Director/Designer Koichi Ishii
Producer/Designer/Writer Hiromichi Tanaka
Programmer Nasir Gebelli
Art Designer Hiroo Isono
Music Composed by Hiroki Kikuta
Developer/Publisher Squaresoft
Review by William D. Tucker
Long ago, humanity exploited the magic power of Mana to erect a terrifying flying fortress of unimaginable destructive capability. The Earth, enraged at the exploitation of its lifeblood Mana, sent forth the Mana Beast, an apocalypse monster capable of destroying the Mana Fortress, and therefore humble the ambitions of humankind. This epic battle happened long ago, and has passed largely into legend, myth, and fable. Human beings have settled back down into simple existences mostly using medieval-agrarian levels of technology, save for a few centers of high technology including an evil empire and some pirates with an impressive earth burrowing land cruiser. The Mana Fortress is long gone, destined to live on in rumors of submerged mystery continents and dark schemes in the Emperor's heart . . .
A young boy wanders outside of his village, led along by a ghostly presence. He finds a sword in a stone, which he promptly removes, and becomes the target of an aggressive, outsized bug monster dwelling in the subterranean caverns below his village. The boy defeats the monster, but he is immediately exiled from his village by the community elders for the sword he wields is a repository of great mystical power. The dark forces of this world will attack the boy in order to kill him and take the potent weapon for themselves. Anyone near the kid may also be killed, and so the young boy must leave the village in order to confront the source of evil in this world and free himself from the curse of wielding a heroic sword of legend.
The Earth is filled with animals, plants, and giant insects with unusually high levels of aggression. The implication is that the natural world has become much harsher to keep humanity in check since the war against the Mana Fortress, lest humankind decide to create a new supreme weapon of annihilation.
You, whoever you are, are the player. You control the boy and his two eventual allies, piloting them through a maze-like top-down world of forests, towns, cursed temples, towers filled with Game of Death-style floors filled with opponents of escalating difficulty-all with the goal of gathering a complete set of the mystically empowered heroic weapons of old (which include a whip, a battle-axe, a spear, a set of steel knuckles, and a mighty bow) to keep them out of the hands of the dark forces. You must also collect a set of magic seeds which are tied to different elemental powers. All standard fantasy role playing game stuff, but with a few tweaks.
For one, you cannot actually purchase any of the weapons. They must be earned by overcoming evil forces, and then you must charge them up by killing scores of enemies in battle. Yes, these heroic weapons of yore are charged up by the blood of your foes! The game doesn't quite present it like this. But the reality is that you must kill many, many forest animals and monsters in order to make your weapons more powerful. There's also an experience point system which increases your hit points, your magic points, your various defensive and offensive statistics, but the combat really leans into the notion of these mystically charged, ever transforming weapons. Power, how it should be used, and how it may corrupt those who wield it, is the theme of Secret of Mana.
You eventually take control of three young heroes-a human boy, a human girl, and a sprite of indeterminate gender identity-stand between the world and the world's annihilation. The boy wields a sacred sword of legend. The girl uses healing magics. The sprite casts offensive spells: fireballs, lightning bolts, makes enemy go boom. The fighter, the healer, and the death-ray shooter-a classic trio.
The gameplay consists of nonstop combat with no real puzzles like in a Zelda game, which is somewhat unfortunate. Some puzzles would've livened things up a bit. The combat is surprisingly addictive despite it not always feeling completely under your control. Every time you take a swing with your weapon, you have a recharge period before you can attack at full strength again. As you gain higher levels of weapon proficiency, you can charge your weapon up to deliver a mystically empowered killing strike. The trade-off is that the higher level charge strikes take longer and longer to build up to criticality thus leaving you open to attack. Fortunately, you have your two companions to carry on the fight while you charge up, so you rarely end up feeling overwhelmed as long as you take the time to grind up to a level equal to or above that of your enemies.
An amusingly strident instruction manual exhorts the player to go forth, conquer evil monsters, and to restore balance to the world. It also provides some interesting explanations for why you can throw away most all of the items in your inventory except for your weapons. Your weapons are mystically empowered and capable of transformation into deadlier forms; therefore, they cannot be permitted to fall into the hands of enemies or innocent civilians lest they wreak havoc in the hands of the malicious or untrained. There is also the implied prospect of powerful-perhaps semi-living-weapons corrupting whoever wields them, and this is a bit of lore not obvious within the game itself. It's a nice little bonus that's only in the manual. It got me thinking, "Is this game an elaborate allegory for principled use of weapons in time of necessary armed resistance against overwhelming evil?" Hmmm . . .
