Day Three Hundred and Sixteen - Lego Marvel Superheroes: Maximum Overload, "You know what? It's not bad."

Despite the fact that The Lego Movie trailers have been looking more and more cute and entertaining, currently available Lego-brand series like Ninjago and Clutch Powers haven't exactly kindled the strongest feelings of confidence within me.

Still, I've been on a Marvel kick lately thanks to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Thor: The Dark World and seeing folks play the video game for Lego Marvel Superheros has kind of intrigued me, so I decided to give Maximum Overload a shot... and, you know what? It's actually pretty cute.

To be sure, it's definitely vanilla and dumbed down, relying on sight gags like Wolverine kebab claws and meta in-jokes like Spiderman's angst runs, but there are quite a few clever moments and never do I feel like the properties are being exploited too much. Sure, there's no way in hell that Lego Loki has the charisma of Tom Hiddleston, nor do Tony and Pepper strike the right chord in their dynamic that I'm familiar with both from the movies and the comics, but Spidey is pretty spot on concerning his quips and it all feels much closer to the current run of Ultimate Spiderman when it comes to the television universes.

I'm also kind of impressed that the female characters aren't sexualized like their comic and movie counterparts. Yeah, it's a little hard to do that sort of thing visually, considering the trapezoidal boxes that comprise all Lego figures (aside from Hulk and Abomination), even if they still have painted on cleavage, but there aren't any written gags that trivialize them as sex objects either and that's something of an accomplishment, I think... even in kid friendly entertainment.

I also like how short it is. Clocking in a twenty-two minutes, it moves quickly from scene to scene, giving Loki time to annoy quite a few parties in the Marvel universe before being easily thwarted by the arrival of his brother, Thor, who can fill in the blanks via first-hand exposition.

Finally, I think I should mention the little gags. Whether it's the red 'Exit' sign in Loki's ice palace or "Code Five, no Six," there are just the right amount of silly jokes and asides that make this tiny commercial for the game (and, let's face it, that's what it is) actually palatable on its own and really rather effective as advertising. I do have the urge to buy the game now that I've seen this short little episode, in the hope that the relatively catchy writing and humor carries over.

If you're looking for anything deep, keep scrolling as there are most assuredly better offerings available on the Instant Stream, even when it comes to comic properties, but for fans of the Marvelverse looking for light fare and parents looking to introduce their younger children to comic book movies, Maximum Overload is right up your alley.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day One Hundred and Twenty-one - Dead Space: Downfall, "Heavy Metal levels of gore... but that's it."

The prequel event of the first Dead Space game, Downfall follows the very quick destruction of both the colony world Aegis VII and the mining ship Ishimura thanks to the Red Marker, an artifact of mysterious origins that apparently drives people mad and is connected to the graphic mutations of reanimated corpses thanks to an alien virus.

Really, Downfall is just a Total Party Kill (TPK) movie that leads survivors down the path of destruction as, one by one, they are all lost to the encroaching necromorph armies or their own madness.

If I were to compare Downfall to another film, it would probably be Event Horizon, just another horror movie in space where the enemy is both the Self and the Other, but it never really gets deeper than that. There are a few nods to the game, such as a brief cameo of Isaac's girlfriend and Dr.Kyne, but it's just a poorly plotted and animated piece that is 75 minutes of exposition for the game.

The gore is unnecessary and gratuitous, like Hanson's murdering of Shen which takes up a good ten seconds of screentime as we watch him fillet her like a fish with a plasma cutter. It's over the top and pointless. There are several moments where they do dial it back a bit and go for artistry over simple explicit exploration, like when one of the colonists ends her own life, but they are overshadowed by the need to constantly amp the violence and blood.

Scenes like this go on for the majority of the film and they have no real emotional impact because we never get invested in the characters. They're never around long enough to sink our teeth into. What brief interactions we have between them are either betrayed when the crisis comes or awkwardly lampshaded in poorly conceived dialogue (like the case of the Comms officer and his dislike of main character Alissa Vincent).

Now, I've gone on a bit about the violence, but let me be clear... I'm not against folks doing it, I'm just saying that, in this case, it's to no effect. It's all boring and lacking in emotional impact, mostly do to the lack of character development and style.

The art is boring and lifeless. I wasn't impressed by either the character design or the constant reuse of necromorph models. I mean, in the final moments, we see a very distinctive necro with its lower jaw removed being jettisoned into space, then just a few more seconds later we see the same model on the bridge in a different part of the ship.

Lazy. Lazy, lazy, lazy.

I guess I'm okay with what they were trying to do with Downfall, provide some context on the events that occurred previous to the video game, but who cares if you are just going to waste it all on a cheap splatterfest of the week.

If anything, this should have been a six part mini-series to slowly ramp the terror and give plenty of time for character depth. I mean, it's hard to get bent out of shape when "generic security officer #3" gets his face torn off. Heck, I barely cared when Shen was murdered... and that was supposed to be one of the more impactful moments of the film.

Bleh.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~