VGFlicks: Rampage (Part 2)

Continuing from Part 1; go read it if you haven’t.

The military

Their current size stands at "pretty damn big".
Inching ever closer to "monstrously big".

The giant animals are on their way to Chicago, breaking everything in their fits of rage. Claire and Brett Wyden, still at Energyne, are monitoring their progress, while distracting agents from the FBI who come to inspect their records. Claire makes sure to blame Kate Caldwell for the current mess. Meanwhile, Johnson – no, wait, I mean Davis Okoye – has a heart-to-heart with Kate while they wait for transportation, called by Harvey Russell, to come pick them up from the hayfield they’ve ended up in.

The three are taken to a military base, where they’re briefed on the rampage. George the albino gorilla and Ralph the wolf somehow met each other on the way to Chicago and, instead of fighting, kept going in the same direction together, which doesn’t make sense as members of such different species.

I had to do some geography work for this review!

Try reasoning with the army. It's hard. Especially if you're
the protagonist, you know what's going on, and they don't.
Then, it's not hard, it's freaking impossible.

Not sure where in the U.S. they actually met, but one of them must have gotten lost on the way. Kate concludes that the giant animals are being called to Chicago by a transmission that irritates them. Underestimating the threat level, Colonel Blake (Demetrius Grosse) has Davis and Kate taken elsewhere by the FBI for interrogation, likely a result of Claire Wyden’s earlier lie. Davis does manage to get the MPs off his back, first by trying to convince them to let them go… and when that doesn’t work, he just beats them up. He and Kate sneak around the base and steal the base’s medical helicopter, with help from agent Russell, who hands them the keys and a device to stay in touch.

Primatologist, ex-soldier, and he can pilot? He's a keeper.

While our protagonists fly towards Chicago, the military tries another explosive tactic against the animals, but only makes them angrier. This, finally, convinces them to evacuate the city. It’s probably too late for that. Once again, in a movie where only the main characters really know what’s going on, the military intervenes and makes everything worse. There would probably be a very interesting film analysis to be made about that (and how often it happens), but I’d be way out of my depth.

VGFlicks: Rampage (Part 1)

For monsters this big, humans should be akin
to breadcrumbs.

Final film review for now, and yet another franchise I’ve never played: Rampage, an arcade and console classic with games from 1996 onwards. The games are meant to pastiche the kaiju genre, and feature a giant gorilla, a giant wolf and a giant reptile (rights-free Godzilla), born from mutated humans, wreaking havoc on the world, destroying one building, and one city, at a time. I’ll admit I’m not one for the kaiju genre in general; I care more for the humans fighting the threat than for the monsters duking it out. Might be why the film, released to American theaters on April 13th, 2018 and directed by Brad Peyton, appeals more to me.

Well, that and the different take on the genre it represents. I’ll get to that soon enough. This movie is based on a game that didn’t have much in the way of story, so it will be interesting to see what gets added; aside from a woman in a red dress and the three who are turned into monsters, there isn’t much in the way of human characters in the original game (and saying that it has a story would be generous), so the film will likely follow some new protagonists.

There’s no need for a much longer introduction, so let’s jump into this!

VGFlicks: Tomb Raider (2018) (Part 2)

Resuming where we left off in Part 1…

Reunions

Is there a doctor on the island? ...Well, there's a few, but
none of the kind she needs right now.

Even with her minor skills in MMA fighting, she's fighting a
trained soldier. Of course she'll have a rough time.

Let’s catch up quick: Lara is trapped on the Island of Yamatai, the bad guys have her dad’s research, she barely survived her escape, and now she’s lost in the woods. Oh, and did I mention she’s got a metal spike in her abdomen? Yeah. She’s had better days. Not knowing better, she pulls out the spike. That night, she’s attacked by the man sent by Mathias Vogel to capture her. As the film stresses out, this Lara Croft isn’t the badass we know from the games; or at least, she’s on her way there, but is still lacking in experience. So when she's attacked, at first her modest MMA skills aren’t enough. She barely survives by drowning the guy in a puddle. The encounter leaves her traumatized that she had to kill to survive… she’ll get over that soon enough.

Father and daughter, reunited. Hey, at least she
was right, he's not dead.

Running from the body, she sees someone else climbing up a rocky front. She gives chase and meets… her dad, who’s still alive. This is another departure from the source material; Richard Croft has been killed by Trinity before the events of the first game in the Tomb Raider reboot series. Not exactly a happy reunion, though; before she proves she IS there, he thinks she’s an illusion. Yeah, seven years of loneliness will do that to ya. They don’t really get to rejoice much, considering the situation. At least he patches up her wounds. He doesn’t stay happy long, though, once he learns that she found him thanks to his research, which is now in Vogel’s hands. While playing dead, Richard had been misleading the expedition so that it would never find the place – but now they will, and if they find Himiko’s tomb, they’ll harness her “powers” and weaponize them against the world (and they’ve found it, though its entrance is locked by an intricate puzzle). There’s a reason his recording had asked her to burn all his goddamn research.

VGFlicks: Tomb Raider (2018) (Part 1)

Continuing a theme across my movie reviews this year of games/franchises I’ve never played, that have been around for over 20 years, with movies released at some point in the last seven years. However, I do own two games from today’s franchise on Steam, so I might discover it someday.

“This one walked so the next one could run.” I’ve heard that sentence used in the context of film series a few times. It refers to when a first movie is made to be simple and to-the-point, so that a sequel has a solid foundation to build from. The downside is that this comes with the intention of making more than one movie, meaning that the first film cannot miss its mark. (Actually having a the sequel greenlit helps, too.) The tendency for movies in certain genres to end on cliffhangers has been long derided, and video game movies have been guilty of the practice. Remember that time Daisy busted down the Mario family’s door, gun in hand, ready to destroy more interdimensional Koopa ass?

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I envy you.

But to this day, it still happens, and it may be even worse nowadays with the rampant franchising of everything. I’m playing my cards early for this one, I admit.

Tomb Raider has been around since 1996. One of the few female-driven long-lasting series, featuring the acclaimed Lara Croft, who has deserved her space on the pantheon of great heroines of gaming alongside Samus Aran and Claire Redfield. Tomb Raider is also a film series... sort of; two films starring Angelina Jolie were released in 2001 and 2003. In the 2010s, the games reinvented themselves (and their starring lady), and a feature reflecting the reboot was more than welcome. A film adaptation of Tomb Raider (2013) was released in American theaters on March 14, 2018. Directed by Roar Uthaug, the feature puts actress Alicia Vikander, already a fan of the franchise, in the shoes of the adventurous archaeologist. The film is intended to be an origin story for the character… a foundation to possibly build on in the future.

At the very least, we should look at this film for its own merits, so let’s sit down and give it a watch, shall we?