Making Sense Of My Feelings For Kingdom Hearts 2

"My summer vacation... Is over..."

Those words have kind of stuck with me over the years. Kingdom Hearts 2 was the first game in the series I played.  I saw it on the shelf at a game store and I had some notion that sequels were usually better than their predecessors so I decided to try the second one first.

I didn't come in with any preconceived notions of what Kingdom Hearts 2 was supposed to be. To me, the opening prequel was just something I had to figure out. Piece it together.

And I think, experiencing Roxas's summer the way he did, with no memory of who he was before, is what made it strike such a chord with me. If I played Chain Of Memories or 358/2 days before playing Kingdom Hearts 2 I might have felt a lot different.

The bittersweet emotion, feeling the weight of what Roxas sacrificed, a life he had on borrowed time, with friends who were fabrications in a town that didn't really exist, watching it all come to an end, just so someone else's adventure could start.

It hit me hard.

I think that's really the defining moment for Kingdom Hearts 2. I know a lot of people who remember the poignancy of this moment and I'd probably say that this is the best-written part of the entire King Hearts franchise.

And the rest we kind of blocked out.

I've played Kingdom Hearts 2 a lot over the years but I hadn't completed it again since I was a kid. And a part of me knows exactly why;

This game is filled with so much bullshit.

I probably don't need to tell you about the convoluted storylines or the poor pace or the weird XP requirements for abilities that shouldn't be optional, but here we are. It's tough really describing the cognitive dissonance of this experience.

Powerful moments along with beautiful scores and moments of gameplay that genuinely teeters on being some of the best not only of its generation but of the next two generations of consoles. Juxtaposed with clunky controls and strange upgrade trees and filler content so sub-par that you'll be begging for a reprieve from the asinine story.

How do you make sense of those feelings?

Well, first you remember just how fun and sweet it is hanging out with Winnie The Pooh as he gets his tubby head stuck in honey jars and the genuine sadness of Pooh not remembering Piglet and you remind yourself that despite it all, Kingdom Hearts has some good moments, dammit.

Then you take a deep breath, grit your teeth and play through Atlantica again.

Then when it's all said and done, you sit back and think about it for a few days, really reflecting on the experience.

Then you decide to play something better until you feel enough nostalgia to go back again.

I'm not going to lie and say I like Kingdom Hearts for a lot of respectable reasons. Divorced from my childhood hours in Twilight Town there really are a lot of good parts but I think we've moved on as people, moved on as gamers. So much of the experience is archaic now and despite two re-releases on two separate HD collections there are still a lot of problems KH2 hasn't addressed over the years that future games have. When I picked up Birth By Sleep and you could just dodge roll, from the start, and this PSP game had a better sense of flow in its first five minutes than the big numbered entry of the franchise has in its first 8 hours, yeah, it's hard not to feel the nostalgia goggles crack.

I still think it's at least worth playing through once in your life.

After all is said and done it's still a game I have a lot of fun with and first impressions are everything. A lot of people are going to come away with this with a sense of awe their first time around.

And after that, you too can hate Kingdom Hearts the way only a Kingdom Hearts fan can.

Also KH1 is better than KH2 chaaaaaange my miiiiiiiiind.

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Goblin Slayer and Sexual Violence

Something I've been thinking about a lot recently is how problematic works can sometimes deny themselves the audience that'd love them most.

Anyway, so another pass through of Goblin Slayer and the gratuitous depictions of sexual assault had me wonder if there isn't value in releasing "censored" versions which, even if they have to be sought out, might make a work filled with trauma triggers more accessible to the people who might find the stuff under all the sexual violence really engaging.

I've heard some argue that Goblin Slayer's violence is necessary and crucial to the plot, and we shouldn't meddle with the author's original vision too much and I think there's room for a middle ground. While I personally would prefer that cishet men take a break from using gratuitous rape as a plot device until they can learn not to carelessly shove it in whenever the drama gets a bit dry, why can there not also exist two versions of this one thing where one simply blacks out the harder to read parts?

