Destruction of the picture is ever evolving

Back in the day when we only had square screens and movies were wider than they were taller, home media releases tended to butcher the image. Not only were wider images often just cropped to fit the more square screen, but pan and scan was applied to showcase and focus more on certain parts of the picture. Take a look at the comparison video how pan and scan was made with Ghostbusters and how much the intended picture was lost, or how extra editing had to be done.

This isn’t just something that was done throughout the existence of mainstream home media. Even Laserdisc, the format that was touted as the film fanatic’s choice, suffered greatly for many releases being pan and scan. The reason is the same why older media that was produced before the HD media hit around the corner is being cropped and slapped with some effect on top. The resulting ruination removes information on the screen, causing actors’ and surroundings to go unseen. In comedic media, you often see jokes and even scene important elements lost to pan and scan as the focus has to be on the speaker. To use Ghostbusters as an example, Spookcentral has a good three-point comparison what’s the core issue.

At the top, we have the original picture, with a cropped version to fit a different aspect ratio, and then at the bottom a pan and scan. The pan and scan version would have to move the image left and right to cover the whole scene to show all of the picture. Sometimes it simply doesn’t, which results in static cropping. This results large areas of information being lost to the viewer, in this case, we either lose Winston, or both Egon and Winston. This isn’t a single case; almost every single movie released on VHS, Laserdisc and DVD have pan and scan version out there well into the mid-00’s before HD screens took over. You would think this issue would be solved. After all, all modern screens are wider than they are taller by standard, but that’s not the case. The pendulum has swung to the opposite direction.

As older televisions programs use older standards for the screen size, they don’t fit modern screens without empty space. Hence, shows like The Simpsons are being cropped to fit the new standards, losing large amounts of information and destroying the scenes’ layout. Bart and Lisa on the above shot lose all of their torsoes and the luxurious house is almost completely gone. The scene has become too cramped, there’s less room to breath. Here’s an example how cropping removes whole jokes from scenes.

Nabbed from Tristan Cooper’s Twitter

The whole joke about Duff Classic, Duff Lite and Duff Dry all coming from the same pipeline got axed. This repeats throughout the whole show on Disney+, and worse all, Fox has been selling these versions to overseas markets to be rerun on television. This means the only way to see The Simpsons as it was meant to be seen is on DVD or VHS. In one of the DVD commentaries Matt Groening mentioned that there will never be Bluray realease of the show, because the DVD is already at the resolution the show was made in. However, as you can see on the cropped version, they’ve upscaled the image and applied some smoothening effect to it. Recently I watched half an episode of the show on local television, and witnessed how a classic episode was effectively ruined by cropping and by this smoothening effect, destroying detail and sharpness of the picture. This was made in order to make the show look like modern contemporaries or newer episodes, as no line ended in a sharp stroke but to a round end. Colour variation and balance had been destroyed in an attempt to move any sort of grain or scratch off the screen and making things higher in contrast. Tristan also pointed out how in certain scenes you don’t only get cropping, but stretching too.

The Simpsons is the most cited example of this, but it is far from the only show that experiences this. The He-Man Official Youtube channel has a long history of stretching and cropping full episodes they upload, with all episode of The New Adventures of He-Man being cropped. Originally, their He-Man and the Masters of the Universe episodes were both stretched and cropped, but after someone kept bitching at them episode after episode they slowly began to upload episodes in proper aspect ratio, only return to stretching and cropping. Take a look at how Castle Grayskull looks between their normal and stretched videos.

As you can see, the image was simply stretched to fit the new standard’s width without any consideration what it does to the image. Everything is simply wider with no reason behind it. There’s no lost information in this way, but it’s not how it should look like. At least there isn’t information lost. There is also no rhyme or reason how or when Filmation’s cartoons get what treatment, as an episode of Bravestarr that was uploaded a month ago still has its proper aspect ratio, but every upload after that suddenly begun to be cropped or stretched, starting from this episode, from 25th of July onward.

There are massive amounts of shows in streaming services and on home media that does these exact same things, cropping and stretching. In effect, it is the same fear of the empty screen space that was driving cropping and pan and scan. Both the game and film industry, television included, are too fearful of those black bars. This may be because some of the home consumers think the picture has been cut off or their screen is broken. Sony even has a support article explaining that there are media in a different aspect ratio, and even recommend zooming or widening the picture via TVs own settings, something now self-respecting consumer would do. The results would be as you see above; lost information and screwed-up picture. I’m not sure if it’s just inbred stupidity or lack of education that makes people think something is wrong with the picture if they don’t have their whole screen filled, or if it’s simply sheer ignorance.

The consumer, ultimately, is not responsible for these despite there being a group that doesn’t apparently understand aspect ratios. However, we have all the information we could hope for at the tip of our fingers, this information is readily available for anyone who wants to see what’s with their picture. Then again, almost all home media, at least physical media, lists the aspect ratio at the back of the box. This, of course, would mean the consumer would need to learn something about aspect ratio. Not everyone is interested in that, but really, it’s one of those little things everybody should learn about as part of their normal media education.

After all, film and television are considered a form of art. Consuming both in their proper, intended format is necessary in order to fully experience the effects and intentions the creators have used the screen for. Be it Jurassic Park‘s higher than standard screen or TV’s square-ish format, it’s all about what it has been designed and intended to be in. We should not hammer a square peg into a round hole, like so many studios and services are at the moment.

 

Foundation of disappointment

Much like Apple TV+’s teaser starts, people have been trying to adapt Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels for fifty years and have failed. Even Dune is more adaptable than Foundation. This may sound overtly exaggerated, but it’s all about the fundamental nature of Foundation; it is about the sociology of humanity, not the psychology. What I mean by this that Foundation has no protagonist we follow through or witness heroic events. Foundation is all about concepts and promises of action, much like how Hitchcock would plant a bomb underneath a table to make two men discussing something suspenseful. Even the creator of the novels’ psychohistory, Hari Seldon, is not seen in the flesh after the first story, par prequel novels.