Secret of Mana's story isn't quite all that it could have been. The game was originally developed for a cancelled CD-ROM add-on for the Super Nintendo that would've allowed for a much more expansive gaming experience. Once the CD-ROM was scrapped, the developers had to cut large portions of the planned design to fit into the constraints of the regular SNES cartridge. As you get further along in the game, it becomes more and more obvious that a much more elaborate scenario has been hacked down to the minimum: boss enemies are reused; dungeon crawls become simplified and repetitious; the story goes in directions which are not fully elaborated; characterizations are slashed to the minimum-however, it mostly works if you consider that the heroes are children. The game takes place from their perspective, and so not all of the complexities of the world are immediately obvious to them. What is obvious is that the world is in chaos, full of monsters, and endangered by the ambitions of evil would-be rulers. And since the adults have long ago abdicated moral leadership, the children must step up to make things right.
In fact, I rather enjoy the semi-coherent magical realism storytelling of Secret of Mana, which seems culled from various myths and religions. It gives the game the vibe of some half-forgotten, half-remembered myth-cycle only partially set down in writing upon ancient tablets or scrolls or 5D metaphysical holo-cubes or whatever the ancients liked to doodle upon in their idle hours. It reminds me of the endless battle sagas I would compose with my action figures as a kid.
That's not to say Secret of Mana doesn't pack a dramatic punch in a few key scenes. It does, but the game was clearly much more ambitious in its original unconstrained design than what they were actually able to ship back in '93. Many of the themes here explored would achieve greater expression in Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VII, and in games from other developers such as Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma. Secret of Mana has a very strong reputation for those of us nostalgic for the SNES, but it doesn't quite live up to such fond memories. Today, it plays like a much more casual kind of game, closer in play-style to Final Fantasy Mystic Quest-which is not an insult coming from me. Mystic Quest is massively enjoyable for me to play through-the low-stress alternative to more demanding JRPGs.
Secret of Mana and Mystic Quest have something else in common: both games are blessed with excellent soundtracks. I revisit these titles as much to hear the music as to experience the gameplay. Secret of Mana's soundtrack ranges from soothing meditative arctic melodies to the manic, coked-out loop that plays when you are hanging out in the underground blacksmith works of the dwarfs. The boss battle themes are killer: the mainline boss fight theme begins with a hectic evocation of overwhelming danger that transforms into a soaring theme of heroism thereby providing a sonic map of the ideal flow of battle: danger met, danger conquered, bask in the glory! The Dark Lich Battle Theme is, I believe, an act of psychological warfare upon the player. My personal favorite might be the quietly unsettling theme that plays late in the game signalling the dawn of an ominous new era-but you'll just have to play the game yourself to get the story on that one.
Visually, Secret of Mana pops. Bright colors, credible designs of houses, temples, stores, subterranean lairs, with the one shortcoming being the noticeable number of empty rooms that serve no purpose other than to be dead ends. This is obviously a sign of the cuts made to the game design once the CD-ROM device was cancelled.
All of the enemy and character designs are charming and distinct from the cutesy chibi mini-figure designs of other JRPGs at the time. The characters are stylized, but somewhat close to human proportions. Chrono Trigger would carry on the character design ethos and some aspects of the enemy design approach to new heights, but it's all basically laid out in this game. The boss monsters are satisfyingly large and intimidating thereby giving you the satisfaction of victory once vanquished. One of the more unusual boss creatures is a mega-slime that grows to nearly screen-filling size as you inflict damage upon it. As mentioned above, the game repeats a number of boss fights with slight variations which is another sign of the game's reduced design ambitions.
In terms of gameplay, my favorite stretches involved the longer crawls wherein you really could get the feeling of controlling three swashbuckling heroes dueling wave after wave of formidable foes. The final dungeon before the end boss fight was satisfyingly demanding, although due to my obsessively grindy play style I blew through it pretty quick. I loved fighting the ninja enemies, and would've thoroughly enjoyed fighting an entire castle filled with those guys. The combat has moments where it really cooks, and I wish there would've been some longer, more challenging battles. The final boss fight did keep me on edge in a way I did not expect.
Secret of Mana is an unfinished game which shouldn't work as well as it does. It's not quite a masterpiece all on its own, but it lays the groundwork for superior games to come from Squaresoft and most likely had an influence on other developers of JRPGs in its day.
So take the sword from the stone, and fight alongside three punk kids to save the world from the ambitions of asshole adults!
Monday, February 26, 2018
The Lynch Meditations 10: Twin Peaks Pilot Alternate Version (1990)
This is basically the same as the broadcast pilot but with an ending involving a one-armed man discharging a revolver into another man presented as Laura Palmer's killer, and an extended dream sequence shot for a later episode involving Agent Dale Cooper in the Black Lodge and listening to the Man in the Red Suit as he says weird shit, and then does a dance.
