WhatEvenIs:

Talking about movies, games and the randomness of life itself.

[whateven-is]

What Even Is: Fury

Fury, the latest World War 2 film starring Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf and Michael Pena, is set in the final weeks of World War 2, where the Allies advance through Germany towards Berlin. I was really hoping that this wouldn't be an unimpressive, cliched mess, and fortunately it wasn't. Fury was not, however, perfect.

Brad Pitt plays the role of Wardaddy, the commander of the four Sherman tanks the Americans have in the area. LaBeouf plays the gunner, Bible, an unfortunately stereotypical religious soldier, and Pena, playing Gordo, is the driver. The tank, named "Fury", is assigned a new co-driver, who fires the ball mounted gun at the front of the tank. This role is played by Logan Lerman, who starred in the Percy Jackson films.

The first half of the film was very interesting to watch, showing off good visual and sound effects. The way tracer rounds flew through the air, and how rounds bounced off of the tanks, as well as the attention to detail on the scrapes and dents was impressive. Sound wise, all the sounds of shells and explosions were definitely up to scratch, and were nice and loud.

I only had two problems with the film. The first, which wasn't a huge problem, was that some of the German shells fired at the Sherman tanks were either too inaccurate, or looked like they should have penetrated. I will say though, I may be expecting more than is realistic. Nevertheless, for any audience, whether they know about tank warfare or not, this shouldn't be too much of a problem.

My second problem, which was a little bigger, was the ending. SPOILER ALERT, skip this paragraph if you haven't seen the film yet. The final fight was what disappointed me. I know a tank is strong, impenetrable to small arms fire pretty much, but when you put a Sherman tank up against 200 German SS soldiers, it should not kill as many of them as it did. SS soldiers were the most highly trained soldiers in the German army, and they would never run straight at a tank, or take 10 minutes of their comrades dying to realize that they need their anti-tank weapons to take it out. Even if they were standard German soldiers, they would definitely not be that dumb.

Overall, Fury was a solid film. It had impressive visual effects, featured real tanks (yes, Tiger 131!), and presented a fairly good story. Apart from the odd cliche throughout the film, I thoroughly enjoyed Fury, and give it a 7/10. ~WhatEvenIs 

[whateven-is]

What Even Is: Gone Girl

So I just saw Gone Girl. First things first, Film of The Year!

Gone Girl is a film about a man called Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) who finds his wife Amy (Roseamund Pike) missing, on their 5th wedding anniversary. The police are called and a full scale investigation is launched. Clues are found, which along with Nicks increasingly suspicious activity lead the police to begin to investigate him.

Let me tell you, what you have just read contains no movie-ruining spoilers. This is a long film, just over two and a half hours, but it manages to create and hold tension for its entire duration, with twists and turns throughout. The film is slow moving, but there was not a moment in the film where I felt it could pick up the pace, and the pace is what keeps you on the edge of your seat for those few moments where everything explodes.

Roseamund Pike presents an amazing performance in this film, and the flashbacks she is in are really the only backstory you'll get. Ben Affleck arguably left some to be desired, but I think his character was meant to be played the way he does. Carrie Coon also stars, an actress usually seen on TV, specifically her 10 episodes in The Leftovers this year. But she also does an amazing job of playing Margo Dunne, Nicks sister. All characters conceal their emotions, which are only truly shown in short outbursts.

As for the actual plot, I can't say much because you have to go in knowing as little as possible. Cinematography, superb. Gone Girl kept me on the edge of my seat for its entirety, and certainly deserves its 9/10. ~WhatEvenIs

[whateven-is]

What Even Is: Games and Getting Hooked

Games are amazing; they’re something to do when bored, the best way to waste time, and even better for procrastination. There is something about games that makes us want to come back for more, and more, and more, until we realise that we have spent way too much time playing. When you ask yourself why you really play games, the only answer you will come up with is “they’re fun”, or “they have good storylines”, but ask yourself why that is exactly. Why is this game fun? Why is this story interesting to me?

A fantastic example of this is Minecraft. I bought Minecraft in 2010, and I still play it now. Not as much as I used to, but I still have the game installed and always up to date. Minecraft is a great game, and the reason why it is such a fun game for so many people is the possibilities. Not only can you build anything in Minecraft, you can also put anything into Minecraft through mods. You’re playing and you think “I want a jetpack”, well, you can get a mod for that. Mods add so much extra content that you could never play all of it. The other part of Minecraft it the randomly generated worlds. Unless you copy and paste the world seed (used to generate the world), you will never spawn in the same world twice.

Minecraft, however, has no story. Well, you could argue that it does, but that story is largely dictated by your actions in the game. A good example of story in a game is something like BioShock Infinite, or the BioShock games in general. BioShock Infinite explores so many different themes, but not in the way one of those books you read in school did. It looks at socialism, racism, and redemption, but in a way that leaves you pondering your own existence and asking for more. BioShock Infinite encouraged multiple play throughs so that people could fully understand the story, and explore the decisions that you could make to see if an alternate outcome was possible.

All in all, games have the ability to draw us in, interest us, and present us with ideas and concepts that we would never have dreamed of. While games may take up lots of time, what’s to say that’s any different to reading a book, or watching a movie? Games are like books or movies, only you control the main character who has to fight their way out of a horde of demons, or win the F1 Grand Prix. Yea, games are the best. ~WhatEvenIs

[whateven-is]

What Even Is: The End of the World

The apocalypse, 2012, the Mayan calendar, all wrong. I prefer to take a more logical (well, logical to me) approach to how the world will end. Here I’m going to discuss some of the ways that I believe the world will end, why, and the likelihood of each theory happening.

