Superman's best scene

Created 18 Jul 2025 4:00 PM

I just went to watch the new Superman and, hey, it's pretty good, did not regret going. Definitely enjoyed it more than any of the Snyderverse movies, I'll say that much.

I want to talk about my favourite scene in the film, and I cannot do that with spoiling some of it. I will say that the scene in question is maybe a quarter of the way in, and it's most about interpersonal stuff rather than the nitty-gritty of the film's main plot, so; if you're happy to accept that, read on, otherwise, thanks for coming this far.

Onwards!

In this continuity, Clark and Lois have been dating for a few months, and Lois knows Clark's secret identity. In the scene, Clark agrees to have an interview with Lois as Superman... a promise he immediately regrets when she asks to have it right then. What follows is a very clever, well written, perfectly paced scene that is so multi-dimensional that I wanted to focus on all the layers of this very complex discussion (and I mean complex here in regards to the circumstances around it, not the topics being discussed). I am working from memory here, I obviously don't have a recording of the scene, so this is going to be broad-strokes.

So, why is this discussion so complicated? Let us count the ways...

1. Clark and Lois are in a personal relationship.
2. Clark and Lois are in a relatively new personal relationship.
3. Clark and Lois are in a secret personal relationship.
4. Clark and Lois have a professional relationship, but Superman and Lois do not.
5. Clark and Superman are secretly the same person.
6. Clark is being asked genuinely difficult questions about his actions as Superman.
7. Lois and Clark do not have entirely compatible stances on Clark's actions.
8. Lois's personal views and professional responsibilities are not completely compatible.

The beauty of the scene is that these are just abstract elements that a viewer might think about, they're all things the film thinks about. Lois and Clark have clearly not yet set strong boundaries around all these things, or at least haven't consistently built them into how they act in the relationship.

Throughout the scene, both characters are repeatedly arguing over what are and aren't valid questions. They stop and start the recorder, fighting over it at least once. They argue about what is and isn't on- and off-record. It's not clear how much of the doubt Lois' questions point to are just a reporter interrogating a subject for a meaty story, and how much is personal doubt she has about the things Superman has done.

Every single one of the things on that list above is important to this scene at some point, and as far as I remember, none are directly stated out loud. The scene just trusts you as the audience to understand how many directions both characters are being pulled in at once... and you do.

Looks, it's cool to see Superman fight a monster or hurl a meteor out of orbit or do cool super-stuff, but scenes like this are what really build a character, a scene, a film. I really hope I get to watch someone do a deep-dive on it once this hits homes.

Bad AI isn't good

Created 7 Nov 2024 3:12 PM

Enter the Oasis

Hey, look, I love a good bad movie. The Room is a famously awful piece of cinema, full of bizarre choices at every level, a hilarious piece all the funnier for how serious it thinks it's being, and I am here for that. But what we can't do is pretend that, because we can get that enjoyment from how bad it is, that it then is actually good, or is close to being good. It's fun, but it is still bad.

AI is bad.

(And, disclaimer; not all AI etc. There's a big difference between someone setting up a neural network to work on some specific task, and the kind of big tech this-will-solve-all-your-problem "AI" bullshit that's the more well know. I'm talking about the latter.)

But a chief strategy amongst those people tasked with selling it to us is to take the inherent flaws in it, the abject shittiness of it all, and tell us that that's the feature, the fact it can be so wrong is what's so good about it, and it's only going to get even better (meaning, paradoxically, both that it's good and will improve, and that it's bad and will stop being bad.) And that's bullshit.

Let's talk about Oasis.decart.ai.

Oasis is AI-generated Minecraft. You are dumped in a Minecraft world, and can move around, break blocks, manage your inventory etc etc, all functionally an AI-generated video being influenced by your inputs. And, look, on a basic level, it does feel slightly impressive, to be able to do all those Minecrafty things without actually running Minecraft. It just has two tiny, inter-related problems.

1. It's utterly terrible at being Minecraft

Look, all this system is doing is examining a screenshot of Minecraft, checking if the player is looking around or moving or clicking the mouse, and then generating a new screenshot that looks like what might happen if an actual player playing the actual game did that thing. And, sure, like I said, that is slightly impressive, but it means the system doesn't actually have any idea what's going on.

For example; the world is constantly changing around you. Turn around? The world changes. Look too closely at a block? The world changes. Get in an area where the terrain is too indistinct or repetitive? The world changes. The AI doesn't actually have any model of a world it's drawing from, so any time it's tasked with showing you something that wasn't already on screen, it just makes something up. Often, that thing won't even look like anything in Minecraft, at which point the AI will just assume you're seeing something indistinct in the distance (even if it's also clearly right next to you), and slowly morph it into something recognisable as you "move" "closer".

This extends to your inventory. Open the screen, close it, then come back later, and it's likely your items will have completely changed.. along with your character model. This even extends to things that never leave the screen; I notice the items in my toolbar kept slowly morphing, or tools disappearing or reappearing, because the AI doesn't actually know what you have, just that it should look a bit like it looked in the last few frames, and that tends to let it drift.