I'm trying to avoid spoilers if you've never seen Twin Peaks. I don't know how much longer I can hold out. Once I get to Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, I'll probably be at Full Spoilers, so be warned.
If you've seen Twin Peaks, like I have, I'm guessing you are going to be underwhelmed by this alternate version of the pilot, though it is not terribly done in and of itself. I consider it largely superfluous-an artifact of the convoluted processes of getting a network contract for an entire series as opposed to a movie that truly stands on its own.
I first watched this alternate version sometime in late 1999 or early 2000. I recall renting a Warner Home Video VHS at a Blockbuster, confused that the real deal pilot was nowhere to be found in terms of an official release ("official release" . . . sounds kinky!) and so I had to tape the actual pilot during a rebroadcast on one of the cable networks that was re-running some-but not all-of the Season One and Season Two episodes. I want to say it was the Bravo channel, but I don't recall, exactly.
Anyways, all this confusion really doesn't matter anymore. The complete run of all three seasons of Twin Peaks has been released in numerous formats, and if you try hard enough or spend enough money you can get 'em all in one place, and watch 'em real convenient-like. Such is the wonder of our digital age!
Onwards . . .
NEXT: 3/8/18: Twin Peaks Episode Two (1990)
I'm trying to avoid spoilers if you've never seen Twin Peaks. I don't know how much longer I can hold out. Once I get to Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, I'll probably be at Full Spoilers, so be warned.
If you've seen Twin Peaks, like I have, I'm guessing you are going to be underwhelmed by this alternate version of the pilot, though it is not terribly done in and of itself. I consider it largely superfluous-an artifact of the convoluted processes of getting a network contract for an entire series as opposed to a movie that truly stands on its own.
I first watched this alternate version sometime in late 1999 or early 2000. I recall renting a Warner Home Video VHS at a Blockbuster, confused that the real deal pilot was nowhere to be found in terms of an official release ("official release" . . . sounds kinky!) and so I had to tape the actual pilot during a rebroadcast on one of the cable networks that was re-running some-but not all-of the Season One and Season Two episodes. I want to say it was the Bravo channel, but I don't recall, exactly.
Anyways, all this confusion really doesn't matter anymore. The complete run of all three seasons of Twin Peaks has been released in numerous formats, and if you try hard enough or spend enough money you can get 'em all in one place, and watch 'em real convenient-like. Such is the wonder of our digital age!
Onwards . . .
NEXT: 3/8/18: Twin Peaks Episode Two (1990)
Sunday, February 25, 2018
The Lynch Meditations -10
The Twin Peaks pilot was re-edited and released with additional footage as a stand alone feature length movie to be shown on European TV. I think. That's what I've read. I wasn't there, you know? This was done to get some value out of the production of the pilot in case it wasn't approved to become a series by the network.
Later, David Lynch and his collaborators would shoot a television pilot called Mulholland Dr. which was not approved to become a series, and so Lynch and co. took out a scene or two, shot more footage, and released it as a feature film which became nominated for many awards, and is regarded by some as Lynch's masterpiece. Is that where the New Golden Age of Television began? I probably shouldn't ask such grandiose questions about TV since I don't much care for it. Or was it The Simpsons? That show's going strong even today . . . Futurama's pretty good, too . . . I liked that South Park movie but the TV show got kinda long in the tooth for me . . .
So, if you end up with a pilot that a network doesn't want, you can go make a movie out of it. Or just dump it on YouTube so it doesn't have a shot at competing against snarky comedy movie reviews and inane unboxing videos. YouTube is fun.
Later, David Lynch and his collaborators would shoot a television pilot called Mulholland Dr. which was not approved to become a series, and so Lynch and co. took out a scene or two, shot more footage, and released it as a feature film which became nominated for many awards, and is regarded by some as Lynch's masterpiece. Is that where the New Golden Age of Television began? I probably shouldn't ask such grandiose questions about TV since I don't much care for it. Or was it The Simpsons? That show's going strong even today . . . Futurama's pretty good, too . . . I liked that South Park movie but the TV show got kinda long in the tooth for me . . .
So, if you end up with a pilot that a network doesn't want, you can go make a movie out of it. Or just dump it on YouTube so it doesn't have a shot at competing against snarky comedy movie reviews and inane unboxing videos. YouTube is fun.
Friday, February 23, 2018
The Lynch Meditations 9: Twin Peaks Broadcast Pilot (1990)
"She's filled with secrets."
Logging machinery sharpens its own teeth as the music of mystery plays.
An endless parade of actor names blink on to the screen-how many people are in this show? What kind of a name is 'Ontkean?' Is that the name of a murderer?
