Quarantine Control #138: Once Upon a Time? In Evermore? Nope

DC Staff | November 25, 2022 | Features, Movies, Television, Videogames | No Comments

Thanksgiving has officially passed in the United States, a time to, uh, eat turkey or ham (or both) and talk with the family. (The real meaning of Thanksgiving is not as acknowledged as it should be on this day.) It was a good time to forget about the issues bothering you, be they widespread ones like COVID-19 and the rising tide of fascism (with a little helping of two recent mass shootings in the US) or smaller and more personal ones, assuming you’re in the position to do so. It’s a rough time, as it always is; cherish any kind of break.

Geoffrey Barnes

Nope (2022)
Source: Peacock
Episodes: 1 movie

Outside hoping for an entertaining movie, what I was looking forward to most with Nope was the ideally-profound message it would convey. Jordan Peele has thus far excelled at directing movies with meanings behind the harrowing disasters the characters venture through, particularly pertaining to racial relations. I have — apologies in advance — yet to sit down and watch Get Out, but the movie has been available long enough that it’s far too easy to stumble upon what its true meaning is. I have, however, seen Us, a movie with a solid message behind it even if it was a bit jumbled by the end, which came alongside an entertaining horror movie that wasn’t hesitant to poke fun at itself. Nope has quite a bit what I was hoping for, but not entirely that.

Nope is another horror film from Peele, but this movie combines that with a sci-fi feel. It starts with a father and son team of ranchers, Otis Haywood Sr. (Keith David) and OJ Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya), who encounter a mysterious figure in the sky while on their ranch in California. It’s not a bonding story thanks to falling objects from the UFO killing Haywood Sr. at the film’s start, leaving OJ to maintain the ranch. OJ’s itinerary is to sell the horses to local theme park Jupiter’s Claim to keep the ranch afloat, a parked owned by former child actor and all-around character Ricky Park (Steven Yeun). It’s not until the mysterious flying figures return and cause the electricity to flicker that OJ and sister Emerald “Em” Haywood (Keke Palmer) realize that their visitors could be otherworldly.

I’ve seen Daniel Kaluuya in several roles now, enough to know that he can handle serious and comedic parts well. Nope in particular marks a reunion for Kaluuya and Peele, both of whom previously worked together for Get Out. But his part as OJ is the most subdued I’ve seen him yet. The man is suffering internally thanks to the sudden loss of his father, but it’s a remarkably calm sadness on display during several of the film’s moments. Kaluuya also does a great job playing an American with an accent that identifies him as someone who grew up on a ranch, considering he’s British. It’s Keke Palmer, however, who seriously shines here as Em. She’s always been a solid actress, but has rarely been given the opportunity to fully express herself until a number of roles throughout this year, a trend that I hope continues for her into 2023. The acting is very good throughout.

Nope takes place over a more limited set of locations compared to Us, with everything happening out in the ranch and desert areas of California, the kind of environment that could easily make anyone think this takes place down south until they hear the accents. But it helps when the locations themselves look great thanks to top-tier cinematography. On the same note with the presentation: This is yet another film in which Peele’s superlative taste in music is on display throughout the film.

The shimmering presentation helps with a movie notably slower-paced than Peele’s previous efforts, a bit longer than it needed to be for the payoff. My biggest disappointment with Nope is how the message it seeks to convey is more convoluted than Peele’s previous works, which thus makes the film not as memorable. Don’t take this as me saying I wasn’t entertained with the result; the story was nonetheless solid, and I’d be here all day if I talked any further about how great the acting is. But I’d rank it below Us as a result. Not all of Peele’s movies need to have a message, but this could have had a more fascinating one.

I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t entertained the entire time. Even if it’s not Peele’s best work, his trademark touch still shines through, and points to it for being an original concept. I hope studios, Universal Pictures chief among them, continue to give him robust work. Similar to how Kaluuya was a returning actor from a previous film, I hope that Keke Palmer gets another part in a future Peele film, especially if she’s not playing precisely the same type of character.

Angela Moseley

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you who celebrate it. For everyone else, it’s just Thursday. I wish you a happy Thursday.

Secret of Evermore (1995)
Source: Squaresoft USA
Episodes: 1 video game

I’ve already made it official that I plan to stream more of Secret of Evermore tonight. I also wanted to contribute something to Quarantine Control, so you get to read about me gush about SoE. The background surrounding this game’s development can be read here.

Secret of Evermore is a game I was introduced to as a teenager in either 1999 or 2000. I had had recently gotten into Pokémon thanks to the craze that had kicked off a few years earlier. While I was enjoying the handheld RPG (Pokémon Blue for the curious), a friend of mine suggested trying a “real RPG.” To be fair, we were edgy teenagers at the time and Pokémon is a real RPG. So I ended up borrowing SoE off of him. This was a formative time in my life when I was slowly moving away from platformers and beat ’em ups, and into turn-based RPGs. This title was a mix of both (I didn’t know the term “action RPG” at the time) and I was curious.

Immediately I enjoyed the humor of the game. It poked fun at small town tropes, sci-fi movies, and B-movie nerds. It was probably also a good thing I hadn’t been introduced to Secret of Mana yet, so the ring combat system was all new to me. I made steady progress in the game, playing after school, and before work. The game was challenging, and I quickly became equated with GameFaqs. With help from the guides, I was able to complete the game and returned it to my friend.

I eventually went on to play Secret of Mana (and a few other games in the series), but they didn’t take away from my enjoyment of Evermore.

About a year ago, I felt the itch of wanting to own SoE especially after obtaining an Analogue Super NT. I found a copy at Lukie Games for about $80. I played for a while and even recorded some video for YouTube. Earlier this year while playing Final Fantasy VIII the bug to play SoE bit me hard. This was combined with listening to Retronauts and watching a YouTube video retrospective. Said retrospectives were down on the game, so I felt like a new playthough would be beneficial. Would the game still hold up for me after more than 20 years?

