Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises

This review will be spoiler-free so read away!

The Dark Knight Rises is out this week and I thought I’d share my thoughts on the film. Let’s start out with the basics. The film takes place 8 years after the end of the last film. Batman has been in hiding ever since taking the fall for Harvey Dent's crimes but with the appearance of Bane, and with Gotham under threat once more, it's time for the Dark Knight to return again. But is Batman prepared for an enemy more powerful than any he has yet faced.

Before getting into specifics I'll start out by saying the film was really, really good. All the characters were handled well and given time to breath. The fight choreography and big set-pieces were well crafted, and light on the CGI as most of Christopher Nolan's stuff is. 

The whole scale of the film was incredibly large, with Bane's attack on Gotham city being so well carried out, it strikes before anyone can really do anything to prevent it, especially a Batman who has been in hiding for 8 years. 

The film also deals with the theme fear once again, through Bruce Wayne's indecisiveness, and this inaction being responsible for some of the events that occur in the film. Although the fear aspect isn't as heavily pushed as it was in Batman Begins, it still plays a large role in proceedings.

Tom Hardy as Bane was a complete monster, so brutal, and despite most of his face being covered, his expressiveness through his eyes alone is very impressive. The mid-film fight between Batman and Bane is incredibly well put together, and completely sold by Tom Hardy’s immense physical stature.

Anne Hathaway was great as Selina Kyle. She played it brilliantly as a manipulator, usually only looking out for herself, and playing others against each other. Catwoman (though I don’t think she’s ever directly called this) was incredibly well handled in the film I thought.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt was great, and his character's story was such a welcome inclusion in the film. He seemed like a bit of an amalgam of certain characters from the Batman mythos, but a great inclusion after all.

And of course, Michael Caine as Alfred is once again fantastic, stealing almost every scene he appears in, and delivering some of the emotional backbone to the film.

I haven't decided yet where the film lies in relation to The Dark Knight. The Dark Knight has loomed as one of my favourite films, which hasn't diminished upon repeat viewings, and only time will tell if this film will stand up to the same viewings. I am definitely looking forward to seeing it again, though, and I'd recommend everyone reading go see the film.

All I can really say is, Christopher Nolan has struck magic once again.

A Superhero RPG for PC

Apologies for the lack of updates for the last couple of weeks, but I've been pretty busy for the last while and here's why:

I'm making a game! Yep, a bona fide computer game. It's an old-school style rpg game but unlike all those old-school rpg games this isn't about fighting trolls and dragons, no this is all about superheroes!

Now of course, making a game isn't easy, which is why I want to be able to dedicate time to it and to make it as good as I possibly can. To aid me with this I have started a fundraiser on indiegogo.com/knightsRPG. Please, check it out if you have a minute to spare. The aim of this is really to provide me with the means to be able to concentrate on making the game to the best of my ability.

For those who have used crowdfunding sites in the past, you may be thinking "Indiegogo? Why doesn't he just use Kickstarter? Everyone and their cat seems to have heard of that place!"

Well to be honest, I would have liked to have used Kickstarter too. It's a well-known thing at the moment, and videogame funding seems to do well over there. The only problem is, you have to have a bank account in the USA to be able to use it, and as I'm from Ireland and currently living in Australia, that didn't seem like it was going to happen. And so I went for the second largest site out there, indiegogo!

I'm very excited about all this and I have the game all mapped out, along with some fun things I'd like to implement based on what funding I get for the game. So do me a favour if you can and head over to indiegogo.com/knightsRPG and check out the game, and if you really want, drop me a couple of pennies, and I'd be very grateful.

Thanks and see ya soon,

James

Why is naming characters so hard?

It seems like a such a simple thing to do, and yet, whenever I start writing something new one of the stumbling blocks I invariably have is deciding the names of characters, from the major ones to the minors. In many of my stories the character names have changed multiple times, just because I felt a certain name didn’t suit well enough.

But why is this? What makes a name a “good” name? And does it really matter? I know that when I read books I don’t really place much importance in a character’s name, it’s just what they are called. And yet when I write myself, I find something pushing me to find just the right name for a character. I can’t think of many examples of ‘good’ names of characters, only bad ones (for example, calling a character Hope, whether that character saves the day, or is symbolically killed at some point, it feels a bit obvious doesn’t it?).

New Dark Knight Rises Trailer

The newest trailer for The Dark Knight Rises is out now, and all it's doing is make me want to watch this film more and more. I'm double happy because the film is out here in Australia a day before it is back home in Ireland. (I think that's the real reason I came over here :D ) If you haven't clicked on the video above to watch yet, then why the hell not?

Film Review: The Avengers

Marvel’s latest big-screen blockbuster is hitting screens worldwide at the moment and I was fortunate enough to get a chance to see it yesterday. For those who don’t know, this is what Marvel’s last few films (Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Incredible Hulk) have been building up to. We’ve been introduced to all these characters in what have mostly been very good films(the last Hulk film wasn’t as good as the others but certainly not as bad as Ang Lee’s Hulk, but then again, not much is).

Going in as I did having watched all those films (and having read comics about them for the last few years too), it’s hard to tell whether you need much knowledge of the characters beforehand, but it seems the film  assumes you at least have a rough knowledge of them (and if you’ve successfully managed to avoid hearing at least the most basic details about the characters from their last few films, then chances are this won’t be the film you’re looking for anyway).

The basic premise of the film is that this group of superheroes (consisting of Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye & Black Widow) has to unite to face a greater force than any of them could handle individually. It’s a pretty basic premise, and overall the plot is pretty straightforward, but with an ensemble cast like this, that’s pretty much necessary. Not to say that this hurts the film either, it simply leaves lots of space for the films real strength to show through, the character interaction.

Book Review: The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins

After watching the Hunger Games film a couple of weeks ago, I decided I’d give the 3 books a read. I wanted to find out more about what would happen in the world of Panem. So what did I think of them overall? Somewhere between “Meh” and disappointment.

The first book was good. The changes they made between the book and the film seemed like logical ones, especially considering the first person narrative of the book. Overall I’d say the changes made in the film were for the better, giving a much larger view of the impacts of Katniss’ actions in the games and things happening around her than is possible to show in the book. The book is however much more detailed and brutal than the film is but I have to say I probably enjoyed the first book on roughly the same level as the film.

The Magic of Unplanned Writing

I've been writing on and off for a long time, lots of little stories, stories that were never finished, and stories that are still tucked away as ideas in a secret folder (I say secret but not exactly well hidden. It just sits on my desktop, tempting me away from whatever I'm currently working on). When these ideas strike is always exciting, and the impulse is always to chase these ideas and see where they lead.

The problem with chasing these stories in the past has been that whatever I was then working on would inevitably get lost in the wayside. I've gotten a hell of a lot better about it though, which has resulted in me getting a lot further into the novel I'm currently working on, and some of these ideas for other stories have fed back into the novel so it's all good (Of course it's also meant my ideas folder has been filling up a lot quicker, but hopefully that'll come in handy later!).

But anyway, one thing I've discovered through getting so far in my current book is how much fun the unplanned things can be. As the characters begin to develop and grow they start to fill in the story much more than I planned. Certain elements of my story have been dropped as I've written more and found out that the characters, as they've grown and become more developed, don't want to do some of the things I want to (they're like unruly children that way). There's been many occasions where what I've intended to happen in a given scene has completely changed while writing it.