Some reasons why 'Quantum Break' was so bad.

A couple of days ago, me and my friends managed to play through Quantum Break's story mode. After spending four evenings playing this much anticipated game about time travel gone bad, we managed to reach the finish line.

As a whole, we agreed that the game unfortunately wasn't that well made. The only really good thing about it was that graphics wise the game looked pretty solid and that the combat system was somewhat entertaining too.

In any case, in order to keep things simple, I'll try to list seven major reasons why Quantum Break's story didn't work at all. These are the things why the game failed and why most of the time its story felt so disappointing.

1) There's not much of a reason for the protagonist to exist.

Let's not forget the old adage about how plot is character and character is plot. This means that the better written and the more compelling your protagonist is, the better the story as a whole is going to be too.

Unfortunately, when the game started, it didn't take long before we noticed that a) our protagonist's presense in the beginning wasn't really needed and b) him instantly agreeing to participate in the experiment made no sense whatsoever.

Also, when the 'catalyst' phase happened in the story, the villain in the game had no compelling reason to invite our Jack Joyce. He could have found someone more trustworthy than a person that he had barely met before.

2) Our main character seems dumb and doesn't know what to do.

As the game progresses, it becomes apparent - although not stated - that our main character has no clue about science or about time travel. Nothing in the game suggests that he knows what the villain and his scientist brother were up to.
 
This means that he has no idea what to do or what his goals should be. All the actual 'decisions' in the game are made by other characters (some of them you get to play very briefly) who supposedly know what they're talking about.

So since our main character can't do anything intellectual in the game, he more or less resorts to shooting and killing the bad guys. This makes him a fairly uninteresting and bland character that you can't really root for.

3) Exposition in the game is simply horrible.

Easily the biggest problem with the game is how badly the parts where you get to play the game and how the live action sequences mesh together. This 'ambitious' aspect of the game doesn't work at all and warrants a lot of criticism.

The single worst moment in the game is when the first live action scene kicks in and we're introduced to a character that we haven't even seen in the actual game. This is such an awful way to tell a story that it needs to be seen in order to be believed.

When it comes to producing a game like this, you are allowed to take chances, but you also have to respect the basics of storytelling. There are some axiomatic rules about what you can and can't do that simply cannot be ignored. 
 

4) Those 20+ minute live action scenes are pointless.

I have no idea who's idea it was that we would follow the private lives of some tertiary characters in the story. This seems such an awful idea that you might even think that someone was sabotaging the game on purpose.

In these live action scenes we keep following (among other things) the private life of one of the villain's bodyguards. For some reason we're supposed to be interested in following this guy who happens to have a pregnant wife.

In my estimation, only like 10% of these videos are about the actual main characters & the villain. The rest of the videos are about these 'red shirts' who don't really matter and who go through meaningless events in the story.

5) The game has all kinds of continuity problems. 

Unfortunately, there's not that much immersion in the game or moments that keep you excited and entertained. Since the objective of the main character is fairly obscure throughout the game, it's hard to give a damn about the story.

I mean, there are certain moments when things are almost interesting and you're almost entertained. The sequence on the broken bridge was at least somewhat interesting and there was a fight scene about two thirds in that didn't wear me down.

However, both these exciting moments are shortlived and don't last long. That abrupt transition from the bridge to the homebase is extremely awkward and that cool fight that I mentioned ends with an awful cutaway scene.
  
6) The story already happened - so there's no reason to play.

That's right, for some reason every single thing that you experience in the game has already happened. Our protagonist is only retelling his story, which becomes clear when he talks to some woman inside some random interrogation room.

I have no clue what the writers were thinking when they decided to throw that curveball at us. The story in no way benefited from this pointless revelation and made playing the game even less interesting as a whole.

To be clear, this 'it already happened' can be okay as long as only certain parts of the game have already taken place. Uncharted for example did a pretty good job with it when Nathan Drake's story started with that train accident in Uncharted 2.

7) The ending, not surprisingly, doesn't make sense.

Finally, after finishing the game, one big problem we had with the ending was that one of the villains who already died apparently wasn't dead after all. He hadn't died even though he was shot in the head and clearly was a goner.

Yet, what was even more troubling about the finale was how our 'smart' protagonist wanted to go back in time again. He wanted to go back, because - surprise, surprise - he wanted to save one of the female characters that we briefly met in the game.

Considering that 'Quantum Break' was all about how we shouldn't mess with time travel technology, and how we should be aware of the risks that would be involved, that was probably the worst way to end the game. 

Comedies shouldn't last more than 90 minutes.

