mark_asphodel: Sage King Leaf (Default)
mark_asphodel ([personal profile] mark_asphodel) wrote2010-03-14 09:56 am
Entry tags:

There Will Be WHAT?

 I spent yesterday afternoon in the fandom toilet, and goshdarnit I had a good time.

See, one of my favorite movies EVER is There Will Be Blood, so when I heard of a Nintendo-themed parody, I was obliged to check it out.  Well, There Will Be Brawl has nothing to do with the film starring Daniel Day-Lewis, aside from that characters in both works get their heads bashed in.  It's a lot more like Watchmen as filtered through the Nintendoverse-- complete with a few well-placed and deliberate shout-outs to the graphic novel.  And it's brilliant.  Seriously, this thing is well-scripted, well-acted, and has production values.  I'd rather rewatch this than sit through a half-hour of any broadcast TV show I can think of right now.  Sure, it's dark-- the makers are not kidding when they say that it's for those aged seventeen and up.  It's gritty noir in which Our Heroes, most of whom aren't particularly heroic, drink, use drugs, have affairs, swear, beat one another up, and die horribly.  But there is an actual plot-- three plot threads, all of which are actually resolved-- and it's clearly done out of the same perverse love that makes any of us write or re-read darkfic.  If your fanboyism can stand to see your childhood favorites filtered through a black lens, and if you can recognize the likes of Jill Dozer, Barbara the Bat, and Saki from Sin and Punishment on sight-- watch it.

PS-- the Italian accents are so-so, but the Russian accents are brilliant.  I've lived with native speakers of Russian and Ukrainian for years, and the syntax is spot-on.  Everything that comes out of Fox's mouth is a riot.  And Fox was awfully attractive for a furry....

PPS-- I swear to god, the characterization of Marth in Episode 10 is the closest I've seen to canon in any SSB-derived work that features him.  

After all the major authority figures die horribly, he takes over the Mushroom Kingdom as the new chief of police and announces plans for reconstruction, a return to good old-fashioned values of bravery and heroism, and all that jazz.  (No, this is meant to be taken at face value as a positive development.)  Bwa hah hah.  And here I didn't think it was possible to keep him in-character in an SSB context.

Mind you, up to that point he was behaving as badly as everyone else this side of Kirby, but I still got a laugh out of it.  I'm a fan; that's what we do.

[identity profile] samuraiter.livejournal.com 2010-03-15 12:32 am (UTC)(link)
Watchmen being my favorite movie of all time, I had to bookmark this. :-)

[identity profile] mark-asphodel.livejournal.com 2010-03-15 01:01 am (UTC)(link)
You will either thank me or defriend me in terror.

But I swear it's worth it for the Lakitu newscasts alone.

[identity profile] writerawakened.livejournal.com 2010-03-15 01:43 am (UTC)(link)
Hmm, I've heard about that series, but I didn't think it was worth watching. Maybe I should check it out.

[identity profile] mark-asphodel.livejournal.com 2010-03-15 01:56 am (UTC)(link)
I expected it to be something like Brawlgasm, which I watched a bit of, laughed at in a kind of stupefied horror, and felt dirty afterward. No comparison. I was skeptical at first, but I think once Peach's cell phone went off and the ring tone was "Sonic Boom," I knew I was in for the long haul. It's done with genuine love and affection for the characters being warped and mutilated. Yeah, it's obvious at times that Mario and Luigi have latex noses, but compare the production values on TWBB to the ones on the "official" Mario Bros screen adaptations and it's a very pleasant surprise. Also, Zero Suit Samus is hot.