Entry 050: "The Island of Dr. Moreau"

Dear Internet,

                I have come across H.G. Wells' work before.  From the countless remakes and homages to the numerous works he created, it would be hard not to be completely naive to his works.  Neglecting to read the original works, of course, can last for some people years and years.  There is a certain unique manner that people would prefer to view spin off works ad nauseum rather than return to the source material which will continue until people begin to be fed up with derivative works, but I digress.  I had listened to "The Time Machine" as an audio book a few years ago as a way of making my 40 minute commute a little more enjoyable.  In effect it did, mostly due to how Wells is able to tell a story and engage the reader.  Both stories are told in a first person perspective by a character recalling their journey.  Wells is able to instill fear for the safety of the narrator despite the reader knowing that they survive their trips because they have lived to tell about it.  I think I might be moving too quick, so let me tell you a bit about the plot.

                A vassal carrying Edward Prendrick sinks out in the Pacific Ocean which caused him to retreat to a lifeboat for safety.  Ten days later being the last man alive of his dinghy, he is rescued by Montgomery.  Edward is taken onto a ship filled with various animals set for the titular island, which is technically incorrect since the island never receives a name.  When the ship reaches its destination, Edward is abandoned by the ship's captain to a dinghy sitting off the coast.  Dr. Moreau and Montgomery, his assistant, take Edward in reluctantly.  There, Edward learns about the experiments that Moreau performs on the various creatures that he has shipped in to his island.  Afterwards, the reader finds out about how deep and terrible the experiments that Moreau performs are.

                Anything beyond that would be a betrayal of keeping the big reveal kept tight under wraps, but since the book's back page summary gives it away, I guess I can say it.  The big reveal is that Moreau is performing vivisections n the animals in effort to make them humanoids or as close to people as close to people as he can.  The only reluctance that makes me say this is the fact that the book tries to make an emphasis on Edward thinking that Moreau is turning people into the creatures he finds.  Knowing that Moreau is making Beast Folk from even before the story starts ruins the introduction of a few characters.  If I have spoiled the story for you, Internet, you can count yourself fortunate that it was only a 104 page book I ruined, which can be read in one sitting.  I remember when the final plot points were ruined for me when I read "A Tale of Two Cities" in the first two sentences of the introduction.  This is the very reason that I refuse to read introductions for books until after I finish them.

                All of that spoilering is fine and dandy, but I am supposed to be talking about "The Island of Dr. Moreau," right?  The story is plenty interesting if at least a bit far stretched.  The book tries to say that the doctor is making these abominations through vivisections.  The extents of these creatures' abilities include low level pondering and basic speech.  They walk upright and can even handle a hatchet.  The problem of course is saying that vivisection can alter these creatures in such a way to obtain these results.  Moreau is even explained to create his creatures by combining the animals together.  A modern individual, and most likely a person of the time of the writing of the novel, can see through this in an instant.  The notion of alternating the physical and mental makeup of creatures through such a crass procedure is preposterous.  There are dozens of things that would prevent such medical anomalies.  Foremost would be tissue acceptance and genetic compatibilities.  Then there are blood types, not to mention that Moreau has to do his experiments confined to an island with limited resources.  Every story, especially in the case of science-fiction, is allowed one "go with it" element.  It is an exception to logic that the rest of the story hinges on to make it interesting.  "Star Wars" has the force.  "The Time Machine" has the machine.  The plausibility of Moreau's experiments pushes its luck, but if you can get past it, you can find an intriguing story that wants to delve into the nature of man.

                Moreau wants to play God.  There is no way around this.  He makes creatures for his own enjoyment while hiding behind the mask of scientific progress.  If he is trying to create Beast Folk for a reason, the only thing that can be his final end is to try and redeem himself in the eyes of his peers back in England.  Otherwise he is a monomaniac.  Strike that, he is a monomaniac no matter his reason.  The only thing that can point him as otherwise is that he does admit to creating non-humanoid monsters, but that only means instead of having one mania he has more.  He even goes as far as to bend the creatures to his own will by placing upon them a Law, which becomes a mantra for the animals throughout the story.  The Law includes rules against killing, how to walk, and how to eat among other things.  The problem with the Law is that it all revolves around Moreau being their god and maker.  Once his omnipotence is shown to be faulty, the whole thing caves in upon itself for those still remaining.  The creatures understand the Law as a set of rules.  What they are incapable of understanding is the reasoning behind the rules.  If they could understand it, they would realize that the Law is not for their betterment but to keep them in line.  Moreau doe not only want to be the creator of this new and twisted life but also their ruler.

