Video Essays on film and gaming

Geostigma

Pro Adventurer
AKA
gabe
^That was great. KK is rapidly becoming one of my favorites I need to just sit down during the weekend and check out his video library.

 

Geostigma

Pro Adventurer
AKA
gabe
Not an essay but I thought it would still be nice to post. It's a history breakdown of how Id came to be



I know the games industry recognizes what they did for gaming but I feel like sometimes fans don't know or understand how much they did. They really did change the landscape of PC gaming a ton of times and the innovations John Carmack came up with over the years really were game changers. The dude is a genius to be honest.
 

Geostigma

Pro Adventurer
AKA
gabe
I've always felt the the movie is probably as good an adaptation as it's going to get. Especially the Directors extended cut if you can sit through all of it.

But I never thought of the little things he brought up in regards to how it's also a little disrespectful to the source and now it totally can't unsee it. Especially Ozy's suit lol. Really eye opening.
 

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
Oh yeah, I really did like the adaptation and you need to have a sharp eye like that guy (seriously, check out his other videos too, and IDK how he makes the visuals but they are awesome, makes me think he doesn't do them on his own) and be able to analyse the source material and shit like that in order to pick out stuff like that. Particularly the bit about the contrast in violence levels, which kinda takes the shock out of the thing.

I should rewatch it at some point, it's a good movie. I bought the comic as a birthday present to my brother, I'm sure he digged it.
 

Geostigma

Pro Adventurer
AKA
gabe
What a great video.


By the way does anyone else feel that The Joker actually wins at the end of The Dark Knight?

The whole thing with the Ferries blowing up. Part of it is the Joker saying you can't trust Gotham/People to do the right thing and of course Batman chooses to have faith in the people.

How ever when Harvey dies by taking the blame I feel like he flip flops and decides that you can't trust the people to do the right thing and over look Harveys turn to put the Mob families in jail thus proving The Jokers point.
 

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
Stumbled on this one, too. Looks like the channel may have more good stuff, but I've yet to check it out.






X :neo:
 

Tetsujin

he/they
AKA
Tets


Relevant to my interests. Although I can actually hum pretty much all the MCU themes but I probably listen to them more often than most people. Considering how much the composers are swapped out along with the themes, the MCU barely gives any theme time to stick around for it to become memorable to the average moviegoer.
 

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X


Relevant to my interests. Although I can actually hum pretty much all the MCU themes but I probably listen to them more often than most people. Considering how much the composers are swapped out along with the themes, the MCU barely gives any theme time to stick around for it to become memorable to the average moviegoer.

Interestingly, all the examples of films that people can sing/hum have singular character or entity-specific themes or leitmotifs featuring prominently AND they're all part of a single primary series. Even DC does that with the Wonder Woman theme in BvS, but overall I'm not really sure if I fault the MCU for doing this, specifically because it's an ensemble universe the way that it is.

I think that with the way that the films are constructed and intermingle, you'd be stuck hearing the same small character-specific music over and over whenever they're the focus – especially in films like Avengers & Civil War where you'd have the characters themes dominating everything, and it feels like it'd run the risk of growing exceptionally repetitive very quickly.

While you can't really hum it, the theme used at 1:40 is one that I instantly jump to when thinking of the MCU, because of how it's used as an introductory theme.






X :neo:
 

Tetsujin

he/they
AKA
Tets
While you can't really hum it, the theme used at 1:40 is one that I instantly jump to when thinking of the MCU, because of how it's used as an introductory theme.

And they now replaced that one as well! :wacky:
 

Obsidian Fire

Ahk Morn!
AKA
The Engineer
Both of those are interesting. I think it says something that Gaurdiens of the Galaxy has the most memorable soundtrack in the MCU at this point because over half of the soundtrack is '80s music and they're all relevant in-universe because that's the era one of the main characters is from.

I think the 2nd video comes down too hard on Hans Zimmer though. Plenty of his stuff has melody and themes and are obviously his (Dream is Collapsing, Mombasa, Up is Down, The Kraken) and not generic at all. The thing with electronic music is that really exposes how well the composer knows how music works and how well they can effect people with it. And Hans Zimmer knows how to write memorable music. He is however the pioneer of electronic movie music though, so it's easy to see why he gets copied so much, but that's not really his fault...

One thing that neither video touched on is how the MCU is an adaption of comic books and the effect that could have on a soundtrack. Starting with how comic books don't have soundtracks, but how they have tones of sound effects. TBH, the things I associate with comics sound-wise are things like how many different kinds of punches, bangs, thumps, laughs, shouts, etc. can be conveyed with text effects. Same thing goes for character voices by the way. Character voices are the same way; I don't hear voices so much as I "hear" the different kinds of speech bubbles and the fonts of the text inside those bubbles. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm okay with the MCU not having a memorable soundtrack because that's not what I'm there for; I'm there to see a live-action version of a comic book and those don't have soundtracks.

Another thing is that composers have been "stealing" musical ideas from each other since time immemorial. It's kinda funny to look back at what Baroque, Classical and Romantic composers thought of each other and it turns out that they weren't all that different from composers today. It's just that it took longer for musical ideas to spread. So you'll totally see composers slamming each other over stealing ideas, writing garbage music, etc. In other words, music in general has been dealing with this for a very, very long time.

Speaking of copying musical ideas... the very first original film soundtracks were written by people who studied under Romantic composers. So a lot of the very first soundtracks are nearly indistinguishable from Romantic music (the original King Kong soundtrack is a good example). Interestingly enough, most Romantic music was all about painting a picture in listener's head with sound. So a lot of composers just ported over Romantic music ideas into the movies and found it worked very well.
 

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
Finally someone manages to explain season 19 of South Park to me, and the correlation between its ongoing themes of PC culture, gentrification, and the weird bolted-on "ads" thing which tbf I still don't really get.



TL;DR, it seems they've thought the whole season through quite far, instead of living episode to episode like they did before.
 
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