Zelda Retrospective: The Legend of Zelda - Twilight Princess Review

After receiving significant backlash for a perceived shift in tone, Nintendo focused their efforts on a brand-new Zelda game to send off their humble Gamecube with a bang. Unfortunately, this would place it within the launch window of their brand new Wii console and so decided to delay their highly-anticipated sequel, Twilight Princess, as a Wii launch title. Much has been said about Twilight Princess, but since I was an edgy teenager at the time I thought it was just what the Zelda series needed. I was wrong. I'm sorry.

Review: The Legend of Zelda - Twilight Princess

The writing on the wall should have been so clear in retrospect, but even the title of this new Zelda screamed unnecessary edginess. "Twilight Princess?" Just the word Twilight evokes thoughts of darkness and melodrama, so it should come as no surprise that Nintendo tried to create a game oozing with edgy darkness and edgy melodrama only to drop the ball hard. This Link was more similar to the adult Link from Ocarina of Time, weathered and ready for a harrowing adventure because that's what you wanted, I guess.

Unlike many previous games in the series, there's no legendary tale to serve as the backdrop in Twilight Princess, instead dropping the player into a melancholy conversation between Link and his mentor, Rusl. Between the two disparate tones of darkness and melancholy, the latter is executed much better and the opening scene sets the mood perfectly. The game begins to falter almost immediately after, and doesn't pick itself up for a fairly long stretch.

In past games the plot setup is delivered quickly, though a better description would probably be 'efficiently.' A story doesn't need long and drawn-out exposition to introduce its conflict, and games like Ocarina of Time and The Minish Cap exemplify this aspect. That's not even considering the NES Zelda games which simply throw the player into the game without worrying about story at all. I'm all for a good story in a video game, but if a video game takes more than half an hour to introduce its conflict I consider that poor story-telling.

If Twilight Princess took a while to establish its story like The Wind Waker I'd be much less annoyed. In that game players are given their outfit, the sword, and go through their first dungeon by the time the player is out of the tutorial for Twilight Princess. The tutorials aren't even fun or very engaging; rather, the player is forced to herd goats and play with kids to teach them how to use items. It's horribly unintuitive and at times it can be outright patronizing. Tutorials in Twilight Princess are invasive and seep into every corner of the game, further increasing its linearity.

The overall size of the game world is much larger than Ocarina of Time, but it's still much smaller than the Great Sea. Despite the larger size, linearity is a major problem and is probably the worst in the series by this point. Majora's Mask is also very linear--requiring players tackle each area of Termina in order--but at least that game allows players to actually explore the entire field map whenever they want. Twilight Princess regularly cordons off chunks of the world map to make sure you're heading toward the dungeon it wants you to finish. Road blocks stop the player from entering certain parts of Hyrule, some requiring Epona to jump while others need to be taken away by characters who don't appear until the story concludes. A bridge will be removed from the map at one point preventing the player from going back for an extended period of time, and at its most egregious there's actually a locked gate that a character opens as the story continues.

You'll note I keep referring to the story as the main element blocking players from parts of the game, and that's because Twilight Princess is easily the most story-focused game of the series by this point. Unfortunately, it's more long-winded than anything else and typically falls back into tropes more often than not. Worse than that, the story often feels like a bigger, more bombastic, less time-efficient Ocarina of Time. Let's take a look at how the games open to show what I mean.

In Ocarina of Time, Link is awakened by his new companion Navi in order to save the Deku Tree from its infestation. The player has to navigate the small Kokiri Village in order to find a sword and gather rupees to buy a shield. After clearing the Deku Tree the players are given the Fairy Ocarina and are able to access all of Hyrule Field, though Lake Hylia, the Gerudo Valley, the Zora Village and Death Mountain are barred from entry until the items required to enter those areas are found.

The story in Twilight Princess begins without a word of backstory to contextualize the narrative, but Link and Rusl discuss the twilight and Link's upcoming visit to Hyrule Castle to present the royal family with his new sword. Before night falls, Link is asked to herd sheep. In the morning, the villagers' children appear and beg Link to play with them, so the player needs to go out and buy a slingshot. In order to buy a slingshot, a series of events need to be completed: climb a hill, knock Rusl's wife's baby carriage out of a monkey's hand using a hawk, take a fishing pole from her to catch a fish for a cat to cheer up its owner, then buy the slingshot, and finally return to the children. Rusl shows up to Link's house and gives him the wooden sword, and after using the slingshot to kill a spider blocking the way to his house the player is forced to clear a tutorial explaining how to use both the slingshot and the sword--despite the fact that the player would have just used the slingshot to knock down the spider.

