The Walker (fallout fanfiction)

I don't know what day it is. The month is October, year 2156.

This morning I saw some crabs picking at a corpse. They scurried off as I walked past them. I got back into town at dawn, my feet were blistering. The doctor back at the post did what she could, which wasn't much.


Met up with Carl while I was back. He invited me into his home. Guess he was in a good mood, he doesn't usually do that. He had a few beers left in the fridge, they were decayed but still much better than what I'm used to.

I spent a long time sitting and resting my feet and looking around at Carl's paintings. Been a while since I'd been in such a nice place.


Carl's wife was sleeping in the bedroom. I wonder if he realizes how lucky he is to have a wife who's still pretty, and isn't a cannibal or a thief. Sometimes I wonder if I could live this sort of life. Probably not.


Right now it's 5:43 according to my watch, but that might be broken so I don't really know what time it is. I think I'll head out soon. A sandstorm started up outside. I kind of like it.

Valhalla Rising (2010)

This is an interesting movie. There are so many things about it I want to dive into and personally change myself. The editing, cgi blood, slow-motion, little things here and there. And then there's the character of One-Eye. Nicolas Winding Refn has said that the character is meant to be a monolith. A creature, not a human. He's not supposed to have identifiable emotions or true motivations for anything he does. Every time I think about that I get upset.


One-Eye is a human. Nicolas Refn might not have intended it, but he is a human. Everyone I've heard from who's been close to this movie, be it people who worked on it or people who've seen it, cannot get on board with the idea that One-Eye isn't human. Mads Mikkelsen himself said to Refn that he thinks he should register human emotion, but Refn refused and carried on. The interviewer in the commentary track with Refn said to Refn himself that he didn't understand the idea of him being an "alien". I can buy the monolith idea absolutely; he doesn't speak, and anyone can apply whatever dogma or idea they want into him. He can be whatever people want him to be. But the fact is that he IS innately something. What that something is may not be terribly deep, but it is nontheless something.

We begin the story with him as a slave, in the opening section entitled Wrath. He fights and sleeps in a cage every day, for what we're led to believe has been years. This is when the idea that he's a monolith comes into play; the pagan vikings that control him use him as a tool for money. He fights, and never loses. The chieftan himself says that he's driven by hate. Hatred for his captors, which is expressed in vivid detail in the scene where he escapes. He mercilessly cuts down two viking warriors within seconds, and then tears out a third man's guts with his bear hands. This is true, seething hatred. This is a very, very dark human. but still a human. He had motivations for doing what he did.

He goes to America with christian vikings. They start blaming him for bad things, others praising him for good things. Some say he and the boy will bring luck. Later on, they say they brought them to hell. He's a monolith in the way that nobody understands him, but they fool themselves into thinking they do. All we, or they know, is that he is very good at killing people and he doesn't much care where he goes. He protects a boy, we assume, because the boy fed him when he was locked up and was the only one who didn't show contempt for him. But then I start thinking back to what Refn said; he's not human. What? Every time I think back to what he says about One-Eye I start to think he must be fucking with me.

By the end of the film, One-Eye kills three men who attack him out of blame for the misery they've endured. He then decides to walk up a hill with the boy, two of the Christians following him. The Christians realize why they really went out on their mission in the first place, without thinking of God or One-Eye or anything but their own motivations. These are great moments, reminiscent of the film Stalker by Tarkovsky.


The ending is possibly the most frustrating part of the entire thing. One-Eye guides the boy to some distant rock in a vast ocean, and natives appear out of nowhere. From everything we know previously, any threat to One-Eye or the boy is responded in One-Eye killing the threat in moments. But instead, he grabs the boys arm, as if to tell him "everything is going to be ok", and lets the natives kill him. This is just as much a death sentence to the boy as is fighting them. Where is the boy going to go? He's in the middle of nowhere. There's no possible way he will survive. While One-Eye dies and becomes a spirit, still looking over the lands as he does in his visions, the boy he took along with him for the entire meandering journey is going to die. What was the point? What was the point to anything that happened in the movie? Refn says it's a story about the evolution of religion. Ok, I get that, and that's very interesting, but good god he could have shot higher. So much of it was a waste.

