TheOvy

I'm happy to see Outer Wilds included. I would've wanted this line, myself:

We do not have much connection, you and I. Still, this encounter feels special. I hope you won't mind if I think of you as a friend.

Said by Solanum, on the QM. One of the more poignant moments of the game, when you're trying to connect the dots of a long-extinct civilization, only to befriend one, literally out of time. The game really is about connections, in the end, and how our story is part of the same tapestry, even as we're separated by eons.

It is a shame there's no Legacy of Kain lines. Was the best written game for years, I think, and is still one of the best written. Perhaps it wasn't popular enough to make the list, or perhaps none of the writers of this listicle have a lot of experience with the franchise.

Specifically, it's cheaper to not give the retailer their cut. The $10 hike for physical allows Nintendo make as much money off physical as it does digital. It's not passing the savings onto you, it's just charging customers who prefer physical more.

I rewatched this just last week, for the first time in over 20 years.

And I must say, this film wasn't as fun as I recall as a teenager. Mkaes me laugh, more than anything. But most of the action in this film is hidden by zooms and edits. The way John Wick is choreographed, and shot to show all the cool things happening, is the antithesis of the way Equilibrium hides the action, and tries to imply something cool is happening. Implications are for subtext, not spectacle! It felt like a cop out, save maybe that one scene he does a flip and shoots two guards who happen to be standing parallel. It's very silly, but at least a stunt man actually did the flip in one shot.

Then, when Bale breaks down in tears from about five seconds of Beethoven, the first thing I thought was the scene in Amadeus when the older Salieri starts to swoon when recalling Mozart's music in his head, describing the subtle instrumentation, or the scene in Philadelphia where Tom Hanks' Andrew Beckett draws the audience into this surreal world as he cries, describing the way Marias Callas is singing. Equilibrium comes off as amateurish pastiche in comparison. Beethoven plays for five seconds and Bale cowers in tears without the song having a moment to really be felt. It's cheap. The music deserves better tha this.

I shouldn't dunk so hard on what today would be a straight-to-streaming film that largely gets overlooked. But man, without the benefit of being a teenager currently living in the early '00s, the film is weak. I recall one friend claiming it's "better than The Matrix." I can't imagine anyone expressing that sentiment even five years later, much less 20. What I see in Equilibrium now is the story of getting older, and knowing better.

But hey, at least it had the dose of Fahrenheit 451 in it. That makes it very mildly more substantive than the other post-Matrix ripoffs like Underworld or whatever else has leather, akimbo pistols, and wirework. Equilibrium was one of many.