I'm pretty sure I know exactly why this long string of tutorials was implemented, the reason being that Twilight Princess was postponed to be a launch title for the Nintendo Wii. Unlike the Gamecube version which used a controller setup almost identical to The Wind Waker, Twilight Princess struggles with implementing the at-the-time brand-new Wii Motion controller, and as such many of the standard Zelda functions had to be reworked to play correctly on the controller. The directional buttons can each be assigned items making it the most readily-available set of items in a Zelda game, but these items have to then be assigned to another button to actually be used.

There's no camera control unlike The Wind Waker and the Gamecube release of Twilight Princess, and since there aren't enough buttons on the controller the shield has simply been relegated to a parry on the left nunchuck, although this move has to be unlocked by the player. The sword is also changed to the extremely gimmicky Motion Controller as a waggle instead of a simple button press. That's not to say the sword follows the player's movement; rather, the waggle replaces a simple press of the B button. Players still need to manipulate the control stick in order to swing in different directions, which makes the finer control of sword combat feel horribly confusing as both hands start to work against each other.

I want to stress that the Wii port of Twilight Princess was likely created as an afterthought to get more people to buy the experimental new version of a Zelda game. Most people would list at least one Zelda as part of their top ten games of all time, and anecdotally I know more than a handful of people who buy new Nintendo consoles just to play the new Zelda. There's something of a running joke among the older game-playing crowd mocking Zelda as a stereotypical "casual gamer" game series, as most people who bark about Zelda being the best games ever made have either not played much of the series or simply don't play video games. It's a crass stereotype, but stereotypes exist for a reason. That's not to say Zelda is a bad series of video games--if you've been reading this blog you can probably guess it's one of my favorite series in video game history--but its reach among even the non-game playing public is widespread.

Naturally, more people bought Twilight Princess on the Wii and that version received a Nintendo Selects reissue; the Gamecube version, which released a month later, is commonly identified as a fairly rare game. I didn't play the Wii version until years later and found the port to be lacking, due not in small part to the flipped nature of the game world. This likely didn't disorient players who played the Wii version first, but after playing it so many times on Gamecube it was just weird to play the same game with a vertically flipped world. In case you weren't aware, the entire game was reversed in order to accommodate the fact that players would be swinging the Motion Controller with their right hand and wanted Link to match the player's movement

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Link being a left-handed character if only because it's so unorthodox, so for that reason alone I can't imagine any version of the character being legitimate without the left-handed nature. Furthermore, the HD re-release keeps the Gamecube presentation and only allows players to play the game flipped on the new Hero Mode, which is intended as a harder difficulty option. With that in mind, it's pretty evident the Gamecube version was the game Nintendo intended to play.

I wanted to bring all this up because I'm almost positive players who were using Twilight Princess as their introduction to the Wii's controller almost definitely needed to become accustomed to the controls, but since the Gamecube version is the exact same game these tutorials just comes across as trite. The fact that players have to kill a spider and then show the game they know how to use the slingshot is beyond patronizing and I can't believe there's no option to skip it. One of the kids even gives Link a prompt to skip the sword tutorial, but if the player selects no the game berates them for being rude to children until they say yes.

Oh, but we're not done talking about the game's intro yet. After assuring the kids the player knows how to play the game, a monkey appears and everyone chases it. The player fights bokoblins and is given the game's lantern by an NPC in order to continue through a cave. I don't understand why the bokoblins simply couldn't have been easier than normal and the player couldn't just learn how to control the sword by fighting them. After finally reaching the end of the road, the player rescues one of the children and the monkey before returning home. Another day passes and Link has to herd goats again. Ilia, the daughter of Ordon Village's mayor and the primary romantic interest, chastises Link for not taking care of Epona. After following her to her favorite spot all the way outside the village, Link and Ilia are attacked by mounted bokoblins and their moblin leader--or something else, I don't know, apparently moblins weren't good enough for Twilight Princess and this is just some new guy.

Link is taken into the Twilight Realm and turned into a wolf, then dragged to Hyrule Castle. Midna, an imp in the Twilight, helps Link find Princess Zelda who sends him back to Ordon Village. The player then has to recover a sword and shield from Ordon Village while sneaking around the hostile villagers, who are all panicking because their children were abducted by the bokoblins. Link then has to collect bugs who absorbed the Tears of Light from Faron, one of Hyrule's Guardian Spirits, in order to return to his human form. After this, the player explores the first dungeon and is finally able to explore Hyrule Field. Mostly. After the first open and horrifically empty area of Hyrule Field, players are once again forced to enter the Twilight as a wolf and collect more Tears of Light.