A sad and beautiful woman puts on makeup in front of a mirror only to turn towards the camera just so-as though she were suddenly aware of the camera, and now cheating out to the audience to reveal an eerily powdered face.
A fisherman kisses his hand and touches his wife's ear before going out to the shore to discover a woman's corpse wrapped in plastic.
The police show up to take pictures of the corpse, make a preliminary identification, and a tall, goofy looking cop weeps openly despite the admonitions of his superior to handle his business. Apparently, this policeman weeps at the sight of the fallen.
The cops try to keep a lid on the news of the identity of the murdered young woman, carefully regulating the dissemination of the information to the immediate family . . .
. . . but soon enough the word gets out: Laura Palmer has died. And the specter of grief prowls the community of Twin Peaks bringing shock and tears to many who learn of Laura's death. Apparently, this young woman was well regarded in her home town. She was popular, beautiful, smart, the golden child.
Of course, this is all revealed to be partially a facade of perfectionism covering soul-deep misery, uncertainty, and a fear of secret, all-consuming evil, but this first episode concentrates on the ripples of grief and heartbreak emanating in all directions from the carefully wrapped corpse of Laura, what her death means symbolically to those who knew her or knew of her. Her death is a small town version of the murder of JFK: a catalyst for bringing to the surface deep-seated conflicts that go beyond the mere mechanics of murder-of an aggressor taking the life of their victim-and into the realm of metaphysical conspiracy.
When an admired person is senselessly killed, we struggle to make sense of why such a person had to die and in such a pointless, brutal fashion. Surely there must be some larger significance than the anger and entitlement of the perpetrator triumphing over the life of the victim. A lone asshole with a gun-Lee Harvey Oswald-murdered an American president, and we, as a nation, have never been able to live that down. How can one miserable piece of shit strike so deep into the heart of the nation all on his own? Surely there must be some far-flung conspiracy, some allegorical significance?
But in America, lone pieces of shit with guns strike deep into the national heart all the time, usually by slaughtering scores of unarmed children attending public schools. Sane gun control would pretty much end these crimes, but American society is infected with an irrational belief in a kind of interpersonal militarism that mandates that each person is all alone and must provide for their own security at all times by becoming a soldier in the army of one ready to shoot anyone who poses a threat at all times . . . but I digress.
Twin Peaks is a fictional construct, and so it is, by design, full of secrets, constructed to be rich with internally logical allegory and symbolism, and, yes, Laura Palmer's death is not just another sad and sickening outcome of America's longstanding culture of violence toward women-indeed, she will be revealed to be at the nexus of a vast metaphysical struggle worthy of George Lucas and J.R.R. Tolkien.
But in this first episode, we have yet to rocket off into the realms of high Lynchian weirdness. We are essentially presented with a realistic, if quirky, police procedural involving a joint FBI-Twin Peaks PD investigation into Laura Palmer's murder. The large cast of characters-all those names popping up in the opening credits-exist to give various layers of depth to the story, to allow a nuanced, meandering exploration of the ripple effects of grief, and to provide a wide array of possible suspects within the mainline murder mystery plot.
This pilot episode runs about ninety-three minutes, and almost plays as a self-contained feature-length film, save for its cliffhanger ending, and abundance of characters and clues which have yet to be satisfactorily paid off by episode's end. The pilot assembles a large cast, and establishes a distinctive look and tone with simple, direct filmmaking. It isn't nearly as weird as the episodes to come-this is the David Lynch that would go on to make The Straight Story, not so much the Lynch of Wild At Heart, Lost Highway, Mulholland Dr., or Inland Empire.
But the weirdness is coming.
In fact, there's another version of this pilot-a misbegotten twin that leaned hard into the desire for tidy endings in order to secure a release as a stand alone movie for European television . . .
NEXT: 2/26/18: Twin Peaks Pilot: Alternate International Version (1990)
Logging machinery sharpens its own teeth as the music of mystery plays.
An endless parade of actor names blink on to the screen-how many people are in this show? What kind of a name is 'Ontkean?' Is that the name of a murderer?
A sad and beautiful woman puts on makeup in front of a mirror only to turn towards the camera just so-as though she were suddenly aware of the camera, and now cheating out to the audience to reveal an eerily powdered face.
A fisherman kisses his hand and touches his wife's ear before going out to the shore to discover a woman's corpse wrapped in plastic.
The police show up to take pictures of the corpse, make a preliminary identification, and a tall, goofy looking cop weeps openly despite the admonitions of his superior to handle his business. Apparently, this policeman weeps at the sight of the fallen.
The cops try to keep a lid on the news of the identity of the murdered young woman, carefully regulating the dissemination of the information to the immediate family . . .
