Archive for the ‘Games’ Category
A baker’s dozen short
On “The Hobbit,” dwarves and why Peter Jackson is right to deviate from Tolkien’s classic
As a fan of literature, I rarely root for a film adaptation to make wholesale changes to a beloved book. And yet strangely, for among my most-beloved books, those of J.R.R. Tolkien, I’m in the position cheering for major changes to plot, theme and tone in the upcoming adaptations of “The Hobbit.”
I was a huge fan of Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” both books and movies. Peter Jackson’s movies took a lot of liberties with the books, generally focusing more on action than the often meandering travelogue of Tolkien’s prose, and cutting out sequences both extraneous (Tom Bombadil) and cool but probably unworkable (the Scourging of the Shire). Characters were tweaked and plots rearranged, with battle sequences extended far beyond Tolkien’s brief descriptions and characters given extra adventures and conflict.
While some purists complained, I largely didn’t mind. For the better part of four years I obsessed over the films, tracking news as they were shot and produced and then watching them multiple times, in theaters and on DVD, after release.
But anyone who thought Peter Jackson’s adaptation of “The Lord of the Rings” played fast and loose with the original had better hurry up and hook up a dynamo in Wolvercote Cemetery, because Professor Tolkien is about to be spinning madly in his grave.
Monday night miscellany, part 3
Short thoughts (EDIT: after finishing, I can say my expectation of brevity was clearly unfounded) on interesting things:
— Many people, when I tell them where I went to college while making small talk, immediately ask the same follow-up: “Oh, and you majored in journalism at Grinnell?” Well, no, actually, I didn’t. Grinnell, as it happens, doesn’t offer a journalism program. It doesn’t even offer any classes in journalism. My education in being reporter came from throwing myself headlong into the student newspaper (one year as a writer, three as an editor) and then taking internships in the summer. Did my lack of a journalism degree impede my search for a job out of college? Perhaps a few hiring editors shuffled my resume into the “no” pile using “journalism degree?” as a filter, but enough didn’t that I got a second look. My clips and an interview made it clear that I knew what I was doing, or as much as a typical recent graduate does, and I got a job.
Moreover, when I speculate about the sometimes-dismal state of our industry, I’m never terribly worried. Even were I to end up unable to find a reporting job, I’m sure I could find a job someplace. I majored in political science, but the real skills I came away from Grinnell with were thinking and writing quickly and clearly. Those skills can take you a long way in a wide variety of fields.
I indulge in this tangent by way of introduction to an interesting article from Josh Barro in the National Review. Responding to a writer making a defense of classics majors who writes, “students of Arts and Letters do get hired, and they do go on to better jobs as they gain experience,” Barro agrees — to a point:
This is reasonable advice for students at certain colleges–highly selective ones–but is bad advice for the general public. Only if you’re at a top 10 or 20 school do you have the luxury of picking a major that does (not) give you job-specific skills and still being confident that you will find a good job after graduation.
Standing athwart history yelling “hard to port!”
The 16th Century wasn’t a good one for the Scots. It had started so well — the Scots had finally triumphed once and for all over the hated Englishmen, parading through the streets of London as conquering heroes. And then Martin Luther nailed his theses to the church door, and everything went to heck.
That is not, of course, the real course of events in Renaissance Britain, though if there ever were a time for Scotland to strike, the Wars of the Roses might have been the moment. (And they did, in fact, meddle in the Wars of the Roses, but to no avail.) But it’s Scottish history I decided to alter the past few days in the “grand strategy” game Europa Universalis (III, to be precise).
I’ve long been a fan of the Civilization series of games, where you take control of a civilization and, through war, economics, science and diplomacy lead them to glory. Europa Universalis is a similar concept, with a few key differences: unlike Civ games, where you usually play out on a randomly generated map, EUIII always takes place on the same world — ours, between 1399 and 1820. Whatever date you pick, the world is a close mirror of the actual situation at that time. But from then on you’re in control.
