Hey y'all. Grim title, eh? Well, it's true. Not that Mega Man doesn't have a ton of fans, each playing the games, listening to the music, and writing fanfiction. These all exist, and yet the series is over. Gone. More or less finished forever.
The thing about Mega Man is that it's not a continuous storyline. It has to end sooner than other series. Take Super Mario Bros for example. It has almost no plot, and there is almost no relevant connection from one game to the next. Mega Man and other similar series (Metal Gear Solid, Halo, Assassin's Creed, etc) will all die in the end, because eventually people will run out of plot. If plot continues from one game to the next, then it one day must end, or people will call the newer games hacks and tell the game developers that they might as well let the series die.
Mega Man is already dead, and not because fans asked for it. In fact, the fans have protested time and time again for it to come back. But it can't, for the simple reason that the plot is over.
I'll start with the Classic series. It was wonderful when it came out, and unlike what many people thought, the series was not intentionally cheesy until 7, and it was only the 8 bit graphics that made it so. Think of the ending sequence for games 2 and 4. And what's so cheesy about Mega Man's long lost brother kidnapping their creator? Only when Mega Man came on the SNES did the developers decide to add in forty bajillion eye-popping colors and flying confetti.
The darkness in the early games, particularly 2 and 4, reveals what Keiji Inafune had in mind all along: a grim, futuristic story of a society that creates robots, and thus their own doom. However, once the Super Nintendo came along, there was no need for Classic to be serious. In fact, it was probably made intentionally goofy to contrast with Mega Man X, who first debuted on the SNES.
The X series was more or less like the Classic series, only with more complex gameplay and plots. There was a lot to like and dislike about it, but what it did do was take a more or less happy series and plunge it into gloom. Instead of a blue robot merrily destroying goofy baddies, we get a blue emo and his blonde friend pondering all the crappy parts of life. The story goes down such a bad direction, that thinkers among the gamers will realize a disturbing truth: in no Mega Man X game does the future turn out better in the end. In fact, many times the world is only marginally better off than it would have been if X and Zero hadn't fought at all.
To make it worse, their main enemy Sigma simply cannot die. Unlike Dr. Wily, who thought of various silly ways to escape and return for revenge, Sigma is literally killed seven times and comes back afterwards without fail. Clementj642 likes to say that Sigma died in MMX8 for good, but we really have no way of knowing that, as the game doesn't say directly and it would be easy as ever to retcon Sigma alive. You almost want to tell X and Zero to just give up before Sigma comes up with an even more nefarious plan and infects more robots.
Starting from the Mega Man Zero series onward, the series just continually drops more of its basic elements and becomes something else entirely -- usually something depressing. While Zero did have a refreshing gameplay style (a new villain for every game? Whaaaaa...?), it got even more depressing than the X series, particularly because X is now a floaty orb thing and Zero is far in the future trying to save a band of desperadoes from annihilation. The world is scorched and devastated, all except for one city. Which eventually gets destroyed. X eventually dies, Zero eventually dies, and just like the X series, every single game in the Zero series ends with the world in a worse position than before, as Zero was not able to bring any real peace, no matter how hard he fought. The last game literally ends with a girl crying on a hill. Heck, if it hadn't been for saner heads in Capcom, Keiji Inafune would have made Mega Man X the main villain of the Zero series, the only way it could have been any more depressing.
Then there's the Z/X series, which I have not played or seen on youtube. I saw a bit of the beginning, but couldn't really get into it. I find it silly, to be honest. It abandoned even more elements of its predecessors, becoming instead a future where people and robots have merged, and pure robots (reploids) are illegal. Thus, the reploid virus that emerged during the X series can now infect humans.
Honestly, whoever decided humans and reploids should merge was pretty dumb. Not only do humans now get the virus, but if you were a robot wanting to negotiate peace with humans, would you agree to merge with them into the same bodies? No, because that would basically guarantee the extinction of all robots.
This game is just not one fans of the older series can get into that much. I'm sure new gamers think its fine, but that's only because they don't realize it's a bizarre knock-off of the older games. There's a reason only two of them came out. Gamers would much rather play as X or Zero rather than people who have merged with the "souls" of the robots. Yeah. Souls. In metal objects. That's real cute. /Sarcasm.
Mega Man Legends is even more wonky than the others. The worst part of it? All the humans are dead. No really. Those characters you play are not humans, but rather aliens that have come to earth because the humans were gone and they figured they might as well settle here. There's apparently some gimmicky DNA storyline or something explains that humans can come back, but for the duration of the two Legends games they're dead. D-E-D redneck dead.
In contrast with that disturbing bit of news, the games are actually pretty happy and colorful. People seem to like them. Unlike with the Z/X series, I'm fine with that. Why not enjoy a fun game? At least they didn't want to depress you to death. However, the game is not really very Mega Man, bearing only mild resemblance to the series by a couple of names and some blue armor. Someone said they'd like the game better if it was an original game rather than tacked on to the Mega Man series.
But, you protest, how does that make Mega Man dead? People are all the time hankering for a new X, Legends, or Classic game. Heck, Classic even got two new games on the Wii pretty recently.
Well, let me explain. Mega Mans 9 and 10 were created for the nostalgia factor of people around my age. They were not created for new players, and add nothing of significance to the Mega Man plot. Well, not that Mega Man classic plots were ever that continuous anyway. They just touch on our childhoods briefly, without any potential for the MM series. If Capcom made a similarly styled MM11, they would be called hacks for not being original anymore.
Besides, who really wants to play a new Mega Man game when you know in the end that it will only turn into the Mega Man X series? The happy-go-lucky world of Rockman will turn into a really grim world where the good guys never can seem to kill the guy causing all the world's crap. Thus, there's nothing that can be added to the Mega Man Classic series that extends the plot, unless they want to make a transitional from Classic to X. Frankly, they'd be better off just leaving that to the readers' imaginations. Classic is doomed.
Mega Man X does have some potential for a sequel, but it too is cut short by the fact that Sigma's plans have already succeeded; the backstory for Mega Man Zero is already set out, so X can't do anything that goes against what was already written. X would end up almost as repetitive as a Classic sequel would, except for gameplay.
As for the Zero series? What are you going to do? Zero's dead. I don't know much about Z/X, but again, people would rather play as robots than people possessed by the souls of robots. It's just less creepy that way.
At the end of the day, Legends has the most potential for a sequel. However, it's not really Mega Man. Only the vaguest references reach back, and you can't really call a Legends game a true sequel unless one of them has a time machine that goes back to kill Dr. Wily or something.
So, as I said, Mega Man is dead and gone. There's nothing that can ever bring it back, because the whole series is locked into a storyline that forces depression and death on all the characters that we loved so much. It's really difficult to enjoy a series when you know that they'll all fail and die in the end.
So that it's. RIP Mega Man, 1987-2012. Wow, only twenty-five years old. And that's assuming you count this as the official death year. Maybe I shouldn't complain, though. It happens to games. They run out of plot, and the circle of life continues. It just sucks that the game series that made me so happy as a kid is dead now.
Or is it?
There's actually one idea that never really got off the ground. I'm not sure why, as to me it's the most obvious thing imaginable. There was always one guy that they never really used to his full potential, who got the short stick in a lot of ways. He was introduced, and then promptly forced into becoming a side character who just gets to antagonize a little. Basing a game on him would create not only a new series with new plot, but also allow new gameplay developments to arise and shake up the Mega Man series. And what am I talking about?
Mega Man: Bass
No really, I mean it. I didn't play the later classic games as a kid, but when I would watch the playthroughs on youtube, I wondered why they didn't give him more to do. It would be a good way to shake up gameplay. Mega Man's gameplay didn't change much until you get to the Zero series, and by then the doom and gloom plot pretty much assured that all the characters you cared about would be dead.
That's why Bass is so important. Removing Mega Man as the main protagonist and replacing him with Bass would automatically guarantee different gameplay just due to Bass' shooting abilities and how he flies with Treble. Bass is most of the time more flexible in gameplay than Mega Man, as cute as the blue bomber is. Levels would be designed after Bass' style of fighting and end up being way different.
On a plot level, it would be interesting to do this. Though it would necessitate getting rid of Mega Man somehow, permanently or just for a game or two.