Lately I've managed to watch a lot of comedies that in most cases have managed to entertain me and have managed to put me on a good mood. Almost every film that I have watched has been - if not great - at least okay qualitywise.

When it comes to these films, many of the movies that I have watched were comedies. Hotel Transylvania, Hotel Transylvania 2, Shaun The Sheep and The Nice Guys were mostly fairly solid films that I would recommend for others to see.

In any case, when it comes to me liking these movies, I liked most of them because they kept my attention and weren't too long as films. In most cases I didn't get too bored and didn't start to think about other things outside these movies.

When I thought about this a little bit more, I noticed that the shorter the comedies were, the more positive thoughts I had about them afterwards. It made a lot of difference whether the film was a 90 minute movie, or a 2 hour movie.

For example, Shaun The Sheep's running time without closing credits was only a bit over 75 minutes. Compared to some quality dramas like 'Bridge of Spies' (running time 2h 15 min), the movie about sheep was only half of that.

Yet, its short running time didn't hurt the movie at all, because everything in the film was so well thought out and felt perfectly natural. I felt that I got everything that I could have wanted from this wonderful little film.

Hotel Transylvania animations didn't have that lengthy running times either. Since both of these Sony's animations were close to 80 minute movies without end credits, they were only a bit longer than Shaun The Sheep.

When it comes to the quality of these vampire animations, I managed to like both films quite a bit. I liked them, even though film critics (45% and 54% respectively at rottentomatoes) hadn't liked these movies that much.

That is not to say that Hotel Transylvania 1 or 2 were masterpieces as animations, but they were good enough to entertain me. They had a premise that was plausible enough and had scenes, story beats and funny moments that made me happy.

On the other hand, when it comes to a comedy film that is clearly at least 20-30 minutes too long, is there a better example than Shane Black's movie 'The Nice Guys', that was recently released on dvd & blu-ray. 

When it comes to the movie as a whole, there are a lot of good things that you can say about the film. In theory, 'The Nice Guys' has all the elements to be a movie that you could even compare to some of the classics.

Yet, once the film had most of the things wrapped up and reached its climax at the 90 minute mark, it didn't end. It added another 20+ minute final act to its story, even though there was no real reason to do that.

At least in my view, you need to have exceptionally good reasons to keep your comedy going once you go past that 90 minute mark. There has to be something that absolutely has to be seen, or else you need to wrap things up quickly.

Considering that comedies are usually faster paced than dramas, have quicker cuts and use all kinds of storytelling tricks to keep us entertained, every single minute and moment counts a little bit more than in dramas.

Let's not forget that after a certain point, the longer the movie keeps going, the less excited and the less happy it makes us. Our attention spans get shorter and we care less about what is happening on screen.

In the case of 'The Nice Guys', since the last act didn't bring anything new to table, it made the film worse. Every single extra minute that kept the movie from ending made me more confused and made me like the film less.

In that sense, if only 'The Nice Guys' would have ended sooner like Hotel Transylvanias and Shaun The Sheep did. In that case, not only would it have been a shorter movie, but it would have been a better movie too.

'The Good Place' is not a good show to watch.

Now that the new tv season has started, half a dozen or so new comedy shows have premiered. These are the shows that have been rated highly by the test audiences and have been approved by the network executives. 

Many of these shows get a massive push in the media and get hyped through the roof. They get praise from the critics, regardless of whether they are any good or whether they have any potential to become successful. 

In any case, one of these new 'awesome' shows happens to be NBC's 'The Good Place', that premiered in September. It has received fairly enthusiastic reviews across the board, so you might think that this series would be the real deal. 

Yet, as is the case with almost every new series, this show that stars Kristen Bell and Ted Danson, is no exception to the rule. 'The Good Place', unfortunately, isn't any good and doesn't manage to entertain you in any meaningful way. 

The biggest problem with this single camera comedy is that its premise doesn't make sense. The show being about Bell's character going to heaven doesn't have universal appeal and (literally) doesn't have a connection to real life.

Pretty much none of the stuff that happened in the pilot made sense or felt natural. I can't be alone in thinking that the writers and the producers of the show had no clue what they were supposed to do with their characters.

For example in the pilot, Bell's character's most frequent reaction to going to 'heaven' is a simple 'cool'. She thinks that it's 'cool' that she's there now, that it's 'cool' that she's one of the chosen ones and that it's 'cool' that she has a soulmate there.

The fact that she doesn't have problems and doesn't have issues with what's going on is not a good thing at all. That she doesn't have obstacles or goals to deal with means that the show doesn't have organic story ideas that it could build on.

Naturally, these problems and logical inconsistencies were not the only things about the pilot that didn't work. The pilot also happened to have many other problems with storytelling and with things that didn't make sense.

