Salient » Baz Macdonald Wed, 12 Jun 2019 04:01:45 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 The Fight Against Bigotry in Nerd Culture Sun, 27 Sep 2015 05:27:10 +0000 Hasta la vista, bigotry.

I’m proud to be a nerd!

More than that, I’m excited that there has never been a more acceptable time to make such a declaration. Over the past two decades, nerd culture has gradually moved from the fringes to the forefront of cultural signifcance. Like H.G Wells’ Red Weed, nerd culture has grown exponentially, wrapping its tendrils around every facet of pop culture. Books, TV, film and, of course the self-professed meccah of nerdomvideo games.

I have made the somewhat foolish decision to pursue a career writing about such things. Because of this, to my family and friends, I’ve become the “video game guy”. In most ways, I like being thought of this way… let me emphasis most ways.

I say this, because over the past few years my friends have been bringing to my attention cases of sexism, racism, homophobia and all-round toxic bigotry within nerd culture.

People ask me for explanations as though I speak for these people, as though simply by investing in this culture I inherently understand them. Let me be clear, I do not, and nor do 95 per cent of other people who would proudly call themseleves nerds. But this fact doesn’t change public perception. I see first hand that people are moving from seeing nerds as adorable social misfits, to hateful, disgusting basement trolls.

It is often futile to justify these bigots as simply a vocal minority. That minority has become so loud in this internet generation and their hate is so profound that it grabs headlines and offers them the spotlight that they so desire.

There have been two such cases over the past few years which have really got my hackles up.

The first incident was last year when Anita Sarkeesian, an insightful and intelligent critic, created a video series called Tropes Vs. Women in Video Games. This video series, and other minor events during the same period, sparked a fierce debate online surrounding the role of gender diversity in the gaming industry. Gamers dubbed this argument “Gamergate”. I could attempt to describe what those arguments against Sarkeesian were, but honestly they weren’t well-considered enough to justify explanation. The anti-Sarkeesians began to produce a steady stream of sexual and physical threats, causing her to be temporarily moved from her home and put under police supervision.

A similar case happened this year, caused by the most prestigious literary science fiction award, the Hugo. A group of writers lashed out against the award’s inclusion of minorities. The hate mongers attempted to steer voters towards writers they sanctioned, all of whom were white, heterosexual males. I’m happy to tell you, however, that not one of the writers sanctioned by this group won an award. In fact the awards had a larger voting pool than ever before, leading to the most diverse range of winners in the award’s history.

Thankfully, stories of social progression winning out like this are becoming more common. Fans and creators are fighting back by creating and supporting diverse content.

The chauvinists are undeniably the minority—a minority whose strength comes from their volume. It is the responsbility of the majority to drown them out. Our numbers are so much greater than theirs, all it would take is a whisper from each of us to drown them out completely. So I call on you to fill comment boards, forums and content with ideas and words of logic and insight. Don’t be afraid to disagree with the bigots—their aggresive words can’t stand up to reasoned argument.

Do this and we can return to what this culture should have always been—simply a group of people who celebrate and discuss content they are passionate about.  

Baz is a student media butterfly who flits from town to town, publication to publication, breaking hearts along the way.

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Cinderella Sun, 29 Mar 2015 04:46:46 +0000 ★★★

Cinderella is one of the most prominent fairy tales of the twentieth century. Now, almost 70 years after the release of Disney’s animated version of the story, Kenneth Branagh has released his incredibly faithful live action Cinderella. But despite how wonderfully beautiful and superbly crafted the movie was, I couldn’t help but ask myself: Who is this movie for? And are these messages relevant anymore?

The film tells the story of Cinderella exactly as we have all heard it a thousand times before, which is perhaps the film’s greatest flaw. Within the first five minutes, when I realised how loyal this retelling was going to be, I groaned internally, knowing exactly how the next ninety minutes were going to play out. But I told myself: this movie is to introduce young audiences to the story.

There are two problems with this. Firstly, the film is far more mature than you would think, often recalling nostalgia for 1950’s romance and dancing movies more than it does any form of modern children’s movie. Kids throughout the cinema squirmed through intellectually demanding scenes, as I was enthralled by the pathos. So this movie definitely doesn’t seem aimed at the kiddies. Secondly, is this story really one we want to teach young girls and boys? Branagh’s retelling is entirely faithful to the 1950 film, sexist and degrading portrayal of women included. Cinderella is still portrayed as a helpless damsel in distress. There were many moments when the evil stepmother was being an absolute arsehole, and all I wanted Cinderella to do was give her a good kicking. But of course she doesn’t, spouting incredibly vague sentiments of kindness and love instead. Children’s movies have grown more complex than these Disney sentiments. Pixar movies, for example, teach kids wonderful lessons without shoving it down their throats, simply through having narratives and characters that support good behaviours and thoughts.