Perhaps I need to get back to what Foundation is about. It is not exactly about the fall of the Galactic Empire. The fall in itself is not important, it’s background material, the start of it all. Foundation is about humanity’s actions and how we can use psychohistory, a fictional statistical science combined with psychology, to statistically predict how humanity will act in the future. While seemingly a success at first, Asimov moves towards proving faults and weaknesses in psychohistory later in the series, much like how he established the Laws of Robotics and then proceeded to explore all the ways they could be broken and how faulty they innately were. As said, the fall of the Galactic Empire is just the background, the kick-off point where the Seldon Plan begins, a plan for Seldon’s established the Foundation to nudge humanity bit by bit to certain directions with careful manipulations to shorten the galactic Dark Age that follows after the fall of the Empire from thirty thousand years of barbarism and violence to mere thousand. Everything goes right at first, there are no deviations with the plans and Seldon’s recordings are correct what happens long after he has been dead. These Seldon Crises are predicted events that put the Foundation to the test, first being how the Foundation has to deal with four different kingdoms who broke off from Empire during the fall. These crisis are dealt with in a manner how Seldon has predicted, until an element outside humanity throws a monkey wrench into the gears. Psychohistory can only account humanity and its actions, but not unknowns from outside. Though even that becomes somewhat questionable due to introduction of Robots into the Foundation series and Hari Seldon being aware of future plans of one R. Daneel Olivaw.

None of this would make terribly exciting television of film though. Foundation lacks punching action that most other science fiction works might find themselves under, like the Robot novels. Supposedly, Asimov himself had said how he regretted how much of Foundation was people sitting around and talking. It works in book form, especially when it’s the concepts and realisation of those concepts matter, but on television it is jarring. You simply can’t be faithful to the Foundation novels when adapting them, which is why Apple TV+’s adaptation takes the predictable action-romp route. It’s extremely easy to take the first Foundation story and simply set it during the Fall of the Galactic Empire, with all the violence and murder that would take place at Trantor, the capital world of the Empire. However, all the interesting spots for television and films happens removed from what’s truly interesting in the novels. Take for an example the Second Seldon Crisis, where the Foundation has provided nuclear power to its neighbouring kingdoms after the first crisis, but has tied its running and maintenance into a guise of religion of the Great Galactic Spirit. When one of the nations try to advantage of their superior military power and attack the Foundation, the population revolts against the rulers as they have violated against the Galactic Spirit. For television and film, all the military parts and people revolting would make good entertainment, but what’s on paper is not this. What Asimov wrote was about discussing how and why the Foundation enacted these religious rules, proceeding to a discussion about the nature of this religion and how much power this religion truly holds as the mastermind of the attack futilely tries to act on his plan. This is one of the motifs in Foundation, where there is heightened tension, which is solved because of plans and solutions build into the problem itself, negating violence. Violence is the last resort of the incompetence, as the series states.

Foundation is space opera and political thriller with heavy emphasize on solving problems. Hollywood must have something bombastic. Science fiction as a genre on TV and film require huge front-up savings, be on streaming services or in the theatres. Thus, resorting to Star Wars-ifying Foundation with battles and action, be it in riots or shoot-outs, is the easiest way to it easily palpable to the generic audiences. This is why, for example, the SciFi original mini-series adaptation of the Dune had some added action elements, or why its 1980’s movies version changed and added things to make carry more impact on the screen. Sure we can argue that milking a cat is a very Lynchian change, and making it rain on a desert planet makes a great looking ending even if it is absolutely retarded. What the Apple TV+ teaser promises is not Foundation, but Foundation as adapted by Hollywood; a dreary looking series filled with action and violence in space. Is that all SF is now? Ever since rebooted Battle Star Galactica science fiction on television has become more and more depressing and violent, making shows like Star Trek effectively remove their true core in exchange of violence and swearing.

If adaptations for the Foundation has been attempted for the last fifty years, why would it suddenly be feasible? Technology has never been the issue. We’ve had great script writers who have been able to adapt books before into movies in faithful and successful manner well before the millennium change hit us. The only thing that seems to have changed is streaming and companies wanting to find themselves IPs they can market and gain viewers. Foundation, being a cornerstone in literature, seemingly would fit just fine among all the other SF works that streaming services are offering. It only makes sense to actionify it then, seeing it’s going against shows like modern Star Trek shows, Mandalorian and whatever else Star Wars stuff that Disney’s going to throw out, and even The Orville. The name is used to drive a similar vehicle just to match these other titles. This adaptation has been lingering in development hell for a decade and then some. It’s no surprise it’s getting out in this form at this time. As such, what hopes there are for an adaptations that wouldn’t bastardise the source material? There ‘s no love in here for Foundation. If you’ve read the original novels, or have heard the terrific radio drama by BBC 4, you can expect this adaptation to disappoint.

Forceful franchising

There has been a slew of bombs in the box office as of late. The latest Terminator met a dark fate of its own, and that reboot of Charlie’s Angels was a disaster to the same extent. If we were to got back few years, you can fill Star Wars into this as well. There are more flicks that fall among these three, but outside having a certain kind of political message to them, all three also had a second common factor; they were all forced.

By forced I mean that whatever the writers, directors etc wanted to do was forced on the franchise. It wasn’t just the political message that what forced, but the whole franchise is mangled and twisted to fit that mould. This forcing square peg into a round hole doesn’t need to be political though, it can range from that to a story that simply doesn’t work. Take the Terminator for example, a two movies series that, at its core, was about how we can choose to live and change the future. Any sequels to Terminator 2 would render the whole point of the two movies completely moot, which all of them did. Any and all stories set after the second have been nothing but microwaving the same leftovers over and over until nothing is left, until someone throws some goop on it to remoisturise it. Ends up being a terrible meal, just like Terminator: Dark Fate ended up being. Future War, the war against the machine seen in the two movies, would’ve made great material as a sequel and prequel at the same time. Showcasing the future that was prevented in all of its post-apocalyptic glory would’ve made great material, worth a trilogy of its own, but the closest thing we ever get to something like this on film was Terminator Salvation and that was terrible. For whatever reason, the franchise’s writers have some kind of hardon to shit on John Connor. Destroying a legacy character that is considered a major part of the franchise to any significant extension rarely goes well with the audience. You don’t need to look any further than Star Wars for another example of this, where all the Original Trilogy characters and concepts have been intentionally eradicated. Killing John Connor in the latest Terminator movie just for someone else to take his spot is not just an insult to Terminator 2, but a slap to the audience’s collective faces.

