Quarantine Control #44: Wonderful Exploder

Have you noticed that every piece of good news about the COVID-19 pandemic is balanced out by bad news? It’s an unfortunate pattern. The vaccine has finally arrived, but the rollout has been underwhelming even in the best cases, not to mention racist. The number of new COVID cases has also thankfully dwindled now that the holiday season bump is behind us, but there are new variants swirling around proven to be more contagious and which could make people sicker than the more common variant. This is, in fairness, a better alternative to the constant stream of bad news we adjusted to for a while, but current events are far from good.

The best place is still in the home, with the pandemic and the inclement weather now threatening us.

 

Geoffrey Barnes

Wonder Woman (2017)
Source: HBO Max
Episodes: 1 Movie (with a sequel)

My expectations for the Wonder Woman film weren’t very high, despite being aware of the movie’s solid critical reception since its release in theaters over three-and-a-half years ago. My pessimism wasn’t entirely logical. Aquaman was a fine-enough and pretty-looking popcorn film, and Shazam! was enjoyable. But though I enjoyed parts of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Ultimate Edition despite its edginess, Suicide Squad was a bitter disappointment. That movie somehow alone lowered my expectations for those I hadn’t seen, including this movie and its sequel, along with Justice League. I shouldn’t be as surprised as I am about Wonder Woman actually being enjoyable, though it does have stumbles.

The movie begins in a predictable manner, establishing Diana of Themyscira (Gal Gadot) by zooming through her growth from a child with potential to a formidable warrior, and showing how the island is eventually breached by nefarious people in the 1910s during World War I. But the story developed in three ways that I didn’t quite expect for a superhero or Wonder Woman film (I somehow remained in the dark about how this movie progressed for nearly four years), despite knowing that DC’s adaptations strive to be different from the Marvel Cinematic Universe films.

The departure from Themyscira to help learn about and fight the Germans with Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) made this Diana’s first trip outside the island, meaning she’s hilariously ignorant about how normal humans live. I had a good time watching Diana struggle to hold normal conversations with people, attempting actions that would have every other human glancing at her with a side eye (like grabbing a random baby), and learning how not to dress like an amazon. The movie spends quite a bit of time with this, but every minute is worth it. It’s helped by just how surprisingly good Gadot plays the part. She wasn’t involved enough in Batman v Superman to get a full feel of how good she was (or wasn’t) in the role, but she shines here.

A good portion of the movie involves Diana/Wonder Woman fighting against proto-Nazi German soldiers, after getting accustomed to the human world and the war its embroiled in. Despite Diana’s frequent talk of Ares, the God of War, instigating the sins of mankind behind the scenes, she genuinely fights soldiers who believe in their cause. Granted, history has shown how they were fighting for the wrong side, but it was nice to see that Warner created a DC adaptation that was different form the norm by not being edgy, or by having the soldiers being too obviously manipulated by a known supervillain. The story outline admittedly brings to mind Captain America: The First Avenger, but it has enough differences to not qualify as a rip-off.

The movie was different enough from other superhero films that I was disappointed at how it had to make made a turn for the conventional for its final act. It was reminiscent of The Wolverine, which kept its noir-style themes for most of the film only to abandon them by the end, though it wasn’t comparable to when Suicide Squad attempted something similar. Wonder Woman was always going to lead to this given who the threat was stated to be and, let’s be honest, the expectations the audience had for a film with the name “Wonder Woman” in it. Diana had to fully display her abilities in a way similar to how she fought against Doomsday in BvS. The fight also showed where a nice chunk of the budget was allocated by being very pretty. But it still would have been better if they didn’t do this.

Even with the small issues, Wonder Woman is the best DC film I’ve watched so far, and not because it crosses a low bar. It delivers where it needs to, by combining superhero thrills with a realistic-enough tale and includes solid acting talent. A damned shame that it might all be downhill from here when I get around to the other DC movies, including Justice League (which I plan to watch in theatrical form before succumbing to the outrageous monster that will be the Snyder Cut) and sequel Wonder Woman 1984, which wasn’t as favorably received. It’s back to lowering my expectations.

 

Joseph Daniels

My laptop is open in front of me, warming my legs as I sit in bed.  The compositions of a man with unfortunate beliefs about LGBT people and who denies his own nation’s war crimes plays through earbuds.  Not because I don’t want anyone else to know I’m giving Koichi Sugiyama the time of day, but because everything just sounds better through earbuds than through the speakers of a laptop, and despite the man’s history, listening to the music of Dragon Quest is part of the experience I’m trying to document.  Even if I’m bad at it.

