Penguin

No arguments there. That's one of the Protodeviln's biggest flaws. That's why they ended up in Spiritia-deprived comas until that Megaroad fleet came along. As far as I understand it, the whole Spiritia-vampire thing was not a function intended by the Protocultures, but the result of entities from the sub-universe possessing their genetically engineered weapons. The entities require Spiritia in order to remain in our universe, although exactly why they want to stay here is anyone's guess.

Y'know, I can't tell whether you're being facetious or not. So, at the risk of continuing to play the straight man here... What I'm reading is that, since emotional state affects Spiritia, and emotional states, as humans feel them, are associated with a wide variety of chemical responses in the brain, therefore these chemicals are responsible for Spiritia. The flaw in this reasoning is that while emotions affect Spiritia, emotions do not create Spiritia. Spiritia is, according to Macross 7, a life energy that exists at least in all sentient beings (maybe in all life forms... I don't remember if that was the case or not). Emotion effects the level of Spiritia, but is not responsible for its existence in the first place. A person drained of Spiritia is left incapable of feeling emotion (or of any independent thought at all), but that does not mean that person's brain has been sucked dry of all chemicals, or that the chemical receptors have been damaged, or that any other physiological effect has occurred. This goes back to the triggers of emotion. Even though chemicals cause the associated feelings, and you can artificially create feelings through chemical manipulation, science is still fuzzy on the brain activity that triggers emotion in the first place. Two people listen to the same song... one person gets happy, the other sad. Why? Even though chemicals are responsible for the actual feeling, the activity that triggered the chemical release is something else. Chemical transmission is the cause of emotional feeling, but not the root of all emotion itself.

Life energy? Life energy for a human is the process of breaking down food. Humans are pretty much an internal combustion machine. 415199[/snapback] Your mind must reach beyond the physical, grasshopper. Macross 7 contends we are more than just the sum of our parts, and the energy of life is more than just the chemical decomposition of food. Luminous beings are we... not this crude matter.

I think that's what many of us who didn't enjoy it as much are taking issue with, story-wise. I love the first two films, not only when I saw them in original release but also when I watch them now on DVD. However, I think this new film could have been better if it wasn't so close to the originals in story. Superman has changed in the last 20 years, as has his audience, but the film didn't keep up. I don't read where anyone here was expecting vast social relevance or riveting political commentary out of this film... it is just a comic book movie after all. If anything, we were sorta hoping for more somthing even lighter and more fun. That's where it really falls apart as an homage to the originals. The first two had lots of humour and wit in amongst the action... "Superman Returns" missed that, and it dragged down the atmosphere of the film. Even with the dated story elements and characterizations, I'd have enjoyed it a lot more if it just lightened up.

World-shattering apocalyptic plots must unfold as the genre demands. In horror movies, they have to be simple, unstoppable, and summed up in the first 15 minutes of the film if not before the opening credits (e.g. any zombie movie a la "28 Days Later" or "Dawn of the Dead"). In science fiction they need to leave the world in a state that exemplifies and amplifies the writer's theme du jour. In action movies (e.g. James Bond, superheroes), they often must be intricate and require several carefully planned steps, all so that the hero or heroes have enough time to a) put the pieces together to discover the plot, and b) stop it in the nick of time while the inexorable count down counts down. That being said, I can understand Limbo's point of view. Sometimes, writers reach awful far to try and create the necessary intricacies. You're left at the end thinking "isn't there an easier way to destroy New York?" Of course, the villain's goals are never as blase as plain ol' destruction. I do prefer it when villanous schemes arise from a more personal place for the villain. The result is that the viewer gets more involved in the underlying motivation for the villain, and you can dispense with the multi-stage grand scheme. "Spider-Man 2" and "X2" I see as good examples. There wasn't anything deeply intricate (gotta find a synonym.. I'm getting tired of using that word) about the villains' operations, but there were serious ramifications if they weren't foiled (destruction of New York, mutant genocide). While I loved "Batman Begins", Ra's whole plan about driving Gotham mad in order to shock the world into righting itself seems dubious at best, ludicrous at worst. The examples he had given earlier about how the League of Shadows had altered the course of history were much more dramatic. In trying to bring it all down to Gotham and a plot that could be foiled by a couple of people (Batman and Gordon), the writers invented a scheme that is sorta goofy. As well, Ra's whole motivation is lofty and philosophically based, with the result that the viewer can only appreciate it on an intellectual level. Compare that to Otto Octavious' injured ego and pride and drive to see his dream come true (taken to an insane extreme mind you), or Stryker's horror at what his son had done to him and his wife and his extension of that into a hatred of all mutants. The latter examples are all emotions we can empathize with, on some level, and so we get more involved and there's no need for sillier levels of detail. No one expects a grand action film to feature 120 minutes of Superman punching thugs beneath his power level or James Bond foiling mail fraud, but it is nicer when the grand evil schemes don't require so much suspension of disbelief.