If you’re doing an entry to a franchise, you don’t get to tell your own story. You have to fit whatever you are intending to tell in that readily made setting without contradicting it too much. Otherwise it will not only cheapen the franchise as a whole, but also take away how believable your work is. Fanfiction writers are a good example for both better and worse, where some can write stories that don’t contradict the pre-established works but also supplants them, raising the overall value of the writing. Sometimes these people get to write new stories for their favourite franchise or similar, but on the other hand, you got the writers who intentionally disregard the pre-set world and proceed to write whatever is cool for them. The whole Mary Sue issue nothing short of common problem, something we see more often in ‘official’ franchise works nowadays. Star Wars again is a sad example, though I’ll cite The Force Unleashed‘s Galen Marek as an example here, as he has a lot of common with Rey, Both are “inspired” by Star Wars’ prototype material and both end up being very powerful in rather unassuming circumstances all the while making large and significant effects to the whole story despite not really having any reason to. I admit though that Marek/Starkiller was trained by Darth Vader, but that alone should raise some hairs. Sure, the whole thing about Sith backstabbing each other wasn’t anything new, but retreading the ground of What if Vader had an apprentice? was rather weak, especially when it turns out Marek ultimately played a large party in setting up the Rebellion… rather than, y’know, the people who clearly set up the Rebellion in Episode III and in previous materials.

I guess the success of the latest Rambo movie should show something Hollywood is missing most of the time. Reheating an old franchise is OK, as long as there is a point and doesn’t serve as a vehicle for something else, be it for an ego project, a trophy project or a political message as its main driver. In (John) Rambo we saw the titular character returning to home after all these years of seclusion and staying away, and while I’d consider that as the definitive end for the character’s story, Rambo: Last Blood visits the character’s everyday life once more, and to show that he can’t escape violence. The audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is rather positive 82%, and apparently most of the movie goers were women, if reports are to be believed. Much like how the gaming press writes to the developers rather than the customers, the movie reviewing professionals tend to review films for Hollywood, and often with an angle. Their score for the movie is 27%, which either shows that the larger audience has completely different taste in movies than the industry, or that the reviewers and Hollywood have lost all touch with the audiences. Most likely it’s partially both, and considering reviewers nowadays are dependent on the studios for review copies and favours, they are more inclined to give positive reviews than not. Ah, to be independent and burn bridges by trying to be honest.

That is not to say that you can’t have your own story or political message in a franchise work. Rather the opposite, but it also requires working the opposite way. Rather than slapping it on the surface like it was some sort of sticker, Hollywood (and games industry) is missing how it needs to be weaved as a part of the natural workings of the framework. Something like Jurassic Park is able to get away with its environmental message by having it as the major part of the work, but also balance it with everything else. Even during the dinner scene, where characters discuss the nature of genetics and whether or not it is for human to meddle with nature, we’re not left with just one side as we continue to marvel all that what has been criticised has left us. Star Trek rarely took the easy path during its more difficult episodes, especially during the best seasons of The Next Generation, while Discovery does the exact opposite, ridiculing and laughing instead of, y’know, taking the hard route and showcase characters as people rather than caricatures. Episodes like Darmok, Inner Light and Chain of Command didn’t only challenge the actors, but also the viewers. The Measure of a Man of course falls into this category as well, putting an ethical dilemma on the forefront, balancing on the issue without directly taking one clear side. While there is a story resolution, the episode still lingers. It is, ultimately, how well something is made. It’s like a good gravy; if you fuck it up, the lumps will make it terrible.

An era of hamfisted franchises

Using very sources or examples is never really a proper thing to do, but recently I can’t help but to feel that as of late more and more companies have been trying to expand their franchises at the cost of the core audience. I don’t mean the usual memetic way, but at the expense of the franchise themselves.

Take both Star Trek and Star Wars as an example. Hell, throw in Ghostbusters in there for good measure. I’m not wondering what the hell happened, because we know what happened in both cases. With Star Trek, we first had the Abrams’ reboot films, which weren’t great to any degree. He didn’t care about the franchise, he didn’t get it. Whatever he did wasn’t in the spirit of Trek and it showed on-screen. The same applies to the second movie, revisiting the same beats for characters like Spock being essentially reset to his original form in the first movie. The PR team directly lying to the audiences about the villain disn’t do any favours. After all, trying to remake what is considered the best of Star Trek movies is a tall task, something the writers and directors weren’t up to. Into Darkness is considered the worst in the series for a good reason, even if it hamfists the usual Trek message in like a truck. Third film may be a fan favourite from the reboot timeline, bu that’s little worth when the movie itself made the least amount of revenues.

All this is really ramps up with Star Trek Discovery, the least viewed Trek if we go by what Midnight’s Edge’s latest Trek video. The overall reaction to it has been less than favourable, but this is not surprising. Les Moonves micromanaged the show to the point of failure. He didn’t care for the franchise, but saw the potential in it to make money. What he or the rest of CBS’ staff didn’t seem to realise that failure would mean further losses on the long run. Any person running a franchise with fifty years of history and a cultural position will tell you that you don’t play the game for short-term gains. The Next Generation‘s later seasons, and the subsequent series didn’t dabble in current politics too much. Instead, good storytelling was at the front with the occasional thematic comment, much like how the Original Series had gone. Deep Space 9 had few episodes that were about racism and culture, yet these were woven into the story in a significant way. The same can’t be said about Discovery, which sadly pushes the politics over the story to the point of the main character Michael Burnham being unable to do anything wrong and comes out the most unpleasant main spot character across the franchise. Pretty much everything was driven by political ideology, with Klingons being turned into representation of political views.

Star Wars suffers from this same approach. Rather than tell a good story, a fitting story for the franchise, Episode VII gave us a terrible story that only got worse in the next mainline movie. The current Expanded Universe has seen vehicles for further one-sided agenda both in books and comics in a similar manner, and it all shows in the falling revenues.

There is no respect towards the franchises or the stories in either camp.

The best stories in either Trek or Wars have been fantastical character pieces. The comparisons of current politics have always been present, but largely in an allegorical method or as motif that is woven in to the overall fabric. You may not notice them, but your brain sure does. This is where so many modern stories fail. For example, the struggle between the Rebel Alliance and the Empire is an allegory to certain war with small and technologically weak group fighting a large and overpowering enemy, the Viet Cong against the United States. However, that isn’t emphasized to any degree within the Sequel Trilogy outside the setup.