                Edward falls into the trappings of the Law but for different reasons.  He professes the correctness of the Law but only because he wishes to maintain the balance.  If he did not say that the Law is right, he would have been fodder for the homunculus.  He tells the creatures that the Law is still true despite that Moreau dies at one point.  The way that he tells the creatures that Moreau is still a god comes across as especially skin crawling, probably since he does not believe a word of it.  In a way, Edward takes on the sins of Moreau by proclaiming that the Law and its punishments are still in effect despite the truth of the matter.  Whenever he talks to the beasts, it is almost as if he is a completely different person from the one that has been narrating the story and telling the reader about his thoughts on the subject.  

                All of this has to boil down to something, right?  You can take the obvious thing away from it and say that "The Island of Dr. Moreau" is a criticism of organized religion, specifically Christianity.  That is probably why Wells refers to this book as "an exercise in youthful blasphemy."  Moreau makes himself a god that creates for his own desires and ego.  He is eventually killed by his own creations, a reference to the death of Jesus.  Edward is forced to keep up the pretend Law or religion for his own ends, but he is more a bystander than anything else.  If you look at the book in this light, which is easy to do once Edward starts prophesying to the Beast Folk after Moreau's death, it all becomes very shallow.  The argument has been made long ago and has been found wanting.  The biggest hole here is that Moreau is about the farthest thing away from God.  He is a madman.  While the book does a great job in trying to portray the story of Icarus through the dangers of a modern scientific world, it is best when it stays away from the sun.  

                "The Island of Dr Moreau" is a good novel, albeit a bit short.  The book has a way of being light upon the descriptions of the Beast Folk, which I thought would have been a great focus for the horror of the novel.  It almost completely glosses over the laboratory, short of one or two lines when Edward stumbles in on it.  Looking up vivisection turned my stomach more than the novel was able to.  But that is more or less because the terror of the novel does not revolve around the physical nature.  It is a cautionary tale of how the endeavors of men can disregard the ethics of their actions.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

P.S. Tomorrow is "Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki."

Entry 049: "Brutal Legend" Pt.2 End

Dear Internet,

                "Brutal Legend" is over as far as I am concerned.  I have completed the main story and the game was unable to make me want to play it any longer than that.  There is still multiplayer mode that I have not played, which allows players to play one another in the tower defense mode.  On top of that there are sidequests that reward the player with points for upgrades, statues to raise, tablets to find which unlock music, and various other things that are hidden away.  None of these are essential or needed.  I was able to get through the whole story without any upgrades except for a few that I purchased for the ax and guitar.  There are six guitar solo moves hidden throughout the land that are special moves that aid in battle.  I found and needed one.  I played about for side quests out of the 30 or so and saw that they were mostly repeats with only location or enemy changes, so I chose not to do them.  

                There is a lot to do in "Brutal Legend," I will admit, but none of them are needed to get through the main quest.  Worse than that, the game was unable to make me want to play though them.  This is coming from a guy that is trying to get 100% in "Lego City: Undercover," a game with well over 300 collectable unlockables.   To a certain extent this might be due to the fact that I am playing "Lego City" for my own enjoyment with no entry being required for it while "Brutal Legend" is preventing me from continuing through the backlog.  However there is a glaring problem.  The various things that "Brutal Legend" has ready for the player to collect are not needed one bit.  Maybe playing on the highest difficulty would make the player search out these various goodies to help aid them, but even on mid-difficulty I breezed through the majority of the game.  The only time I had to repeat the same battle over and over again was with the second to last fight, and that was more because the game decided to throw a new enemy type into my arsenal and one in the enemy's and asked me to quickly understand the mechanic of the new type mid-battle.  The game forgot a simple lesson in game design: you do not teach in the middle of a test.  The other times when I failed a mission was when I got thrown into a new situation with little to no explanation, but I got over those much quicker once I got the mechanic down, so that is more par for the course.

