The Prestige, directed by the incredibly talented Christopher Nolan who also wrote the scripts for and directed Memento, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. As a film, it's fundamentally unique in two ways:
1. Not only does it have amazing first viewing value with the incredible sense of mystery, suspense, and revelation throughout, but also incredible rewatchability with the manner in which we see everything connect together and start seeing all the different clues hinting to what we eventually find out.
2. Not only is it an incredibly unique, complex, artistically brilliant and meaningful film, but unlike others like that out there, it isn't that way at the expense of a fast moving, entertaining plot.
Essentially, it's the perfect movie and by far the greatest ever made.
The Dan Brown books, the Robert Langdon series in particular, have all been incredible and kind of come close. Films, nothing but The Prestige even approaches them. For one, character and plot development is usually far superior in the more notable JRPGs out there, and its largely due to how longer they actually are and how much more time there is to explore the characters and the setting (and of course largely due to the talented writing staff behind these games). Secondly, these Japanese developers tend to be far more capable at using music to set the atmosphere and feeling of a particular scene than any movie maker out there and generally manage to do so masterfully throughout.
I understand that the majority of people out there are going to find it hard to accept that a game is going to be able to tell a better story than a format designed for it but the fact of the matter is in almost every case they (JRPGs) do.
I've done watching The Prestige. Definitely a cut above the average mental diarrhea that Hollywood throws at us. All the twists and turns were interesting if a bit contrived and confusing at times. Not bad all for all, but not quite the greatest movie ever.
Now it's time to continue my list:
Starcraft
Mass Effect(nothing too spectacular, but started a story that has a lot of promise)
Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne
Braid
LoK
MM6: The Mandate of Heaven
Silent Hill 1
Now if anyone wants to shake their head at this list and point out some dog shit JRPG that you totally think is better, then don't – you probably don't know anything.
It's all subjective anyway.
__________________ And from the ashes he rose, like a black cloud. The Sin of one became the Sin of many.
Any of the games I listed has a better story than all of the JRPGs combined. If you think otherwise, you can always exercise your God-given right to bite me.
Yeah, SH was made by the Japanese and had an awesome story, too bad it wasn't a JRPG. And thank the Lawd, I wouldn't want androgynous teens with hairdos that can impale you running around in my Silent Hill.
Maybe later, if I'm feeling generous, I'll introduce you deprived sods to what is very likely the best video game ever made.
__________________ And from the ashes he rose, like a black cloud. The Sin of one became the Sin of many.
KMC Community Forums
Aug 8th, 2009 07:15 PM