Well, I just got back from seeing the flick, and here are a few thoughts. Overall, my feelings are mixed. I didn't dislike it, but had some issues... Heavy: I found the film weighed down by its own gravitas. I've got nothing against a serious tone, but I felt it was almost unrelenting, without any lighter breaks aside from a brief laugh or two. The overall atmosphere of the film is grey, both visually and emotionally. Good Routh, Bad Superman: I thought Routh did a great job. I'll toss in the obligatory Chris Reeve comparison, and say that some times the voice was almost spot on. That being said, it was hard to find a personality in Superman. Clark is the clown, Superman the calm paragon... is there a real person in there somewhere? The character never seemed to emote with any passion. I prefer the modern take on Superman in comics and shows like "Lois and Clark" and "Smallville", where Clark is a whole person. Superman is the costumed persona. The old take of Clark as a buffoonish alter ego is outdated. Why does anyone like, care about, or even notice the Clark-in-Metropolis character? Luthor... what for?: The whole plot with Luthor seemed like a tack-on to provide a fight somewhere. Luthor from the time of the first movie was caught in the middle between the mad scientist he started out as, and before the driven billionaire he would become. Continuing the character in this vein results in a weak and laughable motivation in a film that is otherwise heavy. He ends up like a puzzle piece that just won't fit. As a result, the conflict doesn't rise from the story in a smooth and cohesive manner. Dude, where's my climax?: The leaden tone of the film never seems to rise or fall. There's an attempted action climax, but any elation is immediately snuffed by another heavy occurrence. I never felt a sense of triumph or victory. And then the film just carries on way too long after... denouements are great, but this is too much. We don't need Superman: The world of the movie is one in which there is only Superman. There aren't any Superman-sized threats that really make him necessary (Luthor is an aberrant blip). In his absence, you can suppose that some people died that might have been saved... but the world kept on going, just like ours. It's a world in which he's nice to have around, but not really required. In the end, I guess I would have preferred a reboot or something. Continuing story and character elements that are over 20 years old seems retro in all the wrong ways. This is a vision of Superman's world that the we've moved past. It tries to start in media res, but it's clear that while the backstory is inspired by the first two films, there are plenty of implied differences, so we don't have a good idea of what has gone before. For a film wrapped around Superman and Lois' history before he left, not having a clear notion of what that was leaves the viewer unsure about the basis for all this angst.

I dunno about Section 31... I'm so sick of conspiracy theories and the assumed "coolness" of black ops units. Star Trek works best when it exults the strengths of humanity, overcoming their darker sides and not swimming in them. I'd get behind stories in a darker setting, where characters have to make greater sacrifices and more difficult moral calls and doing "the right thing" has more cost than in the happy placid Federation universe we so often see. Section 31 was explicitly depicted as a group that mindfully did "the wrong thing", supposedly in service of a greater ideal. A Section 31 series would just be a spy story in a sci-fi setting, devoid of the core themes that differentiate Star Trek from other franchises, unless someone really took the time to delve into the thinking behind such people (e.g. Do the ends justify the means? Is a "decent" organization like the UFP valid if it is upheld by indecency? etc.), and that could get preachy and/or repetitive really fast.

Actually, I've been bitten by the 12" bug quite recently... especially with all the new stuff from Hot Toys, DC Direct, Sideshow, and Medicom. I just got tired of all the little 3 3/4" figures cluttering up my space. Now I can have great big figure boxes cluttering up my space. That black costume Spidey is sweet. From Medicom's superhero line, I've only picked up Cyclops (my favourite X-Man). However, I've got all the Star Wars line (now all we need is a Boba Fett), and the two newly released Cool Girl Gatchaman Jun figures (to match the less inspiring North American releases of Ken and Joe). Plus, I've got the Rocketeer on pre-order. Also waiting for the Hot Toys Robocop and ED-209, and from Sideshow Han Solo from ESB and the Hot Toys Colonial Marines "reprints". Oh yeah... preordered the 12" Hikaru too. I'm gonna have to put together some insane sorta diorama once these all arrive, along with all my other 12" figures, just to take a picture of them all together. "Man dolls" be damned...