I really like Goblin Slayer. I like the pure unbridled fun of watching a stoic, dedicated, uptight warrior who can't ever see anything but his craft learn to lighten up and let in friends. There are all these cute moments like where Orcbolg introduces a friend to cheese, or when Orcbolg gets asked out on a date and while he shows up in full armour, because of what if a goblin attacks, he isn't immediately turned into a yammering idiot at the mere thought of a woman wanting to spend time with him. To everyone's surprise, he graciously accepts because he's trying his best to invite in the parts of life that aren't specifically his job. And despite having the equivalent of a plumbing job, there comes a moment where Orcbolg asks his fellow adventurers for help in beating back a wave of goblins, and while initially, it seems no one wants to do it because there's no prestige or monetary gain, because Orcbolg has let so many people into his life, his new friends help him rally a massive group of eager people.

There's so much to love in this story, so much genuine heart that it kills me that the first thing you'll see in the pages of this swan song to the power of letting people in is some of the most excessive depictions of sexual violence.

Perhaps the barrier to entry could be lowered, is all.

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Review: The Last Jedi

Rounding it off, here's my thoughts on The Last Jedi;

It's bloated, it tries something new but I ultimately find it has too many rough edges for me to really enjoy it.

The Last Jedi has some genuinely stellar setpieces going for it, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Luke this go around. Mark Hamill is older and much more matured as an actor so you can really tell how much better he's become at his deliveries since Return Of The Jedi. Carrie is great and I really found myself wishing for more of Leia and Holdo on screen, it just seems like The Last Jedi needed a little more time in the oven.

It's one of those scripts where all the conflict comes from people who don't talk to each other. I'm one of maybe three people who think the Kantobite scenes are the most necessary to the film but the third act is where The Last Jedi really grinds its own gears, where you can feel the script going through the motions.

It's a divisive film to be sure and while I wish I had more to say on it, the fact is, I think I enjoyed it less than any of the prequels. Rather than having some huge flaw, the problems with The Last Jedi are mundane, and as a result its just a less memorable film. Flawed in execution but in not a lot of big and obvious ways.

That said, I still respect the film for what it tried to do and there are still large parts of it that I did enjoy. I do think there's a way to cut it to get the tight pacing of the last film in there as well while also keeping the more subversive elements.

Guess sometimes, less really is just more.

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Review: The Force Awakens

I love this movie.

I'd forgotten what a shot of adrenaline The Force Awakens was. Finn's character, his bromance with Poe, Adam Driver's ironically wonderful performance of Kylo Ren...

The Force Awakens might just be my favorite Star Wars film.

I actually struggle to find things to say about it, other than to sing its praises. The score is great, the writing is great, the effects are great, the characters are great, the sets are great, the action scenes are great... The Force Awakens is, to me, the platonic ideal of what a Star Wars film should be.

What's really left is to talk about all the ways it improves on things. Practical and digital effects are blended together much better here, Han Solo's characterization is much better, and inf fact he's so much more likable that the death blow really does feel like a character cut down before his time.

It's not perfect. I mean, the flaws are so petty and small in comparison to how much about this film that works that it's hard to even ask what flaws. Maz Katana is kind of a handwave on Luke's lightsaber, there's at least one character at the beginning of the film played by a notable actor who seems like he'll be important only to die almost immediately, there's a will they won't they romantic subtext to Finn and Rey's relationship that's not going anywhere any time soon but... It's just so hard to care. The Force Awakens is funny and clever and interesting and the production value is sky-high. It feels like such an effortless slam dunk that you kind of forget all the crap that it's plastering over from sequel creep.

I love this movie.

I'd go as far as to say that if you only ever watch one Star Wars film, this one should be it.

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Review: Revenge Of The Sith

Sad to end the prequel trilogy on this note but Revenge Of The Sith was frankly the least enjoyable film I watched of the bunch.

Unlike other films, which pleasantly surprised me with their level of quality, Revenge Of The Sith simply had beats I was looking forward to and a lot of dead air in between.

I think part of it is that even the cast was feeling fatigued at this point. Coming out in 2005 with Phantom Menace premiering in '99, I'd wager at least six years of their lives were dedicated to films they had less and less investment in. Natalie Portman seems like she's phoning in all but one scene and I can't blame her because a previously kick-ass Padme is turned into kind of a background damsel in this film.

