Videogames aesthetics are often misleading. There are many examples of beautiful games that have no artistic merit, emotional heft or ludological interest. There are also many examples of ugly games that grip utterly. Of course, the ideal is both simultaneously – and Transistor almost does that.
Frankly, the idea of a female superhero flying solo at the front of a modern movie is becoming a bit of a joke. Despite there being a Wonder Woman film in the pipeline, that this relies on the success of "Batman vs. Superman" (both of whom have had their fair share of reboots) is disheartening. But going into an X-Men film there’s always the hope of both sexes having gripping storylines - a trend we’ve also seen play out in Captain America: The Winter Soldier - so step forward Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique. In a film that’s all about righting past wrongs you can't do much better than casting an Oscar-winner with a multimillion-dollar franchise under her belt right at the centre of your movie.
If the 60s-set X-Men: First Class was Mystique’s coming-of-age, then its sequel Days of Future Past (which sees Bryan Singer return to the helm) is her reckoning, with the chance for a peaceful future resting in her hands. When Mystique is given the chance to undo a destructive decision, thanks to the power of time travel, she is once again forced to wrangle with her beliefs and allegiances.
We meet Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen), who are firm friends in the near future, just as a vast swarm of sentinels approaches their hiding place. They come up with a last ditch attempt to save the world by sending Wolverine's consciousness (Wolverine is played once again by Hugh Jackman, who never seems to age) back to his 70s body, in a Back to the Future / Terminator 2: Judgement Day type mash-up. It's the era of the Nixon administration, with the president playing a key role here and, before you look it up, no Nixon is not played by Steven Van Zandt from the E Street Band (aka Silvio in The Sopranos) in prosthetics - it's actually Mark Camacho.
Of course Wolverine needs some help so he is tasked with assembling some old friends: a younger Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) who is constantly high on junk - well, a serum that allows him to walk but strips him of his telepathic power - and the soon-to-be Magneto, Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender, pictured above right) who has been imprisoned deep below The Pentagon, accused of assassination. And so, we are taken on a prison break mission with the addition of young whippersnapper Quicksilver (Evan Peters from American Horror Story) whose super-speed power is introduced in one of the most inspired and fun moments of the film. It's a comic slow-mo scene that plays out to Jim Croce’s "Time in a Bottle" and works just perfectly.
The fallout from the revolution plays nicely into the 70s setting, with many of the mutants in personal turmoil and suffering from raw wounds. Charles and Erik are at a stale-mate, sparring with one another over the sadness and regret of fallen comrades, which fits in perfectly with the film's Vietnam War backdrop. Fassbender and McAvoy excel at delivering bitter blows and heightened emotions, yet still manage to keep a twinkle in their eye when delivering fan service.
X-Men: Days of Future Past is convoluted and some of it doesn’t make sense but it’s a complete blast from start to finish thanks to a fine cast, good sense of humour and Fassbender spouting James Brown lyrics at random.
It's time to talk about time travel. The fourth dimension, as time is sometimes called, represents fertile ground for videogames designers. After all, the shift from side-scrolling two-dimensions (move left, right, jump up, fall down) to three was a huge leap.
The core of a great videogame can sometimes be very simple indeed. The Trials series is based around the idea of leaning back and forward while accelerating and braking on a motorbike. Such simple controls, in this series, are turned into the ability to jump, push, roll and otherwise manoeuvre your lump of engined metal over a series of seemingly impossible obstacles – very much like "trials" riders do in real life.
A quick scan of the credits gives grounds for optimism about Transcendence, with Johnny Depp leading a copper-bottomed supporting cast which includes Rebecca Hall, Morgan Freeman, Paul Bettany and Cillian Murphy. Director Wally Pfister may be a first-timer, but since he's been Christopher Nolan's cinematographer since 1999's Memento and won an Oscar for his work on Inception, you might give him the benefit of the doubt.
“I don’t do the costumes,” says an intense bloke called Adrian. “That’s for people without a life. I’ve no interest in that.” Further down the corridor, or the Upper Deck as they’re calling it for one weekend only, there’s Kevin, who presumably has no life. Kevin is wearing a maroon zip-up blouson with black shoulders, retailing at £35. “Last year I wore normal clothes and I felt out of place,” he says. “I’ve been a fan for years but I’ve never had the courage to actually come to one. We’re stigmatised. We’re geeks, aren’t we?”
Goddamn The Hunger Games movies for reminding us (after the travesty that was the Twilight saga) that films based on YA fiction could be thought-provoking and thrilling, for they've only gone and hoiked our expectations up too high. Those expectations have recently been dashed by the likes of Ender's Game, The Mortal Instruments and Beautiful Creatures.
The first outing of the re-tooled Captain America in 2011's The First Avenger was a bit of a hoot, thanks to its carefully-wrought 1940s setting and Stanley Tucci and Hugo Weaving portraying contrasting varieties of Teutonic craziness. Bringing the Cap into the present day after a 70-year slumber poses a few different problems, since he is quite literally a man out of time. It's really not that easy to take seriously a bloke who goes everywhere with a large tin shield clamped on his back, while everybody else has upgraded to hover-jets and laser-guided weapons.
In the animated cutscene that begins Out There, the game lays out its basic premise. You are an astronaut frozen in cryonic sleep and then sent wildly off course by some mysterious event. You awake in an unfamiliar solar system with limited supplies of fuel and oxygen, a newly-acquired interstellar drive and a vague plan to reach a distant star.
As pedigrees go, beat this - Believe [***] is the brainchild of Alfonso Cuarón, director of the Oscar-plundering Gravity, and JJ Abrams, mastermind of Lost, Fringe and the made-over Star Trek. This debut episode didn't live up to expectations, but it would be rash to write it off too soon.