For instance, the 'revelation' in the middle of the pilot that Bell's main character wasn't actually a good person felt extremely artificial and unnecessary. It absolutely wasn't needed in any way and made the pilot feel even more constrained.

I also didn't like how her supposed 'soulmate' didn't speak english. I found it to be unnecessarily convoluted when the token black character simply 'revealed' that his french got automatically translated to english instead.

Yet, the single worst moment in the pilot was when Ted Danson's character out of nowhere decided to kick a dog. This kind of animal cruelty had no reason to be in the script and made me feel even more angry towards the writers of the show.

In the end, even if one was willing to overlook all these problems with the show, let's not forget that 'The Good Place' was supposed to be a comedy. It was supposed to be a series that made you laugh and made you feel better about yourself.

Unfortunately though, there's almost nothing good about the show's pilot. It's not well written, interesting or funny and the pilot doesn't have anything in it that would make you care about the characters and what happens to them.

In that sense, since the show doesn't really know what it's supposed to be about and since it doesn't make you laugh, 'The Good Place' as a series is probably not going to make it and is likely going to get cancelled fairly soon.

South Park is the only relevant comedy on tv.

For some reason I hadn't been that excited about watching South Park's return to tv this season. I hadn't paid much attention to the show lately and had managed to see its new episodes only after I had first watched some other comedy shows.

Yet, after watching these new episodes that have aired, I'm really happy that I managed to see them. Almost certainly the best thing about this television season has been South Park's return to our tv screens.

In my view, there are certain reasons why the show is still the best comedy series out there. Even though the show has entered its 20th season already, it doesn't seem like it has lost its relevance as a television series.

At least in my opinion, the best thing about the new season is that the series has managed to be actual. The fact that the season has been about the ongoing presidential election has made the show so much more interesting to watch.

In any case, the season premiere, not that surprisingly, was about Colin Kaepernick (pictured above) and his silent protest during the national anthem. The town didn't seem to get enough of this totally overblown spectacle.

In the episode, I couldn't help but to like when the audience was only interested in the reactions of the players and left when the national anthem was finished. I loved how the sportscasters reacted to the national anthem as if it was an ongoing game.

I also liked how the episode was about rebooting the national anthem and how Mr. Garrison as Donald Trump was trying his best to lose the presidental election. He was convinced that he was incompetent and that he wasn't up to the job at all. 

The second episode switched to another storyline, where Cartman was suspected of being a world class troll who had made people quit social media. Cartman was allegedly the person who added photoshopped dick pics to get a reaction from social media users.

In this storyline, Stan and Kyle had had enough and thought that they should something about the phenomenom. They decided that together they would 'kill' Cartman and his trolling by destroying his laptop and his smart phone.

The only problem was that it wasn't actually Cartman who was behind the alias 'Skunkhunter42'. This mistake of the kids not finding out who the real culprit was made the situation worse and things started to get out of control.

In the third episode, we continued with this storyline and also got back to the presidential election. Here Mr. Garrison again tried his very best to lose the election, although nothing that he did was enough to turn the voters off.

When it came to the troll storyline, the actual troll happened to be Kyle's dad, who got himself in real trouble. One of his famous victims decided to end her life, which drove Gerald into panick mode and deep despair.

Not only did his trolling have grave consequences, some hackers also were able to track him down. This happened, even though he had tried his best to cover his tracks so that no one would figure out his real identity.

Aside from dealing with these storylines, the third episode also dealt with an idea that was briefly brought up in the first episode. Randy's storyline was about why most elections seem to be so close no matter what happens during the election season.

This 'memberberry' storyline, just like the Gerald the troll storyline is still ongoing and hasn't been resolved. We have to wait until we'll find out more about where this storyline is going and whether it's going to be finished soon.

All in all, based on these three episodes, I've been pleasantly surprised how well written the series has been this season. All these episodes in my opinion have been based on pretty solid ideas and have been entertaining.

As a whole, these episodes have been surprisingly thoughtful and meaningful. Especially those parts that dealt with social media and how we are obsessed with it are relevant and should give us some food for thought.

In the end, we can only hope that the show manages to keep its quality high in the upcoming episodes too. We can only hope that the writers keep up the good work, because at the moment, South Park is the only relevant comedy on tv.

The new Macgyver series just isn't good.

Earlier this year I managed to write about the upcoming new Macgyver series that would start airing this fall. I wrote about how I didn't like the trailer of the new series and that almost everything about it felt wrong.  

Simply said, I didn't like how the new series looked and how the characters 'acted' in the trailer. I didn't get good vibes from it and felt that there was no chance that the relaunch would turn into a success that the fans of the original would appreciate.

