Two sides of the same story; The Hunt for Truth trailers

    

      Hello all, with this weeks Nintendo Direct giving us only a little bit of info on a lot of topics I decided that this week I'll go over something different: the #huntfortruth Halo 5 trailers. (Spartan Locke) (Master Chief)  These trailers are interesting in that they are each a twisted mirror image of the other: they both involve one of the aforementioned Spartans talking to the other Spartan, the later of whom is sprawled on the ground below a Master Chief statue.

      What really got my character instincts going though is how different the two are, and that is what I want to cover in this article: how Master Chief and Spartan Locke are different. 

   

     First off is the thing that was most obvious to me: they talk differently, I don't mean that one has an accent that the other doesn't, nothing like that. I'm talking about the way that they talk. If you notice during the entire Master Chief ad John is unemotional and steely calm, challenging Locke verbally with questions: "is this what you wanted," and using words like "compromised," this calm is kept until, interestingly MC addresses the fallen Spartan by putting extra emphasis on only one phrase in the commercial: "Spartan Locke." This is very intriguing when you think how often Master Chief gets mad: that is, never. Also Master Chief states that Locke is being killed because his mission is done, while Chief's is just getting started.

   
     On the other hand Locke is emotional from the start: coming out of the house quiet and than intimately going into a bitterly sarcastic bit: "hail the conquering hero." The whole spheel is being said almost as if in front of a crowd. Another thing is Locke never addresses Master Chief by his name, rank, nickname or anything, he addresses him twice in the add: once as "that," and once as "you." This could mean one of two things: either Locke is taunting Chief by subliminally saying "you don't deserve a name," or he is putting him on a level less then human to make it easier for him to kill Master Chief to avoid guilt latter on. (This second theory is a practice commonly used by real word soldiers when the soldiers give the enemy names like "Camel Humpers," "Macs," or "Reds.") Also Locke states that Chief must be killed to save "us."

   

      The other thing is more of just something to reinforce said earlier stuff: their body language. Granted since both where in full MJOLNIR armor little can be said of their body language but what is here speaks volumes. For example Master Chief walks very slowly, keeps both hands on the rifle and barely looks at the statue, while Locke starts in a similar fashion, even keeping the gun at the ready for a few seconds, but then starts motioning with his hand like he his on stage and looks at the statue for almost a dramatic effect. Also when going for their hand guns Chief and Locke do it very differently, Master Chief puts his rifle in place on his armor and gets the pistol while Locke drops his rifle into a puddle and gets the pistol. All of this furthers what I've been saying: for Chief Locke is just part of a mission to be carried out, for Locke this is personal. 

   

     This all has even more questions riddled in it to begin with: why are two Spartans fighting in the first place? What happened to Locke in the Chief ad and vise versa? Why is the link for the Locke ad in the Chief video called "The Other Side of Truth" while the link for the Chief ad in the Locke video is called "Truth is Never What it Seems?" Oh well. I guess we'll have the answers when Halo 5 comes out. 

Why Do Video Game Movies Suck?

    

     With the rumors that Netflix may be making a Legend of Zelda series I want to address a sore spot among us gamers: movies based on video games. All movies based on a book or 

video game seem to fall into one of two categories: "It was OK," or "I would rather peel my eyes out with a melon baller than watch that movie again," and I want to find out today why this is.

     There is the obvious theory that video games are about a personal experience; that since movies are about someone other than yourself playing the movie almost seems like a badly put together Lets-Play, and I think this is true about the nonlinear video games: the Mass Effects, and Minecrafts of the world. This sort of games are all about you: what would you do if you were stranded on an infinite world? Who would you feed first if it was just you and a few other survivors of a zombie apocalypse? Do you pick the good option when speaking to a rival king? These are your options that you chose so yes is mostly your experience that video game movies take away.

     But that doesn't explain why so many video game novels and comics are both very popular and critically acclaimed. This though is probably not too hard to explain: video game movies are usually about the plot of the game or something very close to the plot of the game, while the novels and comics are about side stories, origin stories, or original stories that take place in the video game world. An example of this is the Sonic comic series, the longest running video game based comic, is about finding about Sonic's friends more often than finding out more about the Blue Blur. It could also be that since the comics and novels are usually written by fans of the games the pressure is on themselves to create something that they hold dear while movie directors are more like "money money money."