Though Cinderella doesn’t remedy the sexism of past retellings, it does attempt somewhat to balance gender representation through its portrayal of the Prince. There are several scenes in which the Prince reveals his insecurities and weakness. A particularly praiseworthy scene includes the prince at his father’s deathbed, which concludes with him weeping in the fetal position under his dying father’s arms. Though this demonstration of male weakness doesn’t forgive the problematic representation of women, it feels better than nothing.

But despite the questions of why this movie was made and for whom, there is no denying that it is a beautiful piece of cinema. Colourful, vibrant and often a joy to behold, Branagh’s direction brings the world to life, giving the film a fluidity and form that often kept me engaged when the narrative didn’t. There are quite a few set pieces as well, such as a tense carriage ride, which give the film a much-needed sense of action. Personally, I was smitten by an extended ballroom dancing scene between Cinderella and the Prince, the exquisitely choreographed movements accompanied by equally superb direction. However, the little girl beside me didn’t seem to share my enjoyment: she took the moment as an opportunity to turn around and rest her face against the back of her seat.

The film is very well cast, using many lesser-known talents and only ever using big celebrities in roles they are very much suited for. Lily James as Cinderella and Richard Madden as the Prince were particularly likable, which is surprising as they both were often working with pretty over-the-top material. Cate Blanchett as the Evil Stepmother and Helena Bonham Carter as the fairy godmother were also excellent. Blanchett gave a performance which gave complexity to a historically one-dimensional character; Bonham Carter, on the other hand, was working with a script that was clearly written specifically for her, and so of course she rocked it.

Cinderella is a beautiful film, but the question needs to be asked about its relevance in the twenty-first century. In the end the real draw should be the short film that opens it: Frozen Fever. Now that is a franchise that understands how to make meaningful kids’ entertainment for this century.

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Chappie Sun, 22 Mar 2015 19:34:45 +0000 ★★★½

Chappie is the story of the first ever sentient robot created in a weapons factory in South Africa. It follows engineer Dion (Dev Patel) as he creates Chappie, the Artificial Intelligence (AI), and then attempts to raise the robot. However, his progress is impeded by his envious colleague Vincent (Hugh Jackman) and Johannesburg gangsters Ninja and Yolandi (the real-life members of rap group Die Antwoord).

Chappie is overall a great and thoughtful experience, but the problems it does have come from its struggle to create two distinctly opposite experiences within one cohesive package. The film attempts to balance the thought provoking science fiction that Neill Blomkamp has been lauded for, with the overly blockbuster action that he has been criticized for in the past.

Blomkamp has had success and failures within these two areas. His first film District 9 is perhaps one of the best science fiction films of all time, establishing him as a master of poignant and provocative cultural introspect. His follow up, Elysium, presented somewhat shallow sci-fi, but offered action that was not only superbly executed but also thought provoking.

Chappie lives in the middle ground of these two experiences. It is possible to recognise the potential the film had to present powerful examples of both action and science fiction, but these two approaches got in each other’s way, preventing either of them to live up to that potential.

That potential could have led to a masterpiece, and though Chappie certainly is not that, it is still a truly respectable science fiction experience. The film deals with high science concepts of AI, consciousness and human development in interesting and accessible ways. The trade-off to this accessibility is that the science itself is often bafflingly absurd, but this is forgivable given that the film is more interested in communicating concepts and consequences than hard science.

The development of Chappie offers the most in terms of thought provocation. We see Chappie from his first moment of existence quickly begin to learn and, more importantly, be influenced by his experiences and surroundings. The dichotomy between Dion’s emphasis on ethics and progress and Die Antwoord’s focus on survival in their criminal underworld creates a fascinating environment for Chappie’s character development. In Chappie, the experience of watching an entire childhood happen with the space of days highlights not only how impressionable developing minds are, but also that the human capacity for evil is fostered only by exposure to evil itself.

More interestingly, and perhaps more concerning, was the film’s depiction of AI. AI is widely considered by many in the scientific world to be the most likely cause of the end of the human race. As such, within entertainment it is typically treated with justified fear and horror. Chappie flies in this face of this perception, instead portraying AI as the next step in the development of the human race. Chappie himself as the first ever AI is in no way a malevolent or evil character, but rather an overwhelmingly lovable and sympathetic one.

One of the film’s biggest problems, aside from the jumbled approach, was the inconsistency of its performances. In particular Dev Patel and Hugh Jackman gave perhaps the most ineffectual performances of their careers. The saving graces were the performances from Sharlto Copley as Chappie and Yolandi and Ninja as themselves. Copley has played three distinctive characters in each of Blomkamp’s films, proving himself as a superb actor; Chappie may well be his best performance yet. The inclusion of Die Antwoord was a stroke of genius. They brought their unique and well developed characters, aesthetic and audio style to their scenes, creating a more diverse overall experience. Though Chappie isn’t the masterpiece it could have been, it is still a very respectable science fiction film with all the juicy thought fodder you could possibly desire.

