Hey all, it’s that time again: I have watched/played 2-3 things that I don’t think could support a segment of the podcast but that I have enough thoughts about that I want to write them down. This is basically what the newsletter is now. If it ever pretended to be anything else, know now that was a lie.
Tom Watched Pokemon Concierge
My feelings on Pokemon as a franchise are about what they are for Star Wars, by which I mean: that’s some shit I do not care about no more. I used to like it a lot, but there is simply no more meat on that bone. The more Pokemon/Star Wars projects come out, the more I realize that they are just going to keep wringing that rag forever and there is nothing to look forward to other than increasingly scanty drips of grimy water.
That said: Pokemon Concierge has the juice.
Pokemon Concierge is a 4-episode stop motion miniseries where there’s no Pokemon battles. Already this is making my tongue wag. Four episodes? Sign me up. The episodes are 15 minutes? Baby I’m there. STOP MOTION? You mean to tell me the Pokemons are little dollies?? Folks, yes. They are cutie dollies made from felt. They are so cute you’ll cry. My wife loves Calico Critters, they’re these little toy animal people, and the fact is these critters are cute. The stop motion Pokemon are like if Eevee was a Calico Critter. They are so precious and I love them.
The plot is nothing. The plot is there’s a woman who gets a job as a concierge at a resort for Pokemon, which translates into: she walks around a little diorama and meets Pokemon made out of felt and is nice to them.
There’s not much else to say. You watch to see the dollies move and man do they ever. It just goes to show why Pokemon is the most profitable franchise ever. Even though the games are impossible to enjoy, the Pokemon designs are just out-of-this-world appealing. I love when Psyduck waddles around.
Tom Watched the Mission Impossible Movies
One thing you have to understand about movie actor Tom Cruise is that he is one of the key pillars holding up an evil cult that exists to exploit people. We all know this. But also, at the same time, when he is in a movie, that’s pretty good.
Case in point: my wife and I recently watched all the Mission Impossible movies. This is because on an airplane I watched Ghost Protocol (the fourth movie) and my wife watched it off of my screen with no sound. She was inspired so she ended up watching it too and I watched it again off of her screen with no sound. When we got home we watched Missions Impossible 5 through 7, then we went back and watched 1 to 3.
If you are not Mission-pilled it can seem weird that someone would do this, or that they’re even still making these. I remember I used to think: who cares about these movies? They seem so generic. Explosions and guns and cars, that’s every action movie. What’s the hook? There’s like no story. It’s just missions. And after watching 1-3 (of these three, I had previously only seen the first) I can understand why I thought that.
The first one is a treat, but Mission Impossible 2 is a real turd. Extremely stupid and features the incredibly wrongheaded move of having Tom Cruise’s character be a flirtatious type of guy who has sex. This is cinema poison both because the idea of a sexually playful Tom Cruise is repulsive to the human brain, but also for character reasons we’ll get into later. Mission Impossible 3 has a great Philip Seymour Hoffman performance as the villain, but he’s barely in it and they do a fakeout villain move so he’s not even the final boss—this one is OK. It’s directed by JJ Abrams so it has his signature directorial style of Generic Competence. I remember seeing trailers for this and being truly unable to care. If I had seen the first two I probably would think this even more than I did in my ignorance—1 and 2 are so tonally dissonant and every returning character in MI2 acts nothing like they did in the first movie, it feels less like a series and more like an anthology show like the Twilight Zone. Why would I go to a theater to watch a nothing character do generic stunts.
Well, here’s the thing. The fourth one, Ghost Protocol, is directed by Brad Bird, the animation guy, and turns out animation guys know how to direct action really well. The setpieces really go nutty in this one and it has the incredible gimmick of being The One Where Everything Breaks. All the spy tech is shown working once, we go wow, cool gadget, then it fucking breaks and we go oh shit. Oh fuck. This mission has been rendered impossible. Then they do it anyway. The script is really lumpy, the pacing is weird, and the villain is barely in it (he is basically a warm body to be holding the McGuffin until the good guys can be holding the McGuffin) but woweee these stunts are on another level.
And the reason why is that Tom Cruise is a psychotic monster. This is bad for the world but good for da silver screen baby. He is obsessed with Doing That For Real. The movie’s signature bit is when he climbs on the outside of the Burj Khalifa skyscraper. Well he did that for real and it shows. You have to be an absolute psycho to do this and I’m glad he is funneling his psycho energy on that instead of something else (though he probably is doing that too via Scientology).
This is also the movie where the characterization finally gels for the main guy Ethan Hunt. Basically, he too is a psycho maniac whose entire world revolves around Doing The Mission. The scale of the stunts in this one allows them to set up the formula for the rest of the series. Someone goes “in order to win the mission, we have to do this insane thing, but it can’t be done.” Ethan goes “hm. No other choice but to just do it then” and then he does it and everyone goes now what the fuck.
This is why it was so jarring to see him flirt and have casual sex with a teammate in 2. Ethan does not have space in his brain for casual sex and he certainly wouldn’t jeopardize a mission by sleeping with a team member. He would only fuck if it was necessary to get a keycode or some shit and he would not enjoy it. His relationship with women is that if they are gorgeous and brunette he will hug them like a big brother.
Ghost Protocol is also where the “team” conceit firms up a little. Ethan always has a team but they have felt like they’re barely there prior to this. Ving Rhames is the main sidekick and he’s good but the rest are just seat fillers who have like two lines. Ghost Protocol promotes Simon Pegg to co-star status and he is the secret sauce. He has three moves:
saying hahaha it would be IMPOSSIBLE to do the mission like this, so obviously you have another plan, right Ethan? Ethan....Ethan you DO have another plan right? *Ethan does a wry smile* Oh NOOOO!