This is basically the entire setup for the first half of the game: enter a new province, gain a Vessel of Light from the Guardian Spirit, kill some bugs which require exploring more or less the entirety of the province, then return and gain Link's human form to explore it a second time. Think about A Link to the Past forcing players to enter the Dark World every time they want to explore a new area of the world map, or Ocarina of Time forcing the adult character to return to the Temple of Time to scope out every new temple as a child. You could argue it already does this with the Spiritual Stones, but this serves the purpose of introducing the world as well as giving the player a new perspective when they return as an adult. In the case of Twilight Princess, it just feels like busywork.

Go back and look at how much more content is required for the player to tackle in a linear order before they're able to access a limited version of Hyrule Field when compared to Ocarina of Time. Worse, much of this could be entirely cut out; the first goat herding minigame could be cut out entirely, the player could have simply started out with the sword, Rusl's wife could have just asked Link to find her baby carriage, Rusl could have just given Link the slingshot, and the entire three-day opening could have been condensed into a single night before night fell. It would still have taken longer to get into Hyrule Field than Ocarina of Time, but every single one of these instances of forced story could have been removed entirely without damaging the integrity of the story. No really, look at all the suggestions I have that could have been cut out: were any of those necessary to understand the world, characters, or narrative any better? My response would be a resounding no.

It takes even longer to get into the world than even The Wind Waker, and when it does it's so limited and barren that it feels like a second thought. The railroading is all in service of the dark narrative, but there's hardly anything darker than Majora's Mask to the point where it seems like it's trying too hard. I know the term tryhard is going out of vogue when discussing stories, but seriously, just look at this.

You creeped out yet? This is what you guys wanted isn't it?

I've never seen a game fall headfirst so horribly as Twilight Princess, and part of that is it failing so spectacularly to capture the darker tone the developers were going for. Twilight Princess was made in part due to the backlash of The Wind Waker's colorful and cheery tone, but in trying to create a dark story similar to Majora's Mask they fail entirely. Horror is subjective, but most of the time when a creator tries to be scary they often end up accomplishing the opposite. The Twilight Realm story is one of the most embarrassing scenes I've ever watched in a video game and that's mostly because it tries so hard to be creepy without any rhyme or reason. The dark and unsettling tone of Majora's Mask attempted a few of these horror moments, but part of that was the reuse of character assets and a clever implementation of the apocalyptic doomsday scenario. Without even trying, I felt Ganon's reveal in The Wind Waker regarding the true nature of the flooded Hyrule was far darker and more unsettling than anything in Twilight Princess, and that game went out of its way to be relaxed and comfortable.

As I mentioned in the beginning, the mood that I always think of positively in relation to Twilight Princess is that of melancholy, but it attempts this so rarely that I can't think of many times it actually works. The opening with Rusl talking to Link about the sadness of twilight is one of the best examples, but after that is an equally memorable scene where Link simply watches Ilia play with Epona. The scene is brief and even a bit lonely, and if it focused on that rather than attempting a dark and serious story I'd be far less harsh. Even worse, the dark tone clashes completely with many of the NPC designs.

Pictured: Looneytunes McDipshit

Many of the NPCs act exaggeratedly and have cartoonish features, to the point where I genuinely started to wonder if these were scrapped Wind Waker designs. All of these characters mesh poorly with the world, but worse than that they mesh poorly with each other. The character pictured above scoots around on his hands and knees when he's scared and bites his nails in a ridiculous Scooby Doo pantomime, but he's paired up with a stone-faced native from Kakariko Village. The scenario is of the characters horrified by the Twilight surrounding them and then you have this stupid asshole on the verge of shouting "Zoinks!" and running with those stupid Sonic legs.

If the tone had simply been of a lonely hero attempting to fight an alien force, I'd have been completely fine with that. Having ridiculous moments meshes in fine when the game is attempting to be forlorn, but when eyeless spooky ghost characters are killing each other it's just out of place entirely.

Silly, fun Zelda. You told us you hated this though.

What seriously disappoints me is that we would have gotten a different game if people hadn't gotten so distraught over The Wind Waker before actually playing it. Game development takes a long time and I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo started to develop Twilight Princess almost immediately after learning that the initial reaction to The Wind Waker was primarily negative, but given this was the new flagship Zelda Nintendo would never concentrate solely on a dark, edgy game. Instead, what we get is a story that tries too hard without ever committing to anything. As an aside, because Twilight Princess attempts to convey a more realistic setting, the game looked markedly worse than The Wind Waker the moment it released; the cartoon style of The Wind Waker masked some of the Gamecube's faults, but now they're all shown in full force with Twilight Princess as the geometry and some models are far uglier simply because of limitations of the console. Congratulations, idiots: your insistence on a realistic style revealed exactly why Nintendo went with stylized graphics in the first place.

