Watching The Hobbit

Lots of things have happened while here in Rio and back in Barcelona during Christmas, but I will comment them only if I feel like it...

What I want to comment today is about the Hobbit, and also about Lord of the Rings movies, because we recently watched this edition of The Hobbit. I have to say we enjoyed it very much, even if some things didn't make much sense...and I'm not talking about missing things because this edit removed plenty of them, I'm talking about added things.

I have always been a fan of Lord of The Rings. And I'm not saying "always" lightly.

When I could not read on my own, my parents had talked about these books, and had read fragments to me. I remember they read Shelob's chapter, and I could not help but want to know more about what was happening, seeing how creepy but interesting it was, and seeing how there was a giant spider (I was also quite fond of big spiders). Considering I started to read when I was 4, this should have happened some time sooner than that.

I don't remember when I first read the hobbit, but I know it was in preparation for the Lord of The Rings. And I was warned: The hobbit is much lighter in comparison, and much easier to read. However I wanted to give these books a try. I believe I tried to read a more serious Tolkien book with some short stories also in preparation, but they were depressing or uninteresting and I did not finish them.  I do know when I read Lord of the Rings, and I was eight. It was not an easy book, and the beginning was incredibly slow, but I finished all 3 books and I loved them. Tolkien's books have its flaws, but they are also pretty awesome, and I was completely addicted to its world and story. I actually convinced at least 2 people of my similar age to try and read it, after "selling" to them the story.

After a few years, I know I decided to read them again. And again. And one more time. I didn't really repeated The Hobbit, but I read Lord of the Rings 4 times, and every time I read the initial verses (were the rings of power are mentioned) I had goosebumps. I believe it started to be a yearly tradition. However, when I was 16, I was starting to practice and use English more and more. I started reading some small books in English. And then I decided, as a challenge, to try to read Lord of the Rings in the original language.

This was almost like reading it for the first time again. It was hard, it was slow, but it was an incredibly learning experience. Tolkien does not write in an easy way, and I remember reading a whole page and realising I had understood two things from there. Anyway, I managed to finish it. And then, in later years, I re-read it again, also in English. I believe I read it a total of 4 times too, and maybe I'm missing one....

During the general exam to determine university entrance after high school, the English section had an experimental listening part (it was the first year they did something like this) where you were supposed to listen to a conversation and answer some questions. Funny enough, the topic of the conversation was the Lord of the Rings. I answered 70% of the listening part, correctly, before hearing a single English voice in the room.

And then (well, actually after my second time of reading it in English), the first movie came out. The first one was not so bad. There were some changes, that you can understand because lack of time, and some extra things that, while annoying, didn't really detract much (some people got really angry about Arwen saving Frodo, but that's small details.I find more troubling the fact that they turned Gimli into an idiot and other such things). However, the second and third movies (although enjoyable) resulted in plenty of things that made no sense and denied huge important ideas that were in the books.

After watching extended editions and the interviews with writers and creators, I'm surprised at the stupidity of the people behind it. They did a good job, and then they screwed up huge basic principles. For example, the ring is not the ultimate evil: The ring is the ultimate temptation. Therefore, you can wear it to escape enemies and even kill them while you're invisible, and as long as you don't claim it for yourself, nothing really bad happens to you, no whispering, no fire eye. The ring acts slow and over time, but it can be beaten. Not all humans will act stupidly and demand it (Faramir gets over it from the start, not after dragging the hobbits almost to Gondor). Frodo is weak from carrying the ring, but that does not mean he's a mumbling mess without wisdom that will believe Gollum before Sam, and he's spiritually powerful. 100 Humans cannot beat 10000 orcs, a big fucking forest of living trees does that for them, killing close to 8000 of the orcs, and there were actually close to a 1000 humans in the first place. Ents are slow deciding, that's why they decide correctly on the first place, and they don't rush to action after just seeing some fires around the forest, as if they were not aware of that. Merry injured a spectre because his fucking sword was an ancient magical dagger, otherwise he would have just died. The good guys do not always need to fight, and plenty of times their victory is spiritual, without violence involved, and they respect ambassadors and Mouths of Sauron enough to not kill them when they're just discussing things. And so many other things....

Anyway, I did enjoy the movies, but plenty of these points make my blood boil, because they show such lack of basic reading comprehension, such idiocy, that it's hard to believes. Extra love stories and action scenes can be almost forgiven because it's Hollywood, but some things add nothing, mess shit up and make the story a lot worse.  

So, when the hobbit movie was announced, especially after hearing they would make three of them, I was not especially thrilled, to say the truth. I saw it as a cash grab, and I didn't want to waste so many hours of my life and ticket money in that.

However, recently I saw a post mentioning this Tolkien edit. After reading what was removed, it seemed like it could be quite a nice movie, so we gave it a try.

There is still bullshit. There are moments that make no sense. There are modifications made by people who were checking their mobiles or driving while reading the original book, apparently, But the end result is a very entertaining film, long but not stretched, that manages to explain quite well what happened in the original book while keeping you interested all the way.

Don't watch the three bloated movies, download this version and watch something much more close to what the hobbit was.

(And to finish this geeky post let's put some music ) 

World-Building and Bioshock

Apart from taking care of our baby, working and a lightning trip to Moscow and Barcelona, I've been trying to play Bioshock Infinite lately.