                Last I wrote to you, I spoke very highly of the various elements that the game while touching upon a few less than stellar points.  I said there were some things that I wanted to wait to say, and now I can say the.  For one thing, that open world that is supposed to be filled with various things to collect feels really empty.  To a certain extent it is like looking for a needle in a haystack.  The world is huge, but rather pointlessly so.  Since the player has access to a car at any one time, traversing it can be quick, albeit annoying since there is no minimap and navigating to a waypoint by means of turn signals feels a bit broken.  There is no point in walking anywhere since you cannot jump which can leave you stuck in a hole until you summon your car three seconds later.  The only way I can detail as to why the world feels pointlessly big is comparing it to "Lego City."  In "Lego City" not only is there a huge world, but there is a sense of exploration.  There are hidden nooks and crannies everywhere that are waiting to reward the player when they find them.  The game encourages the player to get out of the vehicle to find the items scattered everywhere.  "Brutal Legend" does the complete opposite.  It highlights all the sidequests and has little to no walking exploration.  Having enemies scattered everywhere makes speed bumps that push the player away from getting out of their car to look around.  There is no stress in finding the various collectables.  At least in "Lego City" it admits that collectables are completely cosmetic, but creates a sense of excitement in the player by making the player wonder what exactly they are going to receive.

                Tim Shafer games are herald as the epitome of wit and comedy.  I played "Psychonauts," which was the game that Shafer and his studio designed right before this game.  It was funny, but never in a way that made me laugh out loud consistently.  It made me smirk constantly more than laugh uncontrollably.  That more likely has something to do with the fact that a video game can make the same joke as a movie, but requires the player to regain their concentration quicker than a movie lest the player lose the game.  The player needs to make the joke less funny or they risk having to repeat the level by losing their concentration.  I digress because "Brutal Legend" has to follow this--somewhat overblown in my opinion--legacy of Shafer being the epitome of comedy.  There is some really witty writing at the beginning of the game.  The whole segment of Eddie rescuing the headbangers from a mine got me laughing.  After about the three hour mark, there was next to nothing for the remaining of the game.  A few jokes were scattered here and there, but they definitely dropped in both quality and frequency.  The game turns dramatic and serious very quickly despite it being rather ludicrous and filled with holes.  By the end, there are a few switcheroos pulled that could not make me care at all.  They are pushed in there at the last minute to try and add some sort of backstory, yet the story as a whole lacks telling the player about those key aspects before shaking them up, so none of it really matters.  You cannot pull the rug from under a person if they were not standing there in the first place.  Apparently, there are a few ways to learn about the world from either talking to the various characters or finding those collectables I mentioned.  If the game expected me to pick up on excess information scattered outside of the main story when it was actually central information, then the game pulled a silly trick.  You do not put central information anywhere but at the center of the game.  I am still trying to figure out how Eddie knew what the Black Tears was or when it was explicitly told to the player what they were.  

                Another thing about that giant open world that I am not going to slice into the above paragraph since I am getting lazy, the car handles terribly.  I was constantly sliding around like a sugar-hyped four year old in a bouncy castle.  It reminded me sometimes of the rover in "Mass Effect."  At least that game had an excuse as to why the vehicle behaved like it was rolling around on the moon.  In "Brutal Legend," the vehicle has next to no weight to it except when it goes crashing into an enemy.  I found myself crashing into walls constantly and being forced to slowly slog away because the crash would cause the vehicle to point at an awkward angle half way up a rock.  The driving was never satisfying or all that fun.  It was just a means to get to the next mission, and something to be put up with.  There were sidequest that were races, but I completely avoided them because of how I did not like driving that car.

                Overall, "Brutal Legend" finishes as being mediocre and uninspiring.  The novelty of having a game's artistic aesthetic based around different types of rock is unique, but it quickly grows old when the game plays all its cards so quickly.  The whole premise of a real time strategy game where the player takes on the role of one of the soldiers never quite works.  The biggest problem I had with the game was not the controls as others have said, but the fact that the viewpoint from Eddie constantly restricted my perception of the playing field, hindering my understanding of how I should go about each match.  The game's biggest draw might be the huge soundtrack, but since a number of them are not available until the player finds them or progresses in the story, it limits what the player can listen to awkwardly.  Unlike the Tony Hawk games that I mentioned earlier which handled a soundtrack management perfectly by letting the player choose exactly which songs would cycle throughout, "Brutal Legend" often teases the player by never finishing a favorite song.  I have yet to hear "Through the Fire and Flames" completely because it only plays when I drive the car, and I get anywhere I need to go in under two minutes.  "Brutal Legend" is not legendary in the scope of the story, which comes across like a teenage angst drama, or gameplay, which is not all that brutal either.  

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

P.S. Tomorrow is "The Island of Dr. Moreau" by H. G. Wells.

Entry 048: "Brutal Legend" Pt.1

..well not really.