1. Bass actually does kill Mega Man, but afterwards realizes his victory is hollow because "Wily is stealing all my glory" and goes to kill Wily.
2. Bass kills Mega, but is badly injured. Dr. Light repairs him out of kindness, and Bass feels guilty so he goes after Wily.
3. Mega Man retires and rejoins Dr. Light in his laboratory.
4. Bass has to rescue Mega Man. (Lol!)
5. Mega Man is down for upgrading and can't stop Wily. Bass goes to prove that he can do it alone.
6. A new villain shows up and destroys both Dr. Wily's and Dr. Light's labs. Bass goes in revenge.
7. A new villain shows up, but Mega Man is busy dealing with Wily so Bass decides to see if the new baddie has anything worth stealing. Bass ends up being hailed as a hero, and starts getting addicted to the praise of the public.
These are all possible storylines, and I'm sure you can think of some you'd like as well. The only trouble is that the robot apocalypse, a concept created by fans to explain all the depressing whatnot of the X series, hasn't been dealt with. The future is still going to be dark, gloomy X stuff. And, unfortunately, one of the options available is to have Bass responsible for the apocalypse, because he took over Mega Man's job. That's just too sad. Bass has been struggling with significance since he was built, and to have him responsible for the ultimate destruction of the world is too much.
But there's still a solution. A time change! Yay! When I was doing my Mega Man fanfiction, I did such a change. For a possible game, however, this change would have to be directed by Bass, as he would be the main character. After a few games with Bass as the hero, there would come a game with two endings. One would lead to the X series, and the other to freedom, and a new future for Mega Man! One that isn't depressing as all get out, and is a new blank slate for the series! That means more games, more fun characters, and a future that can last into a new generation of gaming.
Why not give my Mega Man fanfiction a look while you're here? It's fun stuff.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5128867/1/Okkusenman
Showing posts with label mega man. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mega man. Show all posts
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Sunday, November 18, 2012
How to Judge a Game
Hey y'all. So I was thinking, and I decided that if I had to vote for the greatest game of all time, it would be Donkey Kong Country 2. This game has awesome gameplay, graphics, and music. The controls are simple and the experience is fun. It's a game anybody of any age can really enjoy.
But then it occurred to me that this may not be an objective opinion. After all, I haven't played all the games in existence. So how do you judge a video game and whether it is good or bad? Well, the most objective way possible is to go through all the characteristics of a game and judge it by each of them. Let's start with...
1. Graphics
But then it occurred to me that this may not be an objective opinion. After all, I haven't played all the games in existence. So how do you judge a video game and whether it is good or bad? Well, the most objective way possible is to go through all the characteristics of a game and judge it by each of them. Let's start with...
1. Graphics
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Top Ten Top Tens: Video Game Music
Hey y'all. I had a lot of fun trying to figure out the top ten creepiest characters in people's opinions. So, I'd like to try it again, but this time with video game music! I love VGM, especially back in the old days when they didn't put rock music in, but had MIDI sounding bleeps and bloops. My favorite genre of VGM is Mega Man, as you may have already guessed, and I'll probably do a Mega Man Top Ten in the future.
Now, a few ground rules. Note that my source for this list is Youtube, and every song that gets a mention in a top ten video gets one point. It doesn't matter how high or low that song is on the list. If someone's song list is more than ten videos, then only the top ten will count in my survey. I'm not going to videos that refer to a specific game; no "top ten Mega Man" or "top ten DBZ" for me. Also, there's no "top ten creepiest" or "top ten most sad". I will only be counting, "my top ten favorite", "top ten best", "top ten most epic" or similar titles with open reach and the potential to count all types of songs and games. While I may do the "top ten best soundtracks" later, that's too big for the scope of this list.
So let's get to it! How does one define best? Is it the song that takes the most effort? The one that entertains the most, or is the most iconic? How about the one that gets stuck in your head the most? The ones you'll want to listen to when you're not playing a game? It's really hard to tell. But, whatever your definition of best, this is what ranks on youtube.
Let's start this up. For a while I was worried, because people were just mentioning various games, and I was having a heck of a time just getting two votes for the same song. However, over time patterns began to form, and finally I have a top ten.
Now, a few ground rules. Note that my source for this list is Youtube, and every song that gets a mention in a top ten video gets one point. It doesn't matter how high or low that song is on the list. If someone's song list is more than ten videos, then only the top ten will count in my survey. I'm not going to videos that refer to a specific game; no "top ten Mega Man" or "top ten DBZ" for me. Also, there's no "top ten creepiest" or "top ten most sad". I will only be counting, "my top ten favorite", "top ten best", "top ten most epic" or similar titles with open reach and the potential to count all types of songs and games. While I may do the "top ten best soundtracks" later, that's too big for the scope of this list.
So let's get to it! How does one define best? Is it the song that takes the most effort? The one that entertains the most, or is the most iconic? How about the one that gets stuck in your head the most? The ones you'll want to listen to when you're not playing a game? It's really hard to tell. But, whatever your definition of best, this is what ranks on youtube.
Let's start this up. For a while I was worried, because people were just mentioning various games, and I was having a heck of a time just getting two votes for the same song. However, over time patterns began to form, and finally I have a top ten.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Come On, Let's Ride!
Okay, so in my Mega Man 10 music review, I mentioned that I wrote a dumb little story and made up some lyrics to Nitro Man's theme song. I said I'd post it, so here it is. Note that the names of the characters are a little weird because they're based on me and a friend on another website.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Mega Man Robot Master Ratings.
Hey y'all. I'm sure I've mentioned before that there's a perfect runner on youtube named Roahm Mythril. In my last music review, I said that I did averages of all the ratings he did for the robot masters and their coinciding level. Just FYI, here is that list. Roahm rated each robot master on their difficulty to perfect run and gave them a rating between one and ten. Here are the averages from highest to lowest.
#1 is a tie between Mega Man and Bass and Mega Man 4 with an average rating of 5.375.
#3 is MM3 with 5.25
#4 is MM2 with a rating of 4.625. And people say it's the hardest game...
#5 is MM9 with a flat average of 4.
#6 is a tie between MM5 and 7 with 3.875.
#8 is MM1 with the average 3.66.
#9 tags right along with 3.625, MM8.
#10 is MM10 at 3.375.
#11 is unsurprisingly MM6 at 3.25.
So, any surprises?
#1 is a tie between Mega Man and Bass and Mega Man 4 with an average rating of 5.375.
#3 is MM3 with 5.25
#4 is MM2 with a rating of 4.625. And people say it's the hardest game...
#5 is MM9 with a flat average of 4.
#6 is a tie between MM5 and 7 with 3.875.
#8 is MM1 with the average 3.66.
#9 tags right along with 3.625, MM8.
#10 is MM10 at 3.375.
#11 is unsurprisingly MM6 at 3.25.
So, any surprises?
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Mega Man Music -- MM4
Hey y'all. Time for another Mega Man review. This one is about Mega Man Four, one of my absolute favorites from when I was a kid. Now, I've played (and seen played) all Mega Mans 1-5, but the ones I remember best are 1, 4, and 5. Don't worry, I've seen playthroughs to remind myself of all of them, and I've been listening a lot to the music for the purposes of this blog.
In any case, Mega Man four makes me darn happy. Some people say that MM4 is the point where the Mega Man series started going wrong, but I disagree (it's really MM5, but we'll get there next time). Mega Man 4 is actually the most standardized Mega Man, in the sense that it has the most aspects of what a MM game is supposed to be. Now, while MM 1-3 were great, they were still trying to figure out a lot of things. MM 5-6 were very rushed, 7-8 were trying to figure out how to make MM work on the Super Nintendo, and 9 and 10 were essentially trying to connect to the past but still had to adjust for how modern gaming works.
This leaves Four as the one that had the best of everything, in a sense. Rush and Proto Man were there, the Rush jet was fixed to not break the game, the graphics were beautiful by NES standards, the music rocked, the robot masters were creative, the plot included a new "baddie", and it was firmly established in the MM series that no matter what else happens, the guy behind it is always Wily.