The First Order from the new movies abandon this altogether and simply makes them sci-fi Nazi Germany, both in action and visuals. This lack of any sort of subtle approach undermines whatever the writer wanted to say to the point of making the First Order seem like Saturday morning cartoon villains, especially in Episode VIII.

The difference between the two isn’t just that Nazi Germany, or Nazis overall, aren’t just largely irrelevant nowadays as a political power, but also shows the fundamental misunderstanding of the franchise and its visuals. This applied to the older Expanded Universe as well, which explain clearly how the Third Reich marched into the cinemas. Abrams can tell us he is a fan of Star Wars how many times he wants, but the end result shows that he isn’t up to the task to write a good Star Wars movie like so many other before him. The same applies to largely almost every piece of SW fiction produced under Disney rule. It is understandable that Disney didn’t want to start making movies based off the Thrawn Trilogy or the like, as that would have meant they’d need to pone up some money for the original writers. The less they have to tie themselves to pre-existing stories and can make whatever the hell they can all the while milking fans’ affection towards characters like Thrawn, it’s all good to them.

Except when their movies are bombing and toys are barely selling. Disney is now trying to course correct the franchise with their next mainline movie, despite being adamant that nothing has been going wrong. Hollywood PR mandates a studio to keep their shit straight and tell nothing’s wrong, until sometime later they can just admit everything being gone to hell and silently try to fix stuff. It’d be better PR to admit they’ve gone wrong and are looking into ways to correct the matter. You’ll never see a studio do this though.

Trek is also taking a new direction, trying to capitalise on the success of The Orville of all things. ST Discovery‘s second season trailer already shows that they have a new direction, with emphasize on more adventure and fun, with Lower Decks being a straight out comedy from the writer of Rick and Morty. While we shouldn’t pass a judgement on series that haven’t even aired an episode yet, but an educated guess about their intentions isn’t hard to make. Discovery, by all means, has been a failure. Rather than looking at what makes a good Trek show and how to go on about it, CBS has opted to see what the direct competitor was doing and wants The Orville audience. Doing comedic Star Trek isn’t the way, doing proper Star Trek and not whatever Discovery ended up being should have been their first course of action, but that’s not how business is done when blind data is looked at without any consideration to the franchise.

Maybe all of these companies should look into making new IPs rather than bastardise existing ones to function as their vehicles. The Orville did it, against all the odds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CBS should trek toward something new

With the recent new of Patrick Steward returning as Jean-Luc Picard in his own Star Trek spinoff after the questionable ST Discovery. With CBS now footing the bill for the second season after Netflix essentially paying for the ride for the first one, Abrams’ Trek movies effectively being dead in the water as main cast members are walking away from it and Les Moonves of CBS still wanting to screw things up to the point crashing the franchise. Midnight’s Edge’s recent video goes over the background events of the Abrams’ Trek movies, what the current license and copyright mess is and dire the situation for the franchise is overall. To put it short; the man currently in charge doesn’t like SF and wants to remove all the history of Star Trek by somehow collapsing timelines in-fiction to justify to do whatever kind of story he wants.

The thing is, he always could.

The worst decision that franchises like this do is writing prequels. By doing that, the staff is essentially tied to defined future of the story. If they break the future, the overall story and canon makes less and less sense with each little breakage. One drop doesn’t break a damn, but enough drops turn into a tidal whale. For long time fans of any franchise, they know how prequels often turn out. Not all that great, sometimes even sullying the story they’re based on.

The better option is to move forwards. If Star Trek Discovery had been another Trek show set in whatever time span after Star Trek: Nemesis, there would have been far less cacophony from the audience. No strings attached, no character references needed, no plot points to follow, everything can be made new and shiny.

But that takes effort and references seem to something Hollywood and TV writers and execs things are needed to bring in the fanbase. They seem to treat their audience as some sort of imbeciles.

References to past parts of a franchise is the easiest way to make sure the fans and general audience in the know understand that the series is part of it. For Star Trek, it’s the recurring species of Klingons and such with the occasional visitor from other shows, like how DeForest Kelley made an appearance in the first episode of The Next Generation as an older Leonard McCoy. While it supposedly gives legitimacy to the series as a sequel, it all really ends up being useless fan pandering. Similarly, Picard appeared in Deep Space 9‘s first episode to give it a sendoff, and that was about just as needless. The story had already tied itself to a past even, the Battle of Wolf 359. It can be argued that this was more a necessary cameo due to Picard’s role as the enemy in that battle, and to showcase the difference between Sisko and Picard. Problem of course was, the show could’ve done this by itself. At worst, a cameo like this makes a show look weak, as if it couldn’t stand on its own two legs. This was one of Discovery‘s worst weakness, as it was directly tied to the Original series through introducing yet another relative to Spock, and using Spock’ father Sarek prominently throughout the first season. The second season will have Spock in some role as well, meaning Discovery further loses its unique status as a show and as a story, making the world so much smaller.

Of course, it is financially more viable to do this. Referencing and using existing characters and actors ensures the fans, or at least part of the fandom, will flock and pay for these characters. This allows modern versions to be made of these characters and these modernisations then can be licensed onward to toy manufacturers and such. It makes money, and is a safe bet to give that aforementioned legitimacy. It’s a no-brainer why CBS told Abrams and Paramount that their Trek wouldn’t be the only game in town in terms of licensing. I don’t believe there ever was brand confusion among core fans, or even with general audiences to any significant extent, as the visuals between Abrams’ Trek and old Star Trek shows were like night and day, or rather, difference between well shot scene and one filled with lensflares. Any audience, fans or not, are willing to pay for products that they have connected with when it comes to franchise merch, and considering how low quality Abram’s Trek is, it’s no wonder why its toys and other merch didn’t sell. On the other hand, the culture at large has direct emotional connection to the classic Star Trek shows, especially in the US, which means its much easier to sell new merch based on those series.

And as I’ve beaten this dead horse, using those characters to which the audience has emotional contact with in other shows is just good financial sense.

In a way, it is always risky to start with new characters as they have no history or properly set path, and it’s a slight gamble whether or not the audience will like them. The audience may no connect with the characters. Neelix from Voyager is a great example how not to do a character in Trek, as he was never improved upon. He stayed a shithead throughout the series. Character like Bashir is a great example how to improve your character throughout the series, as he started as annoying prick, and then evolved into one of the more likeable and stronger characters of the show.