Dear Internet,

                "Brutal Legend" is pretty brutal, or in the very least it is when trying to connect it to a video capture card due to PS3 issues.  I was able to play some of it on the stream earlier, but after being forced to reboot my computer, it will now no longer even go through to my computer so I can take screenshots for illustrative use.  I believe this is only a problem when it comes to PS3 games due to some protection issues, but if Sony believes that people should not even route their visuals through a computer no matter what, what can I do but comply?  I can do either that or find some sort of Chinese backwards engineered device that strips the signal apart.  Who knows?  In the mean time, both you and I will have to make use of the few screenshots I made in the first session and just utilize our imagination for the rest of the time.

                "Brutal Legend" of Tim Shafer fame, follows the roadie Eddie Riggs, voiced by Jack Black, as he is thrown into a metal rock inspired world after he is crushed by a giant stage prop at a concert.  Mountains of horned skulls adorn the landscape while giant guitars are plunged neck deep in the plains between.  The world that Double Fine made is rich in the art and style that adorns rock covers of a foregone era.  I dare not even try to attempt to categorize the various levels of musical genre and sub-cultures that this game includes.  Trying to distinguish and separate from such genres as Classical Heavy Metal and Folk Metal is better left to someone who has spent years listening to such songs and can detect the subtle nuance.  Billy Joel summed it up enough for me saying "It's still rock and roll to me."

Our lovable yet eccentric protagonist.

                The songs that the game does select are not all obscure ones selected to create a pure underground atmosphere.  There are a few that even I recognize.  I think one or two are shared with the old "Tony Hawk Pro Skater" games, but I cannot be sure about that.  There are similarities between the two games track listings and how they handle the music.  Both create a unique vibe by creating a playlist of licensed music that is perfectly enjoyable by itself.  I had heard that the soundtrack was well selected and created, and I was worried that I might not enjoy Brutal Legend and would be making a quip like "The game's soundtrack lasts longer than the enjoyment from playing the game," but thankfully that is not the case.  A side bit about the audio: I noticed sometimes that the character lines would completely fail to play during some cinematics.  If I was not playing with the subtitles on, I would have missed a few crucial lines of dialog. 

                The gameplay, so far, is somewhat enjoyable, if not a bit clunky and cumbersome.  When the game got released it was sadly toted as being an action/adventure game.  While it does have many elements of these two genres, the game is much more heavily a tactical strategy game.  The player controls Eddie directly with am over the shoulder view.  He can either use a battle ax or an electric guitar that functions as short range and long range weaponry, respectively.  Add dodging and blocking to the mix, it can be understandable that the game would sound like an action/adventure game.  After a little while, Eddie frees a group of head banging men, with more than a dose of comedy, and the real game begins.  The player has to give orders to the other characters like telling them to go somewhere and fight a specific enemy or stay and guard an area.  Eventually, the members of Eddie's army begin to grow well beyond a handful.  It is there that the game really begins.  Soon the player is controlling 40 or more teammates while fighting off hoards of enemies that are attempting to break down the rock band stage that you are protecting.  Basically, the game is a tower defense game in a 3D environment.

When the game does place something in the middle of this world, it is done with plenty of style.

                Coming back to the blood-soaked demonic environment for a moment, it is huge.  The world is ridiculously large and requires a vehicle to navigate it constantly, which the game thankfully gives you very early.  Even when the game shifts from exploration to tower defense mode, the "area" is huge to the point where trying to walk from your base to the enemy's would take much too long to warrant.  The game works a clever workaround to this predicament.  Once the battlefields get to the point where one end cannot be seen from the other, Eddie is "cursed" with large bat wings that allow him to fly around at speeds that make the hot rod from hell look slow in comparison.  Sadly, the wings only work in tower defense segments, and the game has yet to say exactly why only then they are active.  There is an explanation as to where they come from, but that is it.  Perhaps the game will say more as I continue.

                The tower defense matches are rather easy I must say.  I am going through the game in "Normal" difficulty, so perhaps I should be playing on hard.  What generally happens is that I can create enough troops to the point where I defeat all the current enemy troops on the field.  Then I spend a minute or two looking for the one or two obscure enemies on the playfield trying to figure out what I am supposed to do to continue the match.  Sometimes it seems the game is waiting for a specific time before launching the next wave instead of identifying whether or not I have wiped out all previous forces.  This creates lulls in gameplay.  Sometimes it is to the point where I lose concentration and miss when the enemy troop does arrive because I am just waiting for it.  It does not help that the game does not explicitly give you win objectives for each match.  Sometimes it is to simply survive, while other times it is to destroy the enemy's base.  I found myself constantly wondering what I am supposed to be aiming for since the game thinks it is giving enough clues.  And while it is true that if you fumble long enough you can figure it out, it makes the matches take longer because you spend extra time figuring out what you are supposed to be doing specifically.  

