Category: Essays

Posted on in 2017, Comics, Current Writing, Essays, Film

How to Fix the Fantastic Four

What’s up all? I’ve been doing some fiction stuff recently and have strayed away from my earlier bread and butter. There are a few reasons for the shift and I might delve into that later. If you prefer my fiction, that’s not going away. If you prefer my non-fiction/opinion stuff, that’s not going away either. Anyway, enough of that, onto today’s subject.

So, the Fantastic Four film franchise has had a rocky past of late, well more like an ongoing rocky existence. From the 90s Corman film, to the 00s films starring Captain America before he was Cap, to the stupidly-titled 2015 film, Fant4stic. It hasn’t been an easy ride for Marvel’s First Family, with their films being generally received on a scale of Ok to Bad. First, let’s delve into the tricky part of adapting the Fantastic Four for film, and then I’ll throw my hat into the ring attempting to the wrangle the beast at the conceptual phase.

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Posted on in 2017, Current Writing, Essays

What Should I Read?

I’ve received this question a few times when I talk to people about my website. What should I read? Where should I start? I’m going to answer those questions somewhat now. What should you read? Read what you want. You might suspect that my answer would be “Read everything. It’s all fantastic. Even if it doesn’t interest you, read it”, but that answer isn’t very helpful.

Imagine that my website is a restaurant where I prepare equal amounts of every dish and ask people to take what they like. At the end of the night, I can look and go “Lots of people ate the roast beef, but not many people ate frog legs”. I can order more roast beef and fewer frog legs. Frog legs will still exist, they’ll just be a niche item with fewer orders. In the same vein, I can see how many people have navigated to the page for any particular piece. I can’t see how long they stayed or how much they read. I can just tell that they visited the page.

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Posted on in 2017, Current Writing, Essays, Gaming

Thoughts on Breath of the Wild and the Switch

It’s good.

Ok, some context first. Breath of the Wild is the latest in the Legend of Zelda series that’s been consistently running since 1986. Breath of the Wild was released about a month ago for the Wii U and the Switch. As you might have guessed from my article My First Game, I’m fairly new to Nintendo (and practically a spring chicken in some circles of gaming). This is my first Zelda (I did play about ten minutes of Wind Waker HD on my Wii U but I couldn’t get into it). I have been borrowing my brother’s Switch to play the game when I can. So I thought I’d offer my thoughts as a recent Nintendo convert (as late as the Wii U and 3DS).

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Posted on in 2017, Current Writing, Essays

The Word ‘Cuck’

So, you might have heard this word being tossed around in internet discourse of late. If not, well … welcome to Internet Discourse 2017. If you’re not familiar, cuck is an insult chucked around by right-wing nuts and trolls, generally targeted at progressive leftie types, specifically males. Now, it being the case that words is totally my thing what I’m good at, I thought I’d take a look at the why of the word Cuck, and why it’s used as an insult.

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Posted on in 2017, Current Writing, Essays, Gaming

Representations of Australia in Gaming

So, recently I’ve been playing a few games that centre around Australia as a setting and inspiration. So I figured I’d take a look at how Australia is represented in games, through the lens of the current games I’ve been playing. I’ve never been a particularly proud Australian, mostly in part because nationalism is … messy. Australia as a game setting though? Hell yeah, sign me up.

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The first game I want to look at is also the oldest on the list: TY the Tasmanian Tiger. A PS2/Xbox era game that was recently re-released on Steam sometime last year. TY the Tasmanian Tiger centres around the evil plans of Boss Cass, an evil cassowary (appropriate since Cassowaries are bloody scary) and the thwarting of those plans by TY, the last Tasmanian Tiger after the rest of his species was abducted into the Dreamtime.

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Posted on in 2017, Comics, Current Writing, Essays, Film

How the MCU Made Captain America Interesting

Who’s strong and brave here to save the American Way?

So, my favourite MCU movie is Captain America: The First Avenger. It’s certainly not the most beloved of the MCU movies amongst the general population (often being overshadowed by its sequel The Winter Soldier, and its direct successor in the MCU, The Avengers), but I wanted to look back and admire its successes. In fact, I reckon the successes of the first Captain America film are a microcosm of the successes of the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe. So, without further ado, let’s look at Captain America.

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Posted on in 2017, Current Writing, Essays, Gaming

The Indie Revolution

In the words of the Violent Femmes, You won’t fool the children of the revolution.

So, I talk about PC gaming occasionally on this website. I do this in an attempt to demystify it. There is a bit of mystique on spending a minimum of $1000 on a computer just for computer games. I’ve known cars that cost that much (mind you, the computer will last longer with less maintenance than a $1000 car). Personally, I’ve always justified my computer over a console for several reasons ( a computer can do more functionally than a console, storage space is fairly easy to expand, it’s a mostly centralised place for all my games). Not to shame anyone who prefers and uses a console, there’s merit in the simplicity of the console (no-one has had to configure the display on a console, or edit the ini files or such on a console). However, this paragraph of parentheticals is distracting from the initial point I was trying to make.

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Posted on in 2017, Current Writing, Essays, TV

Arrow’s Problem is Not Felicity

(Author’s Note: Some minor spoilers for Season Four and Season One of Arrow)

So, Valentine’s Day was a recent thing. In honour of the day that’s ostensibly all about love, I thought I’d talk about fictional character’s relationships. With that said, Arrow.

So, Arrow is a show on the CW following the exploits of Oliver Queen who moonlights as the Green Arrow. The show is in its fifth season this year and has spawned a whole mini TV universe. It is perhaps the most successful screen adaptation of the DC Universe in the current age. It’s good. TV is in some ways the perfect medium for comics. Movies can only periodically check up on heroes so they can have a habit of rapidly developing relationships between movies (see: Bruce and Natasha in Age of Ultron) or characters can stagnate (see: nearly every Batman movie ever).

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Posted on in 2017, Current Writing, Essays, Film

Why Deadpool Was Snubbed for the Oscars (and It’s Not What You Think)

So recently Ryan Reynolds was campaigning for Deadpool to win an Oscar. There was nothing explicitly forbidding the film from winning. It was eligible enough but the prevailing opinion was that Deadpool wasn’t the sort of movie that’s nominated for an Oscar. Which is true, it shouldn’t be true, but it is. Now, I’m going to begin by explaining why Deadpool was unlikely to be nominated for what it was. Then I’ll get to the reason I think it didn’t get the nomination.

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Posted on in 2017, Current Writing, Essays

What Even Is Are a Millennials?

What are millennials?

We just don’t know. Countless old opinion writers have tried to categorise them. I thought I saw one once. I don’t know. It might have been a smartphone. You know those millennials, always on their phones. What an insightful and original thought. But I’ll let you in on a little secret. My name is Zach Eastwood, and I’m a millennial. I know, don’t act too shocked. The kid in his bedroom writing about how Marvel is so great and DC isn’t doing so crash hot. He’s a millennial? Yes, the true is out.

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