Weekly Geekerati Rundown 4/14/2023

The Week of April 15th Brings Action Figures, Games, and More

Action Figure News

Super7 has a new batch of ReAction figures in the pipeline and this batch features characters from one of the weirdest (and best) Disney films ever produced. That’s right, this latest batch is a set of The Black Hole ReAction Figures. The Black Hole is a very different movie from most Disney fare. Like the classic SciFi film the Forbidden Planet, it has strong echoes of The Tempest. This time instead of Robby the Robot and “Monsters from the ID” we’ve got a new band of helpers and destroyers with V.I.N.CENT., B.O.B., and best of all Maximilian!

According to the Super7 marketing material, “Representing the best - and worst - of humanity, these robotic stand-ins for human archetypes play out the struggle of selflessness, dedication, and heroism against reckless ambition.” While I agree that V.I.N.C.E.N.T. and B.O.B. are stand-ins for human archetypes, things are a little different for Maximillian. His connection to Dr. Hans Reinhardt is chilling and complex, but you’ll have to watch the film to its full psychedelic ending to see just how disturbing that connection really is.

As an aside, I LOVE how the packaging for Maximillian matches his profile. It’s very fitting and makes for a great display piece.

Tabletop Gaming Highlights

New from Gavriel Quiroga

Gavriel Quiroga, the creator of Warpland, has an update to his critically acclaimed dystopian tech-noir roleplaying game Neurocity launching on Kickstarter next week and if you are looking for something different from D&D, this might just be up your alley.

Neurocity is a subterranean city complex crowned by a glitched digital sun ruled by an ever watchful supercomputer named I.S.A.C. A closed society on the brink of collapse suffering an involution from digital to analog technology due to the scarcity of materials and constant recycling of components.

Crushed under the unbearable weight of the system lies you; A citizen in this technological nightmare. Will you yield your personality and obey? Or perhaps you will dare to find the truth about this forsaken place you were born into?

Gametek Discusses “The Einstein Tile”

Geoff Engelstein is one of my favorite game designers and game design theorists. He is constantly analyzing connections between mathematics and games and is a compelling writer who removes any “intimidation factor” when discussing even complex mathematical topics. He recently wrote a piece on the “Einstein Tile” that talks about an interesting mathematical discovery and asks for our ideas on how to use it in a game. Without giving too much away, let me just say that this is yet another case in nature where you can have both infinite chaos and infinite order that makes me love the beauty of the cosmos. Read his article, then read my comment below.

While it is amazing that this hat shaped 13 sided tile can “tile a plane,” what I find striking is that this 13 sided tile aligns perfectly with hexagons as well. This means you have a non-folding pattern overlapping with a folding pattern. Just beautiful. Chaos and order intersecting.

The Grognard Files

Dirk the Dice has an interesting discussion of role playing sourcebooks that aren’t role playing sourcebooks, or rather non-role playing books that can add great depth to your role playing game experiences. This particular discussion of sourcebooks provides recommendations for games in many different genres.

Comic Book Updates

Boom! Studios Briar

Writer Christopher Cantwell and artist Germán García bring us a dark version of the Sleeping Beauty story. What if Beauty was never rescued and awakened to a world in which evil had won and where she had to find a new destiny? It’s an interesting take with evocative artwork. The fourth issue of the series just came out and I’ll be reviewing the book next week.

Film Updates

Luke Y. Thompson Reviews The Green Oak Guardian

In 1999, Mark A. Altman and Robert Meyer Burnett wrote and Robert Meyer Burnett directed Free Enterprise, the ultimate pop-culture geek romantic comedy. Altman and Burnett combined shallow and deep pop-culture references with Doug Liman (Swingers) inspired visuals to create a compelling tale of a permanent child growing up and discovering that you can grow up and still keep all the best parts of childhood. The film embraced geek culture and presented a realistic romantic relationship.

Given that the film was made during the heyday of quality romantic comedies, Nora Ephron's Shop Around the Corner inspired You’ve Got Mail had just come out, Altman and Burnett managed to present a fresh perspective on the romantic arc. It predates, but is similar, to the arc that would later be used in Peyton Reed’s The Break Up. The main difference being that Free Enterprise’s resolution and continuation of the romance is explicit after the permanent child grows up where The Break Up’s resolution is suggested in a way that leads to Butch and Sundance style debates regarding what happens at the end. For the record, while I’m an optimist in my view of what happens after The Break Up, I’m a realist when it comes to Butch and Sundance.

What is with all this prelude? Well, a new film has entered the geek/geek adjacent romantic comedy genre. Lana Reed’s The Green Oak Guardian attempts to combine the current Hallmark style romantic vibe with commentary on Hollywood and geek culture. Reed has directed two prior romantic comedies The Christmas Collision and A Bachelor’s Valentine, films that combined independent film vibes with the Hallmark formula to varied success. How did did Lana do in her attempt at creating the next pop-culture commentary romantic comedy?

Well, my friend Luke Y. Thompson has some thoughts and they are along the lines of what you would expect in the era of the “nice but not brave” romantic comedy. I won’t spoil his review because it’s worth your time to read. I will say that his review has inspired me to do a future Geekerati podcast episode discussing romantic comedies and how we are in an era of pleasant but not extraordinary romcom films.

Before you think that’s a commentary on The Green Oak Guardian, it isn’t. It’s about how most modern romance films fail to truly capture the stakes of the conflict. It’s not that our modern romcoms are predictable, they have always been predictable, it’s that the stakes of the romance feel somehow less emotionally powerful than in some prior waves.

That’s it for now.

Have a great weekend and let me know what you are excited about!