In Final Defense of Fairy Tales

     

    What I really want to say with all this fairy tale defense is that fairy tales are true. I don't mean that there are dragons and griffons flying around in some magical forest somewhere but magic is real; not in the sense that we have come to know: that there is good and bad magic (its all bad actually) but it did get me thinking: if magic is real what other parts of fairy tales are true? Then I realized something: most of the stories started in everyday life. That may not seem remarkable but it tells the greatest truth about fairy tales: they are just about people that decide to take a stand and when they made that stand they don't give up. And that is why fairy tales get so much hate, because they don't tell a worry free story they tell a give-up free story. And our silver spoon fed society doesn't want to except that things aren't going to be handed to them.
   

     JRR Tolkien was a Soldier in World War I one of the most hellish wars ever fought and he wrote a fairy tale that is loved by even this tech obsessed generation. Albert Eisenstein messed up the proof that eventually became E=MC2, partly because he didn't understand some of the laws that would affect the proof until later but instead of giving up he learned those laws. Both of these men not only read fairy tales but believed them. And I think that is the point of fairy tales: to take a stand, believe in your dreams and don't give up ever.

Random movie and game trivia

     Hello all, I'm writing my final Defense of Fairy Tales post for next week but I didn't want to skip out on this week like I normally do (sorry about that) I'm going to share with you some of my favorite bits of trivia about things so without further ado...

There are actually four "first Pokemon" contenders: Bulbasaur is the first Pokemon in the national Pokedex. Arceus was the first thing to exist (but only took physical form later on.) Mew was the first Pokemon to be defined as a "Pocket Monster." Finally Rhydon was the first Pokemon designed in this world.

Drowzee is thought to be based on a tapir but may actually be based on the Baku, a spirit in Japanese mythology that, granted looks like a giant tapir but according to mythology is actually capable of eating dreams like Drowzee does, which is some thing most tapirs can't do. 

The Physic type in Pokemon is weak to three types which are Bug, Dark, and Ghost, which are also three of the most common human fears, which makes sense since the Physic type is all about brain power and as anyone who has gone into their basement at night knows: fears destroy every bit of reason. 

Since most of the production time was spend on the special effects and not on the script the 2008 Iron Man had only an outline of a script when filming came around, so almost the entirety of the movie is in prov.

The CGI Empire State Building used in Peter Jackon's King Kong  took 18 months to make; the best part: the real Empire State Building was built in 14 months. 

Godzilla's famous (and trademarked) roar used in the original Godzilla was made in a rather awesome way: a resin covered glove was rubbed over the strings of a double bass and the resulting sound was than amplified in an echo chamber. 

Are Happy Endings Real?

     

     

  

   Happy endings are used by many people to say that fairy tales are a load of baloney, my theory on this is that in today's culture, especially here in America people confuse happiness with perfection. That joy can only be obtained through getting to goals, or not having any problems, or being the smartest one of your friend group, or something like that. While these are not bad in and of themselves, saying that something like that is the only way to be happy is by those things is where we get into trouble. You see in fairy tales the ending goes: "they lived happily ever after, not: "they lived trouble free ever after", or even: "they live together ever after," it goes: "they lived happily ever after." Let me explain with one of my favorite authors of all time: C.S. Lewis.