Twilight Princess uses the same engine as The Wind Waker, but it takes a few cues from The Minish Cap in that many of Link's sword techniques must be discovered and learned by a skeletal tutor. What's really annoying about this is that many of the techniques are just elaborate versions of Link's parry moveset from The Wind Waker, though rather than a simple press of the A button players need to input commands. Here's a brief example: one of the parries from The Wind Waker involved Link rolling to the side of an enemy and striking them from behind. In Twilight Princess, this same move needs to be learned and in order to execute it, the player has to double-tap the A button and end with a sword attack.

All the involved sword mechanics in the world mean nothing if the game is made easier to accommodate the controls. Since there's no way to actively raise the shield, Link simply has it raised at all times. Since the advanced sword techniques are optional, the game is balanced in a way that players can still win combat without them; with this in mind, Twilight Princess has a combat system which automatically blocks most enemy attacks, a sidestep which avoids all attacks the shield can't block, and a hidden pool of techniques that utterly decimate most enemies. For a game that strives so hard to be the dark, edgy flipside to The Wind Waker, it's baffling that it could be so much easier.

Since I've already compared the gameplay to its prior entry, I want to point out why the passive shield is a step down from even Ocarina of Time. In Ocarina, players needed to raise their shield in order to avoid attacks, but since enemies would attack at random and raise shields of their own there was a real sense of tension in combat. Looking at Stalfos in particular, players needed to watch their enemy's movement and take advantage of weaknesses when possible. Twilight Princess's approach is closer to A Link to the Past in that the shield is raised by default, but even the top-down games in the series after that game featured a shield that needed to be raised with a button press. Twilight Princess in turn takes steps backward from innovations in both the overhead and 3D Zelda games to the point where everything is trivialized for the player. If you thought The Wind Waker was too simplistic, then I would hate to learn what hoops you'd jump through to justify Twilight Princess's dumbing down of mechanics that already worked fine.

Even though it looks more complex, the fact of the matter is that combat is simply more convoluted. That's what I'd have to say is the biggest flaw of Twilight Princess: the developers knew what they wanted to avoid, but didn't know how to replace the controversial aspects of the series with something all fans would enjoy. The combat is simplified even with new mechanics and the story, despite having so much expository dialogue, does very little more than Ocarina of Time despite wasting so much of the player's time.

Different factions are introduced throughout the game, though their importance is highly inflated. The Gorons are Zora return from Ocarina of Time, though they're both largely unchanged aside from more busy design elements. There's a league of adventurers who later become the resistance to the Twilight invasion, but they're only shown to be actively resisting anybody once or twice throughout the story. If you're not going to utilize an established organization, maybe that organization doesn't deserve to exist.

Zant is an extremely interesting villain and I love his portrayal, but because this game was made by cowards he's quickly overshadowed and replaced once again by Ganon. Ganon appears closer to the end of the game and accomplishes very little, but at least two of his four boss phases are complete nostalgia grabs for previous games. The fact that the final battle is a repeat of the final boss of The Wind Waker further makes me think of this game as a half-hearted apology for The Wind Waker, but that just makes me hate the game more. Yeah, Twilight Princess has more dungeons and the game is less colorful and it's more grim just how everyone wanted, but the polish is simply not there.

Speaking of dungeons, I need to make one final complaint about the linear design of Twilight Princess. In previous games, each dungeon would give Link an item which would help the player explore the world and open access to more of the world. Many of the items in Twilight Princess are almost completely forgotten about after the dungeon they're required in; the dungeons are also completely linear this time around, only allowing Link to carry one key at a time so the player doesn't get lost. It's not like these dungeons are intricate mazes, so to force players down one path is a hideous design choice and it's made all the worse by the formulaic approach to new items.

I mentioned this in an earlier review, but as each Zelda comes along the developers seem to lose more of what makes the series so unique. By the time of Twilight Princess, players are literally going through the motions and completing each dungeon in a set pattern that gets old quickly--as an aside, this game doesn't even attempt to give players an option to explore dungeons out of order. Even The Wind Waker, with its six main dungeons, gives players an option to approach two of the later dungeons in either order.

Each item should legitimize itself as both a tool for combat as well as exploration--the main tenets of a Zelda game. Twilight Princess marks an era of the Zelda games losing the plot and the approach to dungeons encapsulates this by shoving an item carelessly into the player's hands and forgetting about it as soon as the dungeon is over. Many of these items are fairly unique and I would have loved to play around with them more, but there simply aren't enough uses for them after

Truth will out, as the saying goes, and most of the naysayers of The Wind Waker shut their mouths the moment they either tried the game or matured a little. I don't fault them for that if they made the judgment as a child because I did the same when I first saw The Wind Waker, but after playing the game I quickly appreciated what it was setting out to do and felt ashamed that I ever doubted it. With Twilight Princess, all I can see is a pathetic attempt to capture the nostalgia for a game that didn't need it.

