Quickshots- Westworld

 

Season 1- This is the best thing ever on television

Season 2- Really liked that Raj scene, couldn’t get myself to finish the season

Season 3- Is this thing still on?

Quickshots- Trailblazer

 

Not good.  Palmiotti and Gray have written some great westerns, and this isn’t one of them.  Interesting concept (hitman goes into witness protection that happens to be in the old west) that could have been held up with decent art, but this is like the Rob Liefeld’s understudies got together and decided to try a western.  Ugh. Cover art is great, though!

The Fine Cinema of Mad Max: Fury Road

The Australian Outback after a nuclear and biological disaster is dominated by three city-states, each of which controls one vital resource- food, fuel, or ammunition.  As part of a periodic exchange of goods one of these city-states, the Citadel, manages a heavily guarded merchant caravan that connects the three city-states.  Despite being the best source of water (via a well-pressured underground spring) and food, the Citadel struggles with radiation and birth defects among its population.  The leader of the Citadel manages the social tensions generated by these birth defects in three ways.  First, by enslaving healthy men and using them as living blood banks. Second, by enslaving healthy women to act as brood mothers in hopes of birthing a generation of fit children.  Finally, by creating a Norse-inspired cult that reveres death in combat before succumbing to radiation-linked diseases.

Enter the film’s main conflict- the Citadel’s best warrior and caravan leader is a woman kidnapped from a distant matriarchal city-state as a child, who wants to free the brood mother sex slaves and with them return to her homeland across the desert.  As an experienced caravan leader she is familiar with terrain, the unusual weather hazards, and has made deals with the scattered bandits and tribes along the way for protection.  When the caravan leader makes her break for her homeland we see start to see the importance of healthy potential mothers to the new society and the strong connections between the city-states as all three bring their warriors together to recapture and re-enslave the brood mothers.  This sets up the film’s ominous question: what is more important, the continuation of a stable society, or the personal freedom of individuals?  In the finest tradition of the Western films, a lone silent gunslinger enters the plot to challenge the assumptions of the main characters and drive them to greater levels of personal understanding and introspection.

That’s Mad Max: Fury Road in a nutshell.  Or, it’s a two hour car chase with almost no dialogue.

Honestly, it’s both.  There is a rich story going on in Mad Max: Fury Road, and it’s right there for any viewer to note.  But you can also completely ignore that story and go right for the constant rev of engines and beautifully choreographed mayhem (Cirque du Solei did some of the stunts in the big fights).  If director George Miller did a film of nothing but two hours of motorcyclists in the Namib desert I would pay to see that, but have them jumping over trucks on fire?  Awesome.

My favorite part of Mad Max: Fury Road came about 2/3 of the way through, in a brief pause in the action, as Max Rockatansky himself spoke his first full line of dialogue: “Hope is a mistake.  If you don’t fix what’s broke, you’ll go insane”.

This film is brilliant.

Gay Cowboys of Fallout: New Vegas

The days are getting longer, the temperature warmer, and the snow is less than three feet deep.  It’s almost spring time here in New England, and that means my mind and gaming habits turn towards raucous outdoor adventure.  I recently fired up Fallout: New Vegas, a game as much about surviving in the wilderness as it is about blasting mutants, and was greeted by the mustachioed face of my smiling, badass, gay cowboy.

Yes, you read that right.  Fallout: New Vegas is a game that rewards you for playing a friendly gay cowboy (mustache optional) in a world where cowboys and rangers are fighting Imperial Rome over the Las Vegas strip (yup, that’s more or less the whole plot).  Here’s how you do it:

First, be Good Natured.  Taking this perk at first level deducts points from all of your combat skills while increasing many of the important non-combat skills like First Aid, Speech, and Barter.  Sounds bad for a gunslinging cowboy, but you are only going to want the cowboy-oriented combat skills (guns & melee) so it’s easy to move points around to get all the wild west wasteland shootin’ and stabbin’ skills you need.

  

Second, you should be into dudes.  Serious.  By second level, if you are male, you can take the perk Confirmed Bachelor which rewards you for your intimate familiarity with the male body to give you +10% damage to the same sex (and a good chunk of your enemies are men), plus the chance to flirt with an occasional wasteland wanderer.

Third, make sure to get good at shootin’ and stabbin’, because by level eight with 45 points in guns & melee you can take the Cowboy perk, giving you +25% damage done by dynamite, hatchets, knives, revolvers, and lever-action guns.  

 

From there you can add in perks like quick draw, gunslinger, and a host of other gunfighter & survivalist perks to round out your cowpoke.  By building a gay cowboy step by step, you get a whopping +35% damage to some of the best some of the coolest weapons on your most common enemies.  Certainly this was a crafty plan of the writers, and I love them for it.

Gay Space Cowboy

Recently a gaming buddy suggested that we take a break from our Pathfinder D&D game and try the new Star Wars system.  He asked if I would rather play a scoundrel on the edge of the frontier or a rebel against the Empire.  I deliberated for some time (I love the frontier, but the chance to try out an ahimsa insurgent?) until he got bored, finished his beer, and found someone else to talk to.  Late last night, though, the answer struck me.  Frontier, of course, because in what other game would I have a chance to play…

A Gay Space Cowboy.

Rainbow Rocket Ranger to the Rescue!  The Empire will never see him coming.  So here are some space cowboys, or gay cowboys, or gay space cowboys, for you to consider.