Rush marine was in this game also, and since Dive Man has a water stage, it's not completely useless (it's by far not necessary, but still). They also throw in a couple of extra items like the wire and the balloon, which are really fun to play with them without being too useful that they make the game ridiculously easy. Honestly, taking the time to play with them is so much fun. Then you also get the charged shot, which enables you to do more damage with you regular weapon. Fun stuff!
The plot is great. It starts off with a magnificent intro, probably the best intro ever for the Mega Man games ever, and only 7, 9 and 10 really compare. Oh wait, never mind, 8 had a wonderful anime intro. You can say 4's is better if you prefer simple intros, I guess. So the story goes that Dr. Cossack is acting up now, because Wily "died" in MM3. In the end, Wily was really holding Cossack's daughter Kalinka hostage, and thanks to Proto Man, Mega Man discovers this and goes after the man responsible. And then he rides back home on a train. Awesome.
So let's move on to the music. Some people didn't like the music in this game as much as the others, and I think that's mostly due to the darkness of the track. Personally, I don't mind at all that the soundtrack is more melodramatic than usual, and it's probably for the best after the party-fest that MM3 was. It's good to go in a new direction. Really, there's no drop in quality from the other games, it's just different. You can either like this or something else better.
I talk a lot about making the music in the games into the soundtrack of a movie, and I feel 4's is definitely the most story-esque. All of the music fits thematically, as if it really is trying to tell the story of a really great dark action movie with a melodramatic ending that's kinda depressing but mostly good.
Anyway, let's get to the actual music. For starters, the intro is magnificent. It starts off slow, just like the melodramatic 4 is. Then it goes into sad to describe the robot wars, then into a pulsing beat where Mega Man is ready to charge in and kick butt. Honestly, it's just like a dang movie. This song might as well be the opening monologue of a movie.
The title music isn't any less hardcore. It's all like "come on, time to fight and show those losers you mean business!". Crap, the stage select screen is one of my favorites of all time. It really pumps you up. I might rank the stage select screens at some point, but for now we'll just go on.
Robot masters!
#8 Drill Man has a really fun theme. It's methodical, fun without losing that dark edge. Honestly, the bassline of this song is a song unto itself. The only reason it doesn't rank higher is because of its competition.
#7 I really have to wonder who composed all of the MM4 songs. Whoever did has a really great head for making 8 bit music sound like the environment and master the song has to portray. Toad Man's theme sounds like water and rain and sewer. Very good stuff.
#6 Dive Man isn't one of my favorite robot masters, but I really like his theme. It's a lot of fun, very party without losing that sense of ocean. I'm pretty sure it's the happiest theme in the game. Yeah, even the fun themes in this one have an edge. Relax with Dive Man!
#5 As a kid, I didn't like Skull Man's music. To me it just sounded overplayed without really being that interesting. I think my brother must have lost a lot when he was playing this level or something, because I was pretty sick of it. However, as an adult I have suddenly stopped hating it. I'm not really sure why, but now I acknowledge that it is good fun stuff. Not the best, but a fun theme that's a good fit in Mega Man Classic.
#4 Bright Man's theme is one of the most popular themes in this game, and it really does deserve it. The song feels so mechanical, both chirpy and dark at the same time. Quintessential Mega Man. In my mind it doesn't stand out as well as other MM songs, but it's the kind of theme you'll randomly think of later in the day and not be annoyed that you did. Good stuff.
#3 Ring Man! I love everything about him and his stage. Except those darn green ring baddies. They suck. Anyway, this theme just catches in your head and makes you want to party. It's spacey, weird, and a whole lot of fun. It makes you not so full of hate when those darn green ring baddies take forever to kill.
#2 Dust Man's theme....so dang epic! The intro alone is enough to propell this song in the rankings. It's dramatic, forceful, and cold. It sounds just like a robotic war should sound, as if the entire world is tearing apart. Honestly, this song deserves some famous composer treatment. This is what doom sounds like.
#1 I'm going to be honest. The themes I remember from a kid most from this game were Ring Man's and Dust Man's, but in coming back and listening to these, I have to say that Pharoah Man's does own pretty good. It's the most fun track of the robot masters, both epic and adventurous. That's why it wins.
The boss battle theme is friggin' epic!! Gah!! It really gives that sense of running out of time. Great stuff! The weapon gain theme is good too. It has a great beat. Very simple game over theme in this game. The password theme is sort of annoying. They could have stood to make it longer and not so repetitive.
Ah, they have a nice little intro to Dr. Cossack's castle. The theme for levels 1 and 2 rocks. It's mysterious and even danceable. You can't help but bob your head to it. The real gem of the Cossack music is levels 3 and 4 though. This is a seriously epic track, one comparable to the Wily theme for 1 and 2 in MM2. It's a fan favorite and deserves to be. Very intense and dramatic, really bringing you in for the action.
Now, after the good times that Cossack's castle was, we find out that Wily was behind it all. Big surprise. Hm, the Wily stage 1 and 2 theme here is good. Kind of reminds me of Toad Man's stage. It's pretty good. Not as epic as Cossack. Nor is 3 and 4's theme, but it's still great Mega Man fare, and it brings up the drama to remind you that you're about to go fight the big boss of the game.
You really have to give them credit for the Wily boss theme. It's marvelous, and probably the best Wily boss theme there is (unless I'm forgetting something). After a really cute "win the game" theme, the depressing ending theme plays, showing Mega Man going home by riding atop a train. Crap, I need to write lyrics to this theme.....it's so sad and dramatic, remorseful and reminiscent. It compares to Proto Man's theme in the level of depressing. It sort of makes me wonder if this was supposed to be the last Mega Man Classic game, at least on the original Nintendo. The remix of MM2's title theme after this bittersweet ending theme really seems to say it. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it.
Link to the music! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj6jW3C0HXk
So in any case, MM4 has a great soundtrack. I personally feel that it's better than MM2's, but a lot of people like MM2's better. Whichever. It's not like either of them are crap. In any case, this is a great example of what Mega Man is supposed to be, but rough points are ahead in the franchise. Honestly, in certain ways the Classic franchise doesn't make a full recovery until MM9. But I'll let you be the judge of that. See you next time!
In any case, Mega Man four makes me darn happy. Some people say that MM4 is the point where the Mega Man series started going wrong, but I disagree (it's really MM5, but we'll get there next time). Mega Man 4 is actually the most standardized Mega Man, in the sense that it has the most aspects of what a MM game is supposed to be. Now, while MM 1-3 were great, they were still trying to figure out a lot of things. MM 5-6 were very rushed, 7-8 were trying to figure out how to make MM work on the Super Nintendo, and 9 and 10 were essentially trying to connect to the past but still had to adjust for how modern gaming works.
This leaves Four as the one that had the best of everything, in a sense. Rush and Proto Man were there, the Rush jet was fixed to not break the game, the graphics were beautiful by NES standards, the music rocked, the robot masters were creative, the plot included a new "baddie", and it was firmly established in the MM series that no matter what else happens, the guy behind it is always Wily.
Rush marine was in this game also, and since Dive Man has a water stage, it's not completely useless (it's by far not necessary, but still). They also throw in a couple of extra items like the wire and the balloon, which are really fun to play with them without being too useful that they make the game ridiculously easy. Honestly, taking the time to play with them is so much fun. Then you also get the charged shot, which enables you to do more damage with you regular weapon. Fun stuff!
The plot is great. It starts off with a magnificent intro, probably the best intro ever for the Mega Man games ever, and only 7, 9 and 10 really compare. Oh wait, never mind, 8 had a wonderful anime intro. You can say 4's is better if you prefer simple intros, I guess. So the story goes that Dr. Cossack is acting up now, because Wily "died" in MM3. In the end, Wily was really holding Cossack's daughter Kalinka hostage, and thanks to Proto Man, Mega Man discovers this and goes after the man responsible. And then he rides back home on a train. Awesome.
So let's move on to the music. Some people didn't like the music in this game as much as the others, and I think that's mostly due to the darkness of the track. Personally, I don't mind at all that the soundtrack is more melodramatic than usual, and it's probably for the best after the party-fest that MM3 was. It's good to go in a new direction. Really, there's no drop in quality from the other games, it's just different. You can either like this or something else better.
