[Weekly Update] Very Important: Patreon Billing Change

IMPORTANT

Due to Apple throwing a hissy-fit, Patreon is forced to changed to a subscription based model, with potential price increase for users who pledge through their iOS apps. To avoid rising charges, we recommend everyone to renew their membership through Patreon's website.

If you pledged for a whole year, your membership will be unchanged for the remainder of your pledge. You will not be charged extra until your next billing cycle.

We'll also switch to subscription billing on September 15th. You'll be billed on the same day you become a member each month. I believe for existing members, you'll continue to be billed on the 1st of each month, unless you stop renewal and come back at a later date.

If at any point you find yourself being charged extra, let us know. We should be able to refund your pledge from our end.

We'll continue to follow this development and keep everyone updated.

CHANNEL UPDATE

Our new video is complete and is waiting for approval. It's a video on historical films that happen in around the same time period. It should go up in a few days.

While we are waiting for it to be published, we are still editing the visuals to include more movies from various countries. If you have historical films from your country you think it's worth including, please leave a suggestion!

For the video after, we are thinking of either completing our video on the Yakuza: Like a Dragon video, or rework our unpublished video on Detective Chinatown.

As for bonus video, I'm once again tempted to talk about Deadpool, since the new movie seems to be a hit. It will require me to go watch the new film for a full picture, though. So if Montreal continues to rain like it does in the past few days, I might not be able to go to the cinema.

MEDIA TALK

Some of you may have heard but I was, once again, rather sick in the past few weeks. Continuous health issue is why our productivity is pretty low for our usual standards. While I was taking my sick days off, I (somehow) managed to beat Doom Eternal. I swear this game is therapeutic.

Don't worry, you don't have to know the game to understand this discussion.

But this talk does include spoilers. So, if you care about spoilers... It's Doom. You shouldn't care about spoilers.

Doom Eternal, as the demonic cleansing violent video game, saw the player battle against the powers of hell to stop its invasion of Earth. It has been critically acclaimed by fans, and also mocked by fans endlessly. People's reason to poke fun of it is numerous, but one of the reasons is the plot.

As Doom's original creator said in the 90s, story for video games is like plot for an adult film, it's nice to have some, but it's not important. The 2016 reboot series, which contains 2 games plus a DLC that definitively concludes the story, took that advice to heart. The result is a gloriously messy hunk of lore that includes Christian mythology, Lovecraftian themes, Nordic pagan culture, and wrapped in a sci-fi shell.

Yes, it reads and plays just as convoluted as it sounds.

One of the biggest contrivance in the series comes towards the end of the story. The protagonist, the doom slayer, acquires the soul of the dark lord, so that he may resurrect him, and kill him so that the entire forces of hell loose their power. (Stay with me)

It is then revealed, out of nowhere, that the Dark Lord is just the hell version of the protagonist. Outside of hell, the Dark Lord is indestructible. So what does he do? He goes to hell and wait for the protagonist.

The protagonist then grabs a MacGuffin, so that he can travels to the deepest part of hell. Just as he arrives, the DLC copies that portal scene from Avengers End Game, and shows all of the protagonist's former allies coming through to wage for on hell. Except... How did they come here!? I have the one MacGuffin!

Now, for a casual audience, this reads like some 5th grader's first edgy novel. But I promise you, it's silly but it's also kinda cool. That's the charm of it. It is so blatantly someone's DND campaign. Someone on the writing staff very obviously made it up as it goes, and put in all the cool stuff, regardless of if it make sense.

As I age, I gradually find myself taking things less and less seriously. The past edgy me who wanted to see a serious fantasy adaptation of Dungeons and Dragons is no more. Instead, the silly adaptation that came out last year was perfect in every way. Everyone's DND campaign is silly. That's the fun of it.

It's the sort of storytelling that was common back in the 50s, when special effects were the reason you go to the cinema. The prime example would be Clash of the Titans. The plot is just an excuse for a bunch of cool combats against cool monsters. But as cinema gain more prestige as an art, carnival rides like that becomes quite rare.

I guess, at the end of the day, Scorsese was wrong. MCU movies were, in fact, the closest it has ever been to classic cinema. That is, it dazzles the audience the same way that train dazzled people back in the 1890s. It entertain people the same way Jason and the Argonauts did in the good old days. Cinema was born as a form of entertainment. The silliness of it is not a weakness.

But do you enjoy this kind of non-sense storytelling? Or is it too lizard brain for your taste? Honestly, I don't know how much I would actually enjoy Doom if it has a serious story. The dumb fun tone was perfect for it. It's also respectable that they actually wrapped up the story instead of teasing more sequels.

Anyway, I'll see you soon with a new video!