Ep. 197 - Myst Opportunities, with Chris Remo and Mathew Kumar

rejj

I can get behind watching Repo Man any time

yeso

highway patrolman has been on my to watch list for a while and I think I’ll make it more of a priority.

here’s a rare contemporaneous appreciative review of walker for those interested

https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2018/10/our-man-in-nicaragua/

exodus

so I got this from the documentary that’s on the walker dvd, which I watched less than 2 weeks ago, so I’m definitely not getting this part confused. It is possible that it wasn’t alex cox’s call, but it is definitely “not very punk rock” as one might say. You find this out in the doc when all the american tourists/“sandalistas” as they were known talk about how they’re getting paid ~$6.50/day as extras and how they were about to strike for better pay until they learned that Nicaraguan folk doing actual jobs on set were getting the same or less.

I think you have to watch it on youtube but there’s the sequence!

[edit: I had guatemala on the brain for unrelated reasons and so edited my replies, I kept saying Guatemalan instead of Nicaraguan which is real stupid.]

Gaagaagiins

exodus sandalistas

I have nothing to add other than to recognize that this is HILARIOUS

Ormic

exodus Thank you for this (for others interested, the quoted bit starts at around 23:00). Funnily, the film was always available in Europe (VHS and DVD, released by Universal even) and so I ended up with a barebones disc without any extras. Should have gotten that Criterion a long time ago, I guess.

I agree with your assessment of the lack of punkrockness. After watching this little “making of” I can also see how the other statements are still valid in a way since most movie productions would not necessarily employ 400+ crew locally in the country that is actually depicted (and definitely not support Sandinistas). Easy to imagine how for some Universal accountant even 6.50 (1987) USD still seemed like too much. Paying those gringo extras the same (or even more) is maybe the real “crime” here.

But yeah, if any other director should ever manage to get a production like this rolling, they sure should/could do better than that.

Gaagaagiins

I agree with this assessment too!

EDIT:
Thinking a bit more about this, I see only one real solution: get Alex Cox on the John Carpenter episode and confront him with all of it (he does have a podcast at least as I found out now).

therealdadsy

exodus Appreciate you going out of your way to find that and pass it on.

You’re right, that isn’t very punk. I could have been more specific with my earlier words; I’d swap out “approach” for “aesthetic” which was actually what I was trying to convey with that comment. Regardless, from watching that I’d say it’s more than reasonable to deduct that Cox did know or was at least wilfully ignorant to Nicaraguan people being paid so little and less than the white tourists, which is not OK and is very disappointing from someone that I thought was above this kind of exploitative behaviour.

Also re: coolest vehicles in video games - I always liked Mars Guo’s and Ark ‘Bumpy’ Roose (lmao) podracers in Star Wars Episode I: Racer

UnparalleledDev

re: Jeff Gerstmann asks: What’s the coolest vehicle to ever appear in a video game? (04:54)

conceptually I was always enamored with the Turtle’s van, but I never got that far in the game as a kid,
so that might have something to do with it.

the real answer is JRPG airships
the FF3 airship has storage, shops and a bed to restore hp/mp.
During random encounters the ship will shoot its cannons at the start of the fight.

by far Breath of Fire 2 TownShip takes the cake.

TownShip can become a literal airSHIP that can fly and land anywhere.
the player fills the town with residents recruited from around the world.
different residents open different shops and unlock unique items and equipment.
not everything can be unlocked in 1 play thru so it also adds replay value.
not to mention the fusion house that can fuse your party members with elemental shamans to make them super powerful.

exodus

I always found the concept of jrpg airships super exciting and then the execution to (usually!) be disappointing. But I did like the one in wild arms (I think) because there were lots of places you couldn’t get to any other way that you got to explore… If I recall correctly. This is a 25 year old memory. My disappointment in airships mostly came from cases where they were essentially fast travel, or where the only new places you could get to with them were mandatory.

Oh and re: Alex Cox I agree that the biggest issue is paying the American extras more than the Nicaraguans who did real work. The rest might have been out of his control… Or something. But I guess I should get him on the show eh

rejj

I will always philosophically disagree with the off-handed assertion that the wipeout vehicles are not cool.

That out of the way, I would like to put forward the extremely boring suggestion that a bunch of the mechs from whichever Battletech game you want to pick are the coolest vehicles to appear in a video game.

They are big, stompin, hunkin, huge robot mega war machines

◉◉maru

rejj They are big, stompin, hunkin, huge robot mega war machines

Yes but they are not big, stompin, hunkin, sexy huge robot mega war machines.