In any case, now that the new series has finally aired, what can be said about this relaunched series? Is the new Macgyver television show worth watching or did turn out be as bad as it looked like in the trailer?

Based on the first episode that has aired, the reimagined Macgyver series unfortunately wasn't that good. At least in my opinion, there's very little chance that this relaunch of a series is going to last very long.

The biggest problem with the show is that in almost every way, it manages to be about something else that the original series was about. It manages to forget almost all the good things that made us care about the original Macgyver.

For example, unlike Richard Dean Anderson's Macgyver, Lucas Till's Mac acts like an overconfident douche on the show. He doesn't seem like he's a down to earth person or someone that you would like to know in real life.

Unlike in the original Macgyver series, you don't really feel for any of the characters on the show. Even supporting characters like 'Jack Dalton' and 'Patricia Thornton' seem to be either unlikable or just way too bland and two dimensional.

 

When it comes to this new show's plotlines, these new storylines don't seem to be even remotely believable or plausible to me. There's no way that on the original show Mac would have broken into a casino to steal a biological weapon from some bad guys.

In the original show with Richard Dean Anderson, pretty much all the plotlines managed to be fairly plausible and based on real life. To me it felt like most of those storylines could have happened in our real world too. 

The fact that the new show is a disappointment unfortunately also extends to those 'macgyverisms' too. Those improvised gadgets in the original show were one of the biggest reasons that people looked up to Mac and to the show.

I mean, who can forget how the original character managed to come up with quick solutions to different kinds of problems? You couldn't help but to have respect for his ability to get out of trouble and to get out of harm's way.

On the other hand, when it comes to this new Macgyver getting out of trouble, you can't help but to facepalm. Stopping bullets with an ordinary kitchen tray just isn't possible, no matter how much you're willing to suspend your disbelief.

In any case, when it comes to judging the series as a whole based on the first episode, things don't look good at all. The new Macgyver seems to be too dumb, too violent, too noisy, badly acted, and badly written too.

Especially when you consider that the producers of the show had the chance to completely rewrite and retool the series after the first pilot of the show had failed, you have to wonder what on earth they were thinking here.

All in all, as a massive fan of the original Macgyver, I can't help but to feel let down by the new series. This could have been a good show, but since the producers didn't follow the footsteps of the old Macgyver, this new series is a big disappointment.

What to think of the U.S. presidential election?

Over the course of the last six months or so, I've spent a lot of time following the presidential election in the United States. Pretty much every day I've paid attention to what's going on and who's the favorite to win the election.

Like so many others, I started with the democratic presidential primary, where Bernie Sanders was running against Hillary Clinton. I hoped that Bernie would end up being the democratic nominee, since I did not trust Hillary at all.

Even though I'm a liberal, I also paid attention to the republican presidential primary, where Donald Trump was competing against a dozen republican candidates. I wanted to see who was the least bad of those candidates on the republican side.

As it happened, Bernie Sanders unfortunately did not prevail against Clinton's establishment machine. He lost, whereas Donald Trump managed to win over the rest over the field, that included crazies like Ted 'nukem all' Cruz.  

In any case, now that we're only six weeks away from the general election and there are only two 'major' candidates left, what should you do as a voter? Should you be voting for Trump, Hillary, or perhaps for someone else?

As a progressive Scandinavian, who has paid a lot of attention to what's going on this election cycle, I can say with relative high confidence, that of all the candidates, I would not vote for Hillary Clinton - under any circumstance.

I would not vote for her, because in my view, she's an unindicted criminal, who through her 'extreme carelessness' and 'negligence' during her tenure as a secretary of state, repeatedly violated the espionage act.

Working as secretary of state from 2009 until 2013, she mishandled classified information using her private server. She had hundreds of emails on her server containing top secret information and even information above that classification.

The fact that she wasn't and hasn't been prosecuted for these crimes just goes to show how well the Clintons are connected in the U.S. Any other person would already be either fired or in jail for her actions, as the FBI director James Comey himself stated.

This, of course is not the only reason why I wouldn't vote for her this election season. Besides of repeatedly violating the espionage act, there are multiple other crucial reasons why one shouldn't vote for her.

For instance, over the decades it has become obvious that she's a fraud as a person who only cares about herself. She doesn't have a moral compass and only will back things like gay marriage when it's politically expedient to do so.

When it comes to the economy, she took hundreds of millions in bribes from special interests and Wall Street. No wonder she's now diametrically opposed to regulating the big banks or having a single payer health care system in the U.S.

When it comes to military interventions, Hillary has been for every war there is and she's backed by all the prominent neoconservatives. There's very little doubt that 'madame secretary' would be a warmonger in the oval office too.