Now I'm going to describe what I wanted and expected. The first 20 minutes feel like a sped up version of a truly brilliant character piece. The fights, the cage One-Eye lives in, the interaction with the boy. The chieftan and his annoyance with the christian vikings, having to live in the fringes of the earth. All of those things could have been developed far more extensively. Give us more fights, more betting between the vikings. All of this would make a much different overall movie, but it's what I wanted to see so desperately that I can't help but talk about it here.

Nicolas Refn has talent, he just needs to be controlled. If not by himself then by a studio. I came away from this movie thinking he didn't have a clear enough picture of what he wanted to do. It wasn't concrete, it was all over the place. And the reason I'm critical and trying to get into his shoes is because I just really want to make a movie like this. But that's being selfish.


Anyway, that's enough complaining. Aside from everything I've said, the movie is great. It's better than most of the stuff out there, and it makes you think. The cinematography is some of the most beautiful I've seen since The New World, and the action scenes are incredible. It evokes atmosphere like no other, and you can really feel a true passion underneath everything. It's the best movie I've seen this year, and probably my favorite Refn movie if only because of the first 20 minutes and the mood of the entire piece. His best film is probably Bronson, but if he can figure out what he's really doing as a director he can only improve from here.

Not my people (Rant)

The people of my generation and younger, not that I'm so wise as to know whether these people are the majority or not, are becoming nihilists. They place no significant weight on human interaction or the importance of manners and respect. It's all an inconvenience on the way to what they want, where they need to be. Be it in video games, jobs, friendships, activities, you name it. Technology is catering to the individual, and in the process the individual loses sight of what it is to be an individual; technology has replaced it. The situation I was in is, albeit, at the highest level of this; people who have been so deeply immersed in the competitive gaming world, so used to using the people around them that they interact with them more like objects than people deserving of respect and care. It is not a fun experience of gathered enjoyment, but one of utter indifference.

Technology makes it convenient for nothing to matter. It can cut everything down to it's absolute core if you so desire, but this is a delusion. A digital world has been crafted, not unlike The Matrix, of information and influence. Social networking, media, gaming, forums; it's all there. The tools available are astounding, and the ideas are sound, but the reality is horrifying. Anyone who's ever spent over a week or two completely seperated from technology in nature or the wild should understand what reality actually is. It's not treating people like garbage. Not feeding into internet persona addiction. Not assuming you know how everything is because technology has given you the answers. You have no answers. You have an altered perspective of the world, while perhaps being true in it's knowledge of facts, lacks the feeling behind them. The way the world is right now, It's not only stripping away any reasons to care, but also reasons to feel.

The age of social networking has degraded interpersonal relationships at an astounding degree, in too many different layers for me to describe here. Our dependence on immediate satisfaction in the form of the internet and technology is now taken for granted, and almost everything is seen as boring or overdone by today's youth. Imagine the joy and excitement that people of older generations would look at today's world in, only to see the people who have now grown up in it living it in a perspective that seems utterly barren of honesty the old ones are seeing it with.

None of what I say will matter, because I'm a hypocrite. Everything here that I condemn, I use. I preach against people disparaging others online, but my words mean nothing because I have no face. People will read this and say I should "stop crying", and to just "get over it". I have the awareness of what this is all about, the danger of it, but I won't cut it off from my life simply because everyone else revolves around it. To change is to become even more alienated from my generation, not that that's scared me before. I'm sure it will happen soon enough.

"Nobody cares about anything anymore. And no one knows why nobody cares." -The Void

The Hurt Locker (2009)

War is a drug. A drug that opens the doors of the "hurt locker" and forces the best of men into it. Some are able to get out of it with time, some never do, some never want to. The story of this film focuses on William James (played by Jeremy Renner), a man who lives and breathes inside his own hurt locker and pulls the people around him into it, whether they like it or not.


