Souvenirs of Geekdom: Swords and Star Wars -The Lightsaber

The lightsaber may well be the greatest piece of science fiction design work ever to sear its way into our collective consciousness.

While the success of Star Wars relied on a cocktail of factors, the use of a sword-like weapon that pre-empted rave culture by about a decade surely played a massive part.

It marries, with startling effectiveness, the sci-fi and fantasy traditions. It does so without being hokey or creating incongruity or, worst of all, being a bit silly. There's something visceral, dirty and personal about a sword fight that a gun fight - particularly one with lasers - can't quite match. Particularly one that was filmed 30+ years ago, before we could do fancy-pants slow motion and bullet time. You've seen a phaser fight in Star Trek, right? *Yawn*.

With lightsabers, the Star Wars production team brought the drama of the sword fight to an sf (or whatever the abbreviation for 'science fantasy' is, if you want to be fussy about it) setting without having to resort to characters carrying around shonky metal weapons. Weapons, it needs to be noted, that are unarguably centuries out of date by the time other folk are dueling with laser pistols. While other players on the Star Wars stage might view the lightsaber as archaic, with its ability to swat away laser fire and cut through pretty much anything it clearly has a place in its wielder's arsenal.

Combined with the Jedi and Sith traditions, though, the lightsaber does more than allow medieval combat into a science fictional setting - it evokes the romance of high fantasy and knighthood. Wielders of lightsabers are more than just utilitarian warriors - they're linked to a long and noble tradition. It's a visual reminder that the Jedi are more than simple soldiers. They partake in a greater destiny than that.

And, man, when someone pulls out a lightsaber you hear that hum... That sound was created by sound designer Ben Burtt. It's a combination idle interlock motors from ancient movie projectors and the effect a television has on an unshielded microphone. In the minds of millions of nerds worldwide, ancient AV tech as the sound of science-fictional warfare. There's something weird and a little haunting about that.

But wow, that drawing of the lightsaber - watching the blade flare up. It's the same effect as a gunfighter drawing his pistol. It has that immediacy. It's that same call to action. The moment it's drawn, a situation is irrevocably changed. It becomes, very very suddenly, dangerous. When a lightsaber's drawn, something big is going to happen, and it's not going to have anything to do with words or thought. It's going to happen through action and violence. On a more primal level there's something very appealing* about that sudden move to action - especially to a generation and a subculture largely defined by passive, cerebral pursuits. Perhaps, too, to a generation that feels it lacks the power to effect change.

The lightsaber is a brilliant coalescence of science and magic and nobility and violence that digs into a whole great knot of things going on in the nerd's subconscious.

It should also not be forgotten that glowing things flashing around in the dark look really cool.



*The Space Between Panels does not endorse the solving of problems through the medium of lightsaber duels. Lightsaber duels should only be entered into after all diplomatic avenues have been explored and under the supervision of a responsible adult.

Souvenirs of Geekdom: Mallrats

Souvenirs of Geekdom. Or nerddom. I like the word 'nerd' better, but 'nerddom' doesn't look right. So... 'Souvenirs of Geekdom'.

It's going to be a series of short essays on the detritus of our subculture that's barely even a subculture (or that is maybe really a whole cluster of subcultures) any more. A poke around what makes us nerds, what makes us beautiful and what makes us woefully lame. It's inspired by Douglas Coupland's superb Souvenirs of Canada, which offers up a fascinating meander through the flotsam of Canadian life, providing a sense of the country's identity by way of anecdote, history, consumer goods and pop culture reference. That's the sort of thing I'm gunning for here, but our lot's primary point of convergence isn't quite so straightforward as geography.

First up: Mallrats.

There are numerous cultural and social forces that pushed geek culture into the mainstream over the last couple of decades, and anyone who tries to give too much credit to any one film/book/comic/ANYTHING is clearly a maniac. That said, Mallrats surely helped. More significant than the film's impact on our acceptance into the society around us, however, is its impact on the nerd's self-image.

(Catch-up! Kevin Smith's Mallrats is basically the film John Hughes might have made if he was a great big comics nerd. It's about two guys wandering around a mall, chasing a couple of girls and talking about comics A LOT. It also had an early film cameo by Stan Lee.)

As a nerd growing up in a world that hated and feared you, Mallrats gave the feeling that maybe, just maybe, you could be a little bit cool. Yeah, Jason Lee and Jeremy London - the two nerd leads - might play a pair of slackers, but they play a pair of slackers who go out in the world, interact with society at large and, in their own way, are... if not cool, very likeable, kind of good-looking, a bit charming and generally the sorts of chaps people like to have around. More importantly, they play nerds who go out with girls played by Claire Forlani and Shannen Doherty.

While neither of these guys is exactly (Robert Downey Jr's) Tony Stark, in 1995 nerds in moving pictures were generally of the bestpectacled, pocket-protector-wearing, might-just-shoot-you-while-you-eat-your-cheese-strings variety. All of a sudden, here were nerds who fit in comfortably with the zeitgeisty, dumbed-down, slacker interpretation of Generation X. Here was a vision of the nerd that fit comfortably alongside the Pepsi ad version of what young people were. In the Mallrats interpretation of Geekdom, you didn't have to be an outsider to be a nerd. You could be in.

No, it's not as good as Clerks. No, it's probably not even all that good, full-stop (although it is interesting that the Metacritic critics' rating of Mallrats is a paltry 41/100, while the user rating is up at 7.5/10). Still, it made many of us feel - even as our balls were still in that awkward mid-drop (free-fall?) phase and our strongest claim to physical intimacy was linked to a Witchblade comic - that one day the opposite sex might one day look at us with something other than contempt or half-formed pity.