. . . but soon enough the word gets out: Laura Palmer has died. And the specter of grief prowls the community of Twin Peaks bringing shock and tears to many who learn of Laura's death. Apparently, this young woman was well regarded in her home town. She was popular, beautiful, smart, the golden child.
Of course, this is all revealed to be partially a facade of perfectionism covering soul-deep misery, uncertainty, and a fear of secret, all-consuming evil, but this first episode concentrates on the ripples of grief and heartbreak emanating in all directions from the carefully wrapped corpse of Laura, what her death means symbolically to those who knew her or knew of her. Her death is a small town version of the murder of JFK: a catalyst for bringing to the surface deep-seated conflicts that go beyond the mere mechanics of murder-of an aggressor taking the life of their victim-and into the realm of metaphysical conspiracy.
When an admired person is senselessly killed, we struggle to make sense of why such a person had to die and in such a pointless, brutal fashion. Surely there must be some larger significance than the anger and entitlement of the perpetrator triumphing over the life of the victim. A lone asshole with a gun-Lee Harvey Oswald-murdered an American president, and we, as a nation, have never been able to live that down. How can one miserable piece of shit strike so deep into the heart of the nation all on his own? Surely there must be some far-flung conspiracy, some allegorical significance?
But in America, lone pieces of shit with guns strike deep into the national heart all the time, usually by slaughtering scores of unarmed children attending public schools. Sane gun control would pretty much end these crimes, but American society is infected with an irrational belief in a kind of interpersonal militarism that mandates that each person is all alone and must provide for their own security at all times by becoming a soldier in the army of one ready to shoot anyone who poses a threat at all times . . . but I digress.
Twin Peaks is a fictional construct, and so it is, by design, full of secrets, constructed to be rich with internally logical allegory and symbolism, and, yes, Laura Palmer's death is not just another sad and sickening outcome of America's longstanding culture of violence toward women-indeed, she will be revealed to be at the nexus of a vast metaphysical struggle worthy of George Lucas and J.R.R. Tolkien.
But in this first episode, we have yet to rocket off into the realms of high Lynchian weirdness. We are essentially presented with a realistic, if quirky, police procedural involving a joint FBI-Twin Peaks PD investigation into Laura Palmer's murder. The large cast of characters-all those names popping up in the opening credits-exist to give various layers of depth to the story, to allow a nuanced, meandering exploration of the ripple effects of grief, and to provide a wide array of possible suspects within the mainline murder mystery plot.
This pilot episode runs about ninety-three minutes, and almost plays as a self-contained feature-length film, save for its cliffhanger ending, and abundance of characters and clues which have yet to be satisfactorily paid off by episode's end. The pilot assembles a large cast, and establishes a distinctive look and tone with simple, direct filmmaking. It isn't nearly as weird as the episodes to come-this is the David Lynch that would go on to make The Straight Story, not so much the Lynch of Wild At Heart, Lost Highway, Mulholland Dr., or Inland Empire.
But the weirdness is coming.
In fact, there's another version of this pilot-a misbegotten twin that leaned hard into the desire for tidy endings in order to secure a release as a stand alone movie for European television . . .
NEXT: 2/26/18: Twin Peaks Pilot: Alternate International Version (1990)
Thursday, February 22, 2018
The Lynch Meditations -9
I first watched some out of order episodes of Twin Peaks on cable TV when I was a teenager. I didn't quite know what the hell was going on, but I got the drift. I tracked down Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me on VHS, watched it, loved it, and realized I had to see the rest of the series.
You might already be aware of this . . . but Fire Walk With Me basically gives away the entire mystery of Twin Peaks. It's also a grotesque and confusing piece of cinema. I loved every minute of it.
I finally ordered the VHS collection of Twin Peaks right as I was graduating high school. It featured every episode-except the pilot-recorded in glorious Extended Play (EP) format. The quality was shit, but not unwatchable. I had to tape the pilot, which was unavailable on VHS for some reason at that time, off of cable. Later, I dubbed a rental copy VHS release of the international version of the pilot episode, and so I had, on a variety of shitty VHS tapes, a piecemeal Twin Peaks Perfect Collection.
As much as I rag on the VHS format-because it fucking sucks-I could not stop watching Twin Peaks once I got started-even watching crummy EP picture and sound quality. At that time, it was my first experience watching a long-form TV show from beginning to end. I hadn't even watched an anime series from beginning to end at that point. I couldn't get enough. I even liked all the Second Season shit with the boring dude on the motorcycle. That's how good this show was: it transcended the scuzziness of the VHS format to fire a beam of art directly into the center of my brain mass.