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The Order: 1886 Sun, 15 Mar 2015 09:45:12 +0000 ★★½

Upon completing The Order: 1886’s roughly seven-hour campaign, I was filled with an overwhelming feeling of disappointment. The kind of deep, dark disappointment that comes from something truly promising, utterly failing to live up to its potential.

Playing The Order: 1886 is a frustrating experience for many reasons, but none more so than how clearly you can identify what the game’s failings are and how easily they could have been avoided. Worse still is being able to recognise how slightly different design choices could have resulted in a truly amazing gaming experience.

The root of The Order: 1886’s evils clearly stem from its obsession with being a cinematic experience. This preoccupation is evident in every moment of the game, from the annoying aspect ratio to the gratuitous cutscenes. To be fair, the developer Ready at Dawn truly succeeded in this attempt. The game is a cinematic feat, gloriously gorgeous at every moment, slick and clean in its visual delivery. The trouble is that The Order: 1886 is not a film, it’s a game, or so it says on the box. But having completed the campaign, it’s not easy to call it a game. More apt would be a film with brief moments of poorly-designed and alienating interaction.

I can’t fault Ready at Dawn’s intentions; the cinematic approach was clearly implemented in an attempt to create an evocative narrative experience. In some ways they succeeded. I was often provoked by the story; I could appreciate its nuance and structure as well as its cast of interesting characters and relationships, but only as a passive observer. I never felt personally involved or responsible for the narrative—rather I felt frustrated at my lack of control and alienated from what could have been a rather compelling story.

After all, the The Order: 1886 has a fascinating premise, telling the story of an alternate-history Victorian London in which technology has progressed much faster than in our reality. Victorian London itself is still recognisable in its tone and figures, but in this reality there are gigantic blimps in the sky and people wield powerful weapons harnessing chemicals and electricity in ways we have never seen before.

You follow Galahad, a member of the Knights of the Round Table, or the Order, as it has become known. As part of this centuries-old society bent on maintaining stability and quelling threats, you are tasked with hunting down and putting an end to an insurgency of rebels who are somehow linked with The Order’s greatest and oldest threat: The Lycans.

Aspects of the story are as clichéd as they sound, but overall the assimilation of a completely new alternate reality, with a well-maintained tone, make the story itself quite interesting.

Though many may find the seven-hour campaign painfully short for a AAA title, it was actually a perfect amount of time to tell the story. The irritation I had with the game’s timing was much more a matter of pacing than of length. As I have said the game uses cutscenes abhorrently, often giving players minutes without any need to even hold the control. Though this is bad, what’s even worse is giving players literally seconds of control just to walk several feet before you are pulled into yet another cutscene. This is a large part of what makes the pacing of the game so bad; you are never comfortable in any given action knowing that you are only moments away from having control once again taken away from you.

However, in the end you are not missing much—The Order: 1886’s version of gameplay often consists of nothing more than largely boring environment exploration or two-dimensional cover-based shooting. The environment exploration could have been interesting, but, as with every other moment of the game, you are given no control over discovery. You can pick up objects, but the objects lack any content to discover, rather Galahad just tells you what is interesting about it the moment you pick it up. The cover-based shooting is equally unimpressive, often feeling more like a way to pad the game out, rather than a fun experience or compelling way to progress the story.

The way to make this game an exponentially better experience is clear. Ready at Dawn should have focused on making a narrative experience for the medium they chose: video games. They should have realised how key interaction is to this medium and forgone lengthy cutscenes and visual prowess for meaningful interactivity and fun gameplay.

The Order: 1886 had every opportunity to be amazing: a world-class developer, a financially generous publisher, and some really great narrative ideas. Yet these factors were squandered on an overly cinematic experience that should have been vetoed early on in its development. But it wasn’t. And now all we have is disappointment and the bitter question rolling around our minds—what if?

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American Sniper Sun, 01 Mar 2015 07:27:34 +0000 ★★½







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28 Days: A Period Piece Sun, 01 Mar 2015 07:27:00 +0000 Discharge is a troupe of female comedians who have been bringing us socially aware, and hilarious, theatre since 2012. They’ve had some massive successes over the last couple of years with shows such as What Is This, Women’s Hour? and Benedict Cumberbatch Must Die. There latest show 28 Days: A Period Piece continues their grand tradition of hilarious and poignant comedy.




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Thre3e Sun, 01 Mar 2015 07:26:55 +0000 I left Thre3e with a huge smile on my face… because it was finally over. It is rare to find theatre this bad in Wellington, but Mirrored Faces Productions made many key mistakes, creating an experience which has left me with PTTD (Post-Traumatic Theatre Disorder).