I heard and read reviews about this game, and there has been lots of posts, screenshots and gifs around the internet. Just form the beginning, the game can catch your eye by looking like this:

It's not only graphics, which are really good...is the world that they're showing you. A world of fantasy, a floating city with rails connecting sections, huge statues, a thriving population, shops, houses...all this mixed with steampunk technology. It looks awesome.

However, this is not all, by far. I started playing and was immersed in a complex and weird story, starting with an introduction that takes a long while before you even fire a single shot (apart from firing in little fair tents that have games of marksmanship). This introduction is incredible, makes you feel inside this place...but more important, makes you believe such a place exists.

Maybe a great part of what makes art amazing is its ability to create worlds that do not exist. You can see that in movies, in literature, in dance, even in music and paintings...they can show reality, but they can go further than that, and show you the realms of the imagination. These realms can be amazing, scary, dark, cheerful, modern, dream-like, happy...and in these realms you can make your own rules, in history, in economics, or even in physics.

Games are art, even if not recognized by everybody, and good games create such worlds while putting you in control of someone or something inside that world.

When these worlds are created with art, it is very important that they're created well. A bad painting, that messes up proportions just because of lack of skill will remind you that it's just a painting.  You may enjoy it, but reality will point out the problems it has, and you will return to your own world much faster. You can apply that with any other world-building work.

That's why world-building is very important. The most clear example you can find are novels. Novels, by its extension, have lots of time to create a world. It's hard to put a lot of details in a movie that last 90 minutes, but in a book of 500 pages you have time to develop a universe inside. Books have a lot more margin to define this world, which can be slightly or a lot different than our own.

And nothing will make a story lose its appeal as a badly-build world. I believe Terry Pratchett (or somebody commenting on his work) once mentioned that his created city of Ankh-Morpork submerges you in it because you don't need the protagonists to be there for it to work. If the hero was not walking around, doing hero stuff, its inhabitants would still work, and live, and eat food, and buy things, and all that. That created world is so rich that when the heroes stroll around it, it's easy to believe you're there with them. It makes sense internally. Does it matter that magic is real, the earth is flat, and that the sun orbits earth in there? No, because its consistent with itself, and it works...if you imagine a world described as it is in the books, you can see that it's solid, it has its own life.

Now, that may sound blasphemous...but let's have a look at Tolkien. Let's concentrate on Gondor. What does exactly that region do? It basically fights the Dark Lord, permanently, always at war for who knows how many years, all their people soldiers, all their people closed inside their walls. Now, Tolkien has great world-building skills, and this world is rich and varied. However, Gondor in particular makes little sense, and personally that's why it seems also like the most boring part of the books, when Gondor defends itself or attacks (when Rohan helps it's fun, but while there's only Gondor, it's boring), because I cannot help but wonder how the hell it's still standing, or how people manage to live there.

Now, you can maybe say that Tolkien explained these details in some other work, or that some things are implied without being said...however, I still think that Gondor, in the Lord of The Rings, is not well made, and it fails to stand on its own logic. People would not live there if it wasn't for the plot.

There are lots of lesser books that nevertheless grasped quite well this concept of World Building. For example, the Belgariad and the Malloreon are not greatly written, or very original...but its characters are much more alive than some of Tolkien's characters, and there's a lot of details to simple facts...like the fact that, if somebody's going to wage war, that someone is going to provide food for the troops, and then if you invest in some cheap food, you may get huge rewards...or, that a moving war front needs a constant supply of materials, which needs to follow you and form a chain with the origin of the supply. That gives a lot of coherence to the book.

Before I mentioned that movies do not have as much time for world-building...but that does not mean they should not have a good one. The easiest way to see that a movie is full of bullshit is if the world is rather inconsistent with itself. Take Star Wars prequels, where in a galaxy of millions of planets, that have billions of people and species in each planet, there's like 6 characters that are always present when something important occurs, no matter the place. That's laziness right there, and returns you to reality fast enough to scream bullshit.

Games are in a middle term, taking longer than movies but not being able to say as much as books do. In games, immersion is very dependant on that world-building. The first Bioshock game was impressive, the water rendering was amazing, physics involved in its movement were pretty awesome, and the introduction was very surprising...however, the supposed "city" did not seem a city at all. Even considering that an underworld city needs to have small corridors, it never felt like corridors, just a single endless corridor that railroaded you from place to place, with a few exceptions where you had a couple of different rooms to visit. Also, everybody was an enemy. For a city that was supposed full of people, even after a disaster, it felt empty, lifeless....and the fact that the corridors were not a labyrinth, or a grid, removed the feeling of being in a city, putting you back in reality and saying "Game with linear design".

Bioshock Infinite, in just the first hour of gameplay, shames the first Bioshock by showing how it's done: It moves you to a great city in the sky, with people, with attractions, shows, shops, toys, children and adults, subculture, rebellion, social problems, radio shows, music.....in general, life. You can see that people live there, you believe so, because it makes perfect sense, internally. The game still has a linear design, but by defending these flaws as part of life in there, such as the fact that private houses are closed, or that flying streets sometimes are not connected and may have timetables or change depending on the moment, makes you ignore the fact that you're basically moving from point A to point B in a straight line.

You feel in a city, with people living there, and you see that it does not require your character for it to make sense.

This is world-building when done well. Great stories and great art will always have great world-building. And Bioshock Infinite does it very well indeed....