Act of Valor: An Analysis

Promotional Media

You probably already have a decent idea of what you’re getting into with this one. The “silhouetted soldiers in front of a sunrise/sunset” poster is well-worn territory, to say the least. It’s minimalistic and dramatic, and not to mention entirely trite and decades late to cause any kind of emotional effect. Movie posters frequently do this, however; there are just certain designs in this field that get used and reused ad infinitum, because the general viewing public prefers what’s familiar. This poster does that, but even for its genre it’s entirely indistinct. Even if the template a poster uses has been done to death, it can still pack a lot of punch if the elements of the poster are arranged distinctively. Imagine the Platoon poster, which features the distinctive soldier on his knees, arms outstretched to the heavens in absolute dismay. Picture the Full Metal Jacket poster, which displays nothing but an army helmet labeled “Born to Kill,” adjacent to a peace sticker. It’s evocative, powerful, and alerts you to the cruel, brutally sardonic and honest reality that awaits you in the film. If the silhouettes for this poster did something like that—refer to a specific event in the film, or define the characters in a way that distinguishes them from every other movie soldier—it could have been far more evocative. The movie does well to include the tagline “A Motion Picture Featuring Active Duty Navy SEALs,” as it’s just about the only thing that could spark intrigue in anyone besides ardent Call of Duty fans. There are attempts to introduce characterization in the gestures of the shadowed soldiers; one is touching another’s helmet, two appear to be gripping each other’s shoulders, and the rest are either doing the “walking forward holding a gun to look totally badass” thing, or the “standing with a gun to look totally badass” thing. But that only makes the characters cardboard cutouts, which, as we’ll find later on, might at least not be considered false advertising. 

            So the poster, then, can only make you imagine the tropes you’ve seen in every other war movie. You probably picture the standard fare: good ol’ boys will risk their lives for the country and the ideals they believe in, the opposition will be represented as freedom-hating barbarians with no concern for human life, and at some point someone’s going to jump on a grenade in heroic self-sacrifice. Some of the soldiers will be put out of commission by wounds—but only the plot-convenient and/or secondary ones—and there will be some serious bro talk. Guess what? All those things do happen. Big shocker.

            The trailer works to the movie's advantage, though. This is a movie built for the trailer if there ever was one. The Navy SEALs exhibit their physical prowess, pulling off all kinds of awesome techniques, which demonstrate the movie's authenticity. Over the action, there are enough vague one-liners and explosions to excite even the most jaded, spineless person such as myself. It's unfortunate that some of the dialogue made it to the cut, but even so, the trailer is well done. The music is dramatic, and there's a big ol' dosage of piano rock towards the end that bolsters the mood. There's nothing in the trailer that suggests this is going to be a revolutionary movie, but it does at least promise a movie with some decent action. The cinematography is, for the most part, very well done. There's a moment where two gunships are firing on one position on an adjacent landmass; it's a very dynamic composition, and works quite well. 

                                    

Reviews

Observing the reviews of the film, it almost seems as though the decision to use real Navy SEALs in place of actors was done in part to make it “critic-proof.” Sure enough, every major reviewer that dismissed it—in other words, basically all of them—found their comment fields full of angry people hurling words like “anti-troops” or “anti-American,” or the ever popular “elitist” at the writer in question. Apparently, being a member of the US military, or even distantly associated with one, exempts you from all creative criticism.

Screw that. If we can’t call a bad movie a bad movie just because a few good, courageous men took part in it—completely ignoring the Hollywood bullshit and cynical marketing ploys that went into it—then we as a culture need to sit in the corner of the room and seriously think about what we’re doing. The theater I saw this movie in was empty. That should tell you something. There's already an overabundance of media that appeals to the military complex we seems to have in this country, and this movie could've been the dose of realism that brings our inflated image of ourselves down a notch. Instead, it becomes just another bog-standard movie thrown on the pile, with all that implies. There’s a SEAL who’s expecting to raise a child with his wife upon completion of service, so at that point you figure he might as well pick out which flowers he’d like thrown on his grave. There’s one who carries an American flag with him at all times, one that’s been passed down generations in his family. Every element of it was trite and cliché, and the arguments will come back “That’s because it’s reality, and in reality this stuff happens!” If that’s your argument, then give me one good reason why this movie shouldn’t have just been a documentary. If this were real life, the shallow symbolism would actually feel real, the clichéd backstories would achieve new levels of depth and tragedy, and you might actually feel something when one of the SEALs got shot or killed—dramatic reenactments can have much more potency in this kind of situation. It does a great disservice to the SEALs to see their courageous and selfless actions reduced to a cookie-cutter Hollywood product. If you want to freshen a cliché, apply it to a compelling character. Outside of their assigned character traits and backgrounds, which take all the easy roads to relatability they can—families, “good ol’ boy” chats, patriotic speeches, “witty” banter—these characters are cardboard cutouts, arbitrarily given traits to elicit sympathy from the audience, without actually making any effort to do so.