Verdict

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is an ugly, patronizing game that fails to convey both the tone it's attempting to capture and the melancholic mood it fails to utilize. It's bloated to all hell with an ugly, empty and enormous overworld full of generic caves. There are way too many Pieces of Heart, too many dungeon items lose their utility as soon as Link leaves the dungeon, the sheer volume of nostalgia grabbing is embarrassing, and for the first time in the series (unless you're like me and feel this way about the Oracles) it finally feels like the Zelda formula is unraveling. Like the Oracle games, this is the perfect example of a game that exists if you need a new Zelda game to play, but it's far from a memorable experience and feels cobbled together more often than not.

If you absolutely have to play Twilight Princess, go for the Wii U HD Remaster. Unlike The Wind Waker HD, this version adds no irritating element like extra bloom but it does fix most of the annoyances that actually could be fixed. There are fewer Tears of Light to collect, players don't bang their sword on walls, and the hard mode allows masochistic players to play the game in the Wii's vertically flipped mode. It completely eclipses the Gamecube original, but in my estimation it's little more than polishing a turd.


Zelda 3D remaster mini-reviews:
http://subjective-objective.blogspot.com/2016/03/mini-review-zelda-remasters.html

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Review: American Gods

I'm never taking recommendations for books again for the rest of my life.

I was going to write this review over a year ago, but frankly I got bored and decided to shelve it for a while. With a television series set to air on Starz, I decided to give my thoughts on what might be the most anticipated show of the year for many people and why it's a big pile of dookie.

The Premise

Shadow Moon--I'm not joking--an experienced conman, is released from prison to find his wife has died in a car accident. After discovering she was having an affair with his best friend, Shadow reluctantly accepts an offer to be a bodyguard for the enigmatic Mr. Wednesday, a womanizing thief. There's more to Wednesday than Edgy Originalcharacter is led to believe, and before he realizes it Wednesday throws Fedoralord into a complex web of intrigue with a grab-bag of whatever shallow religious icons author Neil Gaiman could find.

Yawn.

The first thing that jumped out at me while listening to the twenty hour audiobook (465 pages, if Wikipedia is correct) is that very little actually happens in the plot. Euphoric Originalcharacterdonotsteal is constantly introduced to these fantastical deities covering a wide range of world religions with all the affect of a dirty old broom.

Gaiman must have taken the wrong inspirations from Stephen King, as long passages of nothing happening litter the pages of this Hugo-winning novel. At one point, Laughable Name decides to leave his hotel room to go into the lobby and agonize over a selection of potato chips before returning to his room to watch an episode of Jerry Springer, which is also described to the reader. Did that sound like an interesting series of events? Did you learn anything about the character or the world which, I must remind you, is full of a mish-mash of every deific entity of every major religion?

Unoriginal Joke is occasionally visited by his dead wife and the two jab at each other with smarmy quips that even Joss Whedon would heavily reconsider dropping in a script. Every single line out of the wife's mouth is about how inconvenient being dead is, and the reader is never really given much motivation into her actions aside from feeling bad about cheating on Melvin Dragonlord, and beyond that her character falls so flat that I could never get a read on what she was like before becoming a one-liner-spewing zombie.

Wednesday, an incarnation of the Norse God Odin, is perhaps the most cliched version of the God Gaiman could possibly have produced. A womanizing drunk, the character brings Shadow to a meeting of the Gods where they take their original forms, though most of them are unphased by Odin revealing that the new gods, a shadow group based on new technology, are seeking to usurp the gods of old.

This brings the crawling plot to a very minimal boost, introducing the central conflict. Maddeningly, this conflict has nothing at all to do with Shadow and the stakes are...

What are the stakes?

I still have no clue what the stakes are in this novel. If the American Gods defeat the Old World Gods, it's implied nothing at all will change. Stupid is offered multiple chances to simply leave, but because he has absolutely no character he decides to stand around to finish his stupid job. That's it. That's the plot of the whole novel--so where do the hundreds of pages come in?

Well, because this is somehow an important piece of work for Gaiman, several chapters are dedicated to short stories describing common people interacting with the old gods. These short stories take forever to finish and grind the already glacial pace of the novel to a halt with very little to show for it. Apparently Gaiman doesn't know that ifrits are not gods, and if that's the case why aren't more mystical creatures just kind of hanging around in the world? The story would have been far more fascinating if that were the case, but only one short story deals with this creature and it has one of the most dull, passionless descriptions of sex I've ever read--well, listened to. Hush.