Explaining what everyone’s assignments are for the upcoming mission, and glossing over how dangerous all the assignments are, so everyone goes “you want ME to do [X]??” and he’s like “uh yeah it’s simple what’s the problem,” and
Talking to Ethan via an earpiece and giving him directions like it’s really easy but actually Ethan has to jump between buildings and out of windows and shit and Simon Pegg doesn’t know why he’s complaining so much about his simple directions.
This could be tiresome, but no: Simon Pegg sells it every time and I always laugh.
After Ghost Protocol the series becomes the sole property of writer/director Christopher McQuarrie who triples down on Ethan being a psychotic mission freak and quadruples down on Tom Cruise doing insane shit that kills you in real life. It helps that he and Cruise get along famously, which probably translates to “he lets Tom Cruise co-direct the movies and doesn’t get huffy about it.”
Some have complained that McQuarrie is not as much a visual stylist as some of the series’ earlier directors like Brian de Palma and John Woo (say what you will about how dumb MI2 is, it’s definitely not generic looking). And yeah that’s true. But name me a director who is better at coordinating the logistics of unthinkable real-life stunts, capturing them on film, and coming up with a plausible enough plot to act as conveyor belt for all the nonsense. I think of the opera scene and the breath-holding scenes from Rogue Nation and I go nuts. I think of the scene where he memorizes a million numbers perfectly in ten minutes because if he doesn’t he will fail the mission and he will NOT fail the mission. I think about the bathroom fight and the helicopter chase from Fallout. I think about the little Fiat chase in Dead Reckoning and the part with da fuckin train. These movies do not always have great scripts (a lot of shit in Dead Reckoning is truly baffling and not in a fun way. There’s a character death that is so undersold you think it has to be a fakeout death, but if so why? And if not, man they really flubbed that death). But the formula works. No one else is making movies where the main guy literally is hanging onto the outside of a plane as it’s really taking off.
Man, I like to think that I am normal about these movies—I know Cruise is evil, I know the plots and dialogue are preposterous, I know the agency that does the missions makes no sense (in some movies the Impossible Mission Force is well-known, in some the Director of US Intelligence has to be told they exist and he’s like “no way! What a kooky concept!” Sometimes it is implied that Ethan Hunt and his team are the only agents left, but then who is putting all the IMF cars they drive in parking lots across the globe? etc). And yet....
Here is an illustrative example. I have seen posts about Dads who refuse to watch these movies because the first one has the original TV show’s protagonist Jim Phelps turn out to be the villain. They simply could not forgive that decision due to Dad Law. I read that and was like how silly. Who cares? But then I thought further. If, in 15 years, there’s a Mission Impossible reboot and it makes Ethan Hunt evil and kills him off, I would simply become furious. I guess what I’m saying is...I’m gonna be a Dad, folks.
Lol, nah just kidding. That would have been a wild way to make that announcement though.
Tom Played Final Fantasy XII
This is the one where guys go like “Verily yon party needs must take the sword to five and twenty marboros, such that we may make barter with the rare drops that issue from the fell things.” There’s a big bunny girl who wears metal underwear. I think my beef with the bunny girls is they have fur and hair on their head at the same time. Can’t do both. One or the other.
Anyway—if you play FF12 you need to play the remaster subtitled “The Zodiac Age” on Steam. There are a few reasons for this. One, the graphics are better. Two, they changed how treasure chests work (apparently in the original, all chests had semi-random contents? Now the chests with important gear/spells will always have it). Three, they added a job system and those are always fun.
However those reasons are all ultimately inconsequential. You play the remaster because it has a fast-forward button built in. Playing this game on the base speed is self-harm and if you are a mandatory reporter you have to call it in if you see someone doing it.
I have heard this game described as a “single player MMO.” I have never played an MMO so I dunno about what their gameplay is like. But in FF12 your group goes around a big area full of monsters. When you get close to one, your guys start whaling on it, but you can manually choose to have them do other abilities instead. If this truly is MMO gameplay, I have to tell ya I cannot envision any reason it would benefit from there being multiple players.
FF12 also does the shit I love where you can program your guys. They call these “gambits” for no reason. But basically you can set up a little flow chart of “if > then” statements that make your dudes automatically pick the actions you want instead of having to do it manually. This really speaks to the core of JRPGs, which is that they are spreadsheet software in disguise. I love it. Add the fast forward button and we are talking nutso efficiency.
This one also really leans into some Final Fantasy idiosyncrasies I have never really grasped (probably since I didn’t play these until I was an adult). Namely—the game is really really easy but there is a lot of optional content which is not only insanely hard but is impossible to even be aware of if you’re not using a guide.
Example: The game has “hunts” which I love—you get a contract to defeat a unique boss enemy. You get a little hint about how to find the enemy and what to expect and off you go. Fun! Well after I beat all 40ish hunts I learned that there are “rare game hunts” which unlike normal hunts do not have a little hint about where to find them or what to expect. They are secret enemies that come out in specific places only when specific conditions are met (you do not know what the conditions are). There’s like 100 of these. I said “oh fuck this” at this point.
The story is fine. There’s an empire (hate that). There are bad gods (can’t stand ‘em). We gotta stop them. Cid is a bad guy this time. It’s a big thing.
All in all a really solid one of these. Maybe in its original state I wouldn’t be so positive but the remaster is just major fun! It owns!
Anyway: next up is the Final Fantasy 13 trilogy. I know these have had a critical reappraisal lately but I can’t deny I’m a little scared. Pray for me
I gotta watch this damn Pokemon Concierge!!
Damn, dude, you write so well. Weirdly never played FFXII. You have me thinking that Maybe it is time (after Rebirth of course).