Secret Bettakultcha: My Men of Tomorrow Talk

I did a talk for Secret Bettakultcha recently about how scary and weird the people of the future will most likely be. I was, it should be said, less judgemental of them in the talk. I honestly believe that being human will be very different on a fundamental level in a hundred years to how it is now, though.

It's been suggested that I'm trying to cover too much ground in five minutes, so if I do another Bettakultcha talk I might scale it back a bit.

I will at some point soon put together a post containing reference materiel I used for this. For now, here's the video:



You can see my previous Bettakultcha talk - on why time travel is bad for you - through here.

A Zeitgeisty Holiday - Dead Island Preview

I previewed Dead Island recently over on SPOnG. Below's an extract. Through here is the full feature.

Dead Island is the zombie game you have in your head. It's the conversation you've had with your mates down the pub in which you discuss whether you'd be better off grabbing the hedge trimmer or the non-power-reliant cricket bat from the garage in the event of a zombie attack.

It's the next step after reading the Zombie Survival Guide. I like to think it's based on real events the CIA doesn't want us to know about.

Dead Island doesn't make you double-hard like Left 4 Dead or ready-qualified for zombie-fighting like Resident Evil. It doesn't make light of the fact that zombies want to eat your brains, like Dead Rising does. (Zombies trying to eat your brains, contrary to what Simon Pegg and his mates think, is NO LAUGHING MATTER).

Rather, Dead Island chucks you into a scenario in which zombies are on the rampage (or amble, depending on which zombies you encounter) on an island with a believable level of resources and an open map to go at and challenges you to survive. Fortunately, developer Techland has substituted whatever slightly shit town you're from with a tropical island resort.

New Series Trailer for Doctor Who to Wreck Your Brain

So... much... stuff...

Captain America Throws His Mighty Shield, Misses: Game Review

My review of Captain America: Super Soldier is alive and pouring mild scorn into the world from SPOnG. Here, have the first few words:

"The most interesting thing about my Captain America: Super Soldier 'experience' was discovering that I'm a little bit attracted to Madame Hydra, despite the fact that she's a German dominatrix with Nazi sympathies and green hair. I won't lie to you, that's a bit of a shame.

"I often feel funny about enjoying the adventures of a man who dresses (unashamedly and unironically) in an American flag. Yet, Captain America can be pretty cool. Generally speaking, he's at his best when he's criss-crossing the globe in superhero espionage stories, inspiring awe with his unflappable ability to hold steady and generally doing things such as riding fighter jets like many of us would a skateboard and jumping out of planes while telling those around him that 'parachutes are for girls'.

"Fortunately for all the uncomfortable Englishmen out there, developer Next Level doesn't bring any of those qualities to bear in Captain America: The Game of the Film of the Comic..."

More through here.

First Dark Knight Rises Teaser Poster is Cataclysmic

This is the first teaser poster for Dark Knight Rises. Anybody remember Cataclysm? Or maybe Gotham architects aren't up to much and it's just the batmobile driving by.

(Courtesy of Empire.)

Brink: REVIEWED

My Brink review is alive and on SPOnG. Have an excerpt:

"Brink might just scare the crap out of you. If you're the sort of person whose mother still dressed them until they were 12, Brink will definitely scare the crap out of you.

"...Brink isn't really separated into single- and multi-player components – at least not in the way most of us are used to. The campaign can be played either on your lonesome with the help of bots or with other humans online. Beyond the fact that humans and bots might behave a bit differently, gameplay won't be altered a jot one way or the other. And, frankly, Splash Damage has done a reasonably convincing job of making the AI behave like (often slightly thick) human players. It's a shame, though, that they couldn't manage clever human-like AI."

And here's that link again.

Outland: A Big Fat Review

 I reviewed Outland over on SPOnG. It's quite good. You should read it (please and thankyou). First two pars:

"The side-scrolling platforming genre's doing alright at the moment on the download services these days, isn't it? Between Limbo, Super Meat Boy, Sonic the Hedgehog 4 and at the very least three other games I've neglected to mention, the genre's positively glowing. Outland, another sidescroller from Ubisoft and developer Housemarque, is totally up for joining those ranks. It's positively glowing, too. Literally.

"So, you are this guy. You have to fight some gods over some stuff. To be able to do that, you have to travel around a bit and do some things. That's not really the point, though. The main hook is a colour-changing mechanism not dissimilar from what you found in Ikaruga once upon a time."

Press Release: Idris Elba in Reliant Robin Accident

This just came in over the news wires:

PRESS RELEASE - LONDON - April 28th 2011

Headline: Ham Actor Hit by High Speed Hirsute Hunk
Strap: Over-rated Thespian smashed against wall - Police seek bearded miscreant

Body:

(London: 28.04.2011) By Our Enterslayment Correspondent

Mostly over-rated actor, Idris Elba, was inexplicably smacked into a wall in North London today at 11:44hrs. Police are seeking a small car driven by a bearded, silver-haired and quite distinguished looking gentleman in his late 30s to aid them in their enquiries.

Film critics are also seeking the rather handsome driver to provide him with an award to actoring and that.

"Idris Elba will be remembered for one thing and one thing only", commented his agent today, "being taken out by a distinguished, greying gentleman with some aplomb."

ENDS