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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Paul Robertson's Power Kings 4 Billion%

Aha! I am Klarion

00:46 / 01.04.08

http://probertson.livejournal.com/

I caught this from Warren Ellis's blog. It is amazing. It's like a gunshot of current cultural zeitgeist.

To quote a poster at that board:

"Every remotely relevant (pop) cultural meme (including religion) + ( Giant Robot Anime (or Final Fantasy) plot - character development and philosophical meandering ) + (Metal Slug x 1000) = this."

P.S. Just what the hell is the Metal Slug meme?

01:03 / 01.04.08

Aha! I am Klarion

01:15 / 01.04.08

Thanks for the link.

I was actually more interested in some criticism/discussion of the metal slug "meme" or, rather, the theme of the game play which involves an endless march down a hall-wall killing things with exponentially bigger bombs and explosives and how this reflects on the cultural and spiritual criticism in the film itself.

08:01 / 01.04.08

I don't know the film, but Metal Slug is basically Rambo. It's about lasting, and about killing a whole bunch of shit. You get progressively larger enemies, and as long as you stay alive, you get progressively larger weapons.
Not as delicate as a game like Ikaruga, it is still a feat of dexterity in later levels. It's exciting, it's challenging, and it's really, really moreish.

Does that help?

17:25 / 01.04.08

Paul Robertson is a genius.

I strongly recommend seeing "Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle Street Fight 2007". I think it trumps Kings of Power for me, because it's far more explicit in it's ties to my videogaming heritage. Pirate Baby really is like every early 90's beat-em-up you've ever played, only scraped from the stale chip fat and slush-puppy that accumulates under the arcade cabinet. Capcom squished and minced through the eyes of Junko Mizuno.

Kings of Power surprises me in a good few places. Where it keeps topping itself in grotesque ridiculousness, hypnotically hammering the strobe as everything gets bigger and louder with your brains sprinting to keep up. There's references aplenty (I've no played Midnight Resistance in ages) But it doesn't resonate for me as heavily as Pirate Baby. Maybe I've no played enough Metal Slug.

His video for Architecture in Helsinki's Do The Whirlwind is worth a gander. He has earlier movies in the faux-gaming style of KoP, which are far cruder, but worth it to see the evolution of his style.

20:46 / 01.04.08

After watching it again though, I'm fully prepared to revoke all of that and profess it as his Best Work Ever™.