I talk a lot about making the music in the games into the soundtrack of a movie, and I feel 4's is definitely the most story-esque. All of the music fits thematically, as if it really is trying to tell the story of a really great dark action movie with a melodramatic ending that's kinda depressing but mostly good.
Anyway, let's get to the actual music. For starters, the intro is magnificent. It starts off slow, just like the melodramatic 4 is. Then it goes into sad to describe the robot wars, then into a pulsing beat where Mega Man is ready to charge in and kick butt. Honestly, it's just like a dang movie. This song might as well be the opening monologue of a movie.
The title music isn't any less hardcore. It's all like "come on, time to fight and show those losers you mean business!". Crap, the stage select screen is one of my favorites of all time. It really pumps you up. I might rank the stage select screens at some point, but for now we'll just go on.
Robot masters!
#8 Drill Man has a really fun theme. It's methodical, fun without losing that dark edge. Honestly, the bassline of this song is a song unto itself. The only reason it doesn't rank higher is because of its competition.
#7 I really have to wonder who composed all of the MM4 songs. Whoever did has a really great head for making 8 bit music sound like the environment and master the song has to portray. Toad Man's theme sounds like water and rain and sewer. Very good stuff.
#6 Dive Man isn't one of my favorite robot masters, but I really like his theme. It's a lot of fun, very party without losing that sense of ocean. I'm pretty sure it's the happiest theme in the game. Yeah, even the fun themes in this one have an edge. Relax with Dive Man!
#5 As a kid, I didn't like Skull Man's music. To me it just sounded overplayed without really being that interesting. I think my brother must have lost a lot when he was playing this level or something, because I was pretty sick of it. However, as an adult I have suddenly stopped hating it. I'm not really sure why, but now I acknowledge that it is good fun stuff. Not the best, but a fun theme that's a good fit in Mega Man Classic.
#4 Bright Man's theme is one of the most popular themes in this game, and it really does deserve it. The song feels so mechanical, both chirpy and dark at the same time. Quintessential Mega Man. In my mind it doesn't stand out as well as other MM songs, but it's the kind of theme you'll randomly think of later in the day and not be annoyed that you did. Good stuff.
#3 Ring Man! I love everything about him and his stage. Except those darn green ring baddies. They suck. Anyway, this theme just catches in your head and makes you want to party. It's spacey, weird, and a whole lot of fun. It makes you not so full of hate when those darn green ring baddies take forever to kill.
#2 Dust Man's theme....so dang epic! The intro alone is enough to propell this song in the rankings. It's dramatic, forceful, and cold. It sounds just like a robotic war should sound, as if the entire world is tearing apart. Honestly, this song deserves some famous composer treatment. This is what doom sounds like.
#1 I'm going to be honest. The themes I remember from a kid most from this game were Ring Man's and Dust Man's, but in coming back and listening to these, I have to say that Pharoah Man's does own pretty good. It's the most fun track of the robot masters, both epic and adventurous. That's why it wins.
The boss battle theme is friggin' epic!! Gah!! It really gives that sense of running out of time. Great stuff! The weapon gain theme is good too. It has a great beat. Very simple game over theme in this game. The password theme is sort of annoying. They could have stood to make it longer and not so repetitive.
Ah, they have a nice little intro to Dr. Cossack's castle. The theme for levels 1 and 2 rocks. It's mysterious and even danceable. You can't help but bob your head to it. The real gem of the Cossack music is levels 3 and 4 though. This is a seriously epic track, one comparable to the Wily theme for 1 and 2 in MM2. It's a fan favorite and deserves to be. Very intense and dramatic, really bringing you in for the action.
Now, after the good times that Cossack's castle was, we find out that Wily was behind it all. Big surprise. Hm, the Wily stage 1 and 2 theme here is good. Kind of reminds me of Toad Man's stage. It's pretty good. Not as epic as Cossack. Nor is 3 and 4's theme, but it's still great Mega Man fare, and it brings up the drama to remind you that you're about to go fight the big boss of the game.
You really have to give them credit for the Wily boss theme. It's marvelous, and probably the best Wily boss theme there is (unless I'm forgetting something). After a really cute "win the game" theme, the depressing ending theme plays, showing Mega Man going home by riding atop a train. Crap, I need to write lyrics to this theme.....it's so sad and dramatic, remorseful and reminiscent. It compares to Proto Man's theme in the level of depressing. It sort of makes me wonder if this was supposed to be the last Mega Man Classic game, at least on the original Nintendo. The remix of MM2's title theme after this bittersweet ending theme really seems to say it. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it.
Link to the music! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj6jW3C0HXk
So in any case, MM4 has a great soundtrack. I personally feel that it's better than MM2's, but a lot of people like MM2's better. Whichever. It's not like either of them are crap. In any case, this is a great example of what Mega Man is supposed to be, but rough points are ahead in the franchise. Honestly, in certain ways the Classic franchise doesn't make a full recovery until MM9. But I'll let you be the judge of that. See you next time!
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Nitpickery -- Mega Man movie review
Hey y'all. I know I said I was going to review Disney princess movies, but for my lack of ownership of them (and my desire to not steal) I'm going to have to delay this for a bit. Besides, there are other things I want to review because they are interesting to me. I'm going to be reviewing a fan film, done entirely out by non-professionals, in particular Eddie LeBraun, the director. They actually did a pretty good job for what they had, though I'm going to nitpick them anyway, because that's what I do. Overthinking is fun! Yay!
Okay, so this film is called Mega Man. I kept thinking that "Get Equipped" was part of the title, but that's just the tagline. Anyway, it's basically a retelling of the plot of the first Mega Man game on the original NES. Man those were the days. I miss 'em. I'm just old enough to barely remember a commercial for the Game Genie that actually came on TV years ago. Anybody remember that? Naturally with my love of original video games (it hasn't been long enough for them to be retro!), I just had to see this film. I'm kinda shocked how good aspects of it are. I think we're going to see more of LeBraun as time goes by.
So the story of the movie goes thusly: Dr. Light and Dr. Wily are genius robotics scientists that have just developed a line of robot masters that will perform duties to make life easier for humans. After Dr. Wily is expelled from the project, Dr. Light and his robot "daughter" Roll proceed to build another robot, this one called Rock. Jealous of Light's fame and accolades, Dr. Wily steals the robot masters and uses them to devastate Fujiwara City. Rock decides to risk his life and become Mega Man, a fighter robot capable of taking down Wily and putting an end to the terror. He his helped from time to time by the mysterious Blues (AKA Proto Man) who is Dr. Light's first creation, a robot that ran away from the lab to seek his own fate.
This movie is actually visually effective for something not on a big budget. The cinematics of it are great, and the camera angles do their best to show off the places where these are filmed. I'm pretty sure that it was filmed in New York, but the movie calls it Fujiwara City. In the games it was Monstropolis, but whatever. The name change isn't a big deal. S'all good. It's not like Monstropolis is all that great a name anyway.
So, yeah, the way it was filmed was definitely the best part of this film. Being a fan film, they simply didn't have the budget to make something too spectacular, as far as fight scenes and costuming went. Also, they couldn't show anything blowing up, because naturally this was filmed in a city and you can't blow up public property. Not without getting arrested, anyway. So, there's no damage to the city from the rampaging masters, a column of smoke looks very solid, and trying to make Cut Man's hand blades fly out convincingly makes creative battles take a hit.
The movie opens up with Dr. Light doing a check up on Roll right before a reporter is due to show up and put Dr. Light and his new robot masters on television to gain exposure and begin to sell them commercially. I have a bit of a problem with this scene: why is Dr. Light letting a reporter into his lab when this is also his house? That's a security compromise, to say the least. Tyler Perry filmed Diary of a Mad Black Woman partially at his house, and he eventually had to move because people knew what his house looked like and wouldn't leave him alone. I'm just saying, it's probably better for Dr. Light to pick a warehouse or some neutral site to display his creations.
Also, the camera (the one the reporter's camera man is holding) is pretty close to the reporter's face at one part. You can't imagine he's getting a good shot. Even worse is when the reporter is signing off, and the camera, instead of letting the robots be in the background (which any reporter would want to showcase), lets a very moody Wily be very clearly on camera and brood. I know that LeBraun probably wanted to show Wily's jealously, but there are other ways to go about it.