At one point, I faced a hill, rotated 180 degrees, and walked backwards. The game allowed me to do this, but devoid of any information to work from, it just generated a flat endless plain, extended further and further as I walked back without end. This is the true imagination of AI; non-existant.

Even putting all this aside, what the game does generate is nonsense. The environments are mishmash of weird terrain, with blocks and objects put around completely haphazardly. There's no concessions made to a fun, enjoyable world; it's only goal is to justify what was on screen before.

2. Minecraft exists.

Let's imagined a "fixed" version of this app. They've figured out how to keep the world around you persistent. Your inventory no longer changes when you're not looking it it. It runs faster, as fast as your computer allows, and at a much higher resolution. The world that generates is coherent, fun and wide. Maybe they add multiplayer so you can explore the world with your friends, and save them permanently to return to again and again.

...That's just Minecraft. That already exists.

They're using AI to create a faded shadow of a thing that already exists, with all of the societal, environmental and moral costs that entails.

Oh no, it was a mirage

The eventual promise of this is that we can have entire games that play out without actually making a game; if you can create a screenshot, the AI will figure out how it actually plays. But it's a false promise, like the idea that ChatGPT will suddenly stop making things up if they can just get more funding. This tech is only ever going to let you play vastly worse versions of things that already exist.

In the meantime, they play up the worth of the flaws. The fact this thing is garbage is a feature, actually, look how fun it is to play Minecraft in a world that is constantly shifting around you! Isn't it funny! Please pay us.

Please do not pay them. Not this company, nor anyone else that pushes how humorously bad their "AI" is as an interim stumbling block on the way to the perfection that they're definitely less than a year from, honest. Don't pay OpenAI, don't pay Tesla, don't pay anyone pushing this stuff.

Just go play Minecraft. It's fun. We can play together, if you want.

UFO 50 is rather good

Created 29 Sep 2024 5:08 PM

OK, let's start this off with an up-front recommendation; UFO 50 is an absurdly generous retro-styled game collection, and if you have any love for or even just tolerance to games that look and play like they're on a system kinda like the NES, you're definitely going to find at least one game in here that you're going to just gobble up. Give it a go, and just... just don't give up and refund if Barbuta doesn't take your fancy. They stuck easily the most marmite-y game up front. Maybe start with Warptank, that's a good'un.

UFO 50 has a unique problem; helping you track your progress over... let me just check my notes here... 50 distinct games. Each with their own save system (or lack of), their own progression types, and their own secrets and mysteries. They need to give the player 50 answers to the question "how far through the game am I", as close to at-a-glance as possible, with no prior instruction, with games as distinct as a full-on RPG, a Metroidvania, a saveless exploration adventure, and a 10 minute long scrolling arcade platformer.

Because the UFO 50 devs are just really, exceptionally good games designers, they came up with an elegant and fun solution both to show the player how far they've progressed, and to nudge them forward with each one. Essentially, there are multiple distinct sub-goals, per game, with their own rewards. I call this Dust, Gift, Trophy, Cherry, for reasons that I'm about to explain, in this little list, right here:

1. First, each game cartridge is initially covered in cobwebs and dust. That fits the meta-narrative of the player having found an old console with a bunch of games in an old storage locker. Games you haven't played look this way.
2. The first time you play a game, a little animation plays of the debris being blown off, and from then on, in the menu, the game cart is shown in pristine condition.
3. Each game has a goal (listed in the game's sub-menu) which grants a Gift. This goal is generally something you can, or must, achieve before completing the game proper. You can't see whether you have a gift or not by just looking at the cartridges... But you can see them in the lightly-hidden "house" screen, where a little virtual pet will roam around and interact with the gifts you've unlocked. You can even push a button to bring up a grid of just the gifts, in the same layout as the default view of the carts, and where highlighting any (or the gaps where gifts are missing) shows which game it's tied to.
4. Actually beating a game (whatever that means for that game) grants a "trophy", along with changing the cart into a shiny gold colour. (The first time you do this, the "house" screen will also get a yellow trophy flag waving in the wind, with every game you beat being marked as an extra square displayed on it.)
5. Finally, every game also has an extra level of completeness, which gives you a "cherry". Unlike the Gifts and Trophies you aren't shown this up-front; instead, once you have the Trophy for a game, the goal to get this is added to that page of the game's sub-menu. This is generally something like getting the best ending, finding 100% of optional items, or getting first place in every round, that sort of thing; it's the mark that you haven't just finished the game, but completed it. Getting this turns the game cartridge red, and unlocks a mark on a new "Cherry" flag outside the "house"

I love this.

It's just a neat solution to the whole thing. Looking for something new to play? Pick a dusty cartridge. Wondering what you haven't digged into deeply yet? Checks for gaps in the Gifts. Not sure what you've finished, or what finished games still have secrets to uncover? Check for those Gold and Red carts. Big fan.