                This lack of a clear goal sort of rolls into one of the bigger problems of the game.  There is almost no heads-up display.  This brings back one problem that I found in "Fable III."  I do not want to go back to those entries and read them again because it was such a bad game the first time around, so I am not sure if I made this point before.  Both "Fable III" and "Brutal Legend" make use of no health bar to indicate to the player how close they are to dying.   What both games decide to do is take out all the color saturation on the screen and add a growing red boarder on the edges of the screen.  This is a horrible concept because the player has no concrete idea as to how close they are to being dead.  When they are playing, they are asking themselves, "Can the screen get redder?"  The only way they can know if they are in real trouble is by allowing themselves to die to know at what point they should be concerned when the effects trigger.  Looking at a screen going red is subjective to the interpretations of the player and silly since the health points of the characters are objective and number based.  You can argue about how red a color can be, but you cannot argue about how two out of a hundred is close to nothing.

                I will stop for now, Internet.  There are a few other things that I will cover in subsequent entries that I do not want to talk about until I am deeper in the game.  Until then, keep headbanging.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

"Brutal Legend" Announcement

Dear Internet,

         I attempted to stream "Brutal Legend earlier today, but due to stability issues I have with my computer, I will not be streaming it any more.  The PS3 requires such a workaround that it is beyond ridiculous.  On top of that, my PC is prone to crashing upon start-up with the current configuration, and I am tired of having to restart it.  I wish it was less difficult for me to do this, but there is a point where my patience runs out.  I will still get a review post to you later this night.

Yours in digital,
BeepBoop

Entry 047: "Lord of the Flies" (1963)

Dear Internet,

                I am quite familiar to "Lord of the Flies."  The book is probably one of my most favorite and enjoyable novels.  The 1990 film version was acceptable and took a few too many liberties that strayed away from the source material.  This might not be as important if it was not key aspects of the themes that the book was trying to stress, and neglected to make use of the vivid imagery that the novel uses.  With the 1963 film version, the story tries to stay as true to the book as possible and succeeds in capturing the horrors of man that it is alluding to as well as keeping the spirit of the original work.

                The plot of "Lord of the Flies" is surprisingly simple if you have not heard of it.  A group of English schoolboys are evacuated away from England during a war, but their plane is shot down.  All alone on a deserted island, the boys must fend for themselves.  There is Ralph, the central protagonist who desires order and finding a way to leave the island, Piggy, the intelligent yet slightly know-it-all mannered one, and Jack, the antagonist who only wishes to hunt pigs and create a tribal culture.  In the beginning, all the boys wish for some semblance of rules and regulation.  They take a vote and make Ralph their acting chief.  They decide to create a small fire, by use of Piggy's glasses, which can be used for making a much larger signal fire.  The group even gets as far as making shelters before the downward slope begins.  Before long, Jack and his group begin to hunt the pigs that populate their tiny island.  They neglect their duties to tend to the signal fire, and it goes out when a passing plane speeds past.  Jack cites their need for meat despite the obvious fact that he and his hunters failed in keeping to the highest priority, getting off the island.  Afterwards, there is introduced a fear of a beast haunting the island and the superstition that the boys create.

                I could spend three for more pages merely talking about the plot alone.  I once spent half a day during a road trip recalling the whole story to a friend from beginning to end.  But that is neither here or there.  What matters now is the ability of the movie to be faithful to the book while at the same time working the story for a vastly different medium.  It would be more difficult for me to look at the movie and criticize the plot or story since I am so familiar with it and enjoyed it whole heartedly.  Instead all I can do is point out the things that the movie makes new or in the very least does right.

                One of the first things off the back is the use of the singing of "Kyrie Eleison" throughout the film.  Translated from Greek, it means "Lord, have mercy."  Jack and his followers are choir boys, most likely in the Anglican Church.  The first time they make an appearance in the film, they sing this song.  Throughout the film they sing this until they make a new song.  When the group has made a kill on their hunts or have begun to slip down the path to tribalism, they shout out with exuberance "Kill the pig!  Slit her throat!  Bash her in!"  It is just as much of a chant as the Kyrie is but stands on the other side of reason and humanity.  The chanting of the pigs death is used multiple times in the film and each time it is used, the audience gains a glimpse to the madness that sneaks into the corners of men's minds.  Eventually, it is no longer the pig's throat that is called to be slit.