Before I get too much further, let's talk about the acting job of the first actors to come on. The reporter and camera man were fine in acting, though I felt the reporter was slightly too cheesily done. Decent enough. Can't complain. The real gem of the first part, and indeed all of the movie, is Jeanie Tse as Roll. She's friggin' perfect. She's not particularly how I view Roll is, but she's even better. Jeanie is perfect in the part of playing a robot who is silly, sweet, and a bit too abrupt to be human. The slight awkwardness and total sugar innocence Tse brings to this character really brings about the idea of what Roll always was supposed to be in the games. In the Mega Man universe there's always been a thematic conflict between fighting wars and innocence, and this Roll stands perfectly on the side of innocence. She doesn't understand evil, and doesn't try.
Some people who watched this commented that Roll was annoying, but they're wrong. I'm calling it like it is. Any annoyance she has is like C3P0's in Star Wars: perfectly fitting for the realm in which it's portrayed. Certain people are probably too sensitive to that kind of thing, or maybe they just have a tag-along sister like Roll at home.
Ah, now the actors who played Dr. Light and Dr. Wily are Edward X. Young and Dave Maulbeck, respectively. These two characters side by side...okay, let's do this one at a time. This is going to take some explaining.
Wily was fairly terrible, at least at first. A lot of people seemed to think that he stole the movie in the same sense that the Joker stole the movie The Dark Knight, and quite frankly it makes me ashamed that people have such an opinion of this Wily. He didn't do a great job. Then again, I haven't seen The Dark Knight, so whatever.
My criticism of this movie's Wily goes like this: he's pretty one-note. You're almost always seeing him through close-ups of his perpetually sweaty face (come on, makeup people) and he's always bickering about how important he is or how badly he's being treated. It's really annoying. Can't we see him chill for a minute and...I dunno, make a hot dog or do a crossword puzzle or something? Releasing the tension once in a while would help.
The way I always viewed Wily in the games was that he was always determined, and always ready to stack circumstances to make him look smarter. I mean, come on, this guy has been defeated by Mega Man like ten times already without showing sign that he'll ever give up. He's got to be the most arrogant and gleefully evil baddie ever. Seeing Maulbeck whine and complain for the first two thirds of the movie was annoying. Wily might whine, but he's never unable to compliment himself and enjoy his intelligence. This is the Wily we get to see the last half hour of the film, one who is confident and boastful until the very last second. That I appreciated.
Also, his accent was very annoying. I think they were trying to go for something Germanic, but it really came across as a partly Russian accent, and a bad one at that. He's too deliberate in his constant turning of Ws into Vs. Gah. It was really distracting. I really hope they weren't trying to for a Russian accent, because that just doesn't seem like Wily, and if LeBraun wanted to do a sequel with the Russian Dr. Cossack, it just wouldn't fit right.
As far as looks go, I was pretty annoyed at first that Wily wasn't portrayed by a bald man. After a while, I let it go. It wasn't important for the character to look note for note like the game version, and this one wasn't too bad, other than being perpetually sweaty and having hair look like it was painted. I kinda liked it in the end. However, his looks, satisfactory as they were, created a reality conflict with the looks of Ed Young.
Let me explain. Maulbeck had a goofy, parodiacal appearance and over-emotive acting. Dr. Light's actor was the exact opposite: he was played by a guy who actually was older, and looked genuine rather than being some guy in a costume. I absolutely adored how LeBraun actually found a guy who could pull off the Dr. Light style, but this guy's acting had the exact opposite problem as Maulbeck's. He was very dull sounding, and it rarely felt like any of the serious topics he spoke of had any real emotional connection to him. He rambled on in the same mild tone without really making me believe he cared about anything going on.
It would have helped if he added more physical movement to his acting. Little things, like sighing, or rubbing his head, or scratching his ear, or fiddling with some technological whatnot. Maybe if he's upset he can slam a screwdriver down on a table. When he moved like this (very rarely in the film) it was a far more believable performance.
So, when you put these actors side by side, it really looks weird. Young looks very real and serious, while Maulbeck looks goofy and trying to make people laugh. It's just impossible to take this work seriously when both are side by side. It's like putting a clown in a movie where intense jurors are trying to decide if a man is guilty of murder. For the most part, I blame Maulbeck (or the way Dr. Wily was written) because this film more or less tried to have a serious tone about robots trying to understand humanity. Alternatively, LeBraun could have gone a more silly route and thus Maulbeck would have fit in better, but as is Wily wasn't a good villain. I mean, sure he's supposed to be an angry, jealous, emotional guy, but at the same time this dude is dangerous. It's very difficult for me to take whiners seriously. For most of this movie, I didn't feel the danger that should have been eminating from him.
Let's move on. After the interview, Dr. Light takes Dr. Wily into his office and tells him that he's fired, thus ending their friendship (I'm going to cut out spoilers after this, but this isn't too huge a point, so don't worry). My problem with this is the excuse Dr. Light gives him: he wants to work on his new robot by himself. Well, he's just made a bunch of other robots, so why can't he just work on his robot by himself and let Dr. Wily handle making more commercial bots to supply the inevitable demand that his interview would bring? There are plenty of other reasons to fire Wily. Like his bad attitude and hygene. Or maybe Dr. Light already suspects that Dr. Wily is a looney. It's weird that we never see Dr. Light and Wily really being friends. I mean, Light put up with Wily for a reason.
Actually, y'know what? You don't actually have to make it so Dr. Wily was fired. You could have him just get pissed off really bad one day and just steal the robot masters with the access he has already. Maybe the new robot, Rock, will be so good at assisting Dr. Light that Dr. Wily just gets pissed off and starts blowing stuff up. I would have loved to see Wily interact with Rock before their fight against each other.
During the next part, Dr. Light works on Rock while Wily complains some more to his sentient AI computer Olga, played by Elizabeth Lee. Now she was a pretty good actress, and her accent, while still more Russian than German, actually sounded good. Too bad they don't really use her for anything. She's just kinda there for a couple of scenes and "poof", away she goes, never to be seen again. She has a couple of jokes, but overall her lack of a background or a future makes her pretty irrelevant.
Okay, this is a PSA to all people writing baddies: don't have them rant and rave about revenge and outdoing the good guys and then the good guys just forget all about it and get surprised when the baddie does something evil. In this movie it wasn't as bad as others, but still.
The scheme to make Fujiwara City suffer continues, and the six robot masters start causing mayhem. Rock chooses to upgrade into a fighter-bot and call himself Mega Man, because there is no one else to stop Dr. Wily.
Let me stop right there for a second. Okay, if a movie maker doesn't have the ability to make something show up in your movie, he shouldn't reference it. I'm talking about the lesser robots, like Sniper Joes and the like that you fight in the game on the way to the bosses. It's obvious this movie didn't have enough money to make complex lesser baddies, so they should have made the plot circle around their absense, not point it out glaringly. Ooh, I have an idea. If mindless robots were needed to imply the extent of Dr. Wily's control over the city, then combine the Sniper Joes and Mettools. Have people wearing all black, including masks, and then put a met helmet on them. Boom! There you go! They can be the generic baddies to spice up action scenes. Maybe they have a shield, they definitely have guns, and you can call them Metool Joes. Fans would appreciate something like that.
Jun Naito plays Rock. He does an okay job. He is fairly convincing of being a more or less innocent robot who just wants to help. I wish they had been less "Oh, I don't want to fight" and more "I'll do whatever it takes to save the day", because that's the real attitude of Mega Man in the game: dorky and naiively heroic. Not too big a problem, though, and I enjoyed his performance. Not great, but hey, he did the job.
Y'know, I really like how Rock, Roll, and Blues are all Asian people. Mega Man as a series comes from Japan, so naturally these people would be Japanese. It's a pleasant change, and you can really tell that casting was done with proper actors in mind, of those who were available. Some of the commenters said that Rock was boring, and I guess I see where they come from with that. He's pretty good during the earlier parts of the movie, but towards the end he gets really dull from trying to be cool. I guess it's easier for people to play awkward characters than cool ones. Like in the Matrix how Neo is far more interesting at the beginning of the movie than he is at the end.