The Hurt Locker is "an intense portrayal of elite soldiers who have one of the most dangerous jobs in the world: disarming bombs in the heat of combat. When a new sergeant, James, takes over a highly trained bomb disposal team amidst violent conflict, he surprises his two subordinates, Sanborn and Eldridge, by recklessly plunging them into a deadly game of urban combat. James behaves as if he's indifferent to death. (imdb)". It has scenes of action and suspense that keep you on the edge of your seat for up to 20 minutes at a time, and it never lets up. All the while, the carefully drawn character of James is being developed without the viewer even being directly aware of it. You understand his passion through your own fear of what's happening on screen; the film plays into the visceral nature of the action and then utilizes that as an ingenious form of character development.

Every good film finds a way to pull the viewer into the experience; this one uses it's suspense and segmented plot. You never know what's going to happen, since the format of the movie is a series of scenarios. The characters move forward, but every mission they go on is separate. It gets the audience to understand that every day over there brings it's own unique dangers and situations, to give a greater perception of the world these characters live in.

James is founded on principles and anarchy at his core. He has his own way of making sense of war, and thus the world. He loves the rush of dealing with bombs; it's the only thing that makes him feel alive. He believes in doing the right thing. He puts himself in danger not only for his own enjoyment, but for saving the lives of others; although sometimes saving others is the justification he needs to do something for himself.


In a scene about mid-way through the film, a pitched sniper battle begins. Sanborn is using a Barret sniper rifle, with James spotting for him. He takes down 3 insurgents, and as he fires the last bullet, there is a shot of the shell casing falling to the sand in slow motion. When you see this scene the first time, it's a bit out of place; very artistic but still slightly confusing. It's not until you finish the film and look back on that moment that you understand it's importance. That was the last time Sanborn fires a gun in the film, and as we're meant to understand, his life. As he's riding in the Humvee with James near the end, he says he's done and he wants a son. That last bullet he fired will remain with him always, as will his time in Iraq. Those moments etched in his being forever, as much as he tries to forget them. That's the difference between him and James. Sanborn wants to move on, but James wants to stay. At one point, Sanborn asks James, "do you think I've got what it takes to be in the suit?", to which James replies "hell no". He tells it to him in neither a relieving or condescending way, but in a way that's from another school of understanding. Sanborn still has a spark in him, a zeal for life. When him and James were fighting drunk and James was on top of him, Sanborn pulls out a knife and puts it to James' throat. James smiles and pushes the knife even more to his own throat, as if he dares J.T. to finish the job. James isn't driven by life anymore, more so by actions and momentum. He doesn't understand or care to understand anything outside of his realm. When he says that Sanborn can't put on the suit, it's a way of him telling Sanborn that he can't fathom the world that he lives in.

James undergoes a series of challenges to his own sense of reality throughout the film, but conquers on after all of it. He starts a friendship with a boy named Beckham, someone who may remind him of his lost innocence while still being somewhat of a kindred spirit. Later on in the story, he finds the body of a young Iraqi boy with a bomb inside of his dead body. He thinks it's beckham, and takes the body out to be buried instead of detonating it to get rid of any remaining ordinance. After all of this happens, he sees beckham again and realizes the boy he found was just some random kid. He ignores beckham in an attempt to retain his self-built understanding of the chaos of his environment. In another incident, he orders his teammates to go into a town with him to hunt down bad guys. He makes an impulsive decision based on a sudden surge of adrenaline, guised by an overwhelming need to punish the evil. His lapse in judgment results in Eldridge almost getting killed; James accidentally shoots him in the leg in taking down two insurgents carrying him away. Eldridge trusted James after he helped him earlier in the film, and Eldridge felt that James would protect him until the end of their time together. When James reflects on the irresponsibility of what he did, bringing his men into that situation, he breaks down. He has a sudden realization of the alternate (and more honest) perspective of what he did. He knows he has cracks, but he doesn't know how to fix them. Maybe he doesn't even want to. James revels in chaos but convinces himself there is some kind of order to it -- even after some of his methods are proven to be counterproductive for everyone including himself.