I was thinking of that as I typed my post... especially in Voyager, they hinted at a lot of up and coming technology. Things were really accelerating tech-wise, and that could not only cause a lot of the aforementioned fanboy whining, but with technology that can do just about anything, a lot of the adventure would be gone. However, it could still work. Go forward far enough, and who knows what twists future history (how's that for an oxymoron) might take. In Voyager's last season, we saw that holographic creations were starting to be used everywhere. Maybe there's an "AI War" or some such in the making. There are always possibilities. I wouldn't mind seeing Star Trek's technophillic idyll get knocked down a few pegs.

Y'know, I've got all the 2-disc editions, including 5 (the completionist in me won't let me exclude even the dreck), and after watching all the interviews with Shatner, I'm not sure whether he's just got a really quirky sense of humour, or there's been some head trauma in recent years. Thinking about these reboot notions, that's essentially what they did with TNG. Sure, the original Trek was the backstory, but they moved it forward enough that the situations and relationships could be significantly different. I'd almost prefer another leap forward rather than going into the past again.

The ravening collector in me forced my hand... already preordered them from HLJ.

This has made my morning! Let the bells ring out and the people cheer!

Absolutely. "Death Race 2000" is a Corman classic. The 70s gave us the original "Planet of the Apes", "Logan's Run", "Rollerball" (one of my favourites) and a host of other post-apocalyptic/world-gone-wrong films. In many ways, they paved the road for those visions of the future seen in "Alien" and "Blade Runner". I never liked "The Omega Man", I have to say. When I first saw it I thought it was silly, and once I learned it was loosely inspired by (I refuse to say "based on") "I Am Legend", it went from silly to ludicrous.

Whoa, don't go putting words in my mouth... I said that's what studios think every 14 to 17 year old male wants, and they only want to bank on the sure thing. Truth is, I don't know a lot of teenagers, so I have no clue where their tastes are. If they are as vacuous as Hollywood markets them to be, I'd weep for the future...

Actually, I don't think the Minmay at the desk figure is a repaint. The figure I've got has her head on her hand, looking at the doll on the desk. In this one, her head's lifted and turned the other way. The "light up dress" one has different hair and arms than the previous, and even the DYRL one is posed differently I think (can't quite remember that one). Granted, they're still all Minmay rather than some more interesting figures, but they are more than just repaints...

Elitist implies that sci-fi fans think that the genre is somehow superior to all others... I think we're just looking for some quality, which pretty much applies to Hollywood in general right now.

Here's my take... I don't think sci-fi is suffering so much from Hollywood tightening the purse strings as much as it is from the whole corporate, money-making mind-set. We still see Hollywood piling wads of cash on the most unimaginable crap. The studios are only willing to invest money in projects that the money men think are sure-fire: - Properties with built-in audience (comics, sequels, video games, remakes); - Projects that appeal to the perceived limited attention span of the 14 to 17 year old North American male. Problem is: - Many such properties are not necessarily suitable to the motion picture medium; - Hollywood still makes bad choices about which projects to fund (e.g. "Elektra", banking on perceived popularity of Jennifer Garner and ignoring the fact that the comics community, the primary audience, couldn't have cared less after "Daredevil"); - We get a 30 to 40 year-old's approximation of what appeals to adolescent boys. So, any sci-fi beyond a testosterone-choked violence fest (not that those can't be fun too) gets labelled as too "cerebral" for mass appeal, and the studios won't finance them. And sci-fi tends to need larger budgets. I wonder about the perception on teen-male-appeal too. It was at that age (many moons ago) that I first fell in love with the classics of sci-fi (now that I knew enough to understand them) - "2001", "Blade Runner", "The Day The Earth Stood Still"... are modern teen males as ADD-afflicted as studios automatically assume they are, or are we driving them that way by only feeding them this pablum? I've totally come to hate the deification of the PG-13 rating, too. Studios are so freakin' afraid of R ratings and making something aimed at adults. I shudder to think what "Alien" or "Jaws" would have been like if studios had the same sensibilities in the late 70s that they have now.