Some years later, I tried re-watching Twin Peaks on DVD, and I couldn't even get all the way through the pilot. Not because I disliked it, but more because my memories of the show were already so vivid. I didn't need to re-burn 'em into my brain. Now, I've watched Fire Walk With Me a number of times, because it remains a mystery to me, and also, probably, because I'm a twisted fuck . . . but I'll get to Fire Walk With Me down the road . . . but Twin Peaks has always stayed with me since the VHS viewings. That's how good this show is-it gets you the first time, doesn't need a second shot at your heart.
So . . . I don't think I'm going to re-watch the whole series. I don't have the time. My disdain for TV has only grown over the years, although I keep hearing that it's some kind of a New Golden Age. Are we still in that New Golden Age? There's been some good shit, for sure: The Wire, The Big O, most of Breaking Bad, a good chunk of The Sopranos, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Transformers Prime, the PBS Frontline Documentaries . . . so I buy the New Golden Age rhetoric. Why not? You gotta stay positive in dark times. But TV . . . is just so tedious to me in general. I guess I got old and cranky. I can't even really complain about the commercials, now, that shit's purely optional. But I'm still aware of the passing of time, the growing shortness of my potential lifespan as I sit watching something passively, body going to seed, eyesight fading, ass cheeks gathering bulk, gut creeping over my belt-line, once beautiful mane of hair giving way to bald spots . . . hey, may as well sit down, watch some old TV all over again. Fuck it.
So . . . a compromise.
I'm only going to watch the episodes of Twin Peaks directed by David Lynch. I'll skip the others.
We'll see how that works . . .
You might already be aware of this . . . but Fire Walk With Me basically gives away the entire mystery of Twin Peaks. It's also a grotesque and confusing piece of cinema. I loved every minute of it.
I finally ordered the VHS collection of Twin Peaks right as I was graduating high school. It featured every episode-except the pilot-recorded in glorious Extended Play (EP) format. The quality was shit, but not unwatchable. I had to tape the pilot, which was unavailable on VHS for some reason at that time, off of cable. Later, I dubbed a rental copy VHS release of the international version of the pilot episode, and so I had, on a variety of shitty VHS tapes, a piecemeal Twin Peaks Perfect Collection.
As much as I rag on the VHS format-because it fucking sucks-I could not stop watching Twin Peaks once I got started-even watching crummy EP picture and sound quality. At that time, it was my first experience watching a long-form TV show from beginning to end. I hadn't even watched an anime series from beginning to end at that point. I couldn't get enough. I even liked all the Second Season shit with the boring dude on the motorcycle. That's how good this show was: it transcended the scuzziness of the VHS format to fire a beam of art directly into the center of my brain mass.
Some years later, I tried re-watching Twin Peaks on DVD, and I couldn't even get all the way through the pilot. Not because I disliked it, but more because my memories of the show were already so vivid. I didn't need to re-burn 'em into my brain. Now, I've watched Fire Walk With Me a number of times, because it remains a mystery to me, and also, probably, because I'm a twisted fuck . . . but I'll get to Fire Walk With Me down the road . . . but Twin Peaks has always stayed with me since the VHS viewings. That's how good this show is-it gets you the first time, doesn't need a second shot at your heart.
So . . . I don't think I'm going to re-watch the whole series. I don't have the time. My disdain for TV has only grown over the years, although I keep hearing that it's some kind of a New Golden Age. Are we still in that New Golden Age? There's been some good shit, for sure: The Wire, The Big O, most of Breaking Bad, a good chunk of The Sopranos, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Transformers Prime, the PBS Frontline Documentaries . . . so I buy the New Golden Age rhetoric. Why not? You gotta stay positive in dark times. But TV . . . is just so tedious to me in general. I guess I got old and cranky. I can't even really complain about the commercials, now, that shit's purely optional. But I'm still aware of the passing of time, the growing shortness of my potential lifespan as I sit watching something passively, body going to seed, eyesight fading, ass cheeks gathering bulk, gut creeping over my belt-line, once beautiful mane of hair giving way to bald spots . . . hey, may as well sit down, watch some old TV all over again. Fuck it.
So . . . a compromise.
I'm only going to watch the episodes of Twin Peaks directed by David Lynch. I'll skip the others.
We'll see how that works . . .
Monday, February 19, 2018
The Lynch Meditations 8: Blue Velvet (1986)
It holds up.
I don't want to spoil too much with this one. If you haven't seen Blue Velvet go watch it. It is a tightly assembled mystery that is surreal without totally departing reality for parts unknown.
If you have seen Blue Velvet, I'll try not to bore you with what has already been said many times over about this film. So let me see if I can say something that hasn't been said about it before . . . I might not be up to the task . . .
