Quarantine Control #117: Judgment Day for Tigers and Heroes

DC Staff | June 30, 2022 | Features, Movies, Videogames | No Comments

Sure, yes, COVID-19 is still a thing (as is long COVID), but it’s barely been in the news for the last week for good reason. The headlines have instead largely been about the United States Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in a recent ruling, destroying a fundamental right to choose for many women in the country and taking away a civil right. It’s one of the first times the court has done such a thing, and represents how rogue, legitimate, and unafraid they are. As the liberal justices said in their dissent, the current court is likely only getting started, and one conservative justice indicated as much. So, uhhhhh, let’s talk about stuff we did in the last week instead.

Geoffrey Barnes

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Source: HBO Max
Episodes: 1 movie (a sequel to the 1984 film)

Yes, you read that right: I finally sat down and carefully watched Terminator 2: Judgment Day for the first time earlier this week. The key word here is “carefully,” because I wouldn’t include those previous exposures as actually watching the film.

This was the first opportunity for me to watch it without my mother covering my eyes and ears whenever something violent happened or someone used a swear, when my parents ordered the movie through a Pay-Per-View service after it first became available (I am extremely dating myself here). The second time I saw it was on a TV broadcast, which really doesn’t count when the movie was edited to hell. This really was the first time I got to watch the movie the way it was meant to be seen, and I have to say that — surprise, surprise — it was a very good time.

Fortunately, I remembered everything about the first movie from the time I sat down to watch that one around 2012 or 2013. Throughout the years, I’ve heard enough about the movie and remembered enough that I understood everything that would happen, thus robbing me of any surprise. I knew the main Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is the good guy this time, largely a surprise at the time it released outside one trailer, who this time has travelled back to the past to protect John Connor (Edward Furlong, in his first role) instead of killing Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). The job of meeting and killing the Connors is left to the T-1000 (Robert Patrick in one of his earlier roles). The movie takes the time to explain everything for anyone who hasn’t seen the first film, but it’s not a replacement for watching it. It’s the perfect sequel.

I also knew that this movie represented a genre switch. The first Terminator was a horror movie with a bunch of good action on the side, while Judgment Day is an action one with good horror on the side. It was hardly the first old franchise with a sequel that switched genres, but it’s incredible to watch how easily this movie does it. Genre switching is tough to pull off for many works to do across media, but the action switch felt like the natural way to go here. This was bound to happen with Schwarzenegger’s Terminator being the good guy now, but it works well for the ideas it had. It’s also why Sarah Connor is a full-on action lady come this film, preparing for the disaster that could come after being warned of the future in the previous film.

I was surprised about one thing initially: The runtime. A 137-minute movie is hardly long these days, but it was lengthier than average before most Hollywood movies releasing in theaters started getting longer. This was fortunately a movie from a master of his craft in director James Cameron (who did movies before Avatar), and I can’t think of a scene that wasn’t necessary or ridiculously stretched out to pad the runtime. It’s entertaining the entire way through, more than what can be said for most movies that rival or top this one in length.

The only issue that briefly took me out of the film was the at-times iffy acting. It could not have been clearer that this was Furlong’s first acting job, and I’m wiling to excuse him for that. (I won’t talk about his other issues since here.) Hamilton’s delivery during the monologues could have also used work, but she’s fine outside of them. Schwarzenegger, however, didn’t need to do much outside of looking cool, and he does while proving how he’s actually a capable actor. The same goes for Patrick.

I’m not too surprised that this movie has better special effects than its predecessor thanks to the combo of the seven-year gap and this movie being given a much higher budget (the first Terminator film was endearingly low budget). I am surprised at how well they hold up after more than 30 years, however. Some movies are just timeless, and this is one of them even as far as early 1990s effect work.

It took far too long, but I enjoyed my time watching Terminator 2: Judgment Day all the way through. The question that remains is whether I should pretend there were no more Terminator works after this one. But I’d like to address my other movie sins before that, by watching films like the Alien movies (yeah, I know) and perhaps the original Total Recall.

Joseph Daniels

Today is the last day of June, but rather than wait a week for your monthly week of rest, I figured I’d offer it to you one week early.

There have been some… shall we say, awful things that happened this month, especially in the United States. There is definitely a time and place to discuss those events, but there’s also a time and place for gentle reflection on your own life, on soothing your soul and reassuring yourself. I hope it’s reassuring to hear that, despite the great capacity for humans to be evil in the world, there is also a great capacity for them to be good.

This month, instead of trying to offer a few kind words in the face of unspeakable evil after unspeakable evil, I wanted to spotlight an ASMR-style series on YouTube that I like. In Joseph Holloway’s “Daughter of Khan” series, you are the daughter of Shere Khan from The Jungle Book, an original character named Anvesha. As Anvesha, you experience little snippets in the life of a cub being raised by the fearsome Shere Khan, but that is not all that happens in this series. There are scenes from the point of view of a few key human characters, original to the story, and the whole thing feels like it works as a new collection of Jungle Book tales.

