June 29th, 2010

MOVIE WEEK - THE KARATE KID

China sure is a small place in the world of the new Karate Kid.

(Although I suppose it's really no worse than having the Eiffel Tower visible from every point in Paris.)

But that gentle ribbing aside, despite my skepticism of this nepotism-driven create-a-star vehicle, I was very impressed with the new movie. There are a few rough edges that are left inexplicably hanging out and the final tournament sequence lacks the satisfying punch and pace of the original movie, but where the movie excels are in the small details: The cinematography is gorgeous. The performances from Jaden Smith, Jackie Chan, and Wen Wen Han (who played the love interest Meiying) are nuanced. 

And there are multiple scenes which are just flat-out emotionally beautiful. The sequence where Dre helps Mr. Han out of the car is one of the most powerful things I've seen in the cinema recently.

Is this better or worse than the original? Having seen the movie, I find the question almost meaningless. They told the same story, but they made it their own. It's a different film, good and bad in its own ways, standing on its own.

LYCANTHROPE WEEK - WEREWOLVES

Lithographie de la Legende rustique de George Sand, 1858, Paris

Figthing with HTML code has chewed up some of the time I was planning to spend on lycanthropic templates, so I'm a day behind on my lycanthropes, but we'll get to all of them before we're done. Today we're looking at the grand-daddy of them all: Werewolves.

As a reminder, these templates are designed to streamline and simplify the process of creating lycanthropes for 3.5:

(1) Create a stat block for the base creature.

(2) Apply the lycanthrope template in order to create the stat block for the humanoid form.

(3) Apply the hybrid template to the humanoid form in order to create the stat block for the hybrid form.

(4) Apply the animal form template to the humanoid form in order to create the stat block for the animal form.

WEREWOLF TEMPLATES

THE SPIDER WEIRD OF HOLLOW'S DEEP

Werewolves are a dime a dozen, so I wanted to do something truly unusual to showcase the templates. In doing so I've technically broken the rules by applying a lycanthropic template to a magical beast. But if you don't tell anybody, I won't.

The Spider Weird is a horrific creature which haunts the dark woods around the village of Hollow's Deep. It usually leaves the villagers alone, preferring to hunt the game animals of the forest. But upon occasion -- when the villagers rile its anger or perhaps when the blood moon rises -- the Spider Weird will inflict a reign of terror.

The Spider Weird is an aranea which was infected with lycanthropy while in its spider-humanoid form. The mixture of its natural shapechanging abilities and the lycanthropic curse allow it to assume four shapes: A monstrous spider, a black-eyed elf, a spider-wolf hybrid, and a wolf.

In order to create the stat blocks for these forms, I:

(1) Prepped stat blocks of a normal aranea's monstrous spider and humanoid forms. (I added armor and weapons to the latter.)

(2) To create the Spider Weird's monstrous spider form, I applied the base werewolf template to the aranea's monstrous spider stat block.

(3) To create the Spider Weird's elf form, I applied the base werewolf template to the aranea's humanoid stat block.

(4) To create the Spider Weird's spider-wolf hybrid form, I applied the werewolf hybrid template to the Spider Weird's monstrous spider form and then added the weapons and armor from its humanoid stat block.

(5) Finally, to create the Spider Weird's wolf form I applied the werewolf animal form template to the Spider Weird's monstrous spider stat block.

Without these werewolf templates I honestly would have never even considered trying to create the Spider Weird. Way too complicated. With the templates it took about 30 minutes to put the four stat blocks together.

This material is covered by the Open Gaming License.

It's very important, when hiring a screenwriter, to make sure that they aren't suffering from a terminal case of ADHD.

That's a paraphrase, but it's straight from the film. And while one could argue whether or not Perseus is right, it's certainly an interesting premise to build a film around.

Unfortunately, the screenwriter forgot the film he was writing. Because as soon as all of Perseus' comrades have died, Perseus decides to start accepting help from the gods. Apparently Perseus is okay with sacrificing other people for his ideals, but if he has to make the sacrifice himself? Forget it.

And it would be one thing if Perseus was forced to make the hard and deliberate choice to abandon his conviction. Or, in fact, if the film had shown him making any kind of choice whatsoever. But that's not what happens: Instead he just kind of shrugs his shoulders and changes his tune. Heck, even that's an exageration: He, along with the film, simply forgets that there was ever any sort of "fight the gods" plot happening.

Then, just to make things a little more half-assed, at the end of the film Zeus revives Perseus' girlfriend so that they can live happily ever after. All of the other poor schmucks who died because Perseus was a dick? Perseus doesn't care.

Because Perseus is a dick.

The rest of the script is just kind of a fractal variation on this core failure of logic and character arc. On the plus side, the special effects are pretty cool.

JUNE 2010: 

PART 1 - PART 2 - PART 3 - PART 4

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