My other laptop contains notes I’ve been making about the game I’ve been playing, about the benefits and detriments of a few of the monsters I’ve taken with me to substitute for the human party members who come and go.  I glance at my calendar, smile at the tigress grooming the face of her kitten and think to myself “I hope I have enough time to finish this game so I can meet the deadline.”  The blog’s five thousandth post is fast approaching and “Dragon Quest Five.  Thousand.” has a nice ring to it.

I’ve played the game a number of times in the past, but not nearly as much as I’ve played games like Final Fantasy IV or Chrono Trigger, so as I play, I hope I can do the game justice.  While thinking about the way the game’s item drops contribute to its balance, my thoughts drift to a Netflix series that perfectly represents everything I’ve been trying to do with my Retrospective articles…

Song Exploder: How Songs Are Made (2020)
Source: Netflix
Episodes: 8

During each half hour episode, Song Exploder intimately explores the composition of a song.  I don’t know what the selection process is for the songs featured on the show.  Certainly it’s not which song is the most successful for each artist, but if Alicia Keys’ “3 Hour Drive” episode is any indication, the series dives into songs with very interesting stories behind them.  Volume two, released just two and a half months after volume one (so if you do the math, we should hopefully have some more episodes relatively soon) dives into what’s probably the most interesting song from Nine Inch Nails, “Hurt,” a song that was notably covered by Johnny Cash only a year before his death.

It’s very fascinating to hear about the process from so many different perspectives.  Song writing doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and everyone approaches it in their own unique way.  I love learning about how video game soundtracks are composed, and Square-Enix’s composers are usually the most open about how they’ve made their fans’ favourite songs.  It just shows how much respect the company has for all aspects of the art of video games.  Song Exploder is sort of like that, but for some of the biggest acts in the music industry today.

There are currently only eight episodes available, but there are thousands of potential stories out there and millions of songs to choose from.  If you’re disappointed that your journey through the process of making music is over after only four hours, I have some good news.  Song Exploder began as a podcast first.

Song Exploder (2014)
Source: Official Website
Episodes: Ongoing (currently 201 + bonus episodes)

The podcast even officially hit 200 episodes three weeks ago.  Episodes don’t necessarily cover a band’s most famous song, but cover songs that are interesting.  A few of them even explore theme songs like the Bob’s Burgers theme.

One of the biggest benefits to having your song appear on Song Exploder is the publicity the podcast brings with it.  Most of the songs featured are songs I’ve never actually heard, although the very first episode explores one of my favourite songs from The Postal Service, and episode 62 explores my favourite MGMT song.  That said, occasionally the podcast explores one of the absolute classics from the medium; episode 176 talks about one of the biggest songs from 1998, “Closing Time” by Semisonic.

Unlike some of the podcasts I’ve recommended in the past, Song Exploder is a lot more chill.  You can lay back and listen to it and the only thing that would prevent someone from thinking you’re listening to a lo-fi stream is the lack of a staccato rhythm of rain on the window.

Song Exploder is such a good podcast that even if you don’t like the band being discussed, you can get into the craft of writing music you don’t like, and you’ll say to yourself, “Oh.  That’s how come I don’t like this song.  That’s pretty interesting.”

Although most of these are likely not possible, I have a wish list of several episodes I’d love to see in the future show up in the podcast feed.  These include:

-An episode about how Christopher Tin composed his Grammy-winning video game theme song “Baba Yetu”
-An episode about how my favourite electronica song, “Lynx” by Miranda, was put together
-An episode where Darren Hayes talks about how “Dublin Sky” was written, or possibly “Insatiable” or the Savage Garden song “Crash and Burn”
-An episode talking about “Paralyzed” by Delta Goodrem, a song which is very personal to her, and which came along at a time when the entire world was also paralyzed in its own way due to COVID-19
-An episode talking about the process Rich from Solarstone used to write “Without You” for his album . . – – –

Song Exploder doesn’t go into painstaking detail about each song, but then I try not to get into painstaking detail with the games I discuss on this blog.  I want to talk about why each game is good or not good, and the various ways the game is balanced towards being playable, and where a lack of balance might’ve hurt each game.  I’ve been comparing and contrasting how Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest are put together and I hope to demonstrate the difference between Dragon Quest’s approach of rewarding hard work and Final Fantasy’s approach of rewarding casual progress.  I hope to demonstrate eventually how Final Fantasy contributed to the development of Kingdom Hearts and how it split off from the Final Fantasy series to be its own thing.

I guess I’m just hoping to be the Song Exploder of video game writing.  I’d better get back to my game, though.  Bianca’s waiting for me.

 

The fight against the pandemic is very slowly improving, but even thinking about a post-COVID world feels like fantasizing. Everyone who doesn’t think the virus is fake is desperate to get out of this and return to some sense of normalcy, and there’s hope that officials, locally and worldwide, will figure out how to distribute the vaccine with actual efficiency sooner rather than later.