                         

Realism

There's also the unfortunate issue that arises from having a set cast in a movie aiming to be "realistic;" the SEALs are up against a terrorist force numbering at least in the dozens. For the movie to maintain the same cast alive up until the end demands that the SEALs always be at the top of their game, and for the enemies to be inebriated graduates of the Stormtrooper Academy of Marksmanship. Richard Corliss notes in his review for Time, "The villains here are as interested in torturing women and killing schoolchildren as they are in making dirty billions or bringing down the Great Beast Satan (US). They also can’t shoot straight, whereas the SEALs’ aim is unerring; no collateral damage when they blast away." There's a heavy amount of realism you sacrifice in the art of film, for which the audience compensates with suspension of disbelief. This is an issue that's haunted film since the art itself was born; how realistic can you really get if you're working from a sheet? I think that's where this movie largely stumbles. Putting reality through the filter of studios and screenplays and marketing lands your product in the "uncanny valley" or realism. It may look real, but some of the subtleties are missing. This manifests itself in the almost cartoonish villains; there is an attempt to establish the hook-nosed Jewish antagonist--a stereotype I hadn't seen in a while--as a human being with a family and a lot to lose for his lecherous behavior, but it falls somewhat flat. One sequence in particular pits this villain against another in a heated discussion that quickly escalates into a heavily-accented series of shouts that gets positively comical. That's another aspect which one of the rare positive reviews of the movie points out; Matt Turner of The ViewLondon points out, "Like 24 (almost certainly an inspiration for the project), the film benefits from a terrorist plot that, while hopefully preposterous at least ensures that the stakes are suitably high."

Something else that really cuts into the believability and immersion—and it becomes really jarring as the movie goes on—is its clear intention to be Call of Duty: The Movie. It’s absurd to say that, though. Call of Duty is a war simulation aiming to be realistic, and this movie is a war story that aims to be realistic. What we end up with, then, is a simulation of a simulation. Strange, considering it stars actual freaking Navy SEALs. But the editing, the overall pacing of the story which includes all manner of layered objectives, and some of the visual cues are highly evocative of this aesthetic. Let’s run through all the video game things that occur: firstly, when a character is introduced in the beginning of the movie, it’s not enough to have the narration detailing the character’s most standout traits; a freaking hologram shows up on screen. It’s got a character portrait, and a rundown of their achievements. Secondly, large sections of the movie are filmed from a first-person perspective. You actually see the guy holding the gun and shooting stuff, and it was like watching someone play Modern Warfare on a giant TV.  Third, there’s a climactic scene near the end of the movie where a wounded marine, on the verge of death, takes out the Big Bad with a few last pistol shots, in a scene lifted wholesale, again, from the Call of Duty series. The screen is red and blurry—as though the first thing that happens when you’re dying is to lose your contacts and get strawberry jam thrown in your face—and all the sounds become a distant echo.

                       

The point is, this is a film that tries so hard to emulate other things when it doesn't have to. It had every opportunity to portray a gruesome reality, or at least a reality beyond trope and cliché; the fact that it failed is largely just an amalgamation of several bad ideas, badly executed.

Works Cited

Corliss, Richard. "Act of Valor Movie Review: Trained SEALs." TIME. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Apr. 2012. <http://entertainment.time.com/2012/02/25/act-of-valor-trained-seals/>.

Turner, Matthew. "Act of Valour Film Review." The View London. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Apr. 2012. <http://www.viewlondon.co.uk/films/act-of-valour-film-review-45517.html>.

Atmospheric Pacing in an Ancient Video Game

     Because I've been obsessed with Doom music recently (partially due to this Doom ripoff illustration project which I'm regretting), it got me thinking about how great the level when you meet THE CYBERDEMON really was, on reflection.

