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Andrew Klavan

Andrew Klavan’s new novel is Empire of Lies.

With Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, Video Games Edge Closer to Movie Territory

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With the economy tanking, our Constitution in tatters, Europe on the brink of collapse and the Middle East being taken over by Islamists, it’s time to take a serious look at Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. Because I finished playing it last weekend. And all that other stuff is, you know, kind of depressing.

The truly amazing moments in this game — even more amazing than anything in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves — come in the playable action sequences that are so close to the experience of being inside a movie that they’re almost like being inside a movie. Escaping from bad guys across a rooftop, running from a collapsing palace, fighting your way through a ship on a storm-tossed sea, battling your way into a cargo plane even as it plunges toward the earth: these sequences look so good and play so seamlessly that they make just sitting and watching actors do the job seem kind of tame by comparison. I loved that stuff and I also loved the new emphasis on Lara Croft style climbing and puzzle solving.

And the reason I loved those things is that, for me, the major drawback to this series has been an over-reliance on massive gunfights. I played this game in easy mode in the hopes it would cut down on the number of bad guys I would have to shoot to get to the next level. Not that I have anything against shooting bad guys, but a few times in this game, as in the one before, I groaned aloud at having to get through yet another gauntlet before I could move on. That may just be me, but I find these massive melees repetitive and boring. They’re a leaden stand-in for truly creative levels.

But there is plenty of cleverness, technical and artistic brilliance and plot to go around here. Good script by talented director Amy Hennig. Excellent acting by Nolan North, Richard McGonagle and Emily Rose — who’s so much prettier than her animated character, it seems a shame to get only her voice. All in all, a very good time, and a reminder that, for all the unoriginal dross in the video game world, the technology and creativity are advancing toward a genuinely new and interactive form of entertainment that’s going to get better and better for a long time to come.

Unless Barack Obama gets re-elected. Then everything will continue to get worse.

Emily Rose/Elena Fisher - just saying. (from geekosystem.com)

Cross-posted from Klavan on the Culture

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Posted at 1:12 pm on June 1st, 2012 by Andrew Klavan

The Avengers Stands Up for America


A scene from The Avengers, as superheroes Hamlet Guy and Skeleton Man team up to save the world.

The Avengers is a film of shattering emotional impact that will make you rethink the way you view the world and keep you pondering and discussing its insights for days. Oh, all right, I’m joking.  But after the first kind of boring ten minutes or so, it was plenty of fun. Best part: the bickering among superheroes with egos as big as their musk-els, culminating in a hilariously random bit of physical business between the Hulk and Thor.

But just because the picture is dopey fun doesn’t mean it’s dopey altogether. In fact, it’s one of the most purposely pro-American, pro-liberty and pro-market films to have come down the pike in years. The villain Loki has come to Earth to enslave humanity, and goes about telling people that slavery is natural and that they will live more happily on their knees. In a clear reversal of the famous paraphrase of Galatians (A book of the Bible. A special Book. Where Jesus lives.), he tells them they will be “freed from freedom.”

When Loki launches an attack on Stuttgart, Germany, the comparison to Hitler is made obvious. “The last time I was in Germany and saw a man standing above everybody else, we ended up disagreeing,” says Captain America, the reawakened throwback to American ideals of the forties. When a female officer tells Captain A that Thor and Loki are gods, he responds, “There’s only one God, ma’am, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that.”

But Captain America needs some help from Iron Man, the delightfully cynical and ironic representative of free market capitalism. Iron Man is selfish and egotistical but also brilliant and ultimately good-hearted. The tension between him (the free market) and the Captain (American ideals) and the resolution of that tension in self-sacrifice and heroism are the emotional heart of the picture and constitute whatever message it has.

Add to that the fact that the representatives of government are idiots and their decisions have to be countermanded at every turn and, yeah, it’s good liberty-loving stuff. And of course, it ends with the earth being destroyed, all the super heroes being wiped out, and no possibility of a sequel ever. Right, right: joking.

Cross-posted from Klavan on the Culture

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Posted at 3:34 pm on May 31st, 2012 by Andrew Klavan

Smackdown: Conan Vs. Spartacus!

You like movies about gladiators…?

Actually, I do. Is that so wrong??? In fact, Starz’s over-the-top gladiator series, Spartacus:  Blood and Sand, was capable of reducing me to an emotional 12-year-old every week. I would stare at each new gore-and-nudity-laden episode in a sort of mindless rapture, thinking, “Look… breasts… sword fights… also breasts…”

Hoping for a similar experience of ecstatic regression, I tried out the recent remake of Conan the Barbarian a few days ago. And let me add that I’m a big fan of Robert Howard’s original Conan short stories, which really are excellent entertainment. And let me also add that there was no shortage of beautiful naked women and good sword fights here as well. But the movie’s a dud. Conan the Disappointment. Not terrible or anything, just sort of flat and ho-hum.

What’s the difference between Spartacus and Conan? It’s the story, brother! In Spartacus—the first season more than the second, but the second too—the writers had a knack for stating genuinely interesting moral dilemmas in terms of sword fights and sex. That’s what hits that 12-year-old spot—because when you’re a 12-year-old… Okay, when I was a 12-year-old, I sort of thought all moral dilemmas should be solved through sword fights and sex. I mean, how cool would that be?

So—in the spirit of the final fight between Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis in the original Spartacus film—the TV Spartacus would, for instance, show friends forced to fight one another, posing issues of loyalty, duty, survival, etc. It would put people in situations where they had to be unfaithful to their loved ones in order to save their loved ones’ lives. And so on. Silly at some level, I understand, but massively entertaining and involving and… dare I say it? Tons of fun! Which is what I was watching for.

The Conan movie, on the other hand, regurgitates one tired plot point after another. A childhood grudge, a magical sacrifice, a princess who must be tamed and yet who earns the hero’s respect… Really, who cares? Sounds like some producer or executive read Joseph Campbell or some book called “The Eight Essential Plots,” and thought he’d figured the whole thing out. Big mistake.

I wanted to love the Conan film cause I dig this sort of stuff. But if you want to do the sex-and-swordplay thing, you gotta make it matter. You gotta tell a good story.

(Cross-posted at Klavan on the Culture.)

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Posted at 11:02 am on December 14th, 2011 by Andrew Klavan
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