Why we’re passing on Miller’s new movie, wondering who thought Dante would make a good action game hero, year-end gaming thoughts and what makes a good Best Of list.

It’s safe to say that Under Culture is pro-Frank Miller. Personally, the Dark Knight comics rank among my favorites. The influence of his take on Batman is apparent in the excellent reboot of the last two films. The Sin City books are just packed with gritty, pulpy fun, and the movie did a great job of bringing that sense of comic noir to the screen. Even 300, though obviously over the top, was at the very least one long, macho fight scene that was fun to watch. So he’s done some great stuff, and the translations of his work to film have been genuinely entertaining. I’m not that familiar with the source material of his latest project, The Spirit, but I liked the look of it and was willing to take the chance on another Miller film.

Then I watched some clips from The Spirit posted over on io9 and decided there is no way I’m paying to see this movie.

“But it’s just some good cheesy fun!” one might protest. Agreed. And I’m usually all for that. But as a fan who loves movies like The Rocketeer, Dick Tracy, even Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, there’s a glaring difference between those fun trips to a stylized retro-future and the one in these Spirit clips: sincerity. The others work because as objectively silly as their worlds may seem, the characters were all invested in their reality. Whether due to Miller’s inexperienced directing or a mistranslation of comic to script-writing skills, each of these scenes feels like its being acted out — like no one in the movie is convinced of what they’re saying in the slightest. Once the seams start showing the whole enterprise just feels goofy, even dumb. So I’m sorry Frank, but I’m probably going to choose Benjamin Button over your first directing gig for a Christmas weekend flick. Don’t worry, we still love ya’.

[Of note though is that the only likeable one of these six clips is Scarlett Johansson's. That girl can actually act. This scene especially makes me want to see her in a role where she gets to be sassy and funny instead of getting continuously typecast as serious and sultry.]

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In other awkward adaptation news, a trailer was revealed this week for Dante’s Inferno…the video game. Yes, that Dante.

From the paltry footage contained in the clip, you seem to play as some sort of Christian warrior battling the demons of hell. The choice seems misguided at best. Sure, Dante’s depiction of hell would make a pretty great, gruesome setting for a video game — it even has a built-in structure of nine levels. But as anyone who’s read the source knows, the main character is essentially a tourist, just passing through and in no way affecting, much less getting into bloody battles with, the souls trapped there. If you play as some other traveler, why reference the book for your game’s title? No one’s clamoring to finally see their favorite 14th century epic poem brought to life that I know of. Also, God of War has already taken us to a mythical hell in some pretty cool ways, and it’s doubtful this will be wildly better for using Christian instead of Greek themes. Unless of course there’s a sweet party system that lets you team up with a Holy Spirit-summoning Jesus and a force of nature-controlling Moses, and you call it Final Divine Fantasy Inferno XIII. I might play that one.

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One of my favorite Year in Gaming pieces, the now 2nd annual Slate Gaming Club, wrapped up recently, and made for some thoughtful reading.

The mile-high view of the year versus a sterile top-ten list offers a lot more to ponder, with a great back-and-forth exchange between four insightful critics from Slate, NY Times, Newsweek and MTV. They start out discussing why 2008 is or isn’t the best year yet in gaming (maybe not?), and move on to what would have put it over the edge.

The theme seems to be that everyone got really into one game, but that wasn’t the same for everyone and individual responses may vary. Moderator Chris Sullentrop reacts:

One thing I’ve been wondering: Is it a good sign or a bad sign for the medium that this year’s crop of games has produced such a wide divergence of opinion? Michael “the Brainy Gamer” Abbott thinks Fable 2 is perhaps “the most seductive game world ever created.” Chris Dahlen thinks Fallout 3 “balances—and sometimes betters—the approaches of other videogame masterpieces: the retro immersion of ‘BioShock,’ the paranoia of ‘Portal,’ the exploration of ‘Oblivion’ and the seamless storytelling of ‘Half-Life 2.’ ” The pseudonymous “Iroquois Pliskin” says GTA IV is “a classic, and stands head and shoulders above its previous iterations and nearly every other game released this year.”

Those are three more of the smartest people writing about games. They each think their Game of the Year is a new addition to the canon. Maybe they’re right. Or, more likely, this was a year of just-misses, which is why there’s an absence of consensus.

I’m with him in thinking it could have been, but that all the marquee titles, of those I’ve played so far, were just a bit flawed or fell short in some way that didn’t quite reach revolutionary status. Of course, if I had a PS3 and had played MGS 4 and Little Big Planet, maybe I’d feel differently? I know I’d have a hard time giving a top prize to Fallout 3 after getting to its let-down ending this weekend. As someone with a limited time budget for games, I know most years there are a legitimate top three I have to play, and fill in the rest of the year with whatever sounds fun. This year, it wasn’t as obvious which were those three.

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And a final note on the season of Best Of lists from an old favorite, Ryan at Catbirdseat, which sums up my thoughts pretty well:

And what struck me about that is that it rings of exactly what I think a Top/Best/Favorite list should be. It should be the music that, for whatever reason, just really resonated with the listmaker. The music that became part of their lives, instead of part of their “collection.” I realize that makes the lists WHOLLY idiosyncratic and subjective… but I feel like that’s the whole point. Music ain’t science, it ain’t statistics. It’s lust, and heartbreak, and anxiety, and confusion. It’s Elvis’ hips, and Joe Strummer’s guitar. It’s the too-short life of Ian Curtis.

It seems like at some point in the past few years, we decided that it was more important to value music against some nebulous set of criteria that we can apply numerical values to. Let’s keep it up and maybe one day, we can finally squeeze ALL the fun out of this.

Applies nicely not just to music but to everything we love. And also squares well with the Under Culture 2008 wrap-up, coming next week, which is not lists at all but an epic dialogue between Spencer and I on all of our favorite things this year and what made them stick with us. Look forward to that shortly after the holiday break and have a lovely winter celebration, friends.