The core of the film, Obi-Wan and Anakin's fallout, is perhaps the strongest part and the scenes on Mustafar are genuinely where the film hits its strides but it was surprising how tempted I was to just... Skip to the good bit. From Anakin's actual turn to that climactic conversation requires almost an hour of long investigation and betrayal and logistics that I'd actually yelled out "Go cut that man's legs off already!" at my screen.

And it is a lengthy experience, a 2-hour 20-minute film which feels like 3. It's not the longest Star Wars film, The Last Jedi is 2 hours and 32 minutes and Attack of the Clones is actually a longer film at 2 hours 22 minutes but this is the one which I felt could be tightened up the most. Personally, I think below 130 minutes is the best length for a Star Wars film but your mileage may vary.

It's not unwatchable but if anything, I'd say skim the progress bar on this one. It's kind of predictable and it really feels like it's just going through the motions, so rather than sit through minutes of fluff, it's best to be your own director here.

And that concludes it. Six films, two trilogies, and it's not like I came out with some grand revelation. I actually don't really feel more or less love for the series at the end, and while there were some pleasant surprises the most poignant thing I can say about Star Wars is that it consistently plays out like commercial genre fiction, and for what it is... That's fine. I think we keep trying to attach this grand narrative to Star Wars when in truth, it probably has more in common with contemporaries than people would like to admit. Influence might make for a legacy and intrigue but when you get down to brass tacks, what you're left with is a set of above-average fantasy films that use the aesthetics of science fiction to tell a straight-up heroes tale.

And I think that because of that, we shouldn't take it too seriously.

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Review: Attack Of The Clones

Well. Shit.

I think I really liked this one.

I can't really say what it was about Attack Of The Clones that I enjoyed more than... Well, the rest of the films but part of me thinks it's just because of how much this film crams in. The over-the-top sequence on Geonosis, every scene Dooku is in, the special effects, Jango Fett, it's the first time we get to see Yoda fight...

There is just so much to like.

You know, if I think about it, I can't really say I remember a lot of discourse about Attack Of The Clones. It's pretty influential, it decided the end of a trilogy and spawned two separate Clone Wars cartoons so... It's just a little weird that it's not more beloved.

I've heard some critics call it an overcorrection from The Phantom Menace which I can confidently say might be for the best. It has its problems, it's overly long, Anakin and Padme have as much chemistry as tap water, Dooku shows up 75% into the film and that's a supreme waste of Sir Christopher Lee, Hayden Christensen tries and fails to deliver anything close to a film carrying performance, but considering the god-awful lines he gets you can't really blame him and the film is long, it's so long...

But that all seems kind of trivial.

Do I think it's the best film? I don't know. I'd genuinely say though that it ranks higher than most. It might even be the highlight of the prequel trilogy.

But for now, that's really all I have to say on that. I encourage you to give the film a second look if you haven't in a while. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Next up is Revenge Of The Sith and I'm excited. I think I might even be sad to say goodbye to the prequel trilogy but I'm happy to just be into Star Wars again. We'll see how long that lasts.

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Review: Return Of The Jedi

Return Of The Jedi was the film I feared rewatching the most, it's the one I've built up a fair amount of animosity towards over the years.

But despite all that I think I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

It's still plagued by the same problem as all the original trilogy films, being overlong with flat characters and the Ewoks still test me and the first act is only marginally connected to the core crux of the film as it resolves plot points from the previous movie. Boba Fett goes out kind of like a chump despite how much he's hyped up and there is all kinds of grossness involved with Leia.

But despite all that I really did end up having a good time with it.

I think the speeder scene on the moon of Endor really does still hold up, I love the battle between Luke and Vader and how the film's resolution doesn't rest on simply that might is right but that these two beings driven into conflict have to look deep inside themselves and question their base assumptions about the world.

I was surprised at how hard that beat hits.

This might end up being the most positive review I'm going to do of the series and I'm glad there were still a couple surprises left for me at the end of it all.

Now there are only the prequels, sequels and spin-offs left and for the first time in a while... It feels good to watch Star Wars again.

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