     The first thing you'll probably notice is the really creepy carnival music.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iIrg4DM078

     The level starts you off in a tightly packed room with four switches, each one opening one door. Plastered on the adjoining walls are four of the strongest demons you'd faced up to that point, gutted like frogs. Walk out one of the doors and you'll be in a large courtyard. You'll probably notice a few of the pissant flying flaming skulls you've been killing by the dozen up till now. At this point you've got a suspicion there's gotta be more to the level than this. You take a shot at one of the skulls, only to hear a kinda deafening "RAAAARRRRRGH!" somewhere in the distance. If you were a kid when you first played Doom you probably peed a little. By firing a shot, you alerted the behemoth to your presence, and now he's stomping around the courtyard. Looking for you. All you hear now is a loud clanking metal footstep. You'll probably wander around the place for a while, out of a combination of curiosity and just hoping you find him before he finds you. When you finally DO see him... HE'S PRETTY BIG.

at this range... you're pretty much dead.

     The thing about the Cyberdemon is, he doesn't stop to show you his huge set of fangs or strut for a while while you soak him all in. The instant he sees you he starts firing rockets at you in salvos of three. If one hits you, odds are you're dead or close to it. It was one of the most intense boss battles I'd experienced, and it was with nary a dialogue screen, cutscene, or a plot at all, really.

This is something that games today are often terrified to do; let you build the suspense by yourself. Games today are so worried that you might miss something that the whole thing becomes more of a sightseeing tour than an actual experience. 

     Fighting ol' Cybie now is kind of a joke, as the good ol' mouse and keyboard combination which is now standard allows you to just circle-strafe him to your heart's content without ever catching a missile up your nose. Back in those days, though, when you were awkwardly using the arrow and ctrl keys to do business, he was one scary bastard.

Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Final Fantasy IX

     The following is going to be very gushy, nerdy, and nostalgic, but I feel like it's my DUTY as a gamer to say these things. So, abandon all pretense of coolness, ye who enter here.

     So I reread my Top 10 Video Games list that I wrote a while back, and I think I'd like to revise it. Clearly, Ocarina of Time is superb; I know it, you know it, anyone remotely aware of those games that you make move with a piece of plastic in your hand knows it. But Final Fantasy IX is number one to me, no questions asked.

     You see, I'm writing a comic script, and as the pages come out, it's becoming abundantly clear that this game has influenced me in a way that no other singular piece of media has. I owe SO much to this 11-year old game about a polygonal monkey boy and his adventures with his friends around the world. Whether it's the cheerful, reckless main character Zidane giving older-brother advice to Vivi, a young character who struggles with self-confidence and the uncertainty concerning his own mortality, or the beautiful, imaginative towns and landscapes, or the mostly-uptight cast gradually learning to welcome a sense of adventure into their lives, this whole story made an impact on me which I'm still realizing today.

     I remember every time I ever played through this game. Whether it was my first time playing on my brother's Playstation, my chubby little eyes watering from every cheesy Zidane/Garnet moment, or my playthrough when I was snowed in free from school, drinking hot chocolate with way too many marshmallows, or my venture through it in high school where we narrated the dialogue with ridiculous voices, or hell, even my last playthrough this past year where I picked up the controller when I felt overwhelmed or just a bit down. Every time I go through the game it's like embarking on an adventure which somehow never gets old.

     I should also explain something about my first playthrough; it was at the beach where my brother had brought his Playstation and this game. After we left that beach house and I no longer had access to a Playstation, I started to literally *miss* the characters. Like, I honestly really wanted to see more of them, and that's the *only* video game that has ever done that to me. True, I was also a stupid little kid, but even so!

     It has my favorite soundtrack (and guess what? Nobuo Uematsu, the composer, says it's his favorite out of all the ones he's done too. So YEAH.), my favorite characters... hell, the only strikes I can mark against it are the moments when the standard RPG random battle nonsense gets excessive (FOSSIL ROO HNNNNNNNG). Oh, and also the strategy guide sucked; after you bought it they had the nerve to put half the content online. But hey, at least it had pretty pictures.

     I don't really know why I'm telling whoever's reading this right now, though. I'm not trying to convince you to play it, because even if you did and liked it; hell, even if you did and LOVED IT and declared it *your* favorite game ever, there's no way you'd have the same stupid, nonsensical nostalgic connection I have to it. Your childhood's only constructed once, and for better or for worse, Final Fantasy IX was a fairly strong part of the foundation of mine.

tl;dr: I like Final Fantasy 9. A lot.