However, despite the risks, starting from a clean table with new characters and new stories without any of the baggage of old yields better rewards than tying things down. All it takes is proper planning and using the heart of the franchise to its fullest extent, and building up a new story with brand new characters. A new Star Trek should just be that, a new Star Trek, advancing what the series can be about and going toward the future, but ever since Enterprise, everything has just stepped backwards and stalling the franchise.

The Current Format War

The last physical format war was HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray. HD-DVD met a rather quick defeat compared to the previous format wars, where you had more than one format existing side-by-side for different reasons. VHS vs. Betamax VS. Laserdisc was and interesting and long era, where only VHS and LD really had any place due to their nature of media. Way back in 2012 I had a post about what sort of role OVA had on the format war overall, and looking back at this post I should revise it a lot. Interestingly, history tends to rhyme and we’re seeing some of the same stuff taking place with the current format war, which isn’t between physical media, but between streaming services.

Unlike with physical media, digital streaming services are relatively easy to make. The standard for it is already there, embedded video that’s streamed to a device. Looking at the amount of streaming service there are, pretty much any larger company has one, from A&E to YouTube Red. Of course, Netflix is the most successful and well known of the bunch, and is expected to corner to market on the long run due to its overwhelming global popularity.

However, we are talking about a delivery method that does not require the purchase of a separate player and dedication to a form of media. The paradigm shift from television and prerecorded material to decentralised television and all-access services has transformed television as a concept altogether to something most traditional channels probably can’t handle without large shift in their business plans and structure. While physical media will not be phased out as fast as commentators and industry insiders have thought (we’ve been told the last fifteen years that in few years nobody will purchase physical media anymore), it has gone down progressively alongside abandoning the living room centric television. This has affected video games as well, as we’ve discussed, and is one of the major factors why the Switch is a successful console on its own right.  Everybody has a screen in their pocket, everyone has a television in their pocket.

Format wars have been won by having the most stuff on your format as well as capabilities that are not offered by your competition. Laserdisc was a great format for film enthusiast who wanted quality, but the sheer size of the discs and the costs over Beta and VHS later down the line were higher. BETA may have been better than VHS in quality, but it was more expensive and had Sony’s proprietary tech that cost more to license than VHS. VHS ultimately became cheapest option as mass manufacturing took root and home recording became accessible for the general audience like never before. The old tale of porn winning the format war for VHS is not exactly wrong, as it allowed so many small-sized studios and independents to release their products. YouTube and other similar sites that allow and partner with user-driven content creation would be the modern equivalent. However, this is a paradigm shift in itself, and user-created content, be it home mobvies, indies or recording stuff off the TV, ultimately has less to do with winning the format war this time around. It’s all about what professional content you have.

Shows like Star Trek Discovery, Devilman Crybaby, and Cobra Kai are all shows that were made to drive views and sales of a streaming service. CBS did not go and aim to make a great Star Trek show for CBS All-Access, they aimed to make a show that would drive subscriptions, and considering they’ve greenlight the second season and have boldly announced best results ever, it seems to have worked. World wide, Netflix was the one with STD under their belt, but unlike most other streaming services, they’ve been bringing original animation to the forefront more.

While a site like Crunchyroll streams and simulcasts cartoons from the far orient, Netflix has put more money into original creations, most of which have been largely popular. The aforementioned Devilman Crybaby raised quite a bit of buzz and gained some subs for Netflix, and the same thing can be said of their Castlevania adaptation. Netflix and Crunchyroll have a niche cornered. The only thing that can really affect the amount of money made is how much ads get blocked on free streaming sites and how well the consumer is treated. It’s not exactly rare to hear Crunchyroll shitting on their costumers or dropping the streaming quality for all users, including the paying subscribers, without earning. A site like them should know to keep the front and back of the counter completely separate, but with the advent of social media era, it’s seems to have become really hard not to try and piss people off of Twitter or Facebook.

While new and original content is the main tool in this war, nostalgia is also a grand factor. Something and something old usually work hand in hand. All examples here are really just nostalgia driven somehow. Star Trek is an entertainment institution on its won right, Devilman is one of the most important comic books created on the world wide scale, Castlevania pulls the NES kid out from you and Cobra Kai is YouTube Red’s weapon in this. Cobra Kai‘s a show that people would enjoy and Sony has been criticised for putting it to a platform with smaller consumer base rather than on something like Netflix, where the show could get its proper amount of views.

That is, of course, entirely the point.

Having just one provider for any service will easily lead into situation where the consumer has no other options to choose from and has to be satisfied to whatever products and services in whatever quality the provider gives in. The current format war won’t have one winning side, because there is no need for the consumer to dedicate himself to just one medium. What these providers now have to fight with is content, and the more content you have people want to watch and can’t be seen on other services, the more leverage you have. Disney of course will be an absolute juggernaut whenever they start their own services due to sheer size of their library, but we shouldn’t ignore the likes of Amazon Prime and their constant licensing of niche shows that aren’t available elsewhere in the West. While at face value it would seem beneficial for the consumer to have everything in one place, competition is always a driving force.

Of course, then there are digital luddites like me who just sit and wait for shows to come out on physical media.

Overly busy, nonsensical and lacking in imagination

While I would love to dive into and give my two cents on the quality of Star Trek: Discovery as a show, the blog’s not really a place for that. I’ll comment on the designs of STD instead, similar on what I did for Star Wars. Well, the title really says it all, doesn’t it? Well, I’m going to give it a shot and aim to veer away from comparing too much to old Trek shows, mainly because this is a reboot all things considered and because all the designs are far too advanced for its time period. I’ll also concentrate on the Federation designs, because I don’t want to lose my mind with the Klingon’s.

I’ve seen some people on the ‘net using busy and complex designs as synonyms to each other. This isn’t the case. Busy design just means there is a high amount of unnecessary details, lines, cuts and whatever else elements that simply don’t sit right. There are some designers who can make busy work extremely well, but it’s usually the first way to fill in “blank” space rather than working over the designs overall.

The uniforms and force fields are probably a good example of this. The uniforms don’t look too bad at a distance, but whenever we get a close-up, we see that nothing on it looks set-in. Every surface has a texture of some sort on it.