Gaagaagiins

rejj That out of the way, I would like to put forward the extremely boring suggestion that a bunch of the mechs from whichever Battletech game you want to pick are the coolest vehicles to appear in a video game.

Well actually, mechs aren’t vehicles, they’re bodies/body enhancements/extensions of one’s body. Looks like someone hasn’t seen Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt!

◉◉maru Yes but they are not big, stompin, hunkin, sexy huge robot mega war machines.

Impact is definitely not a vehicle! He’s a person! Would a vehicle be able to star in Hollywood movies? And even… experience love?

(please understand I am only pretending to be a jerk, to get the satisfaction of being a jerk without having to annoy or hurt anyone, which is a little bit jerky I’ll admit)

◉◉maru

Gaagaagiins No, no, you do ask a legitimate question! I don’t know if sentience and free will disqualify from being a vehicle. Is KITT from Knight Rider still a vehicle? What about Optimus Prime? Conversely, is Wolf Link a vehicle?

rejj

Gaagaagiins Well actually actually, even if Gundam Mecha are not vehicles, BattleTech’s BattleMechs are!

A BattleMech (often abbreviated ’Mech, although that could technically also refer to IndustrialMechs) is an armored combat vehicle of roughly humanoid shape, standing 8 to 14 meters tall and typically massing from 20 to 100 tons.

https://www.sarna.net/wiki/BattleMech

ha!

kory

◉◉maru How about Daniel Witwicky’s exosuit, as long as we’re getting out in the weeds here!

I suppose this is alternately a mech/exosuit and a vehicle? Trying to think of some video game examples to make it vaguely on topic…the best I have is the Arwing Walker from Star Fox 2/Zero. Plenty of Macross games out there too, I’m sure.

Gaagaagiins

◉◉maru I had a longer thing typed up but I forgot to finish it and now I’m in bed but I must answer before I can sleep.

KITT is as much the sentient artificial being as the car. KITT is not a vehicle, but the car is. Kitt and David Hasselhoff operate the car as a vehicle. The car is either also KITT’s body, or it refers to the car as its body mostly for David Hasselhoff’s sake, who may not really relate to the idea of non-corporeal personhood.

Optimus Prime is not a vehicle in the same way Impact isn’t–they’re sentient beings with mechanical bodies, which can contain mechanical means for someone inside of them to be able to control a sort of vehicular adjacent form of theirs. But just because they’re inorganic doesn’t mean they aren’t corporeal. There’s no ambiguity as to whether or not Optimus Prime’s body is him or not, and it being sometimes in the form of a transport truck doesn’t change that.

Lastly, one of the very oldest pieces of Insert Credit lore is that rideable animals are not vehicles!

Syzygy

“But I don’t want to go among vehicles," Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “We’re all vehicles here. I’m vehicular. You’re vehicular.”

Gaagaagiins

kory genuinely can’t decide wrt Macross style transforming mechs. Is it a mech with a vehicular form or a vehicle with a perverse mech like capability? It’s like a bush plane but instead of pontoons it makes a mockery of the human form

Moon

Rideablanimals

…

Just had to get that classic Insert Credit portmanteau off my chest

Gaagaagiins

rejj Gaagaagiins Well actually actually, even if Gundam Mecha are not vehicles, BattleTech’s BattleMechs are!

A BattleMech (often abbreviated ’Mech, although that could technically also refer to IndustrialMechs) is an armored combat vehicle of roughly humanoid shape, standing 8 to 14 meters tall and typically massing from 20 to 100 tons.

https://www.sarna.net/wiki/BattleMech

ha!

Thank you, it would have necessitated dropping my totally 100% ironic jerk persona to admit that if any ’mechs were vehicles it’d be Battletech ones.

Danimal

esper What’s better in a video game, an elevator or stairs? (22:45)

Just dropping in to say that I’m shocked that no one has mentioned the stairs vs elevator scenario from FFVII when you are breaking into Shinra HQ. I mean, I feel like that has to be what this question is in reference to!

Also, its crazy just how many giant elevators there are in video games. At some point it apparently just became a natural part of level design. Maybe it’s not used quite as much now, but in hack-and-slash and beat-em-ups especially there are a lot of giant elevators that serve as fighting arenas.

kory

Danimal its crazy just how many giant elevators there are in video games

Especially and specifically those giant industrial elevators that move along a diagonal path…these seem orders of magnitude more prevalent in video games than they must be in real life, right?

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