Notes on Stupid Childhood Comics

     When I was a kid I had a stupid little comic strip called Wormy & Stoopy, starring an oval I called a worm and a stick figure with buckteeth. It began as a coping mechanism in church, where my boredom inevitably reached a critical level. This was stream of consciousness at its most basic; I’d grab a piece of paper (or rather, a donation card from the pew in front of me) with, AT MOST, an idea like “amusement park” or “guinea pig” to draw from for my plot. Then I’d just fill the page. The plot, the jokes, the dialogue… everything was formed at the same time as the final pencil marks. Hindsight being 20/20 I think this might be the ideal approach for me in terms of writing in general. In a way, I was dealing with the same timelines and deadlines back then as a kid: my attention span. I would draw until the end of the page was reached and/or my attention drifted to something shinier or video game-ier. These days I all too often approach my comics like a “writer;” I get the plot hammered out beforehand, and then actually put pen to paper. And it often sucks. Working that way removes your ability and willingness to be surprised for the vast majority of the process. It locks you in to a specific path, and if you’re looking to make someone laugh, or hell, just tell a good story, that’s the last thing you want: to be predictable.

     There’s something so pure about that “improvised” Wormy & Stoopy approach (which shows like Adventure Time have down to a science) that I need to find again, because I find that unfunny jokes are harder to stomach if they've clearly been written and rewritten. If you don’t laugh at a given joke in Adventure Time, it’s simply because it didn’t hit you as hard as some of the other ones did. The chemistry of absurdity between you and the show just didn’t line up. This is a marked difference from a failed joke in, say, Two and a Half Men (AKA ALL THE JOKES HEY-OOOOOOH), where you just wince in uncomfortable silence while the canned laughter drones on like a detuned radio. I, unfortunately, went through this wormhole to unfunny and am now trying to claw my way back.

     There was a point during Wormy & Stoopy’s “run” where I started to actually attempt “writing” and “drawing.” I would meditate on jokes before I put them down, and meditate on what people would look like in the strip. Guess what? Those are the strips I hate the most today, because it’s me trying to be funny and/or artistic rather than just drawing what made me laugh. They’re the strips that make me wince as opposed to the older ones, where I mostly just wonder “what the hell was going through my head?”

I think my favorite Wormy & Stoopy strip was one that had no words at all; it entailed Wormy unknowingly taking a shrinking potion and urgently trying to get the now-colossal Stoopy’s attention by climbing him, while Stoopy was completely oblivious, repeatedly shaking Wormy off and occasionally trampling him under random bouts of tap dancing.

     There’s something about that spontaneous approach to writing that ends up being timeless, as opposed to actually sitting and trying to write jokes, where it’s more likely than not that the next morning I’ll wake up and hate what I wrote; or, in this case, I’ll hate what I wrote for 20 agonizing hours.

     I also think it’s important, at least in comedy writing, to completely ignore outside feedback because you can’t really adjust your sense of humor to include everyone. Unless, of course, you’re working with people who share your exact sense of humor—in which case, you’re lucky. I like fart and butthole jokes, but I know for a fact not everyone does. But if I neglect the less vanilla aspects of my humor, it’s basically me neutering what could potentially be my strongest material. That’s another thing I did in the 24-hour comic challenge, and it’s something I’ve been doing too much in general.

All this rambling is stuff that the 24-hour comic got me thinking of. And while I didn’t end up with something I liked, hey, I learned from it. And as many people have said in many ways, reaching the end of the exercise is never the point of the exercise.

Artist's Note

     As a child, nothing got my imagination running faster than the breakneck insanity and baffling logic of cartoons. My greatest heroes throughout my life have been the artists who could convey adult themes and jokes in their work that have rendered it timeless, work that was intended for a two-foot tall audience whose primary occupation was eating sugar cereals.

     I incorporate these ideas of nostalgia and humor into my work, which manifests itself as cartoony illustrations, often with a darker edge. I also frequently incorporate texture into a piece; the ghostly drip of a watercolor can evoke a haunting visage, like a shadow from cartoons past, vaguely recalled by a more twisted and cynical adult mind.