When we started playing my "Silhouette Macross", we were using the pre-SilCORE Jovian Chronicles as the base, so I don't think their attitude is the fault of SilCORE. When we did move to SilCORE, my players actually enjoyed the new complexity system for skills (since I used it to lower difficulties for wilder skill uses, but simply increased the needed complexity for them), and we found that the characters lost nothing in the translation. As a matter of personal taste, we've always favoured wider application of more general skills over separate skills for every little thing (one of the reasons my crew dislikes Palladium so intensely, and enjoyed WEG Star Wars so much). We also ported quite a few things in Mechanical Design from pre-SilCORE Heavy Gear and Jovian Chronicles as well, so we never used "pure" SilCORE. As far as skills go, d20 has the same approach (fixed, more general skill list with broader application), so general vs. specific skills aren't the issue. I think they've just become enamoured of the wide selection of feats and class features. As a test, we did some porting of characters to d20 Modern, and I'll admit they've created some characters with interesting diversity in character features (considering they're all VF pilots). I did point out to them that there's nothing the d20 characters can do that the Silhouette ones couldn't... and in fact, there's a lot less since you could try just about anything in combat under Silhouette and now the requirement to take feats has restricted their options. However, they don't seem to mind, and are more enthused than ever. There's some quote I vaguely remember about losing choice giving more freedom to act, or something like that... maybe I'm seeing that in action. Looks like I'll be creating those d20 Mechanical rules sooner rather than later...

Entering some strange territory, here... In defence of my players, they are "veteran" gamers with a talent for creating diverse, interesting characters. If they enjoy playing around with numerous feats and class features... well, I'll indulge them on it. Anyway, thanks for the Mekton feedback guys, and your tolerance for the diversion in your thread.

To give the system its due, I do find d20 easy and fairly well-applied for purely character-based stuff. It falls apart entirely for mechanical action. They keep trying to shoehorn mechanical action into the same style as the character and fail miserably. Rather than reworking the whole combat dynamic so that it fits both character and mechanical action, they concentrated on the character and then tried to warp it to fit mechanics after the fact. Yuck. Although, the Star Wars attempt at mechanical action was better than d20 Modern's, both are pretty poor. I absolutely loved WEG's Star Wars and we played it for years. We gave the WoTC version a try and the player's verdict was similar to Macross. They vastly preferred WEG for the mechanical action, but preferred all the crunchy bits for their characters in d20 over the d6 system's simpler descriptions. I've read through Fuzion a couple of times and wasn't too excited by it. From the sound of it, Mekton won't satisfy my players' desire for crunchy character stuff either. Guess I'll have to exercise my 20 years of RPG experience and come up with a compromise. "Roleplay morons"? Not sure what that's got to do with character detail, but maybe I just haven't had enough caffeine yet..

One question I have about Mekton is how detailed is it with regards to character design and development? Is it as lavish with the character system as it is with the mecha? I ask this since my players have been pushing me away from Silhouette and towards d20 for Macross, purely because they don't feel that Silhouette's simple system of skills and attributes lets them customize and differentiate the characters as much as they'd like to. Personally, that was something I preferred about Silhouette, that it put the emphasis on character personality and roleplaying for differentiation rather than on classes, skills, feats, and such trappings. But, what do I know... I just run the game. My players place greater value in more character options than in realistic mecha simulation (and, since they play the characters and not mecha, I can understand where they're coming from). Of course, to do what they want, I'd need to come up with a d20 mecha system that's less primitive that what WoTC offers (maybe the Guardians of Order system that DP9 has adopted... but I'm not sold on that one). So, if Mekton has better character development than Silhouette, combined with a solid mecha system, I might be able to push back with an alternative to d20.

More Macross that's not a VF-1 would be welcome departure... I'll hook my wallet to Yamato's accounts without regret if they deliver something new.

CPM angered me mightily when they released all but the last volume of the Patlabor TV series as separate DVD volumes, then put out the last only in a set with the previous two (making me buy them again ), but without them I'd never have received all that Patlabor goodness in the first place (and not spent all that money on both the VHS and DVD versions... wait a minute, am I angry or not? ). At any rate, it'll be sad to see one of the old guard go the way of the dodo.

I couldn't agree more. The last thing I want is yet another VF-1, in any scale, in any variety. I'm looking quite forward to the 1/6 figures... a little variety will be nice.

Jovian Chronicles was my original basis, although I have moved some stuff to SilCORE. I don't think SilCORE is all bad... my players prefer the new complexity system, for example. Since we never used the tactical rules, there's not a lot of difference between the pre- and post-SilCORE stuff.