That's not to say the other few sex scenes in the novel are riveting; on the contrary, Neil Gaiman seems to desire his children's stories about fantasy monsters featuring characters actually named Shadow Moon to be taken seriously, but sex is approached by someone who I'm not actually sure has ever lost his virginity. Go listen to the languid descriptions of sex in chapter 8 of American Gods and compare it to the mind-shattering "the earth moved" scene from Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, or the frantic and passionate tryst between Joe and Joanna from Faulkner's Light in August. Passion isn't merely telling the audience all about the grunting piston-like movements of sex or the act of ejaculation, which Gaiman believes elevates sex. I guess you could just handwave it by saying "They don't make 'em like they used to," but comparing the greats to this trash makes it look even more pitiful.

The novel continues to merely exist at several points, going so far as to drop Shadaloo Bison into a completely detached village suffering horrific winters which literally goes nowhere. It's revisited after the main plot is finished, but it feels completely out of place--as if it were a completely different story dropped in to lengthen the novel. I feel like the publisher demanded a far longer book than Gaiman intended to write; if this is the perfect version of American Gods, I kind of feel ashamed for everyone involved.

The novel ratchets up to a massive war between the gods both old and new, but without spoiling too much (out of respect for you poor, innocent TV viewers) most of the battle is completely off-screen. Oh yeah, did nobody mention that? All the action takes place off-screen and Shadow takes part in none of it. You know, like how Anakin has absolutely no reason to be fighting for Naboo and most of the action takes place without him. He manages to get out of bad situations with seemingly little effort, everyone likes him, his name is literally the kind of thing you'd see scrawled on a binder by an edgy teenager, and he has some sort of God blood or something. I guess it's okay to be a Mary Sue if you're a fantasy protagonist though, because nobody reading fantasy has standards anyway.

Conclusion

I guess this is why I hold fantasy and sci-fi in such low regard: not because I don't personally like the genre, but because critics of the genre seem to accept such low quality garbage and heap glowing praise and awards on the mere act of trying. The bar for entry just keeps shrinking, and by reading these types of novels I feel like I'm lowering myself to the standards typical of the genre--which, after the Young Adultpocalypse of the last decade, is lying somewhere next to dinosaur bones lower than the Mariana Trench. Gaiman has emulated the worst parts of Stephen King, a writer acclaimed for his ability to dump out huge tomes every year quality notwithstanding, and applied it to a plot you'd see in a throwaway anime. Boring, monotone, edgy, unoriginal, cringey (Low-key Lyesmith? How can you read this with a straight face and still respect yourself?) and just generally laughable, American Gods is a book that made me seriously question some of my friends' taste.

Poor

Review: Don't Breathe

I wonder why I even bother sometimes. My life is a trainwreck, nobody reads these stupid blogs; I might as well go work in a toll booth or something. Worse, even more depressing, is that I spent twenty stupid dollars to take my girlfriend to see the vexingly well-reviewed Don't Breathe. I just can't win. Everything is awful.

What I Can Only Describe as the "Premise"

Don't Breathe is an accurate title, because I'm pretty sure director and screenwriter Fede Alvarez wrote the plot while holding his breath or something, I don't know, this is a stupid joke. Almost as stupid as Don't Breathe. A trio of idiot burglars decide they're done with living in Detroit (a fair motivation) and that as one final heist, they'll break into the home what I can only describe as Blind Plinkett; as they've discovered, this man received $300,000 in a settlement after his daughter was killed in a car crash. The three bumble their way through this guy's tiny house as they discover the depths of human horror. Many, many laughs are had at their expense.

The Good.

Well, the cinematography is alright. The first act of the film has extensive use of very wide shots, and I have to say these massive panoramas of Detroit are very striking. The movie actually opens with a very impressive shot as the camera slowly pans toward the blind man dragging a body: it creates a chilling atmosphere and establishes the villain as a fairly menacing figure. This scene is sadly an inverse of the set-up for another movie from this year, 10 Cloverfield Lane: while the latter creates a tense atmosphere that's constantly twisted and turn on its head throughout the duration of the film, I feel like this opening shot is instead a cheap way of lampshading a major twist in the second half of the film which, on its own and without this foreshadowing, would come off as the dumbest twist in any movie of all time. Um, well, there are only about a handful of jumpscares. That's a positive. The thing is, the biggest issue with any of this is that...

The Characters Suck.

Every single character in this film is the dumbest person I've ever seen in film. I mean that in earnest; the three protagonist burglars constantly make horrible mistakes at nearly every turn and the villain is such a complete moron that the audience will likely be at odds for who to cheer for or when to feel tense--well, aside from the unevenly-paced jump scares.

At the very least, half of the cast have decent motivations. Money (why is this his name?) and Rocky (why is this her name?) both want to move away from Detroit and relocate to California. Apparently the two also don't want to get jobs so they've resorted to burglary. Alongside these two are Alex, whose dad owns--or simply works at, it's not clear--a security company. Alex is a complete blob of a human who has no desires or drive; he merely wants to stay in Detroit for his dad for some reason.