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Kingsman: The Secret Service Sun, 22 Feb 2015 07:15:55 +0000 ★★★½

As great as the new Bond films are, it’s hard not to pine for the golden age of the spy thriller. A time when logical plot and motivation were second to a rollicking good time, and punchy one-liners and repartee reigned supreme. Matthew Vaughn’s newest action flick Kingsman: The Secret Service understands what made these classic spy thrillers great and attempts to pay homage to them by cranking these factors up to a thousand.

Following a branch of the British spy agency called Kingsman, we are treated to a My Fair Lady-type story as a veteran spy, played by the supremely badass Colin Firth, takes a young chav under his wing and turns him into a super spy. In the background, a supervillain, played by the equally awesome Samuel L. Jackson, concocts and attempts to execute a dastardly plan.

I won’t ruin the details of this adventure, but suffice it to say they do an excellent job of playing up all the best aspects of classic spy thrillers while also doing a decent, if blatant, job of illustrating what makes them ridiculous. In particular, Jackson’s villain, Richmond Valentine, is a superb blend of megalomania and eccentricity and acts as a perfect parody of the motivations and character of many of the greatest Bond villains. Nonetheless, the film suffers from some tonal imbalances, often seeming to forget what it was trying to achieve and giving in to overly soppy displays of emotion.

But these small moments of imbalance are far outweighed by the spectacular vision and execution of the film’s action sequences, which were undoubtedly some of the most innovative and flawlessly achieved I’ve seen. In some cases they were sublimely choreographed and filmed, such as a fight scene involving Colin Firth in a church, which I have no doubt will become a key example of how this kind of sequence should be done. In other cases, sequences that easily could have been upsetting or disturbing became hilarious and ingenious.

Kingsman suffers slightly from its imbalanced tone, but its overall themes and perspective combined with its superb action sequences make this one of the best action films of recent years. A must see.

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Evolve Sun, 22 Feb 2015 07:15:51 +0000 ★★★★½

It’s not often that AAA developers get the chance to take big risks. The gaming industry made an estimated US$46 billion in revenue last year, which is no doubt a ginormous amount of money, but money like that doesn’t come without equally huge financial risk. Hence it is becoming more and more rare for publishers to let developers experiment outside of popular genres and explore the realms of ‘high concept’ gameplay ideas. This makes the mere existence of Turtle Rock Studio’s newest game Evolve so startling—a game that screams “high concept” from every pixel. 2K Games allowed its developers the flexibility to try something new, to take risks. Which is why it makes me so damn happy that it paid off.

The term ‘high concept’ means an idea that can be pitched succinctly in one sentence. However, publishers in the gaming industry want not a sentence, but an acronym that sells a game to a customer. FPS, MMO, MOBA, RTS—the list goes on. In the gaming industry, ‘high concept’ means more than an acronym.

Evolve is an First Person Shooter (FPS) in which four Hunters attempt to track down and kill a Monster, who is played by a fifth player operating in a third-person action framework. No doubt much more wordy than just saying FPS—but it’s in all those extra words that the innovation and fun take place.

This original idea is brought to us by the same team responsible for the excellent Left for Dead series and is set on the planet Shear in a distant future where humans have colonised much of space. The planet Shear is a wild planet, where humans have begun to take root, but the planet is still very much untamed and occupied by dangerous and spectacular fauna and wildlife.

Playable online or offline, you get to choose who you play as. If you are a hunter you have the choice of four classes, each of which has three unlockable characters with their own unique skill sets. Assault are the damage dealers, Medics the healers, Support the defenders and Trappers can hunt down the monsters and hold them in an area. Or you can choose to be a Monster.

The game consists of matches in which Monster is pitted against Hunters. The aim for the Monster is ultimately to kill all the Hunters or complete an objective. The Hunters’ assignment is simple: kill the Monster. Turtle Rock has done a phenomenal job balancing these two experiences. I was deeply impressed by the how equal both the challenge and the reward of playing as both a Hunter and the Monster are.

Though the game consists only of these competitive matches, it is kept constantly interesting and dynamic by 12 different maps and a litany of map conditions that change from match to match including weather and dynamic events. Every game feels so different and creates an atmosphere that is truly palpable.

Aside from the pure joy of the hunt, the game keeps players engaged through an excellent progression system whereby players unlock additional characters by gaining experience. Though it may not be the most profoundly interesting or innovative way to keep players engaged, I am a sucker for this kind of system and eagerly dedicated myself to leveling up characters to unlock new ones.

Evolve is a AAA experience, but also a very innovative, original and engaging one. It’s not often these concepts go together anymore, so I suggest you check it out.

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