Predator(s)

No filmmaker has gotten the “more than one Predator” scenario right yet, mostly because it’s just not fair to pit more than one of these fucking things against a group of humans. If it’s not fair, it’s typically not interesting to watch. “You mean he was able to kill the entire Boy Scout Troop with his bare hands? I’m shocked.”And despite Adrian Brody being a serviceable black-ops bad-ass, Ahnold he ain’t.

The first Predator movie is over 20 years old. I look at that sentence quizzically, trying to believe that it could possibly be true. It’s like this weird milestone that kept me firmly rooted in adolescence, preventing me from getting lost in this bizarre (alien, even) act of “growing up.”

I don’t know if it’s the way we watch movies now, or if they really were just structured differently back then, but my cohort and I have begun noticing that movies like “Predators” are essentially pre-played video games.

A MEDIC has joined your party. DECKER thinks you should go EAST. The BOARS take 40 damage before dying. >> INSPECT BOAR TRACKS. The BOAR TRACKS seem to go deeper into the jungle…

This shouldn’t come as a galloping shock to anyone; the current crop of people responsible for the movies grew up playing games. Also, gaming is a story-telling medium. Sometimes there isn’t much of a story to speak of, and other times it is the entire reason for the purchase. I’m astonished that there are still people for whom this argument is unmoving; they cannot believe that video games will ever progress beyond mental masturbation, except where they are actively destroying our children.

Happily, I do not run into these people very often.

Connecticon was last week, and Paul and I didn’t get to go. We missed what looked like a hell of time with the folks that we met last year, and if it is within my power to get us there next year, then dammit that’s where we’ll be.

I know there are better conventions and means of getting the word out about our strange little three-times-a-week contribution to webcomics. I just haven’t investigated them to a satisfactory degree.

I know of at least one way we’re different; right now, if you do a search for “webcomics” in the iPad App store, we are one of 5 results. The only other actual webcomic app in there is XKCD. The other three are “reader apps,” a weird kind of enterprise that can somehow make money off other people’s work without doing any actual work of your own.