Like Adam, I'm going to squeeze in some more posts before Our Lord and Master Ta-Nehisi returns to his kingdom.
Has anyone else noticed that if there's an emphasis on blood-n-guts action, lots of 'splosions or some other supposedly déclassé element in a movie, some film critic somewhere will be using the phrase "video game" as a pejorative adjective? It's been a trend that's been on the rise as video-game imagery and source material starts to permeate other like movies, TV and books. Some of the suppositions that these critics are operating from are true, though. Lots of big-budget video games are designed to deliver an arc of brutal empowerment. Whether it's powers , weapons or martial arts moves, you start off with a skill set that grows more prodigious over time and the ability to handle more and bigger enemies comes with an increasing level of spectacle. Whether or not the spectacle is empty depends on how other aspects of the game are executed. One game that managed to subvert the "bigger and more bad-ass model" and mold something deeper was the Playstation 2 game Shadow of the Colossus.
The game's the work of Fumito Ueda, an artist/designer who led the team responsible for another Playstation 2 classic called Ico. Like that game, Colossus takes place in something of a haunted storybook setting. You start off playing as a young man who solemnly carries a dead young lady into a temple. In this temple, a disembodied voice says that the girl may be brought back to life if our hero kills the 16 colossi dispersed throughout the desolate landscape. Beautifully designed and animated, the Colossi could be the lovechildren of Ray Harryhausen and Maurice Sendak. These creatures stand as tall as skyscrapers and some fly or burrow through the ground with frightening power. They're quite scary, and with good reason.