Stranger 109

Last week Activision released a new map back for its widely successful shooter Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. As both a fan of the shooters in general and the COD franchise in particular, I thought I would explore what sort of machinima was being made with this rather powerful engine. Machinima.com recently held a trailer contest in conjunction with Activision as a promotional effort leading up to this release. The game has been out since last November and has found both critical and commercial success, so the release of a new map pack is an attempt to ride out one of the gaming success stories of 2007. Unfortunately most of the trailers felt exactly like you would expect trailers designed to hype a game: like marketing. And that is no disrespect to the machnimators who created the wining trailers. If anything, they demonstrated a media savvy sense of giving Activision what they were looking for. But unfortunately that looks a little more like marketing than filmmaking in this instance. I instead opted to choose another film shot in the gritty world of modern combat that does an excellent job of capturing the unbelievable images Infinity Ward’s new engine has produced. The series is called Retaliation and this is the first of what I hope will be many episodes by a machinimator named Connery Kappeler.

The general premise of the first episode, as the title suggests, is a US Marine response to a terrorist car-bombing of a military base in Credenhill, UK in 2004. And I am curious if future episodes continue off this same event or build off other attacks that the same squadron responds to. Needless to say, this is far from new territory in terms of narratives set in the genre of modern war films. However, what stands out most about the piece is the way it builds tension through sweeping camera movement, excellent sound design and stripped-down dialog. Overall the piece has a very heavily influenced Tony Scott feel with frenetic camera movement accompanied by the larger than life score from the actual game (a practice I would love to see more machinimators implement rather than subbing in movie scores). Also, the images themselves seemed to be slightly desaturated with the addition of a bloom effect that gives that same hyper-stylized look of much of Scott’s work. But what I enjoyed most about the piece is that it really attempts to tell the story through the camera, and I feel filmmaking is at its best when it does this. All too often machinimators, particularly those who use shooters or military based games, try and recapture the magic of Red vs. Blue. They give us two characters within a serious wartime milieu waxing existential about the absurdity of their plight and try to make it funny, a tradition that has roots as far back as the plays of Beckett or more recently M.A.S.H. for you non-theater fans. And as enjoyable as that can be when it is done well, it most often is just a watered-down rehashing of what Rooster Teeth has already perfected. But Kappeler avoids that trap and goes entirely the other way by giving what is a very gripping dramatic scenario that is about far more than explosions and gun fights. I look forward to future episodes and you should too.