I'm a big fan of point-and-click mystery adventure games: Shadowgate, Deja Vu, Uninvited, King's Quest, Nightshade Part 1: The Claws of Sutekh, Snatcher, Grim Fandango, the Gabriel Knight series, the Tex Murphy series, the Phoenix Wright series, and pretty much everything put out by Wadjet Eye Games. These are games where you drag a cursor around the screen, looking for some kind of response from the program, looking for any kind of a clue. You might need to interrogate people by choosing dialogue prompts, being careful not to say the wrong thing which could potentially shut down a conversation prematurely. Usually these games take place in a series of rooms and passages, where each section must be thoroughly investigated and solved before you unlock more rooms, and more passages, that are, ultimately, all connected in some unexpected, labyrinthine fashion by game's end.
Point-and-click games are sometimes notorious for the difficulty of their "moon logic" puzzles-conundrums whose solutions are so arbitrary and obscure that they could only possibly make sense in the hermetically sealed, hyper-postmodern reality of a video game. Sometimes, though, these moon logic puzzles transcend to a level of surreal brilliance which delights, but just as often they make you want to throw your monitor through a window. The best point-and-click adventures create an internal logic that subtly challenges you to engage with the mystery on its own terms, giving you enough clues and worldbuilding contextualization so that you have a fighting chance to reach the end state of the game with a sense of earned achievement.
Blue Velvet creates a near-perfect point-and-click adventure scenario with its own internally consistent reality that seems rooted in our world, but departs from it in key moments to give us a bit of a jolt at just the right moments. We even have a video game cypher of a protagonist (perfectly played by Kyle MacLachlan as a twin-souled square and voyeuristic freak all in one) who allows us to enter into the world with just enough perception to suss out a mystery worth diving into, but lacking that extra bit of common sense which would send a normal person running the fuck home. Visually, we are presented with a series of images and objects that lead us further into the heart of mystery: a severed human ear; a propeller hat; a blue velvet robe; angry and agonized and ecstatic faces distorted in dreams; human forms moving from the background of shadows into the foreground of light; an apartment and a living room presented as though each were a proscenium stage; a work light used as a microphone . . . we are encouraged to think in terms of a show presented before our eyes and how exactly that show has been put together.
The video game cypher takes time out of the adventure to assemble his thoughts and experiences in montage, drawing conclusions that advance the program closer to the end state.
Meanwhile, Angelo Badalamenti's lush score seems to emanate from a dimension of refined film noir that blurs the lines between cinema and reality. After my latest viewing, I am now convinced that the world of Blue Velvet was born from Badalamenti's mysterious score, as opposed to being a film created by a cast and crew of hundreds of people as you would expect from most movies.
Much like in a point-and-click mystery adventure, our protagonist doesn't notice all there is to notice until he is deep into things. When he first goes to a nightspot called the Slow Club, he is mesmerized by a sad and beautiful torch singer. Later, after he's been through some shit, he goes back to the Slow Club, is once again mesmerized by the sad and beautiful torch singer . . . but now he sees someone else in the audience. Someone who was probably there the first time, but our protagonist had no reason to notice this person as distinct from the other anonymous customers in the crowd. I imagine a New Game+ version of these sequences where you can play through it, again, and have a different outcome.
But Blue Velvet isn't a video game. It's a movie. It flows in one direction, coming to one conclusion every single time, and it will never change.
Unless, of course, David Lynch decides to go back into it with computer graphics technology and add in copious amounts of bantha poodoo, digitally enhanced explosions, and maybe an extra rock for Kyle MacLachlan to hide behind inside that closet . . . this would be so fucked-up and absurd I kind of want to see it happen.
But I get drawn into this one every time I watch it. Maybe it's a great movie. Maybe I'm just a great sucker.
NEXT: 2/23/18: Twin Peaks Pilot Episode (1990)
I don't want to spoil too much with this one. If you haven't seen Blue Velvet go watch it. It is a tightly assembled mystery that is surreal without totally departing reality for parts unknown.
If you have seen Blue Velvet, I'll try not to bore you with what has already been said many times over about this film. So let me see if I can say something that hasn't been said about it before . . . I might not be up to the task . . .
I'm a big fan of point-and-click mystery adventure games: Shadowgate, Deja Vu, Uninvited, King's Quest, Nightshade Part 1: The Claws of Sutekh, Snatcher, Grim Fandango, the Gabriel Knight series, the Tex Murphy series, the Phoenix Wright series, and pretty much everything put out by Wadjet Eye Games. These are games where you drag a cursor around the screen, looking for some kind of response from the program, looking for any kind of a clue. You might need to interrogate people by choosing dialogue prompts, being careful not to say the wrong thing which could potentially shut down a conversation prematurely. Usually these games take place in a series of rooms and passages, where each section must be thoroughly investigated and solved before you unlock more rooms, and more passages, that are, ultimately, all connected in some unexpected, labyrinthine fashion by game's end.