So far the answer has been a resounding “yes.” I’ve been enjoying my time in Evermore, even with occasional moments of frustration. The story is simple, but endearing. The main character has no personality beyond being a plucky B-movie buff, and that’s okay. This game isn’t invested in strong character development. The gameplay itself is solid and is the main draw of SoE. My only gripes are the weapons and magic (alchemy) leveling systems. Alchemy is a bit of a mixed bag, as only eight spells at a time can be used, and they have to be leveled up. Not only that, but ingredients have to be kept on hand to actually cast the spells– thankfully the raw materials aren’t terribly expensive. Fortunately, there is no MP in this game, as that would have been way too many restrictions.

Not having a party, aside from the dog isn’t much of a detriment. Sometimes fewer characters can go a long way, doubly so given how overpowered the dog feels. The segments of the game where characters separate and must be switched back and forth works. Not that glitches don’t happen on occasion. I remember parts of Gothica (and the switching mechanic) being an absolute pain as a teenager, so I wonder how I’ll feel as an adult. Since I’m livestreaming this game, I’m sure those watching on Twitch will be entertained.

I still have yet to finish the game, but it isn’t as painful or difficult as I feared it would be. In fact, replaying it has been refreshing. I’m reminded of why I enjoy visiting games created in the mid-90s.

Joseph Daniels

I’m glad tigers don’t smoke any more. These days, a tiger’s money goes to video games and streaming services, although I’m leaning towards not buying any new games for Black Friday. I have more than enough to play through, none of which I’m playing anyway due to trying to keep up with dailies in Final Fantasy XIV amidst real life issues.

The Book of Once Upon A Time (2015)
Source: Disney+
Episodes:
Tigers?: Rajah, Tigger, Shere Khan, more supporting tigers

Yeah, I’m definitely not planning on trying to watch all of Once Upon A Time in a short period of time, that way lies madness. Instead, there’s a series of shorts with a similar sounding name I’d like to briefly talk about this week.

I remember growing up with a channel called Family, here in Canada. It was literally just called The Family Channel. I don’t know why they didn’t just call it The Disney Channel since they were pretty much mainly showing Disney stuff on it, including many of the Mickey and Donald and Goofy cartoons from mom’s childhood. There was a Disney Channel in the United States, but I assume there was a reason we couldn’t have the name here in Canada. It could’ve been similar to the reason we weren’t allowed to call a channel “MTV” so we had MuchMusic instead. There were no commercials, so whenever they needed to fill time, they showed promotional material for other shows on the channel, or upcoming movies, and if they had a lot of time to kill on their schedule after the end of a movie or a particularly short episode of something, they’d bring out one of the cartoons. Whenever they didn’t want to air a cartoon, they aired one of the music videos created for a show called DTV, but for the most part, Disney at the time didn’t produce any original short form entertainment for those five or so minute breaks they would always have on their schedule due to their lack of commercials.

In Australia, Disney Junior produced four seasons of shorts that remind me a little of the book segments of Reading Rainbow, except with their hosts getting a bit more physically involved in the books, to varied results. At least Kate Mulvany was bearable. Season three had “The Umbilical Brothers” and their humour was as bad as their name. Season four had various children enter the Story Room, which itself was a character on the show now. The books read on the show were real books, but they didn’t really go digging deep in their vaults for material. Most of the books pertained to current franchises like The Lion King, Frozen, and so on. None of the episodes featured any books I had from my childhood, but they still used plenty of top tier material, so I never got the sense that they were ever scraping the bottom of the barrel.

These shorts aired as filler material like how DTV was cut up to air as filler material on Family Channel, up until Disney Junior was shut down in New Zealand and Australia and replaced with Disney+. Of course, all three of Disney’s most popular tigers were shown at some point during the course of the series, and Tigger showed up most often. Now that Disney+ is available everywhere, these shorts are uploaded for the world to see. They’re not great, but they’re a good example of Disney’s commitment to making sure their content is available for the world to see… eventually. I still had to wait a year every time new episodes of DuckTales aired, and I pirated The Legend of the Three Caballeros back when it didn’t look like the show was ever going to make it onto Disney+ (it eventually did, and I wish they’d made more than one season of it), but at this point in time, the service is uploading new content aired from television at a much faster rate. The new Simpsons Halloween special with the anime-style Death Note story is already up on the service, which is a lot better than having to wait a full year to rewatch it.

Here in Canada, they’ve been licensing stuff from Hulu like Welcome to Chippendales and Paramount+ like the new season of Criminal Minds, but not every show is afforded this luxury. Canadian fans of shows like 9-1-1 are still out of luck if they haven’t been able to catch it on TV and don’t have a digital recording device; they’ll have to wait until the entire season has aired in order to catch up, just like how Canadians used to have to wait when everything was on Netflix. Sometimes the season would only be uploaded a day or two before the new season premiere, so unless a Canadian viewer wanted to dedicate themselves to catching up so that they would be ready for the new season, they’d be perpetually one season behind on everything. Never mind how impossible it would be if they were behind on more than one show. No amount of binging will catch them up then.

Anyway. I think I meandered a bit, but then that’s par for the course for this series of five to seven minute shorts, especially in season three. I suppose these would be entertaining for children, but I think they’ll have a much better time if you just buy the books for them.

Thanksgiving is also a time for some of you to spend quality time with your families, hearing about what conspiracy theories they consumed from Facebook over the last year. Heartfelt apologies if you fit in that camp. At least try to enjoy the good food as compensation, assuming you’re getting that.

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