Outside of the heroes, the unnamed blind villain of the film does very little. He's reactive, but despite being blind is apparently capable of kidnapping, dragging a body slowly across a street surrounded by inhabited houses, and accurately cutting off clothes at a 100% accurate angle and with such precision that even after the character stands up and run away, their clothes appear completely fine. I know that sentence is a mess, but the movie doesn't give me much to deal with.

Rocky is the arguable protagonist of the film; Alex is shown at home for a few seconds while he gets codes for a plot-destroying alarm remote--a literal plot device which exists only for convenience. That's his entire character. He has no goals or motivations; like Money, the two only exist for Rocky to have another character to play off. Rocky has very little characterization of her own, so the film shoehorns a hamfisted expository monologue near the beginning while hammering in ladybug imagery. Her mom locked her in the trunk of a car when she was a kid, you see, and she found her way out with the help of a ladybug. Because of that, she has a half-finished ladybug tattoo which she wants to color in when she gets to California. And guess what points her to the plot-destroying remote at the end of the movie? And no, it makes no sense.

There's also a dog. Doggo is a more consistent character, as he desires food, sleep, and chasing humans. He's a cute doggo, but stern. That said, compared to the others he's a bit of a shallow character, so when he becomes central to the plot it feels a bit weak. You know, because he's a dog in a horror movie about hiding from a blind military vet. It's almost as if...

The Plot Sucks. (Spoilers, you silly goose!)

So when the three dumbest thieves in movie history come face-to-face with an indestructible blind god-being, disaster strikes very quickly. Despite drugging the old man's bedroom Money still decides to shoot open a locked door (which, I'll be fair, has some decent framing) which obviously wakes the old man up. The ex-military veteran quickly murders Money while Alex and Rocky steal his money and prepare to sneak out, but the old man--and I'm not making a funny joke--smells Rocky's shoestank and realizes Money wasn't alone.

Alex and Rocky run into the basement and discovers the woman the blind man kidnapped in the film's opening. She's the woman who killed blind dude's daughter, and he's locked her up in an obvious rape dungeon for an unknown reason though if you haven't put together it's an obvious rape dungeon, you're probably this film's target audience.. Alex and Rocky are actually autistic and never once attempt to tell her to please be quiet so they can remove the binding around her mouth; luckily, the girl is also autistic and never makes an attempt to remove the binding to explain what's going on. And oh man, when you find out what's actually happening...

So blind guy knows the two are in the basement because he tied the murderer to a bell (wouldn't he get seriously annoyed by a constantly-ringing bell? Does she just sit still all the time?) and cuts them off outside. He shoots them with a gun in the middle of the neighborhood and cops never show up and accidentally kills the girl, also conveniently shooting Rocky's phone (Alex's phone conveniently ran out of batteries) before the two run away. The blind dude identifies the girl's body by the bindings and shouts a Vader no!--including a fist shake in the air. I saw the twist coming with this girl a mile away, but I was mortified by the fact that the film actually goes through with it. More on that later.

The blind dude shuts off the lights in the basement and what follows is a cramped, unorganized, annoying chase scene in the dark. The film is shot entirely with night vision, and boy oh boy does it look godawful. The film then devolves entirely into the two characters running from, and fighting, the blind dude. Rocky runs into the vents and Alex is beaten to a pulp. Rocky is stupidly caught by the blind dude just as she finds the exit, and he takes her back down to his rape dungeon,

At this point I thought the movie couldn't be any dumber, but the blind dude reveals the girl was pregnant. She certainly doesn't look pregnant, but that's far from the issue--because the blind dude apparently denounced religion, and because that's apparently very bad, he's willing to go to any lengths to do...whatever. His goals are extremely stupid.

Moralize Me, Captain!

I kind of want to touch on how this film portrays good and evil before moving on. Alex and Rocky are the clear deuteragonists, but they really do nothing outside of burglary to establish why anyone would ever root for them. They're placed into a bad situation, but it's hard to actually sympathize with them outside of "feel bad because they're the main heroes." Early on, Alex is shown arguing with her mom, who she still lives with to take care of her little sister--I can't remember her name, but let's call her Sympathy Bait, or SB. Rocky wants a better life for little SB and we're supposed to want her to succeed, but her only goal is to steal from people and move across the country so she doesn't have to work anymore. Why? What's the point? How am I supposed to sympathize with a character whose only goal is to not have to work another day in their life? I feel nothing but disgust for this pitiful being.

