Much adulation has been heaped upon Destiny since the debut of the 2.0 patch and the release of the Taken King expansion. The changes both bring to the game as it existed in its first year are universally agreed upon as positive. However, the extent to which such improvements mend the broken state of the…
Apart from Star Wars and Indiana Jones, my favorite Harrison Ford movie is probably Air Force One, wherein the President of the United States single-handedly defeats a cell of Russian terrorists who had taken the plane hostage. In my favorite scene of the criminally underrated White House Down (which asks the age old question: what…
Superman: Lois and Clark #1 is a strange patchwork of references and homages to prior Superman series. This in itself is not problematic; in an overly reductionist way, even Morrison’s All-Star Superman could be described as vignettes heavily inspired by Silver-Age stories and his own previous work on the character. With regards to Lois and…
Often acclaimed as the Citizen Kane of games, the first nascent step in legitimizing the medium as art, the original Bioshock constructed a compelling critique of Randian Objectivism. The sequel, however, wisely avoided repeating the message of its predecessor, instead deconstructing the polar opposite philosophical system, Collectivism. The two games taken together then were thematically…
Beyond any skill as a director, perhaps George Lucas’ greatest contribution to universe he created in Star Wars was as a translator, his particular modus operandi being to take pre-existing elements and adopt them into the genre of space opera. The whole of A New Hope may be seen as Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress… in…
When the Secret Wars tie-ins were first announced, the most common expectation was that the various sequels would be fairly close continuations of the themes and plots from the original stories. Beginning with the final page of issue one and becoming increasingly more evident throughout the following installments, Brian Michael Bendis and Andrea Sorrentino’s Old Man…
The Beginner’s Guide (from Davey Wreden, co-creator of The Stanley Parable) stands apart as the game which most clearly holds a thesis, an argument that it’s trying to make to the player, while simultaneously being the game whose message is most difficult to discern. The most prominent interpretation I’ve happened across so far is that…
The character of Han Solo is no stranger to retroactive continuity. The most famous alteration in the history of film existed solely for the purpose of softening his character. Even given such, the revelation at the end of issue #6 that Han was (possibly) once been married was far more radical a change than having…
I have a confession to make: I’m not particularly excited about The Force Awakens. I’ll be seeing the film opening night, of course, waiting hours in line if need be for center row seats to the first IMAX 3D showing available. But as I’m waiting in line, it will be with no small measure of…
Anticipation for the upcoming seventh episode in the Star Wars saga, The Force Awakens, is quickly becoming a ubiquitous part of daily life in the few short months leading up to the film’s theatrical release. It’s been mere days since Force Friday, wherein a deluge of tie-in merchandise flooded store shelves, with eager collectors lining…
The Hub City Review 