I highly recommend, for anyone who hasn't heard of it before, a little sci-fi themed game called FTL. It's a simple game (made by 2 people and funded by Kickstarter) where you have a ship and have to jump from beacon to beacon and at each there's a random event, usually a battle with an enemy ship. It's glorious, and yup, really rather hard what.

Yeah, I'm half way through season 3 and I've no motivation to continue. I'm just not really enjoying watching it, you know. It doesn't make me smile with happiness, it doesn't make me punch the air, it doesn't make me gape in astonishment, it doesn't make me shake my head in disbelief at a story turn.

I can see what people like about it, but it's sort of not really doing anything for me. I liked what they've done with the brother-in-love DEA agent, but I'm surprised by just how bored I am of the main characters. Self-destructive characters aren't endearing.

It doesn't work in the Star Wars prequels because only lip service is paid to the politics. It merely states a political intention, but neglects to develop either the background to the argument, or the argument itself. And without a social or financial argument at its heart, and at least two sides to that argument that you can understand (and actually make sense), it's just a half-baked idea. And I find that a poorly communicated/told political story is one that breaks down more noticeably than others. I had similar misgivings about the politics in 300 (see that thread).

If you pick up a random Star Trek episode, you'll find it did this much better, where often within its 45-minute running time it will present a commentary about a political topic. And it does it well because it lends credibility to both sides of the discourse.

In TPM, the taxation of trade routes alone isn't interesting, but it's also nowhere detailed enough to make it interesting. That the motivation of the villains remains vague and seemingly at odds with their desires also hinders its effectiveness as a driving plot force. Why would a Trade Federation block trade? It's just thrown in there but never developed beyond being mentioned a couple of times. Worse, the whole manner of its dealing in the senate is laugable, and stretches plausibility to the extreme because we can't see how this political organisation can ever function. Remember, the senate cannot even agree that Naboo is blockaded, and yet it allows a vote of no confidence regarding the 'non-existent' crisis. What? Did someone even read that twice when they wrote it?

When you create a make-believe world with its own political institutions, demonstrating that they make sense and work is vital. And that requires a fair amount of thought and research in the writing process.

A Bittersweet Life is superb, really like that one. A Tale of Two Sisters might be worth adding to the October list, I found that quite scary.

More from Aliens:

Also, I found this BTS clip from the Aliens set:

I like it!

I always thought he was just being a dummy and couldn't find the proper connector for his seat...you know, like it was tucked under the seat or something, ever get that?

I always loved that shot. Slow motion makes anything cool.

Reminds me of the aged Conan at the end of Conan the Barbarian (the real one, not that soft arsed shit released recently).

I like Pitch Black and count myself a fan of Chronicles as well, so looking forward to this. Loved the Butcher Bay game.

I'm actually most excited about Gravity, because it sounds like the movie I've been waiting decades to see.

Other than that, I'm expecting to like and enjoy watching Iron Man 3, Thor 2, Wolverine 2 and GI Joe 2 with my mates.

Star Trek XII and Man of Steel I'm cautiously optimistic about (read: I don't want to get my hopes up too high but I really hope they're good if not better than the previous attempts).

A part of it was also that I didn't think Bruce Willis did a good job at being John McClane again, instead he played an idolised, movie hero version of him. Same with Ford with Indiana Jones, I think time and the popular culture impression of the character twisted the portrayal somewhat.

In comparison, Stallone did much better at returning to his characters. Rambo felt like Rambo, not a parody beefcake version of him, same too with Rocky Balboa. Such that both of these new films I thought are amongst the best in their respective series.

The horror! That's the good nifty fifty as well.