The viewer is supposed to feel anger toward Rocky's mom and her dirtbag boyfriend because they're meany-heads. Rocky's mom makes rude comments about Rocky being a possible prostitute, but it really just seems like she's being petulant. Her mom's boyfriend, however, is shown very blatantly to be a huge dirtbag--he's eating cereal on the couch like a neanderthal, but more than that his hands are constantly in the frame so you can very clearly see the swastika tattoos on them. It's like the movie is signalling for you to look right here so you can hate this man because he's bad, Nazis are bad so he's evil. I mean, yeah, that's true, but it's the simplest way of establishing villainy. LOOK, RIGHT HERE, HE HAS A SWASTIKA ON HIS HAND. HE'S EVIL. DON'T YOU GET IT?

Then you get this massive speech by the blind dude about how he's ditched religion, and a man without God can do aaaannyyyything. It's such a stupid motivation for a villain but it's taken dead-serious by Rocky to the point where she actually acts afraid by this fact alone. He reveals his master plan, which--man, I don't even know anymore. How does this plan even make sense?

The Twist

So let me explain this in the most scientific way possible. The blind man kidnapped the woman who murdered his daughter and restrained her in his basement. In his estimation, the woman stole his daughter and owes him one. She was pregnant with his child despite not appearing pregnant at all--certainly not given any reasonable maternal health facilities--and that, because Rocky caused the blind man to kill her, she now owes him a child. He then retrieves a beaker full of his semen from a freezer and heats it up on his stove because Rocky now owes him a child. But the blind man would never force himself on a woman--he says so himself! And that's when the turkey baster comes in. It's not rape when it's a plastic tube!

At this point I gave up any attempt at taking this movie seriously and spent the next five minutes doubled over in laughter. If you saw this movie in the same theater as I did, allow me to apologize. I'm sorry you were also taken in by Don't Breathe's insanely high Rotten Tomatoes score. I certainly couldn't breathe for the remainder of the running time.

I'll just put it outright. The fact that this movie very seriously had an old blind man waving around a turkey baster full of dribbling cum officially holds it up as the funniest, most hilarious, unbelievably uproarious movie of the entire year--probably the entire decade, honestly.

Of course, he doesn't manage it. Alex appears just as the blind man cuts Rocky's pants (which mend rather miraculously right after) and tries to baste that turkey. Why would he do it right then, though? What if she was on her period? What if she had an IUD? Those things work, you know. What if she was on birth control, what if his dirty old sperm was dead because he had it in a stupid refrigerator and warmed it up on an oven, what if it just didn't take? I hate to tell Alvarez this, and I hate to break it to other virgins who might believe this, but even many couples who attempt to have children typically have to work weeks or even months at a time. Of course particularly fertile couples might be able to get pregnant quickly, but the notion that this will assuredly cause Rocky to get pregnant right away is just silly. What kind of stakes are those? The three of them broke into this guy's house, stole his money, trashed his place and drugged his dog, and she might get pregnant from a one-time insemination. Don't get me wrong, that shit's disgusting, but it's utterly stupid.

The other problem is that this movie really doesn't have legs to approach sexual assault in any way. It's a topic that needs to be approached delicately and Don't Breathe does it with all the subtlety of a cargo ship--far more immense and mighty than a simple commercial fishing boat. It's only here for shock value and adds nothing to the movie. We didn't need to feel this much vitriol for the old man--he's a weirdo who stoops to murder when his home is invaded. Did we need the turkey baster to be involved in any way? It's too much, dude. Dial it back a little. It's like asking for mild at Chipotle and they dump the hottest sauce they have on hand on your delicious burrito. Calm down dude, how could I possibly enjoy this if you're going to go insane with everything? Murder was enough.

Then they have an EPIC TAKEDOWN!!!!!!! when Alex appears to save Rocky and she shoves the turkey baster in his mouth. The two tie him up downstairs and he's so upset at the taste of semen that he breaks out of the restraints, sprints through his crowded basement, and shoots Alex to death. From here the film heads toward what can meekly be described as a climax where Rocky has a desperate chase from Doggo. Doggo is tricked into being trapped in Rocky's car and blind dude somehow finds her some distance away and drags her back.

Rocky sets off the home alarm with the convenient plot device and throws blind dude into his attic. We're completely robbed of a denouement or resolution for Rocky's parents, but she's just shown in an airport with her dumb sister. Rocky conveniently notices a news report which shows the blind man is still alive, though he is not admitting to the stolen money. Rocky gets away with theft and property damage and we're supposed to feel good.

Conclusion

I was hoping for another It Follows and instead fell face-first into some weird amalgamation of Harry S. Plinkett and the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode "The Gang Gets Trapped." As an unintentional comedy, Don't Breathe is pretty damn hilarious. Bad characters, moronic motivations, possibly the most hilarious twist in movie history, and an all-around dull atmosphere create a movie that's going to surely appeal to people who enjoy jump scares and manufactured tension. It's dumb Hollywood drivel that feels three times its short length, and I would only recommend it to someone who wants to watch a so-bad-it's-good horror movie.

Moronic