                The movie also makes use of the "stick sharpened at both ends."  I only mention this because the 1990 version screwed it up.  There is a special horror that comes with this kind of stick, of which I will not describe since it can ruin a revel late in the story if you are unfamiliar with the novel.  But I will try to work around that.  In the 1990 version, the movie makes a reference to this kind of stick but only in the second use of it.  It never mentions its use in the first time.  Since it forgot to do so, the hint of the horror that it is going to be used for never makes it to the audience.  If the audience does not know what the stick is being referred to, then the audience gains no impact to learn that it is being made again.  The 1963 film realized that the horror of the stick was important and subtle.  In the novel it has the ability to wallop the reader flat to learn that it is going to be used a second time and for what.  But I think I am digressing too far into a criticism of a different film.

                One great thing that the 1963 film has going for it is the use of pauses.  It knows that with every deep realization that falls upon the group of boys, there is a profound moment that should not be passed quickly.  When the group learns that a plane had passed over them and they missed their chance to be rescued, there is a silence that cuts deep.  The realization that they are going to be stranded there for a longer time is compounded by the fact that it is their own fault.  The silence of understanding is then juxtaposed with feeble excuses made by Jack.  It works and works well.  Another type of silence occurs with the character of Simon.  In both the book and movie, Simon is the herald of the beast or in the very least the concept of the beast.  What is the beast?  I am not telling.  Let me just say that it is more than just a physical apparition and also a reflection of the fear of doom in men's hearts.  The movie does not scoff at the notion of an unknown terror or even known terrors.  When Simon comes face to face with the Lord of the Flies, Simon spends an uncomfortable amount of time staring at the beast.  This is supposed to be the playing out of a scene in the book which is made much more powerful.  The movie, sadly, does little to convey the near otherworldly mysticism that is found in Simon.  However, Simon does receive a few silent scenes that play out what would be seen from outside his own viewpoint.

                Another thing that I was impressed by was the actors.  It can be difficult to work with child actors, especially those that are young.  They have difficulty memorizing their lines and often come across as reading from a TV prompt with no idea as to what they are saying.  At first I was afraid this was going to happen, especially when I heard Piggy talk.  He is the only one that comes across as dry delivery but that is due to his accent more than anything.  The rest of the cast perform their roles to the point of immersion.  There are dynamic deliveries that rate up there with seasoned actors and can cut to the heart of the scene.  Even Piggy, who I thought would come up dry, gets a few lines attacking Jack's failures and skirting responsibility.

                The best aspect of the film has got to be the imagery, but that is not saying much.  All films must have imagery, otherwise there would not be much use in telling the story visually rather than through another medium.  The story was already told in written word and could be worked over to fit a radio drama if it already has not been.  The film is able to take the elements in the book and create a visual representation of the downward spiral of the mental state of the boys, namely Jack.  Jack is probably the best example of this.  He begins as a choir boy, wearing a black cape and hat along with some sort of puffy white collar I cannot describe otherwise.  He discards the cloths of authority and that of religion.  After that he wears paint on his skin to hide himself while hunting.  Eventually, the paint he wears gets to the point where he looks more like some sort of shaman from an Amazon tribe.  After that, he makes decorative headdresses from the fauna and strips his old hat to make a mask.  All of this adds up to a visual representation of his mental state.  Jack becomes a wild tribal with no sane creed.

                "Lord of the Flies" is a really good film that examines the nature of man and his fall when throwing away the good of the community for self desire.  The novel has been sliced up and analyzed to death that anyone reading it in an educational institute will most likely hate it by the time they are done.  So, I do not need to go any deeper than I already have, lest I start sounding like an English teacher.  This movie does a good job in covering all the plot elements of the novel with very little glossing over.  If you are looking for a faithful adaptation to a classic work of literature, you will be hard pressed to find a more accurate revision.  While not a replacement for the novel, for how can any film accurately depict the implications of how the mother pig is killed, this movie would be a good starting point for a person to become interested in the book or a good way to pass an hour and a half.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

P.S. Tomorrow is "Brutal Legend" for the PS3.  That means a stream provided I can get everything up and running properly.