When Will returns home, he's in boredom and confusion as to what his place is. He's used to being in life or death situations all the time, and now he's at home cutting fruit and picking up cereal at the store. He's completely fine with not fitting in, and he doesn't particularly care to. There's a tender scene with James and his son, where James talks about how he began to love less and less as he got older. Now he only loves working with bombs; he loves it more than his own child. We assume that he's seen enough war that he's become a borderline nihilist outside of his strong sense of purpose when in action. The most interesting part about all of this is how we expect him to say something like this, but at the same time this kind of despair is slightly foreign. It opens up a new realm of conversation in regards to James' psychology, especially when thinking about his past. He's so multi-faceted, and the film does a brilliant job of keeping us informed enough to have an idea of who he is, while retaining enough mystery to stimulate great conversation.

The cinematography and narrative style play an extremely important part in communicating these developments of the central characters. If one were to classify the genre of this film, thriller/character study would probably be most accurate. Bigelow uses traditional thriller elements to get us into James' mindset, utilizing our fear to add to his sense of adrenaline. If we get that scared by just watching it, imagine what the reality would be like; we know for a fact that James has to be crazy to do it, simply because of our experience in watching the movie.


In the last moments of the film, James returns to Iraq for a new year-long rotation. One of the strongest images in the film is the sight of him walking into the distance wearing the bomb suit, with the readout at the top of the screen saying 365 days remaining. He walks into an uncertain fate with a smile, and he has to endure this for 10 times the amount of time we saw in the movie. William James is in a hurt locker, probably has been for a long time, and will be for the rest of his life. And he enjoys it.

Double Indemnity (1943)

Double Indemnity is a straightforward story through and through. It's a film noir in the most classical sense, a simple and dark story about doing foolish things without heed of consequence. It was made in 1943, when film noir was brand new, barely breaking through the door. For DI to be as focused and good as it was for the time period is very impressive. The things that bothered me the most about the film stem from my own upbringing in contemporary films, I saw elements such as developed characters and genuine motivations missing here. I didn't think the film was clear enough with the honest motivations of Neff for doing what he does, as well as his overwhelming willingness to take a life. The film is more concerned with the events happening, the mood, and the conventions of the genre rather than it is with the characters making sense. This seems to be a flaw almost universal for films of the time period, though, so I have to be somewhat forgiving. For all the aspects of the film I disliked, I liked just as many if not more.


The film is entertaining, first and foremost. It may be predictable, but the interaction between the characters is fun and simple. The film takes plenty of time with it's story and doesn't try to move things along at a quick pace, allowing the audience to absorb the atmosphere and enjoy the ride. It takes you on a slight emotional ride, as well, getting you to hope the newly in love couple is going to make it against all odds. But quickly enough the viewer realizes that Phyllis can't be as genuine as she seems, and Keyes will find out eventually what really happened. It's not as easy as a straight line down the middle, there's always the unexpected variables and the true intentions of people involved to be put into consideration. Fate has it's own way of creating bad endings to situations that seem simple, and in the end no one can escape what's coming to them. The lighting and camera work is all top notch, very evocative of the time period and the mood the story tries to convey. Overall, the film is quintessential film noir, one of the true originators of the genre. It's a prime example of how the concept of noir first came to be, as well as a good point to look back on when observing how the genre has evolved. Not only is it historically important, but it's a fun film to watch.

Out of the Past (1947)

In the 1940's, America was still getting used to the cinema. People were still getting used to the idea of connecting emotionally to people on a screen, being transported to another place and another life by means of the theater itself. The film industry didn't know what kind of taste the movie viewing public had in regards to the kind of stories they wanted to see. I consider the early film noir movement as more of an essential building block for American cinema rather than excellent cinema that stands on it's own; for the time period it was all there was, but we have cinematically evolved so much since then.

