After The Bombs Fell, Everything Looked Much The Same...

I'm not in the mood to write another long post about Nightingale today. Well, OK, I am but I'd rather play Nightingale and anyway I doubt anyone wants to read another one of those quite yet. I do have a few other ideas bubbling up but one is a music post I'm saving for tomorrow because somehow Friday or Saturday seem like music post days and the rest I'm not quite ready to go with just yet, so...

I thought I'd put up a couple of trailers for game-related media I happened to watch just this very morning. It so happens they're both for properties based on games I don't play but that doesn't mean I'm not interested. In fact, I'm a lot more interested in the franchises as TV shows or movies than I ever was in the games themselves.

Which isn't to say I've never thought about playing them at all. I have. Both of them.I'm not saying I thought about it very hard but it has occasionally crossed my mind to give one or other of them a try.

Actually, now I come to think about it, I think I may have played one of the franchises, once. At least I own a boxed copy of one of the games. I just have no memory of ever taking it out of the box, much less logging in. 

And I think I might have claimed at least one more on Prime, although once again without actually installing it. They seem to be working through them there, which isn't surprising since Amazon is behind the upcoming TV adaptation.

The other franchise I am certain I've never played. I haven't read as much about it either, although I've read a few bloggers' tales and it's always sounded like something I might enjoy, even though I've gone so far as to do anything about it.

Everyone knows what IPs I'm talking about so there's no point trying to be coy any more. Let's watch the trailers.

Now, that looks solid. I'd watch that show even if I'd never heard of the game. 

I'm not the greatest fan of post-nuclear horror and I've always thought this particular franchise looked a little sub-Philip K Dick in tone, which ought to be a compliment but somehow isn't. Still, that's an enticing trailer. The visuals have a sand-blown austerity that's nicely dirty-clean, the central character seems comfortably under-played, the action looks crunchy and the dialog snaps. 

I mean, it's a trailer so all of that should be a given but at least they've gotten that much right. Not everyone does. Not even nearly.

I notice it's directed by the same person who did the TV Westworld, another show I never watched but probably should have. From what I know of that one, this could be its cousin. I seem to recall Westworld was generally reckoned to be decent so that's an encouraging sign.

Naturally, this being one of those properties the press like to call "beloved" - albeit that's a strange way to talk about a fairly vicious satire on contemporary mores set in a post-apocalyptic hellscape - there was bound to be a deal of apprehension about whose truth is going to be told here. 

I scanned a fair way down the lengthy comment thread on YouTube and it's full of people posting variations of "Please let it be good", which puts it well ahead of the familiar "This looks like a pile of crap" markers hardcore fans often feel obligated to lay down in advance, just in case anyone confuses them with someone who didn't make up their mind four years ago, when the project was first announced.

Not having any prior affections to be trampled, I'm quite looking forward to it. It's on Prime from April, when all the episodes arrive at once. I've been complaining I don't have enough new live action shows in my general field of interest right now so I don't have much of an excuse not to watch.

This next one I'd have to go out of the house to see when it launches, presumably sometime later this year, so that's not going to happen. No doubt it will hit a streaming service not long after though, so I could catch up with it then. Would I want to, on the basis of this trailer? Let's see.

Anyone think that looks... kinda  similar? I guess it's just the post-apoc setting. Stil, to have watched them both in the same morning does feel a little... extra.

I imagine the elevator pitch for this one was "Mad Max In Space Meets Guardians of the Galaxy." Not the original GotG from the comics, of course. That was an almost completely different team and one I loved, back in the day. No, I mean the MCU version that everyone now thinks of as the real ones. And, to be fair, I also like that crew well enough.

The main thought I was having all the way through watching this trailer was "I wonder what Cate Blanchett said when her agent told her she was up for this?" I do tend to think of her as a fairly heavy-duty, serious actor but then she was Galadriel in Lord of the Rings and apparently she kept the ears and had them bronzed, so... 

I have to say she looks surprisingly into it. She's only ten years younger than I am but you wouldn't think it from all that diving and rolling and shooting. You don't get that kind of action in a Woody Allen movie. I guess if nothing else Borderlands should make a nice career bookend with Bordertown. Not that I'm suggesting this movie is going to end her career or anything...

Jaimie Lee Curtis and Kevin Hart being in a video game adaptation isn't such a stretch. No strangers to genre, either of them. Jack Black as the supposedly annoying-but-cute robot, though? That I could really manage perfectly well without. 

As for the actor playing Tiny Tina, she's new to me, although she has an impressive portfolio that suggests she shouldn't be. I don't know enough about Tiny Tina to say if Ariana Greenblatt is a convincing cast, but even though I'm no expert on Borderlands, I had at least heard of the character, which is more than I can say for any of the others, so I guess it's a good role for an up-and-comer. 

I was a bit surprised, though. For some reason, I'd formed the impression Tiny Tina was some kind of adult, gnomelike creature not, as Lionsgate's official description puts it, "a feral pre-teen demolitionist". Does that make her more or less interesting? Hard to say.  

I was quite impressed by just how much of the trailer is shot looking backwards through the windscreen of a car. It's a brave move for an action movie. I do like in-car interaction scenes. Especially ones with a lot of  yelling and arm-waving. I'd watch a whole TV show based around that, so long as it didn't have James Corden anywhere near it. 

The rest of it looks not too shabby. The effects and the sets look good and the action sequences are par. I'm not sure there's going to be a lot of quotable dialog but a movie like this really only needs two or three genuinely good one-liners. That's all anyone ever remembers, anyway.

All told, I'd definitely watch it, if I was watching full length movies, which currently I don't seem to be. I do have a lot of them backed up for when I start again, too, and I doubt this would skip the queue. It will at least join the end of the line, though, I can say that much in favor of the trailer.

All that remains is to wonder whether, having watched these cinematic representations, I might now be more pre-disposed to play any of the games in either of the franchises. 

Nope. Don't think so. But maybe that's not how it's supposed to work, anyway.