Even when it comes to simple things like telling truth about mundane things, she can't help but to make up stuff. Her preposterous claim of having been under sniper fire in Bosnia makes her a pathological liar that you cannot trust.

Also, let's not forget what happened during the democratic primaries earlier this year. Clinton and the disgraced former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Shultz rigged the democratic primary, so that Bernie Sanders wouldn't stand a chance against her.

The DNC didn't stay neutral and instead kept pushing smears and false narratives about Bernie in the media. They even made sure that the televised debates were held when as few people as possible would be able to watch them.

So knowing this all, should it really surprise anyone that independents and people on the left are having problems supporting Hillary? It seems that only those inside the beltway bubble can't seem to understand that she's in trouble.

All in all, I'm obviously not saying that voting for Trump is an easy decision and that you should definitely vote for him. I'm not saying that he's even a remotely good candidate or that he would be able to 'make America great again'.

At the same time, Hillary Clinton is such a failure as a candidate and as a person, that even though this is an important presidential election, as a progressive, I just don't see how I would be able to vote for her.

At least in my view, since she hasn't reached out to liberals and independents this season and since she hasn't managed to explain why she's even running, she doesn't deserve to become the next president of the United States.

The difference between a good and a bad idea.

One of the things that I started thinking when I got my script idea is how important and precious good ideas and good premises are. You can't really overstate how important it is to come up with an idea that has potential to become a good screenplay.

If your premise isn't strong or clear enough, there's almost no chance that you're screenplay is going to be any good. In that case you're almost certainly just going to waste your time and your energy writing that script.

In order to give you a good example on a great movie idea and a pretty awful premise, let's look at two films that are 'roughly' the same. Both these films are about reality tv and about following an every-man protagonist around the clock. 

The first movie in question is Peter Weir's 'Truman Show' that stars Jim Carrey in it. This is a movie that was not only a pretty big success financially, but it also managed to get universal praise from the critics.

In any case, this is a film about a character called Truman Burbank, who lives a seemingly ordinary life in a peaceful city called Sea Haven. Everything in Truman's life seems so perfect and things always tend to work out for him. 

The only thing that he doesn't know about his 'perfect' life is that everything about it is fake. Truman is literally living inside a bubble where cameras are tracking his every move so that audiences at home could follow his every day life.

He simply doesn't know that he's the star of a reality television show and that nothing about his life is real. He doesn't know that he's being exploited mercilessly and that nothing important about his life is private.

When it comes to this film as a whole, the biggest reason that it works so well is because of its 'hook'. The premise of Truman not knowing what's going on and being an unsuspecting celebrity keeps us in the audience involved.

As an audience member, you can't wait for him to figure out that he's part of a huge reality show. You can't help but to root for him when he finally decides to escape from his prison and wants to start a life on his own.

The movie hits all the right notes when it critizices our current celebrity & consumerism culture. 'Truman Show' not only manages to be both funny and dramatic, but it also is a film that has a lot of say about our society in general. 

The second film in this reality genre is Ron Howard's EDtv. This was a movie that not only did not manage to garner universal praise from the critics, but it was also a movie that failed rather spectacularly at the box office.

In this case, our main protagonist is an every-man called Eddie Pekurny, who is played by Matthew McConaughey. Eddie works as a video store clerk and lives a fairly normal and uneventful life that isn't particularly interesting.

Unlike in Truman Show, Eddie's life changes when he knowingly invites cameras to follow his life 24/7.  He becomes a reality tv star because he thinks that it won't be that big of a deal and that it could even be a cool experience.

Not surprisingly, the biggest reason that the movie doesn't work is because the film isn't about anything meaningful. There's no actual 'hook' in the movie that would keep the audience interested in what is going on.

There's no defining idea or premise in EDtv that would help create momentum for the film. There's no real drama, no genuine comedy or actual entertainment in this movie that would keep us on the edge of our seats. 

The film just keeps dragging itself to the finish line and seems to almost glorify reality television. The fact that it doesn't take a stand against this kind of reality television is what should bother anyone who cares about our society. 

In the end, when it comes to EDtv, the writers and the producers of it probably thought that it wouldn't matter that much whether they would pay enough attention to the premise and to the idea of their movie.

They falsely thought that an average (bad) premise and an average (bad) idea could still be turned into a quality screenplay and into a quality movie. They thought that they would come out smelling like roses no matter what they did.

Unfortunately for them, of these two films, Truman Show is the one that turned out to be a wonderful movie. EDtv, on the other hand, is so disappointing and has so little to say about anything, that you have to wonder why it was made in the first place.