We have Elec Man, Ice Man, and Fire Man as the actors with body armor on, and Cut Man, Guts Man, and Bomb Man are the digitally created masters. I liked the digital guys, but my problem with them was that their personalities weren't very clear cut. The Mega Man 1 remake Mega Man Powered Up gave these robot masters cheesy personalities, and for the most part LeBraun follows these to a more serious extent (Powered Up was some cheese, man), it just didn't seem like the digital guys weren't distinctive enough. It wasn't the acting so much as the writing. You can call Fire Man delusional, Ice Man schizoid, and Elec Man arrogant, but there's no real way to describe the others this plainly. Whatever. At least they looked awesome. I particularly like how Cut Man's design was upgraded to make him look more deadly.
The live action robot masters were awesome! Fire Man's looks were great, but I had a problem with him. They made him obsessed with justice and think that Wily was doing the right thing, but the problem with that is there's no real logical connection between blowing things up and justice. He could have really bolstered Wily's performance by having Fire Man say things about all people being appreciated for their genius or somesuch like that. As it was, his words sounded like ranting. The actor, Hugo Salazar Jr (awesome name!), did a good job with what he had to work with, and I like how much crazier than the other robots he was.
Ice Man! Wayne Chang! Wayne was a perfect pick. He was so cute, just like Ice Man, and he did a good job bringing to life the master. However, of all the robot masters ever designed, Ice Man should have been the easiest to costume. He wears a cute blue parka in the game, but not in the movie. Why not? He would have looked a lot more distinctive and sweet. Come on....please? For me?
Alan Fung as Elec Man to me was the second greatest acting job in the movie. He was magnificent, and I really believed him as the macho, arrogant bastard that Elec Man definitely is. I wish he could have had a greater role in the movie, like stealing something (spoiler: the designs for Rock to make Copy Robot) from Dr. Light. He was just too devious a baddie to die so soon. And he had great hair. LeBraun does a sequel to this movie, he needs to cast Alan Fung as Quick Man. And in the meantime, somebody needs to cast Alan Fung in something else, because he has acting gravitas.
My one problem with Elec Man is the way he died. Well, not the physical way, because that was pwn, but who did it. Spoiler alert, go skip ahead if you don't want to read this. Proto Man kills him. I know that Proto Man is supposed to help Mega Man out, but until Mega Man 9, Blues never actually assisted Mega in any actual fighting, and that's only if you count Proto Man's downloadable play mode as plot canon (I don't). Even worse, Elec Man, a very dangerous master in the game, isn't able to damage Proto Man at all. Proto Man is a prototype to the newer robots, so shouldn't he be weaker? Lame.
Also, this movie is about Rock going to fight the robot masters because nobody else can. This bit really shoots that in the foot because if Proto Man can do so without incurring damage to himself, what's the point? It's a huge letdown. In Mega Man 3, Proto Man's first game appearance, he actually fights against Mega Man because he doesn't trust him right away. Couldn't they have done something like that? It would have been really intruiging if Proto Man thought Rock was just a stupid hero automaton Dr. Light made to save everyone. Or heck, save that entire plotline for a sequel, and just have PM do a cameo or two just to watch Rock and see what's up. Another idea would be to have him actually work for Dr. Wily because for whatever reason he's tricked into trusting Dr. Wily more. Something.
Spoilers are done now.
Okay, so let's talk about Sung-Mo Cho, who played Proto Man. Most of my complaints for him are due to faulty writing, not acting. He did a good job being the mysterious and slightly self-righteous Proto Man, and I can tell I would have enjoyed him more but for plot awkwardness. I mean, come on, (spoiler!) his free will results from a power core error? That's like saying a clock gets free will because its batteries started leaking. There are better ways to say he has free will. And since clearly Rock and Roll have free will themselves (Rock's choice to be a hero was his own, Roll's choice to make pancakes instead of eggs was her own), it's pretty ridiculous that fixing the error would make him an automaton. There's better ways to make him run away from home.
Also, the problems between Proto Man and his estranged creator are potentially very complex. I feel that they are oversimplified in this movie, and they more or less get resolved in the end. Come on, let some bitterness drag on a while for intruigue's sake! Instead Proto Man seems to be handled in the exact way to prevent LeBraun from having good drama for a sequel. Honestly, the subplot of Dr. Light's wife was fairly poorly done, and cutting out Proto Man would have given both it and Rock some time to develop. Of course, that sort of does tie LeBraun down to a sequel, and he'll probably want to change it up at some point. Bah, nobody ever does anything for the Mega Man 5 robots...they're my favorite...wah. Whine whine, complain complain.
Okay, so throughout the action of this movie, there are times when the action just slows to a crawl and Dr. Light gets out needless explosition. First of all, you'd be surprised how good a work is when it's trimmed down, and secondly, it's always better to show rather than tell. It feels like nobody can ask Dr. Light anything without him giving a long winded answer. And when Mega Man finally defeats the robot masters, the plot starts really kicking, only to be slammed in the face with how the fight with the yellow devil ends. Honestly, that plot point needed to be cut out entirely. Use the time on it to extend the fight with yellow devil and make it look awesome.
You know, in this Wily complains that Dr. Light isn't the only one who's lost someone. It would have been really interesting to find out that Olga was really Wily's dead sister that Wily put into a computer to save her life. Or maybe just have him muse over someone really important to him that died or left him, or something. That would have been cool. Not really necessary, but cool.
I really love Wily's freak out session when he finally loses at the end. It combines the hilarity of Wily begging for his life like in the games with the seriousness of Wily's real hurt from his lifelong rejection.
Okay, so to sum it all up, there are several things good and bad about this movie, but overall, it feels very much like the fanfiction I read over at fanfiction.net. It's an origin story for Mega Man, it doesn't go too far from the game's bounds and give it more creativity, and the plot feels clunky whenever it has to transition from one scene to the next. Writers will be very inspired for certain moments of a story they want to write, but in between those they have to figure out how they're going to make everything work.
This may have been a low budget film, but good writing costs only time, not money. The dialogue itself was fairly good, other than Dr. Light being forced to be Captain Exposition, Wily not being able to do anything but whine for the first hour, and Fire Man's ranting. If proper plot planning had been done, then much of the film's problems could have been avoided. As a writer, I see things like this and wonder how they happen. Writing alone would have turned this film around and made it much better. Costuming and a better computer budget would have helped, but not to this extent.
This film is fairly good if you are a fan, but for those of you who aren't into Mega Man or don't know what it is, it's a fairly standard action movie with a few cute moments. Heck, I like it despite all of its flaws. It's fun, silly, and in certain ways better than Hollywood could do. I look at this movie and see a great big wad of potential. Go to megamanfilm.com and click the link to check it out.
Okay, so this film is called Mega Man. I kept thinking that "Get Equipped" was part of the title, but that's just the tagline. Anyway, it's basically a retelling of the plot of the first Mega Man game on the original NES. Man those were the days. I miss 'em. I'm just old enough to barely remember a commercial for the Game Genie that actually came on TV years ago. Anybody remember that? Naturally with my love of original video games (it hasn't been long enough for them to be retro!), I just had to see this film. I'm kinda shocked how good aspects of it are. I think we're going to see more of LeBraun as time goes by.
So the story of the movie goes thusly: Dr. Light and Dr. Wily are genius robotics scientists that have just developed a line of robot masters that will perform duties to make life easier for humans. After Dr. Wily is expelled from the project, Dr. Light and his robot "daughter" Roll proceed to build another robot, this one called Rock. Jealous of Light's fame and accolades, Dr. Wily steals the robot masters and uses them to devastate Fujiwara City. Rock decides to risk his life and become Mega Man, a fighter robot capable of taking down Wily and putting an end to the terror. He his helped from time to time by the mysterious Blues (AKA Proto Man) who is Dr. Light's first creation, a robot that ran away from the lab to seek his own fate.
This movie is actually visually effective for something not on a big budget. The cinematics of it are great, and the camera angles do their best to show off the places where these are filmed. I'm pretty sure that it was filmed in New York, but the movie calls it Fujiwara City. In the games it was Monstropolis, but whatever. The name change isn't a big deal. S'all good. It's not like Monstropolis is all that great a name anyway.
