Mortal Kombat 2011

By Eric Adamson

Mortal Kombat, originally released in the arcade in 1992, is one of the fighting games responsible for defining the 2-D fighting game genre.  The game, of course, probably most known for its fatalities (which I spent hours trying to perform and failed Kontinuously) is deliciously gory and perfectly difficult.  The first game began with the simple selection of seven characters (or Kombatants) and each character had the same basic move set, with a few special moves each – including a unique fatality for each character.  Maybe two but I can’t quite remember.  For us children of the 90s, the game remains an iconic symbol.

The game evolved through many reincarnations and modules, including many game versions, a comic book series, television shows, actions figures, adventure RPG games, and, maybe best of all, several live action movies.  The movies were just as terrible as anyone who hasn’t seen them imagines they would be, but were enjoyable nevertheless.  Perhaps I enjoyed them for the same reason that I enjoyed the X-Men movies, not because the movies were great but because I liked the characters and I liked seeing each character in live action and feeling as though I knew more about them than the movie gave me.  The viewers stick around just to hear Scorpion scream, “Get over here!” when he throws his spears from his hands.  Besides, to an amateur martial arts moviegoer, the fighting looks pretty good.

As the game went through these evolutions, the characters and the world and the storyline became increasingly more Komplicated.  For the standard fan of the game, there is by now, I’m sure, far too much to keep up with, although some of them introduced things that would become iconic for fighting games (remember the guy who pops up in the bottom of the screen sometimes, saying something like, “Woop-Ding!”)  Perhaps this over Komplication was what caused several of the latest Mortal Kombat games that have been released to be flops.  But the most recently released, simply titled Mortal Kombat, takes the game back to its roots.  The fighting platform is back to a 2-D fighting setting, there are far fewer characters, and the story is cut loose from all of the Komplicated and often poorly thought out plot lines of most of the series.  The Mortal Kombat franchise has begun to retell its own story.  Back to the basics, I guess.  Except this return to basics comes with incredible graphics and a host of new moves and combos that you haven’t seen before, as well as many of the old ones.

When does a franchise like this reach the point where things need to be reset?  During its nearly fifty year run, X-Men has done it twice, once unofficially, and once officially (not to mention that about every ten years a set of new characters are introduced in order to allow for a new focus.)  But for a video game franchise with a simple story (the seven greatest warriors of Earth must battle for Earth’s survival!) that grew to be incredibly Komplicated (and not very interesting at that) why restart now?  I suppose much of it is a marketing scheme – X-Men writers say they restarted the storyline because it had grown so Komplicated that a new reader would likely be easily overwhelmed.  For Mortal Kombat, it happens because the developers probably realized that their game’s mechanics were lackluster to other games being released, there isn’t anything interesting in the game play anymore.  Therefore, they must appeal to their original fan base, when newer and younger gamers might as well choose a better game since they have no interest or nostalgic tie to the franchise’s title.  It seems to be working, as this new Mortal Kombat is selling tons of copies and receiving great reviews.  (The best reviews since Mortal Kombat III.)

But I ask the question again from an artistic perspective – why restart?  Are large franchises like this with tons and tons of Kollaborators showing that there can be too many minds at work on one idea?  With the creation of these universes, many artists and writers and programmers come together to put in their own ideas, and once an idea is in, everyone else has to deal with it because it is there.  This insertion now exists in the universe that artist is working in.  And even less so than in the real world, you cannot ignore it, because the very medium being worked with has been shifted by someone else.  Of course, the art direction and story writing for Mortal Kombat has been pretty awful during the entire run, leaving its rise to popularity to be based heavily on the gore which wasn’t present in many games in 1992 – especially with games like Street Fighter providing a much more solid story with interesting art direction and hand drawn characters.

I know that it is a little bit of a stretch to consider Mortal Kombat an artistic endeavor for many reasons – the most obvious being that it really is just a Kash Kow for the developing Kompanies.  What makes it fascinating is that despite all of the flaws in story and art direction, despite the terrible flops of the previous games, this new Mortal Kombat is exceptionally fun and the enjoyment of playing certainly redeems the game of its lack of lore.  Did anyone else just overly enjoy the first time you got to watch you opponents bones being Krushed by your kick to the neck?  Or just me?  Also, I don’t know if I will ever get tired of watching various characters mutilate Johnny Cage with their fatalities. And the best part is yet to come:  Supposedly there is a new Mortal Kombat movie being made (it is unclear from my research whether it is a real movie, a web series, or a web series being turned into a movie) but it looks like something I will be going to see.  Check out this trailer:

It looks like someone with a very nice camera has decided to take an interest in Mortal Kombat.  Hopefully it will not disappoint.
-Eric Adamson

The Thin Man and Noir

Noir has been on my mind lately. Naturally, I turned to Dashiell Hammett when I got the urge for some mystery – picking up The Thin Man from a used book stand near Washington Square Park. Actually, the truth is I saw it and it was cheap and I liked the cover – of course, having read The Maltese Falcon a few years ago I was already familiar with his work, so I gave it a try.

I couldn’t put it down.

What fascinates me most about the noir genre, specifically those books focusing on crimes in the 20s and 30s, is the way in which the mind and clever conversation play the most important role in committing and solving a crime. The action usually occurs out of the scene, and the characters simply talk about it later, most often in the most hilarious ways (I was surprised by the comedy in fact, sometimes laughing out loud.) Some characters are never seen, communicating solely by letter or telephone.