Asteroid/Meteor hitting Earth: 35% I’m almost surprised that this hasn’t already happened. There are that many rocks out there in our solar system alone that could hit the Earth that I believe it’s just sheer luck that one hasn’t hit us already. Ridiculous amounts of movies have been made about this eventuality, tons of rocks pass by the Earth that could wipe us out, and it even happened before (well, that one’s also a theory about how the dinosaurs also died out, but I’m gonna count it). It seems like such a common occurrence that it should have happened ten times over already.

Aliens!: 15% Yes, aliens. I know that there are some people who don’t believe in aliens, but I’m using the term in a very broad way. I don’t mean aliens that come in flying saucers and abduct people; I mean any life form that is not from this planet. So bacteria from another planet would be considered an alien. The reason I think this is because if space is as big as scientists claim it to be, then how can another civilisation of sentient beings not exist? That also brings a counter argument, if space is so big then how can anything find each other? To that I say, something would have to find us eventually. Aliens, perhaps not in the traditional sense, but aliens nonetheless.

World War 3: 45% Come on. You know it, I know it, it’s probably gonna happen. Despite this year being the 100th anniversary of WWI beginning, I still fully believe that there will be another war before the anniversary of the Vietnam War. Everyone is always saying, “Oh no, greenhouse gases will heat the earth up”, or “We’re legit running out of water guys”, and “Australia doesn’t have an unlimited supply of iron”. Eventually a fight is going to break out between two countries like two kids over the last lollipop, and it’s not going to be pretty.

Nothing: 5% Yea, it’s about the world ending, but I’m human, and I can’t help but have a little glimmer of hope. What if we don’t get hit by an asteroid, or get killed by some space disease, or heat up the earth and kill each other? Could we possibly, maybe, go on to become more environmentally sustainable, friendlier, and more economically stable? We could move on, build our civilisation to the peak of greatness, and think back on these days as the dark ages, when people didn’t know what they could accomplish.

So there you go, how the world could possibly (and possibly not) end, by me. Don’t say YOLO, but don’t be scared to try things that might embarrass you. Just think “I’m going to die some day, so why does it matter?”.

~WhatEvenIs

[whateven-is]

What Even Is: The Lego Movie

The Lego Movie finally came to Australia, and I finally got to see it with a friend. Overall, it was one of the best movies I’ve seen in a while. The movie revolves around the character Emmet (Chris Pratt), an incredibly generic construction worker with absolutely nothing special about him. This fact is stated multiple times throughout the film, quite humorously. After one joyous, song filled day of work, Emmet loses his beloved instructions, that tell him how to do everything in the day from waking up to going to sleep, and in the course of looking for them, finds Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), and a mysterious, odd looking red brick. Events lead on from there quite predictably, but I won’t give away any more in case you haven’t seen the film. The characters of the film are numerous, and there are lots of well known actors voice acting as well. There are characters like Batman, Gandalf, Superman, Dumbledore, Shaquille O’Neal and many others. These characters, as well as others, have the voices of Will Ferrell, Morgan Freeman and Liam Neeson to name but a few. Every character has a connection to another, like Wyldstyle and Batman, or Green Lantern and Superman, and the way that they interact with each other is always entertaining.

This film has a certain style that just makes it so much better than you may first think. The whole film is animated in that classic stop motion style, albeit a little smoother than some of the homemade shorts you can find on Youtube. You then get the animations of fire and explosions which seem like they were done at a slower frame rate, just so when you look you can see that it is, in fact, still Lego. Then the faces are animated slightly differently as well, which makes dialogue look much nicer. This means that some of the action sequences look amazing, especially when the fighting is not taken seriously. Like when characters can dodge fire from 20 or so different angles.

This film was just so much fun to watch, and is great for younger viewers. Don’t think though, that it is only for young viewers. There are many references to pop culture, film clichés and even hipsters, references that only older viewers will understand. Whether you are young or old, The Lego Movie will bring out the real kid inside of you. 8/10

~WhatEvenIs

[whateven-is]

What Even Is: Tumblr

Why hello there Tumblr, I'm yet another new user. Introductions are always boring, I find, and the best way to deal with them is to barely do them at all. That is why this introduction will be incredibly short. I find it more interesting learning about a person as your friendship grows, instead of learning everything about them as soon as you meet them. Anywho, a few quick things. I'm Australian, I live in Perth. I love metal/punk, my favorite bands are Metallica, Rise Against, Threat Signal, and Muse. I play way more games than I should, I usually play a myriad of games, but the ones that I have kept playing are World of Tanks and Minecraft. Other recent games include Metro: 2033, Dark Souls, Deadpool and Titanfall.  The topics that I talk about are not set. I want to do short film and game reviews, talk about life/its meaning/philosophy, and possibly share my experiences. Nothing will happen in order, or at set times. The only thing anyone reading these posts needs to know is that the vast majority will be opinion based, my opinion. Anyone can disagree with me, just not violently, I'm a pacifist. So much for short, but whatever. Writing should be as long as it is. First talk might be the Lego Movie, which FINALLY came to Aus, or the end of the world. ~WhatEvenIs