So, yeah, the way it was filmed was definitely the best part of this film. Being a fan film, they simply didn't have the budget to make something too spectacular, as far as fight scenes and costuming went. Also, they couldn't show anything blowing up, because naturally this was filmed in a city and you can't blow up public property. Not without getting arrested, anyway. So, there's no damage to the city from the rampaging masters, a column of smoke looks very solid, and trying to make Cut Man's hand blades fly out convincingly makes creative battles take a hit.
The movie opens up with Dr. Light doing a check up on Roll right before a reporter is due to show up and put Dr. Light and his new robot masters on television to gain exposure and begin to sell them commercially. I have a bit of a problem with this scene: why is Dr. Light letting a reporter into his lab when this is also his house? That's a security compromise, to say the least. Tyler Perry filmed Diary of a Mad Black Woman partially at his house, and he eventually had to move because people knew what his house looked like and wouldn't leave him alone. I'm just saying, it's probably better for Dr. Light to pick a warehouse or some neutral site to display his creations.
Also, the camera (the one the reporter's camera man is holding) is pretty close to the reporter's face at one part. You can't imagine he's getting a good shot. Even worse is when the reporter is signing off, and the camera, instead of letting the robots be in the background (which any reporter would want to showcase), lets a very moody Wily be very clearly on camera and brood. I know that LeBraun probably wanted to show Wily's jealously, but there are other ways to go about it.
Before I get too much further, let's talk about the acting job of the first actors to come on. The reporter and camera man were fine in acting, though I felt the reporter was slightly too cheesily done. Decent enough. Can't complain. The real gem of the first part, and indeed all of the movie, is Jeanie Tse as Roll. She's friggin' perfect. She's not particularly how I view Roll is, but she's even better. Jeanie is perfect in the part of playing a robot who is silly, sweet, and a bit too abrupt to be human. The slight awkwardness and total sugar innocence Tse brings to this character really brings about the idea of what Roll always was supposed to be in the games. In the Mega Man universe there's always been a thematic conflict between fighting wars and innocence, and this Roll stands perfectly on the side of innocence. She doesn't understand evil, and doesn't try.
Some people who watched this commented that Roll was annoying, but they're wrong. I'm calling it like it is. Any annoyance she has is like C3P0's in Star Wars: perfectly fitting for the realm in which it's portrayed. Certain people are probably too sensitive to that kind of thing, or maybe they just have a tag-along sister like Roll at home.
Ah, now the actors who played Dr. Light and Dr. Wily are Edward X. Young and Dave Maulbeck, respectively. These two characters side by side...okay, let's do this one at a time. This is going to take some explaining.
Wily was fairly terrible, at least at first. A lot of people seemed to think that he stole the movie in the same sense that the Joker stole the movie The Dark Knight, and quite frankly it makes me ashamed that people have such an opinion of this Wily. He didn't do a great job. Then again, I haven't seen The Dark Knight, so whatever.
My criticism of this movie's Wily goes like this: he's pretty one-note. You're almost always seeing him through close-ups of his perpetually sweaty face (come on, makeup people) and he's always bickering about how important he is or how badly he's being treated. It's really annoying. Can't we see him chill for a minute and...I dunno, make a hot dog or do a crossword puzzle or something? Releasing the tension once in a while would help.
The way I always viewed Wily in the games was that he was always determined, and always ready to stack circumstances to make him look smarter. I mean, come on, this guy has been defeated by Mega Man like ten times already without showing sign that he'll ever give up. He's got to be the most arrogant and gleefully evil baddie ever. Seeing Maulbeck whine and complain for the first two thirds of the movie was annoying. Wily might whine, but he's never unable to compliment himself and enjoy his intelligence. This is the Wily we get to see the last half hour of the film, one who is confident and boastful until the very last second. That I appreciated.
Also, his accent was very annoying. I think they were trying to go for something Germanic, but it really came across as a partly Russian accent, and a bad one at that. He's too deliberate in his constant turning of Ws into Vs. Gah. It was really distracting. I really hope they weren't trying to for a Russian accent, because that just doesn't seem like Wily, and if LeBraun wanted to do a sequel with the Russian Dr. Cossack, it just wouldn't fit right.
As far as looks go, I was pretty annoyed at first that Wily wasn't portrayed by a bald man. After a while, I let it go. It wasn't important for the character to look note for note like the game version, and this one wasn't too bad, other than being perpetually sweaty and having hair look like it was painted. I kinda liked it in the end. However, his looks, satisfactory as they were, created a reality conflict with the looks of Ed Young.
Let me explain. Maulbeck had a goofy, parodiacal appearance and over-emotive acting. Dr. Light's actor was the exact opposite: he was played by a guy who actually was older, and looked genuine rather than being some guy in a costume. I absolutely adored how LeBraun actually found a guy who could pull off the Dr. Light style, but this guy's acting had the exact opposite problem as Maulbeck's. He was very dull sounding, and it rarely felt like any of the serious topics he spoke of had any real emotional connection to him. He rambled on in the same mild tone without really making me believe he cared about anything going on.
It would have helped if he added more physical movement to his acting. Little things, like sighing, or rubbing his head, or scratching his ear, or fiddling with some technological whatnot. Maybe if he's upset he can slam a screwdriver down on a table. When he moved like this (very rarely in the film) it was a far more believable performance.
So, when you put these actors side by side, it really looks weird. Young looks very real and serious, while Maulbeck looks goofy and trying to make people laugh. It's just impossible to take this work seriously when both are side by side. It's like putting a clown in a movie where intense jurors are trying to decide if a man is guilty of murder. For the most part, I blame Maulbeck (or the way Dr. Wily was written) because this film more or less tried to have a serious tone about robots trying to understand humanity. Alternatively, LeBraun could have gone a more silly route and thus Maulbeck would have fit in better, but as is Wily wasn't a good villain. I mean, sure he's supposed to be an angry, jealous, emotional guy, but at the same time this dude is dangerous. It's very difficult for me to take whiners seriously. For most of this movie, I didn't feel the danger that should have been eminating from him.
Let's move on. After the interview, Dr. Light takes Dr. Wily into his office and tells him that he's fired, thus ending their friendship (I'm going to cut out spoilers after this, but this isn't too huge a point, so don't worry). My problem with this is the excuse Dr. Light gives him: he wants to work on his new robot by himself. Well, he's just made a bunch of other robots, so why can't he just work on his robot by himself and let Dr. Wily handle making more commercial bots to supply the inevitable demand that his interview would bring? There are plenty of other reasons to fire Wily. Like his bad attitude and hygene. Or maybe Dr. Light already suspects that Dr. Wily is a looney. It's weird that we never see Dr. Light and Wily really being friends. I mean, Light put up with Wily for a reason.
Actually, y'know what? You don't actually have to make it so Dr. Wily was fired. You could have him just get pissed off really bad one day and just steal the robot masters with the access he has already. Maybe the new robot, Rock, will be so good at assisting Dr. Light that Dr. Wily just gets pissed off and starts blowing stuff up. I would have loved to see Wily interact with Rock before their fight against each other.
During the next part, Dr. Light works on Rock while Wily complains some more to his sentient AI computer Olga, played by Elizabeth Lee. Now she was a pretty good actress, and her accent, while still more Russian than German, actually sounded good. Too bad they don't really use her for anything. She's just kinda there for a couple of scenes and "poof", away she goes, never to be seen again. She has a couple of jokes, but overall her lack of a background or a future makes her pretty irrelevant.
Okay, this is a PSA to all people writing baddies: don't have them rant and rave about revenge and outdoing the good guys and then the good guys just forget all about it and get surprised when the baddie does something evil. In this movie it wasn't as bad as others, but still.
The scheme to make Fujiwara City suffer continues, and the six robot masters start causing mayhem. Rock chooses to upgrade into a fighter-bot and call himself Mega Man, because there is no one else to stop Dr. Wily.