The above shots shows three things; the areas on her sides are riddled with smaller Federation symbols for whatever reason, the Federation badge itself is split into two for no reason and houses ranking pips. Pips, which would’ve been great on the collar, but the collar is now wasted to look funky with its asymmetric design. This asymmetry forces the zip to be on her right side more, but as seen from this shot, it still angles towards the middle of the jacket. It looks stupid. If the jacket had been single-breasted, this would’ve worked. Hell, it would’ve looked great even. Now, with the symmetrical stripes on the shoulders and itty bitty Starfeet logos on the sides, it looks someone botched their day at the clothes workshop and called it a day.

Pants on the other manage to look like uniform pants a bit more, but the unnecessary zippers on the sides look stupid. This sort of vertical pocket is not very practical, so maybe it’s to let some air in. The stripes on the shoulders continue down the pants’ sides, which we don’t see here, but at least they’ve consistent with them. The boots look pretty terrible, with soles jumping out like they were just attached to a pair they didn’t belong to. Let’ not forget that even the boots have Starfleet logo on them. Twice.

Here also get to see the stripes running on the side of the pants.

The only time the uniform looks good is when it’s straight. Any other time there’s a wrinkle or its twisted by a body movement, it looks pretty terrible. All because all the things that should line up don’t, and the texture gets all messed up. The Starfleet symbols don’t help in this at all, and their removal would make the uniform look lots better. Centering the zipper would help a lot too, or at least making it straight.

The force field is a another good example of this. Let’s pass the whole thing that safety force fields didn’t exist at this point in the timeline like they’re portrayed here, and let’s ask why the hell it has all those little lines running in it. There is no logical reason for it other than separate it from other force fields we’ve seen thus far, and certainly does not look like the ones in any Star Trek. It’s a good example of business for its own sake. I could touch upon Klingon designs and all other examples I could muster, but we’re going to go over the word limit as is, so let’s move on.

If the designs aren’t busy to be filled with something, they’re nonsensical and impractical at best. Chairs are always a good example.

The chairs we see here are actually a contrary example of busy design, but they’re a good example of a chair that would be horrible to sit on. Because they’re made from one large piece, there is nothing to adjust on them. The edges are hard and the cushioning looks inadequate. These are the chairs used in classrooms and the like, where you have to have a universal, cheap as hell chair, except even those tend to have some angle to allow natural back curvature. These would make your back ache.

Then again, not everybody has a chair and there are no seat belts. That’s a terrible position to work your whole day. The fact that the station is not adjustable to height means it’s designed for human use, which is a terrible oversight in a universe where aliens serve on Federation vessels.  Also notice how  w i d e  the captain’s chair is

Also notice the paneling in the room filling each and every surface, except the floor which has a carpet, further mudding the scene down. It’s also in a Dutch angle, making it look terribly shot. Straightening it makes a better shot, even if you have to crop stuff out.

A trope in science fiction is that screens are transparent. Considering nobody really would like a transparent screen with high-brightness visuals on it, SF really should get away with it. But a massive screen with unnecessary borders, information and statistics you can’t even see?

Darkening the bridge is another trope that should be dropped, because nothing sounds better than having bright as hell panels in front of your face and then have the room darkened, blinding you for a time. Just like the Dutch angle.

There are two problems with screen like this. First is that nobody is able to see the information on the screen, not even the viewer. The only valuable information that’d be nice here is the meter running at the top of the screen, except it’s relevancy changes all the time, and all the people who needs this information sees it more relevantly on their station. The information on either side of the screen is largely irrelevant, just as is the larger information charts on the right. Hell, the square in the middle functions as some sort of shield against brightness differences, but it actually turns the brightness up, not down. I thought it was some sort of zoomed-in window, but the space in there clearly isn’t zoomed in and we saw that zoom-in function looked completely different. I don’t know what the hell it is, but it’s absolutely nonsensical and impractical. Drop the excess stuff allow the view screen function as a giant window. You get all the data on your stations.

I don’t really need to put different snaps up on how the design are lacking imagination. All the designs, from lighting to chairs, clothing and even colour choices scream of generic science fiction show. Without the Starfleet symbol floating anywhere, on the costumes, this would fit any science fiction show out there. The design work is lacking that heart. It’s not necessarily even lacklustre, but it’s very safe and sits nicely in the middle-ground of being forgettable. The photography and the way scenes are shot doesn’t help the matter at all. The series’ designs are already finished, and unless they managed to revamp things, it’s still gonna look terribly dull.

Let’s not forget the terrible desktop lamps we have here and that Sarek’s hologram is sitting on a table he should not know exists there. Does he know there was a table there and has an exactly same height table at the exact same spot at his house to sit on whenever Michael calls him? Maybe I should come back to this and do a comparative technology level review after the show’s over

Death of traditional television will change game consoles

I’ve discussed how traditional television has been changing to on-demand services for a good while now. What I haven’t discussed much is that this has removed television itself as the central point of the living room, which also means the devices connected will see a drop in significance. Physical media itself won’t disappear as people have been saying for the last ten years or so, but the form it is in will change accordingly.

Granted, saying that television will die is a hyperbole of sorts, but it fits. Just like how VHS died to make room for the VHS. Same shit, different boxers.

I’ve been watching NFL in my local American burger joint on and off, and while I’ve gained appreciation and understanding towards handegg as a sport, it did make me think how easy it is for Big D to showcase something like this in the modern era. Through that I came across the news about NFL viewership plummeting, and while NFL’s popularity has been going down, this is an indicate of where things are going. As television has become decentralised, so has our habit on how we consume it. While we do have differences in how we consume television across the world, the similarities trump them. Just check one of our old ARG Test casts to hear about it.

The game consoles will follow in suit, and if the rumours of NX being a hybrid off home and handheld consoles are true, then Nintendo has probably foreseen this trend. The high-end console gamer will not decantralise his television too easily, he has too many consoles attached to it and too many games yet to be played. For the low-end consumer who infrequently gets consoles and is still rocking his Wii, this won’t be a problem. The industry and some of the high-end consumers have already labelled NX based on the rumours as a gimmick and as the torpedo that will sink the Nintendo ship, but they did that with the Wii too. As a reminder, the Wii made shittons of money.