    In addition, it’s highly important that I keep my subject matter fresh and diverse as possible. I don’t much condone getting stuck in a cycle of a few certain stylistic tendencies or certain characters, unless of course it’s necessary for a specific story. I think it’s vital to never stop pushing yourself and experimenting with your approach, regardless of how successful or profitable any given iteration of it might be. If you get locked in to such a specific work method, you run the risk of growing bored, which is first of all the greatest condemnation of anything you do with your spare time, and second of all completely stagnates your growth as an individual and as an artist. For this reason, it is also important to me that I keep other creative muscles unrelated to drawing strong; everything in the creative sector informs each other, and the deeper the well of influences you have in that regard, the better.

    In keeping with that philosophy, writing often plays a very important part in what I do. Whether it’s just forming word bubbles to fuel inspiration in my sketchbook or writing a comic book series from beginning to end, for me the written word and the visual arts have always been very much intrinsically related. There is little point in knowing or feeling if you lack the means to communicate, and I feel that writing can often add punctuation and punch to what a drawn image aims to express.

    I also aim to keep my dialogue and characters “real;” even in my current comic, Mirabelle the Architect, which takes place in a comedy sci-fi setting, it is important to keep the story grounded in reality. My characters are all based on people I know, even if some of them end up being amalgams rather than strict 1:1 copies. If I keep the base structure of my art rooted in the familiar and what makes me react emotionally, it thereby makes it more relatable and accessible to the outside viewer who might not even understand the subtler, “nerdier” references I frequently utilize.

    Overall I try to treat my art as I’d like to treat my life if I could; as a never-ending experiment where nothing is sacred, nothing is permanent and nothing should ever be taken too seriously.

The Justice League of Everything That is Wrong with My Creative Process

UNITE! Soldiers of bringing this small curly-haired hobbit's writing prolificacy to a screeching halt!

-PROCRASTINATION MAN! With your powers of video games, movies, and bullshitting around on Facebook for hours at a time! You will keep this kid so distracted and bored that, when the times comes that he really wants to write, he'll be too tired!

-SOCIAL LIFE WOMAN! He'll never be able to type or put pen on a paper if he's busy socializing with friends, and more than likely talking about their favorite bottom noises! With your stylish and patriotically-colored metal corset of unrealistic hourglass curvature, you'll make sure that no long novels get written!

-DOUBT BLOKE! You'll keep an already self-destructive mind in absolute creative sludge! You'll cause him to draw unreasonable comparisons between himself and the greatest literature writers of yesteryear, despite the fact that he neither wants to be nor would be happy writing that kind of stuff!

-SLEEP BOY! You know that a soft, cushy bed is his biggest weakness! Why would he write, after all, if he could nap for a few hours instead and probably dream about something really cool?!

-BATMAN REMINDER POST-IT! You'll remind him that he is Batman! How can he write if he has to put on a form-fitting bat suit with big black boots and cute little bat ears and fight crime?!

NOTE: one of these five is false

Mikerofiction

Some really short fiction (microfiction. See that pun in the title? Yeah). And some other stuff. These are fun.

Darkened Corridors

A blind eye to what might stand behind

I run as fast as I can from nothing.

Edit

I can’t help but feel I’ve done this already

One more time couldn’t hurt.

The Bright Eyes of Strangers

I’m not sure I’m cut out for this

Seems as though for everything I can do, there will always be someone miles ahead.

Shed

There were repeated warnings about this place

And if I could see anymore, I might know why.

Rising Tides

A plunger is nowhere in sight

The brisk hush of the water fills me with dread.

Layers

Everything was looking great until I realized I’d been working on the wrong layer.

Son of a bitch.

Sun

Everything is warm, friendly and bright

But as I shamble out of bed, all I can think is

That singing bird is an annoying twat.

In the Mail

“…Starbuck…?” Mirabelle said with a quivering tone, which eventually rose to a squeak. To the tired Starbuck, it sounded as though Mirabelle might have found a black mamba in her daily junk mail.

But what she held was an intricate, conspicuous envelope branded “DSA.” The people that had been in Mirabelle’s dreams for over a decade had sent her a letter.

Did it contain an acceptance certificate? A polite rejection? A simple thank-you note?

Mirabelle had a good feeling about this one. She had just saved the world, after all.

After Hours

They laid perfectly still in the rafters. All they heard was a distant pounding electrical noise. As far away as it was, it was undeniably coming closer. Looking for them.