It takes place in an era of technology before ours, when things were advanced but not enough to scrape DNA from hair samples and contact anyone from anywhere by a cell phone, when you sent harrowing letters by telegraph and the elevator boy walked you to someone’s room when you went to visit them (usually so he could become a witness for who has been entering which apartments). I read twenty pages out of a David Baldacci novel once and decided to stop on the grounds that the characters and the settings felt empty. I felt just as bored as the detective must have, waiting around for his DNA samples to be tested and his video surveillance to be analyzed. I don’t believe that crime novels now (and taking place in a contemporary setting) must be boring on account of the technology, and if someone who sees this knows a good one, I’d be very interested, but the advancement of technology certainly seems like a hindrance, especially when it comes to character development. I am not saying it can’t be done, but it seems more difficult. Characters don’t have to be particularly witty or clever or entertaining to commit crimes, they simply have to be sneaky, which is a trait inherent in all of Dashiell Hammett’s characters, guilty or not. This is a large reason for the elevation of language in Hammett’s stories, the need for each character to be extra clever, and for there to be an immediate divide between those who can speak well, and those who cannot.

Noir is a genre that becomes all about the characters – the plot lines remain generally the same; a lot of money is stolen, someone is killed, somewhere two people fall in love – what shines is the creation of characters, their differentiation through language, and the way that the author tells you straight to your face who did it as many times as he possibly can while still managing to keep you guessing until the end. Of course the not knowing is the best part – and still the picture I have of Mimi in my head makes me squirm, and her shady children certainly have something to hide. The mafia man Morelli in the speakeasy probably lied about everything he said, and why did the bar owner Studsy beat the hell

out of the pale man? Will we ever really know who murdered Julia Wolf? But I am intrigued by the title – The Thin Man…I won’t say too much because I don’t want to give it away, but the title is exceptionally clever and the more I consider it the more I find it to be the perfect title. The word “thin” can mean so many things beyond weight, and if you consider the various goals of the various characters in the novel, you will begin to understand what I mean.

What does it take to make new noir? I seem to only be able to turn to movies, which may not be completely considered noir but have the feel – like The Machinist, or Memento, where the solution that puts the focus back on the mind is taken care of by a character not being completely sane; or The Silence of the Lambs, where the crime solving is done precisely in the way it is done in Hammett, by clever dialogue between clever characters. (I have never read the books the movie is based off of, maybe it is worth a try.) There are twenty other films I could name, I am sure, (Fargo, Taxi Driver, Blood Simple, Pulp Fiction, Blade Runner, etc.) but I guess the question is still left at what it takes to write it, what must be present, and what must not be present – or what must be present and yet remain as hidden as possible to the reader. As always, I am very interested in the structure of things, and the only problem with noir is, the point is to make the structure utterly confusing. All the more interesting for investigation, I say.

--Eric Adamson

Futurama is one of the most linguistically pleasing shows I have ever seen. Despite the fact that it is my favorite television show, I truly believe that the writers of the show are exceptionally clever with language. Often times the characters say seemingly ridiculous things, which are actually quite full of wisdom. An example comes to mind from an episode from the third season called “Future Stock.” Even though I’m sure everyone has seen this episode just as many times as I have, let me give a little background for those who haven’t:

During the episode, Planet Express (the delivery company that the main characters work for) is going bankrupt. During a stockholder’s meeting, a recently defrosted cryogenically frozen man from the 1980’s, named in the episode as That Guy, manages to take over as Planet Express’s new CEO. At the end of the episode, he has fooled enough people out of their stock to gain majority control of the company, and plans to sell it to the biggest delivery company competitor, Mom’s Friendly Delivery Company. At the last minute, however, he dies of a terminal disease known as “boneitis” and Fry (the very same Philip J. who is the main character in every episode) gains voting control of his shares, gaining the ability to stop the sale. Now, here is where the moment of power in the episode arrives! As he is about to reverse the sale, Mom, the CEO of Mom’s Friendly Delivery Company, yells to Fry “Don’t be a fool, you idiot!” And Fry delivers the bomb in return: “I’ll be whatever I wanna do!” The rest of the episode goes on as expected – Fry cancels the sale, Planet Express returns to its financial troubles, and everyone implies that they will be returning to work on Monday. Everything is back to normal.

Now maybe this recap is a little confusing for those of you who haven’t seen the episode (a small percentage, I know, but I want to cover all my bases), but Fry’s words resonated with me in a way beyond their comically rendered syntax. In fact, the idea is a crucial part of the identity of any artist. “I’ll be whatever I wanna do.” My parents are never-endingly concerned with what a student of literature and poetry might do with his degree, no matter how often I tell them that I will be fine. When I worked in a 4^th grade classroom as a student tutor, one of the students asked me how he could be a poet. I told him that to be a poet, you must simply write poetry. Do and you will become. Most importantly, do what you wanna do. This may be bad logic, but I’m going to say it: You must continue doing and unfalteringly doing or you certainly risk an unbecoming. And I posit that an unbecoming of this sort is worse than anyone thinking you are a fool or an idiot.

Annie Dillard says, “One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time.” It is the persistence in doing that pays off, that makes an artist an artist. Fry commands it of himself, he does what he wants and therefore he is his own man. In a later episode (although in a flashback) he says to a stray dog, “People think you are just a dumb mutt who smells bad, can’t find a girlfriend, and has a crummy job! But you’re keepin’ it real and you call no man mister!” I will leave out any personal connection I have to this statement, but they certainly apply to Fry, more so than the dog. Fry goes on being persistent in his existence, which, luckily for him, is pretty much all he does – but more than anything else he owns, he protects his existence with everything he has. He spends it all, every time. No fear. Annie Dillard goes on to say, “After Michelangelo died, someone found in his studio a piece of paper on which he had written a note to his apprentice, in the handwriting of his old age: “Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw and do not waste time.”

-Eric Adamson