeth Winstead. She's really good at this stuff.

Where is Exhumana?

It has been nearly two years since my last progress update on Exhumana. I just wanted to leave some explanation here as to why that is, as well as where the project is going next.

There has been a script for a graphic novel called "Exhumana: Initiate" sitting on my hard drive in completed form since the end of March in 2014. However, following that year's pursuing (and ultimately abandoning) an entire potential career path and my subsequent return to writing, I realised that the work in evidence reflected neither my growth as a writer nor my actual creative intentions.

After this, I attempted to rewrite the entire story -- to reflect what I now thought was the true Exhumana story that I had wanted to tell. Readers have probably already guessed that this was a failure, especially if you yourself are a comics writer. Over all, it was an ill-considered plan.

I loved the world created in that story and was excited to continue narrating its journey to you, dear readers. Despite that sentiment, we have to learn when to cut our losses, and so I haven't done any major writing in comic scripts for months now.

On to the good news: Shauna O'Meara, a fellow member of the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild, who I commissioned in 2013 for the cover images above and on my Twitter profile (as well as lots of other cool ideas for the AGCs on her Flickr profile here) is still on board for something related to Exhumana, once she has completed an assortment of exciting, high-profile jobs that she took on in the interim.

My intent is to reshape the world and ideas into a brand new story, something more mainstream -- not so to say, by "dumbing it down" by any means, but rather to sell the story as a more conventional magazine comic.

When the time comes, I also hope to open up about this process and remain accountable to readers on this blog for more updates, craft studies and so on. Being so fresh-faced, these will be more for my own development than for instruction, you can be certain.

That about wraps up this post -- thank you for reading. I'll see you in mankind's terrible and exciting future!