Out of the Past is a perfect example of the stereotypical nature of most early noir's, trying to stick to a very narrow formula to assure audience approval instead of encouraging artistic creativity. The definition for a film noir is this: "a movie that is marked by a mood of pessimism, fatalism, menace, and cynical characters; "film noir was applied by French critics to describe American thriller or detective films in the 1940s" (Dictionary.com). Directors in the 40's who made film noir pictures understood the themes this genre was about, but never understood character development or a fascinating story. They only knew to go by a very strict set of rules, caring more about making sure the label sticks rather than making a compelling film. Out of the Past tells the story of Jeff Bailey, a gas station worker who's past comes back to visit him. The film never takes time to get us to understand Bailey on a deeper level, why he does what he does, he just goes through the motions without much expression or depth. The audience doesn't have anything to latch onto through this convoluted and pointless story, all of the motivations in the film don't ring true because we don't know where they're coming from in the first place. When a film relies on the main character to carry it, he has to be someone the viewer gets to know; he needs to be a living, breathing person instead of a hollow avatar of pure stereotype. The story is driven by the lead, and if we don't care about the lead we don't care about the story. All the main character is is just a tool of the women he encounters, above all else. He lets his emotions get the better of him, which then lead him down a path of uncertainty and betrayal, his lack of foresight gets him killed in the end.


The plot revolves around information being discovered gradually throughout the film, and characters betraying each other revealing surprises and "twist turns". But anyone that knows anything about film will predict every step of this boring tale. Aside from the blatantly uninteresting plot, the character's simply aren't "there", making the entire film forfeit. As much as I disliked it, however, it must be stated that this is an important film in regards to film history. It's one of the first movies to play with chronology in the storytelling, as well as more complicated character arcs; it did set some kind of small precedents. These elements, however, didn't do anything for the film and thus were wasted. The director and creators of this film just wanted to pump out another copycat genre piece with some superficial changes, such as the lighting and scenery, but none of that means anything when the inner workings are nothing special.

The Wrestler (2008)

Darren Aronofsky is one of the most important directors working today, along with Christopher Nolan and Shane Meadows. These three young guys are some of the up and coming revolutionaries, people who are improving the nature of character study when integrated with story in ways I have been waiting for ever since I was a young boy. The thing they all have in common is a mutual placement of faith in the audience. They don't explicitly spell anything out. They show you what they're thinking on a deep level, and then let you piece it together and come to your own deep realization of what you just saw. It's about linking your mind with theirs on some level. Their movies are so heartfelt and lacking in pretension or sentimentality, that they achieve some of the most true forms of human understanding shown on screen at the cost of requiring the viewer to be truly engrossed in the film. Which isn't even really a cost, it's a privilege.


I'll talk about movies like This is England or Dead Man's Shoes (Shane Meadows), or Memento and Insomnia (Nolan) some other time. But for now I'm going to talk about Aronofsky, and his latest masterpiece, The Wrestler. It's a story about a down and out wrestler, Randy the Ram, played by Mickey Rourke. Some could be fooled into thinking it's a documentary, and it does have the essence of one, only it takes it to such a higher level that it really isn't a documentary at all. It's more of a window to the spirit of one particular individual, and we are all witnesses. The film takes the Ram on a journey of an attempt to turn his life around from a wrestler to a proper father, or a proper lover, an average Joe for the most part. He gets a job in the deli counter to replace wrestling, thinking things will be alright after he talks to his daughter and gets things going with Marissa Tomei. It doesn't last, as the draw of the ring pulls him back in and the addiction to that atmosphere begins anew. Randy lacks the strength to change, simply because he doesn't really know what it's like to become anyone else. He is self-absorbed, and sure you can judge him, but if you've never known (as the Springsteen song says) a one-trick pony before, it might be hard to be OK with his nature. His daughter demands him to get out of her life after he lets her down right after trying to reconnect with her, and Tomei doesn't want to commit to a relationship because of him being a part of her job, so he goes back to wrestling and concedes to his inner feelings about people in the world. Nobody cares about him. Tomei says that she does, but when it comes down to it she really doesn't, she can't see him for who he is, only who she sees him as. Randy steps back into the ring, for the glory of the crowd and to feel like he has a purpose again. He looks to see if Tomei is still there, and she isn't, making him realize she really didn't care in the first place, making him even more determined to make the most out of his home in the ring. He has given up any hope of a new life, and gives himself to the audience and the ring. And thus he feels complete, that he has triumphed over the despair, and he is not alone.