If the NX is a hybrid console, playing both home and a on-the-road market, it would indeed look like Nintendo is taking into account the death of traditional television. If this road proves to be true, then we have to wonder why do both Sony and Microsoft invest millions into research and development of new ultra-HD consoles that have no central point? While both of these machines could be used for their streaming services, this field is largely overtaken by other machines. After all, these dumbed down PCs will always fight a losing battle if they try to tackle a market outside their own realm. Microsoft learned this after one year of trying to push their movie, television and music streaming services, running back to high-end gamers with tail between their legs. One could argue that Microsoft has seen the death of television like Nintendo, then it would make sense for them to absorb Xbox as a brand back to PC. Sony on the other hand is fucked and nowhere to go.

Console as a media center is largely something that the last generation aimed to realise to its fullest extent. Before that PS2 could play DVDs, but that was laughable at best. Only the original PlayStation model was any good as a CD player either. You always had better dedicated devices for all that, and people tended to favour those. Now, you have tablets and whatnot with their wireless receivers everywhere and you’re able to stream whatever you want wherever you want whenever you want. That’s a harsh battle to fight against, especially when you’re trying to remind the consumers that the main thing the device is for is games. Consoles have been always at their best when they are aiming to deliver a console experience to the consumer.

Whenever Nintendo decides to fully reveal the NX will have three results. First, it will show what sort of device it is, confirm or de-confirm rumours that are about. Nintendo has not fueled the rumour train themselves, and that’s good. That has controlled the hype train, and the best thing what they could do now is to control the exposure from their and developers’ end as much as possible. This is simply to ensure that things won’t leak before they are finished, as consumers sometimes tend make false deductions on one or two trickles of valid information.

Secondly, it will show the direction Nintendo will take with the NX. Whether or not it will continue the way of the N64, GameCube and the Wii U (and Virtual Boy) is still an open question, and personally I would so much prefer returning to the NES, SNES and Wii style mindset that has profited Nintendo the most and has produced best games they’ve ever developed.

Tied to the second point is the last one, which may be the most damning. Thirdly, NX’s revelation will tell us how Nintendo themselves sees where console gaming and television itself is going. Nintendo has a spotty track record in certain aspects, but they have a solid one when it comes to defining trends and dare I say innovate whenever needed. The D-Pad just being perhaps the primary example. Let’s not forget the use of mature technology that they engineered when it came to gaming, though that has been less prominent with their more recent consoles to an extent.

The death of Nintendo has been predicted since the late 1980’s, and now consoles overall are predicted to die. However, it is far more reasonable to suggest that just like music purchasing has changed throughout the ages, game consoles will change and take new shape. They serve a market that’s incredibly wide, if the industry would just decide to provide both high and low-markets. That’s why Nintendo can disrupt the industry so easily when they decide to do so.

Competing as a multimedia device in an era where almost every device has a screen of its own and works as a fully fledged multimedia device is, to repeat, a losing battle. Game consoles and games themselves can only make an impact if they are designed and sold as games first and foremost. With times changing, the device these games are played on have to represent the era, and the era of television as the centre of our homes is coming to a slow end.

The screen is in your pocket

With the upcoming new updates to PS4 and Xbone, we’re seeing a trend where both Sony and Microsoft want to appeal to the hardcore gaming market. People are buzzing about their capabilities and all that, but in the end if the games are lacklustre, the console’s power really doesn’t matter at all. Look at PSVita, a damn nice little handheld, but its got nothing against the library on the 3DS.

As I’ve said numerous times before, PC is for hardware performance and cutting edge tech. Consoles used to stick with the philosophy of matured technology. The types of games and gameplays between PC and console are inherently different, but that line has been buried with the PC games entering console market. PlayStation was the most popular entry point, and never left. It may not have been the first console to utilise PC standpoint, but nevertheless it was something that stroke a deal. This has led consoles to be dumbed down PCs to a large extent, but at the same time everyone who plays games via Steam is playing those games via that digital game console on their PC.

Broken record, I know.

Microsoft has been synonymous with PC gaming at least since Windows 95. Other OS’ are enjoying the leftovers, for better or worse. The Xbox brand will be absorbed by the Windows platform at some point in the future, reabsorbed if you take into account that the Direct X box originally spun off from Windows itself. That will be good. The sooner Xbox as a console vanishes, the better. Nintendo will continue doing its thing. If the rumours about NX being a hybrid home/handheld console are true, this is the future where console gaming is going.

What will Sony do? They’re in deep shit, to be fair. Either they need to go the way of the dodo, or begin to emphasize something else. They have no place in the PC market, their televisions and other media equipment have been failing for some time now and they’re mostly known for PlayStation brand. If I were a dick, I’d say that PlayStation has been the thing that has killed Sony itself as a brand. They used to produce loads of new and dare I say innovative multimedia equipment. Their cassette and CD players were top-notch, their TV-sets were without a doubt cutting edge even at their cheapest and goddamn I still have a radio from the 1980’s that works better than most modern ones.

Sony has had their own little troubles. BetaMAX died in the war against VHS and Laserdisc, with VHS winning by the loads. The Blu-ray format has become more and more common, but it has not kicked DVD out from the race yet. Currently, the BD format is already competing against digital distribution. Whether or not digital distribution will end up being the main format over all else, BD and its successors will without a doubt continue the path Laserdisc paved as the collectors’ format.

Will Sony become just a publisher again? When Sony was a publisher in their pre-PlayStation days, they were known for lacklustre games. Whatever Sony will do, they can’t prevent evolution of the Screen. The Screen used to go by the name television, and before it was theatre and so on. Now, the Screen is in your pocket. It’s everywhere, you can watch and play games anywhere, anytime. The PlayStation is not. As PlayStation now, it is married to the Screen in the living rooms, to the TV. It can’t exist anywhere else, and Sony is clearly not willing to entertain handheld gaming. Sony can’t enter PC market, that’s Windows country. Perhaps, just perhaps, they can change the PlayStation into a true multimedia device for the home, except Microsoft already tried that and abandoned it very soon after.

People just want to play good games. All the companies really have to do is deliver them, but that, above all else, has seems to have become difficult within this world where those smaller groups with the loudest voice seem to be catered to. Be it the hardcore gamer or some women rallying against Dead or Alive.