     Like Walt Disney, Clive Staples Lewis lived a sucky life: when he was about three or four his dog, Jacksie, died starting Lewis's life filled with death. On his father, Albert's, birthday in 1908, Lewis's mother, Flora Lewis died of cancer. This same year Lewis's grandfather and great-uncle died and Lewis was sent to a boarding school for two years. After that he was transferred to a different boarding school that he had to quit because of respiratory problems. He was than enrolled in a school near a health resort, it was at this school that Lewis gave up on Christianity. Lewis enlisted in the British army where his college roommate was killed in battle and Lewis was wounded and a year later and discharged. He continued his studies at Oxford University, where he published poems in school magazines and officially published "Death in Battle." Eventually he started teaching at Oxford for many years. Finally in 1929 Lewis's father died and Lewis became a theist and two years later. After a long talk with his friends J.R.R. Tolkien, and Hugo Dyson, Lewis became a Christian again. From that point on C.S. Lewis never had it easy, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. was mocked by his friends, his married life was so stressful he wrote a book about it, and he eventually died on November 22 1963 with his grave reading a favorite Shakespeare quote of his: "men must endure their going hence."

     C. S. Lewis was a great man, and I have no doubt he died happily. Why? His life was filled with death, doubt, and diseases, these are all things that people use to justify giving up. He never gave up because he never gave in. He never gave in to the idea that to be an adult you have to be a grown up. Never gave in to blaming God for all his problems. And he never gave into the idea that happiness came through anything this world could give him. And that is the happy ending: not one of wealth, sex, power, or fun, but of contentment.

Why Fairy Tales are True

    

     Walt Disney, C.S. Lewis, Albert Einstein, and JRR Tolkien, what to they all have in common? Were they all of the same religion? No, C.S was a Christian turned atheist turned Christian, Walt and JRR where Catholic, and Albert was a Jew. Did they have similar personalities? No, Albert was mostly carefree and fun loving, JRR was somewhat of an introvert who wanted only him to work on his books, Walt was hard working and hated anything that didn't live up to his incredibly high standards and C.S was always described as being gruff and sure that he would never be remembered after he died. Then what did they have in common? They all have two things in common: they all went through hard times, and they all believed in fairy tales.

   

     Lets start with Walt Disney. At age 22 Walt started a cartoon company that barely saw any success, causing him to eat dog food just to have money to pay the rent and that went bankrupt after only a few years, leaving Walt to move to L.A. with $40 dollars, a change of clothes, and some drawing tools. After trying to start an acting career he and his brother Roy started the Disney company and received a little bit of fame. However his best selling cartoon series: Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, and all but one of his artists were stolen by Disney's New York distributor: Universal Studios. After designing and making Mickey Mouse famous, Walt suffered anxiety attacks about the profits of cartoons. This caused him to be forced by his coworkers to take a vacation with his wife down the Mississippi River that got canceled and they had to go on a different vacation. After Snow White and the Seven Dwarves gave them enough money, Walt and Roy had a house built for their parents that ended up with Walt's mother dead from Carbon Monoxide poisoning. Right before World War Two Walt's artists went on strike because he refused to be a team player. When America declared war in 1941 Walt Disney Studios was taken over by the army and used for tank and artillery repairs; also most of his artists went to war. In 1942 Walt went to the premiere of Bambi, where during the scene where Bambi's mother was shot Bambi said "Mother, where are you Mother?" to which a teen girl in the audience shouted "Here I am Bambi," causing the audience to burst into laughter, except Walt. After the war the company was $4 million dollars in debts. And finally the day Disneyland opened people got in with forged tickets, the newly pored asphalt melted heeled shoes, and a plummer's strike meant that none of the water fountains worked.
   
     Walt Disney could have quit at any time, heck he could have gotten work at the bank or something and had a pay check every month that he didn't have to divide among anyone. Walt could have quit everything and just drank himself to death. Walt Disney could have done a million things that probably all his family and friends would deem "sensible." But Walt didn't, because he believed in fairy tales. And look where that got him: almost everybody in the free world knows his name and the Disney company, and the company continues to make movies that are genuinely good for all ages and loves by generations.
   

     Fairy tales are seen nowadays as this thing that creates a false hope about what life is, but Walt realized something that I hope we all realize: that Fairy Tales are the truest fiction we have ever had and may ever have. You see people forget that problems in the best of fairy tales aren't solved in a day, a lot actually have the protagonist go through years of hardships before they can live happily ever after.
     As much as I don't want to make this longer then one post it looks like I'll have to. So next time I well go through the life of C. S. Lewis, and reveal some lies about happily ever after.