In telling the story of Randy the Ram, Aronofsky has told of so many others who put themselves through physical or emotional pain for a greater end-goal. Randy's lifestyle causes him to pull away from the only ones who might ever love him, and he never goes to lengths to change it even when faced with heartache. The truth is that he is part of the ring, and he can never leave wrestling because it's the thing he loves above all else. There isn't room for the love of his daughter or another woman. He brings that mentality of battle and suffering everywhere he goes; the ring has molded him into a person who just doesn't fit in with everyone else. The ring is a maternal figure for the Ram. He understands it and feels at home with it, and although it's cruel, it's the only place that he finds safety in. The familiarity of it draws him back. Anyone who loves their job or their self-imagined purpose more than people are just like the guy. Someone like him who knows nothing more enjoyable or satisfying than his or her job will always have a hard time in the wilderness of civilization.

Aronofsky uses all the methods at his disposal to illustrate mood and feeling in his film. He's able to communicate ideas that, to me, are impossible to communicate with justice using any form of vocabulary. He uses music, visual styles, cinematography, editing, and amazing pacing to achieve this. The score, composed by Clint Mansell, is used in a poignant way; it always supports the characters directly. It's not there to add to an environment or create a superficial sense of emotion, it's only there to amplify the already very present emotions of the main character(s). As it helps the characters, the characters build the scenes, and thus the music helps the movie stand even taller as an honest character piece with it's truly artistic and honest portrayal of the human condition. It does for the film what the actors cannot; the score itself is a microcosm for the message the film wants to send. Be it with the somber tunes heard at the beginning, or the building guitar riff at the end: the soundtrack tells it's own story that sits right beside the story that Mickey Rourke is acting through.

The visual style is very distinct, and something Aronofsky didn't come up with until he met Rourke, who then helped him determine what style would suit him best as an actor. Aronofsky figured out which method of cinematography would compliment his presence more than any other, and that method ended up being a mix of hardcore realist/documentary and slight formalist cinematography. It was shot using a typical 35mm film camera, creating a grainy "of the moment" look, showing a heightened sense of realism throughout. The cinematography itself is mostly a camera following Randy around, while getting more up close in the intimate moments, giving us both a personal and observational attachment as far as the visual side is concerned. This allows us to make our own judgments by observing him in a well rounded light, not too one-sided in either regard, simply looking at a small piece of Randy's life and getting inside of his head a little bit. It doesn't go too deep, but just deep enough to get us to understand and think about who he is; it gives us enough information to know him, but not to know ALL of him in every extent.

The editing is methodical, not too slow and not too fast. It spends plenty of time in every moment, letting us live and breathe with Randy, not like a typical Hollywood picture. There are no quick cuts, every scene takes its time and is in no hurry to finish up. This is the best way to force you to connect, by getting you out of your comfort zone and letting you simply watch Randy. It's one of the many aspects of the film that makes the audience go from watching a mile away to being a real witness to the Ram's story. Along with that, the pacing works itself out to round out one complete short and concise package. From the beginning to the end, every single moment matters in understanding who Randy is and why he does what he does. There are no wasted scenes, nothing to give you a chance to pull yourself away from the piece even for a second.


Aronofsky has really discovered a way to illustrate character depth in a truly extraordinary light. He portrays Randy in an unbiased way, and communicates greater ideas in the process. Meditations on purpose and true meaning, honesty and true feelings of love, glory, and pain are all found throughout the film. Whether you can relate to Randy on a personal level or not, you have to be able to understand his thinking at the end of the film. It's clearly spoken while still being innately artistic. The beauty of it all is tremendous. Above all, after all that I've said, this truly is a movie that is felt, not discussed; it has to enter your heart and soul and stay there for a little while. As hard as I may try, I can't truly replicate the feeling I had when I first saw it with words. But I did my best here. This is filmmaking on an incredible level.