Personally, I’m more or less stopped giving a damn where video games are going now. I’m just going with the flow, not really expecting any but still find myself being disappointed at times. However, I do find the constant push for 4K distasteful, as the screens meant for general consumers don’t achieve the desired quality and the prices are still high. Give it five years or so when the technology matures and prices come down. At that time those who want the bleeding edge tech will have already moved to 8K or 16K, but that’s how it always goes. Viewscreen technology moves so damn fast that’s it’s nearly pointless to keep up.

They’re bringing the red cat ghost franchise here too

Youkai Watch has been stirring Japan for some time now, and I’ve been trying to keep my big yapper shut about it, but screw it. Jibanyan has been able to beat Pikachu in many fields for now, and the question is whether or not Game Freaks will tackle this challenger head on, or will they allow Pokémon franchise to grow old. The thing is, Pokémon was a great children’s franchise. Not so much anymore, where it’s a franchise modern parents remember from their childhood, or still follow strongly. The games have essentially stayed the same and the cartoon has more or less stagnated in many ways for some time already. Fans will of course argue that Natures and other little things have changed the game, but those barely make an impact to the now true and tested catch, train, get four attack slots and six monsters.

I’ll be frank; if Pokémon will not reinvent itself as a franchise this decade, it’ll end up in a sad state.

As I mentioned, Youkai watch has been successful in Japan. Immensely so. Youkai Watch 2 surpassed five million copies sold in Japan. Jibanyan has even replaced Pikachu’s central throne in the Next Generation World Hobby Fair. It’s safe to say that Youkai Watch has gained a strong position as one of the new main children’s franchises in Japan. A franchise that has not changed with the times in almost twenty years nor has reinvented itself at any point will have a hard time to stand against something new. New is not necessarily better, but when new challenges the old this hard (and topping it), the old is doing something wrong.

With Youkai Watch slated for Western release, the question that everybody asks if it can challenge Pokémon outside their native soil. After all, both of them have some Japanese culture in them, Youkai Watch is the one hard-rooted to the culture from the get go. In order for West to accept Youkai Watch in the same way Pokémon was, the localisation work needs to be spot on.

The otaku culture in West hates dubs, generally speaking. I’m not sure whether or not this is due to the stupidly purist nature at large, or because people simply regard Japanese better for their ears. Sure, there are differences in the quality of the dubbing, yet the arguments are from universal.

Dubbing is not destroying the original product or anything similar. Dubbing is expensive, costing about $10 000 per episode for a Saturday morning cartoon. Dubbing a movie can be even more expensive, and with each failed take the time ticks, spending more money. As such, dubbing historically has been done to series and movies that have been regarded high quality enough to get such treatment. Dubbing was and is still done to show respect towards the body of work, not the opposite. Dubbing also ensures that the largest possible audience will have an easy access to the product. While reading the subtitles has been in the local culture for a long time, this does not apply to other cultures.

The original Godzilla movie is an example where localisation did not only dub the product, but went their way to give it an extra localisation in form of Raymond Burr’s inclusion. This allowed wider spreading of the movie, but also lowered the bar for people to see the movie. The localised Godzilla movie is not a lesser product in any sense from the original Japanese production, but it is different enough to say that it is its own entity and a worthwhile entry. Unlike with some later dubs, it had both proper budget and approach to make justice to the film. Later in the line with Godzilla movies, budgets were cut and quality became a lesser concern. It wasn’t until later that purists and extreme fans began to regard the localised Godzilla as a lesser product, a thing that nobody though at the time, not even Toho. History has been rewritten by fans in this regard, and it is only rather recently that even the fandom has began to accept the localised version with the high regard it deserves.

Youkai Watch will be a show I will follow relatively closely in the beginning, because it requires similar approach as with the original Godzilla. The franchise is getting ready to be pushed by all fronts; Nintendo publishes the game, Hasbro manages the toys and Viz will push out the cartoon and comics. Whoever is/are in charge of the core translation have rather large responsibility to bring in a good translation. Not necessarily accurate to the word, but something that will go well with the Western audience. Youkai Watch is facing an uphill battle already, and doing a half-assed localisation will only yield lacklustre success.

I have peculiar history with Pokémon myself. Cyber Solider Porygon was aired in Japan on December 16th, 1997. The same day the news broke out about the epileptic seizures it caused, and I remember watching the news that day and seeing the footage. I’m not sure why this caught to my mind then, but about two years later sometime in 1999 I recall reading a magazine in a hospital about the incident and how the series would be coming to local television. Pokémon began to be pushed in the local market around the same, games actually hitting the shelves and so on. I find it weird to get interested in a series because a news piece on television stuck to my head.

After Pokémon hit the television and games became widespread, I too got swept by the mania and for a good reason. Pokémon was a big damn hit with long lasting effect, and proved to be a franchise that impacted the cultural mind. Pokémon was sort of last of its kind, a game that wasn’t a hit with the hardcore gamers and stayed in the Red Ocean. One thing that the series is being constantly criticised of is its unwillingness to change any of the core mechanics or implement all the changes from preceding games to the new ones. For example, the Generation 3 lacked the Day-Night cycle introduced in Generation 2. Then again, Game Freak’s staff is barely able to optimise Pokémon games for the 3D on the 3DS for stable framerate, a thing multiple third parties are able to do just fine.

I want to see Youkai Watch become a successful franchise in the West, to become a new Pokémon to in Pokémon’s place. Much like how I have grown too complacent with the shit I write, so has Game Freak and Nintendo become too complacent with Pokémon as a whole. I can’t fault them really, as the franchise has been able to bring in stable revenues. Digimon has been regarded as the only strong contender against the Yellow mouse machine, but even then Digimon has been mismanaged to large extend, and actually the Digimon movie is an example where the source material was not treated with respect during the localisation. I’m sure Youkai Watch was a surprise to Nintendo, even if it is a game that ensured software sales for their system. This may be a good enough reason for Game Freak and Nintendo to sit back and do their stuff and allow Youkai Watch to become the top dog, but then we can always ask if that is enough from them. Companies should want to keep their top dogs where they belong. It’s easy to do so when there’s no competition, but whenever a challenger appears, one should be willing to tackle this challenger to the fullest extent of their abilities.

In other news, Discotek Media has licensed Giant Gorg.