Let me stop right there for a second. Okay, if a movie maker doesn't have the ability to make something show up in your movie, he shouldn't reference it. I'm talking about the lesser robots, like Sniper Joes and the like that you fight in the game on the way to the bosses. It's obvious this movie didn't have enough money to make complex lesser baddies, so they should have made the plot circle around their absense, not point it out glaringly. Ooh, I have an idea. If mindless robots were needed to imply the extent of Dr. Wily's control over the city, then combine the Sniper Joes and Mettools. Have people wearing all black, including masks, and then put a met helmet on them. Boom! There you go! They can be the generic baddies to spice up action scenes. Maybe they have a shield, they definitely have guns, and you can call them Metool Joes. Fans would appreciate something like that.
Jun Naito plays Rock. He does an okay job. He is fairly convincing of being a more or less innocent robot who just wants to help. I wish they had been less "Oh, I don't want to fight" and more "I'll do whatever it takes to save the day", because that's the real attitude of Mega Man in the game: dorky and naiively heroic. Not too big a problem, though, and I enjoyed his performance. Not great, but hey, he did the job.
Y'know, I really like how Rock, Roll, and Blues are all Asian people. Mega Man as a series comes from Japan, so naturally these people would be Japanese. It's a pleasant change, and you can really tell that casting was done with proper actors in mind, of those who were available. Some of the commenters said that Rock was boring, and I guess I see where they come from with that. He's pretty good during the earlier parts of the movie, but towards the end he gets really dull from trying to be cool. I guess it's easier for people to play awkward characters than cool ones. Like in the Matrix how Neo is far more interesting at the beginning of the movie than he is at the end.
We have Elec Man, Ice Man, and Fire Man as the actors with body armor on, and Cut Man, Guts Man, and Bomb Man are the digitally created masters. I liked the digital guys, but my problem with them was that their personalities weren't very clear cut. The Mega Man 1 remake Mega Man Powered Up gave these robot masters cheesy personalities, and for the most part LeBraun follows these to a more serious extent (Powered Up was some cheese, man), it just didn't seem like the digital guys weren't distinctive enough. It wasn't the acting so much as the writing. You can call Fire Man delusional, Ice Man schizoid, and Elec Man arrogant, but there's no real way to describe the others this plainly. Whatever. At least they looked awesome. I particularly like how Cut Man's design was upgraded to make him look more deadly.
The live action robot masters were awesome! Fire Man's looks were great, but I had a problem with him. They made him obsessed with justice and think that Wily was doing the right thing, but the problem with that is there's no real logical connection between blowing things up and justice. He could have really bolstered Wily's performance by having Fire Man say things about all people being appreciated for their genius or somesuch like that. As it was, his words sounded like ranting. The actor, Hugo Salazar Jr (awesome name!), did a good job with what he had to work with, and I like how much crazier than the other robots he was.
Ice Man! Wayne Chang! Wayne was a perfect pick. He was so cute, just like Ice Man, and he did a good job bringing to life the master. However, of all the robot masters ever designed, Ice Man should have been the easiest to costume. He wears a cute blue parka in the game, but not in the movie. Why not? He would have looked a lot more distinctive and sweet. Come on....please? For me?
Alan Fung as Elec Man to me was the second greatest acting job in the movie. He was magnificent, and I really believed him as the macho, arrogant bastard that Elec Man definitely is. I wish he could have had a greater role in the movie, like stealing something (spoiler: the designs for Rock to make Copy Robot) from Dr. Light. He was just too devious a baddie to die so soon. And he had great hair. LeBraun does a sequel to this movie, he needs to cast Alan Fung as Quick Man. And in the meantime, somebody needs to cast Alan Fung in something else, because he has acting gravitas.
My one problem with Elec Man is the way he died. Well, not the physical way, because that was pwn, but who did it. Spoiler alert, go skip ahead if you don't want to read this. Proto Man kills him. I know that Proto Man is supposed to help Mega Man out, but until Mega Man 9, Blues never actually assisted Mega in any actual fighting, and that's only if you count Proto Man's downloadable play mode as plot canon (I don't). Even worse, Elec Man, a very dangerous master in the game, isn't able to damage Proto Man at all. Proto Man is a prototype to the newer robots, so shouldn't he be weaker? Lame.
Also, this movie is about Rock going to fight the robot masters because nobody else can. This bit really shoots that in the foot because if Proto Man can do so without incurring damage to himself, what's the point? It's a huge letdown. In Mega Man 3, Proto Man's first game appearance, he actually fights against Mega Man because he doesn't trust him right away. Couldn't they have done something like that? It would have been really intruiging if Proto Man thought Rock was just a stupid hero automaton Dr. Light made to save everyone. Or heck, save that entire plotline for a sequel, and just have PM do a cameo or two just to watch Rock and see what's up. Another idea would be to have him actually work for Dr. Wily because for whatever reason he's tricked into trusting Dr. Wily more. Something.
Spoilers are done now.
Okay, so let's talk about Sung-Mo Cho, who played Proto Man. Most of my complaints for him are due to faulty writing, not acting. He did a good job being the mysterious and slightly self-righteous Proto Man, and I can tell I would have enjoyed him more but for plot awkwardness. I mean, come on, (spoiler!) his free will results from a power core error? That's like saying a clock gets free will because its batteries started leaking. There are better ways to say he has free will. And since clearly Rock and Roll have free will themselves (Rock's choice to be a hero was his own, Roll's choice to make pancakes instead of eggs was her own), it's pretty ridiculous that fixing the error would make him an automaton. There's better ways to make him run away from home.
Also, the problems between Proto Man and his estranged creator are potentially very complex. I feel that they are oversimplified in this movie, and they more or less get resolved in the end. Come on, let some bitterness drag on a while for intruigue's sake! Instead Proto Man seems to be handled in the exact way to prevent LeBraun from having good drama for a sequel. Honestly, the subplot of Dr. Light's wife was fairly poorly done, and cutting out Proto Man would have given both it and Rock some time to develop. Of course, that sort of does tie LeBraun down to a sequel, and he'll probably want to change it up at some point. Bah, nobody ever does anything for the Mega Man 5 robots...they're my favorite...wah. Whine whine, complain complain.
Okay, so throughout the action of this movie, there are times when the action just slows to a crawl and Dr. Light gets out needless explosition. First of all, you'd be surprised how good a work is when it's trimmed down, and secondly, it's always better to show rather than tell. It feels like nobody can ask Dr. Light anything without him giving a long winded answer. And when Mega Man finally defeats the robot masters, the plot starts really kicking, only to be slammed in the face with how the fight with the yellow devil ends. Honestly, that plot point needed to be cut out entirely. Use the time on it to extend the fight with yellow devil and make it look awesome.
You know, in this Wily complains that Dr. Light isn't the only one who's lost someone. It would have been really interesting to find out that Olga was really Wily's dead sister that Wily put into a computer to save her life. Or maybe just have him muse over someone really important to him that died or left him, or something. That would have been cool. Not really necessary, but cool.
I really love Wily's freak out session when he finally loses at the end. It combines the hilarity of Wily begging for his life like in the games with the seriousness of Wily's real hurt from his lifelong rejection.
Okay, so to sum it all up, there are several things good and bad about this movie, but overall, it feels very much like the fanfiction I read over at fanfiction.net. It's an origin story for Mega Man, it doesn't go too far from the game's bounds and give it more creativity, and the plot feels clunky whenever it has to transition from one scene to the next. Writers will be very inspired for certain moments of a story they want to write, but in between those they have to figure out how they're going to make everything work.
This may have been a low budget film, but good writing costs only time, not money. The dialogue itself was fairly good, other than Dr. Light being forced to be Captain Exposition, Wily not being able to do anything but whine for the first hour, and Fire Man's ranting. If proper plot planning had been done, then much of the film's problems could have been avoided. As a writer, I see things like this and wonder how they happen. Writing alone would have turned this film around and made it much better. Costuming and a better computer budget would have helped, but not to this extent.
This film is fairly good if you are a fan, but for those of you who aren't into Mega Man or don't know what it is, it's a fairly standard action movie with a few cute moments. Heck, I like it despite all of its flaws. It's fun, silly, and in certain ways better than Hollywood could do. I look at this movie and see a great big wad of potential. Go to megamanfilm.com and click the link to check it out.
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