I admire that the writer of this series takes cues from the original book, meaning there are characters that show up in the videos which don’t show up in the Disney films, like the jackal Tabaqui. Hopefully spending the next week listening to this playlist will bring a sense of calm to your soul and refresh yourself for the month of July. There are currently ten parts, and the playlist being called “season 1” feels like good news to me, since there seems to be an unspoken promise that there may be a second season of episodes coming. The intention is there, at least. Admittedly, there’s some occasional violence, and the series gets a bit intense in places for various reasons, but overall, this is one of my favourite tiger-based ASMR-style playlists on YouTube.

The idea of writing a series like this, with Shere Khan cast in a more favourable light, reminds me of one of my favourite fanfics of all time, “The Tiger’s Son” by Renee Carter Hall. “The Tiger’s Son” switches Mowgli’s circumstances around: instead of being found by the wolf pack, he’s found by Shere Khan, here reimagined as a tigress. The fanfic does a very good job of showing the conflict between Shere Khan and the wolves of the forest in a different light, and even preserves Kaa’s original characterization instead of taking a cue from Disney and making him an antagonist. Honestly, the anti-snake bias in popular culture is just as bad as the bias against the entire Panthera genus.

I hope that, as June draws to a close, any one of you whose month was less than stellar might be able to find your footing and enter into July in a much better position than you were. I believe in you, you got this.

See you next week.

Angela Moseley

The United States continues to plunge itself back into the 18th and 19th centuries as rights are systematically removed from citizens. The right to privacy and healthcare are vanishing– even as the police are further protected against gross misconduct, and separation between church and state is eroded. This country may be the richest in the world, but it is looking less and less like a first world place with each passing week. With a deluge of bad news, it is okay to take a break every so often to save your mental health (as stress is silent, but sneaky). The world is burning, but at least there’s no shortage of entertainment.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses (2019)
Source: Nintendo
Episodes: 1 video game

I last wrote about Fire Emblem: Three Houses for Quarantine Control #73 in 2021. At that point, I was in a rush to try to finish one route of the game before Shin Megami Tensei V dropped in November. Spoiler: I ended up beating SMT V before Three Houses.

All of my issues with Three Houses haven’t changed from what I wrote about in 2021. But at least I can say that on June 20th, I finally finished the game instead of lamenting about how I wanted to finish the game. What I didn’t know at the time when I made my initial choice of lords in 2019 is that I set myself up on one of the longest story paths in the game. By picking Claude because he was A. the first person of color I’ve ever seen in Fire Emblem in the Lord class, and B. the idea of joining a series of alliances verses empires or kingdoms seemed nice, I set myself up on the Verdant Wind route. This route clocks in at a whopping 22 chapters– the same as Azure Moon (Dimitri’s route), but is also four chapters longer than Crimson Flower (Edelgard’s route).

Again, I’m kicking myself for being too stubborn to really learn about the massive changes to the gameplay that Three Houses has brought to Fire Emblem. I was satisfied with my final units from the Golden Deer House combined with a single recruit from the Blue Lions, and recruits from the Monastery. (Yes, I do wish I had made the time to recruit more characters from other houses.) However, there were a few characters I was unable to take to the Master level because I neglected to work on their skills.

I also didn’t explore the possibility of taking characters outside of their comfort zone to discover what they may have been good at when re-classed. Don’t get me wrong, I did manage to bring a few classes to the Master level. I was satisfied with my Dark Knight, Wyvern Lords, Great Knights, and War Masters– classes I haven’t obtained since Fire Emblem: Awakening and Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones. Still, when I eventually run another route (possibly Azure Moon) I’ll definitely do more experimentation.

Looking back on playing Three Houses off and on for the last three years, I can still say the heavy focus on the school system at the monastery is not something I enjoyed. It’s basically way too much Persona in my Fire Emblem. Yet I’m torn. While I didn’t personally enjoy it all the time, I can see why people have. It’s a great way to break up battles, work on building relationships, and focusing on training up units outside of combat. That said the ratio of one or two story battles per game month, versus three or more weeks spend in school broke up the tactical game action way too much for me. Instead of keeping the battles going, the system just made it way too easy for me to put down the game for long periods of time. If the amount of fighting done in Three Houses were increased or the amount of time spent in school were decreased, I probably would have ended this game sooner.

Another downside to playing off and on for three years is forgetting entire aspects of the game. I played in Classic Mode, so if a character died because of a careless move I made, I saved scummed the fight. Then by accidentally pressing the L button, I remembered Three Houses has a move rewind system, a la Tactics Orge: Let Us Cling Together. Whoops. Everything flowed a lot smoother without needing to save scum because of one bad move. Don’t get me started on hiring battalions or rather not bother with doing so beyond the basics.

I know it seems like I didn’t like Fire Emblem: Three Houses at times, but nothing is further from the truth. Change is hard, but it’s my fault for not wanting to adapt sooner. If you’re already a Fire Emblem fan, I imaged you’ve already played this game and are currently looking to play Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes. If not, Three Houses has great gameplay and a decent story. The school elements may or may not be to your liking though.

Killing Roe has simply been the biggest, but the Supreme Court has been on one for this entire term, just today preventing the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) from using too many of its resources to fight climate change. There’s also whatever the hell this dissent is from Clarence Thomas about COVID vaccines being made from aborted fetuses. It’s nice to have reminders that we’re all screwed. Good luck!

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