Point-and-click games are sometimes notorious for the difficulty of their "moon logic" puzzles-conundrums whose solutions are so arbitrary and obscure that they could only possibly make sense in the hermetically sealed, hyper-postmodern reality of a video game. Sometimes, though, these moon logic puzzles transcend to a level of surreal brilliance which delights, but just as often they make you want to throw your monitor through a window. The best point-and-click adventures create an internal logic that subtly challenges you to engage with the mystery on its own terms, giving you enough clues and worldbuilding contextualization so that you have a fighting chance to reach the end state of the game with a sense of earned achievement.
Blue Velvet creates a near-perfect point-and-click adventure scenario with its own internally consistent reality that seems rooted in our world, but departs from it in key moments to give us a bit of a jolt at just the right moments. We even have a video game cypher of a protagonist (perfectly played by Kyle MacLachlan as a twin-souled square and voyeuristic freak all in one) who allows us to enter into the world with just enough perception to suss out a mystery worth diving into, but lacking that extra bit of common sense which would send a normal person running the fuck home. Visually, we are presented with a series of images and objects that lead us further into the heart of mystery: a severed human ear; a propeller hat; a blue velvet robe; angry and agonized and ecstatic faces distorted in dreams; human forms moving from the background of shadows into the foreground of light; an apartment and a living room presented as though each were a proscenium stage; a work light used as a microphone . . . we are encouraged to think in terms of a show presented before our eyes and how exactly that show has been put together.
The video game cypher takes time out of the adventure to assemble his thoughts and experiences in montage, drawing conclusions that advance the program closer to the end state.
Meanwhile, Angelo Badalamenti's lush score seems to emanate from a dimension of refined film noir that blurs the lines between cinema and reality. After my latest viewing, I am now convinced that the world of Blue Velvet was born from Badalamenti's mysterious score, as opposed to being a film created by a cast and crew of hundreds of people as you would expect from most movies.
Much like in a point-and-click mystery adventure, our protagonist doesn't notice all there is to notice until he is deep into things. When he first goes to a nightspot called the Slow Club, he is mesmerized by a sad and beautiful torch singer. Later, after he's been through some shit, he goes back to the Slow Club, is once again mesmerized by the sad and beautiful torch singer . . . but now he sees someone else in the audience. Someone who was probably there the first time, but our protagonist had no reason to notice this person as distinct from the other anonymous customers in the crowd. I imagine a New Game+ version of these sequences where you can play through it, again, and have a different outcome.
But Blue Velvet isn't a video game. It's a movie. It flows in one direction, coming to one conclusion every single time, and it will never change.
Unless, of course, David Lynch decides to go back into it with computer graphics technology and add in copious amounts of bantha poodoo, digitally enhanced explosions, and maybe an extra rock for Kyle MacLachlan to hide behind inside that closet . . . this would be so fucked-up and absurd I kind of want to see it happen.
But I get drawn into this one every time I watch it. Maybe it's a great movie. Maybe I'm just a great sucker.
NEXT: 2/23/18: Twin Peaks Pilot Episode (1990)
Sunday, February 18, 2018
The Lynch Meditations -8
David Lynch once told Roger Ebert in an interview that when he and his brother were children they saw a naked, crying woman walking down the street, and that he wept at the sight. In retrospect, it seems that this woman was most likely trying to escape horrific abuse at the hands of her husband or boyfriend. But Lynch, as a child, was confused by this sight, and so this incident worked its way into his filmmaking.
David Lynch's experience seemed to form the basis of one of the most disturbing scenes in his film Blue Velvet-a movie which was created in part to explore the mysteries of human cruelty and the secrecy which society imposes to cover up such abuses.
Blue Velvet is another example of Classic Lynch, one of his best films . . . I think. I haven't watched it all the way through in quite some time. I'm guessing it will hold up better than Dune did for me . . . but we'll see.
I remember quite fondly the first time I got to watch it in its proper aspect ratio on a decent sized TV at a friend's apartment. So much better than watching the shitty pan and scan VHS. I have absolutely no nostalgia for that format.
So here we go . . .
David Lynch's experience seemed to form the basis of one of the most disturbing scenes in his film Blue Velvet-a movie which was created in part to explore the mysteries of human cruelty and the secrecy which society imposes to cover up such abuses.
Blue Velvet is another example of Classic Lynch, one of his best films . . . I think. I haven't watched it all the way through in quite some time. I'm guessing it will hold up better than Dune did for me . . . but we'll see.
I remember quite fondly the first time I got to watch it in its proper aspect ratio on a decent sized TV at a friend's apartment. So much better than watching the shitty pan and scan VHS. I have absolutely no nostalgia for that format.
So here we go . . .
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