Return to Monkey Island [SPOILER FREE]

[BaronGrackle]

2 hours ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

 

Your wife has good taste... damn sight better than BTTF2! 

I was unclear! Although my wife has excellent taste (in other areas), she is the one who does NOT remember Back to the Future 3 fondly.

 

But that's okay. The kids will have to give it a view before we can get to the Telltale game.

[ThunderPeel2001]

1 hour ago, BaronGrackle said:

I was unclear! Although my wife has excellent taste (in other areas), she is the one who does NOT remember Back to the Future 3 fondly.

 

But that's okay. The kids will have to give it a view before we can get to the Telltale game.

 

Oh dear! What a shame. BTTF3 is so often maligned, that I assumed you weren't a fan. There's still time

[Asterothe]

The previous game I had this was Thimbleweed park!

[ThunderPeel2001]

Welcome to the club! Hard to believe that Trivia Overlord is the rarest achievement I own, though!

[KestrelPi]

On 10/3/2022 at 7:35 PM, ThunderPeel2001 said:

 

Oh dear! What a shame. BTTF3 is so often maligned, that I assumed you weren't a fan. There's still time

 

In recent years I think BTTF3 has seen something as a rehabilitation, as a fine conclusion to the series. I can't go with you on it being better than the second though, which is my favourite of the lot.

 

I feel like the first one is just very well-formed, it's hard to find bad things to say about it, the second or third can't survive without it so if you could only save one of the films it'd probably have to be the first. But the second is an absolutely glorious mess, from its bizarre envisioning of 2015 (though accurate in more ways than it's given credit for) then very silly-yet-believable 1985 dystopia and then the revisit of the location and events of the first film in a way that's never been done as well since. I can't help but love it, it's so much.

 

The trouble with BTTF3 to me is that it hangs so much on being a western pastiche, so if you're not really into that then it's wholly reliant on the characters and writing (which are still great!). The other thing is that it's so far back in time that aside from the clocktower which barely gets used, the locations are practically unrecognisable so you don't really get the fun of the same places being recontextualised like you do in the first two. So I get why people feel like it's 'apart' from the first two, but I think most people I talk to about it now agree it's a perfectly fine adventure in its own right, and concludes the trilogy well.

 

On the whole I think it's probably one of the most consistently good trilogies ever.

[Lagomorph01]

I fear we're going offtopic, but here's my two cents:

I love the whole BTTF trilogy apart from one tiny detail.

BTTF2 introduces "What's the matter, McFly? You chicken?" thing about Marty being a hothead. It truly comes out of left field for me, because nothing in BTTF hints at this. I get that they wanted to give Marty a character arc, but it's so obviously shoved in there that I cringe every time it's mentioned. Other than that, almost perfect trilogy (aside from some necessary recasts). The first one however is flawless and one of my favourite movies of all time!

[KestrelPi]

1 hour ago, Lagomorph01 said:

I fear we're going offtopic, but here's my two cents:

I love the whole BTTF trilogy apart from one tiny detail.

BTTF2 introduces "What's the matter, McFly? You chicken?" thing about Marty being a hothead. It truly comes out of left field for me, because nothing in BTTF hints at this. I get that they wanted to give Marty a character arc, but it's so obviously shoved in there that I cringe every time it's mentioned. Other than that, almost perfect trilogy (aside from some necessary recasts). The first one however is flawless and one of my favourite movies of all time!

Heck I mean what else is there to talk about RMI without spoilers at this point xD

 

I agree that detail is a little hamfisted but if the first one could be said to have a flaw I would say it's that Marty can essentially do no wrong. The worst that could be said about his character is that he's a little impulsive, he sometimes acts without thinking and gets into trouble sometimes because of it. But even when he does, getting into trouble is usually set up as a way to make him look cool.

 

At the end of BTTF Marty has actually overcome very little on a personal level. Maybe playing the guitar got him over some of his fear of rejection but it's not exactly made very clear in the narrative. At the end, he's the character that stays the same while the rest of his flawed family gets 'fixed' around him (Incidentally this, when you really think about it is a horrifying thing to happen - for your parents to become unrecognisable to you as people, and suddenly your memories of growing up being all wrong).

 

He can't be said to have grown or learned anything in any meaningful way in the first film, and that's okay, a film doesn't have to deliver that... but over the course of a trilogy you probably would start to notice it. So I can understand why they felt that they had to give him something to overcome, and while it's a bit weird to have this bit introduced midway through the trilogy, I give it a pass because without it there really would be very little to tie the 3rd film back to the second (and by extention the first). It allows him to have a moment of personal growth that makes him realise he doesn't actually need to prove himself (even if he's forced to in the end), which comes full circle when he gets to change the moment when he would have been in the car crash.

 

I feel like without that, BTTF3 would have felt less part of the whole than it does.

 

On topic bit: something related I really like about RMI is (spoilertexted for very, very oblique allusions to some stuff that happens in the game)

Spoiler

that we get some hints of character development (or at least addressing more directly things that have always been implied about the character) for Guybrush that I think have been largely absent from most of the series, and to me that makes him and the series richer

 

 

[Aro-tron]

I have only just now gotten to the start of Part 3 of RTMI, due to having two kids and plenty of other responsibilities, and I'm definitely enjoying it. As a kid, I only got limited pockets of time to play games, so I would work puzzle over an adventure game for (what seemed like) months.

 

I have introduced my kids (4 and 7) to Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo on the Switch and they have replayed it half a dozen times now. The four-year old finds the controls difficult (mostly navigating the cursor precisely with the joycon), and my seven-year old is now starting to find it a bit simple. They enjoy playing together though, so I think there's a very narrow sweet spot for the Humongous games.

 

The three most recent purchases on my Switch are Putt-Putt, Thimbleweed Park, and RTMI, which I thought was funny.

---

To chime in on BTTF3, I think I agree with Kestrel that the first is nearly perfectly structured, the second is a glorious and ambitious mess, and the third one is a genre exercise that is well-made, but which doesn't feel as personal as the first two. I think what makes the first two movies more than just adventure romps is that they are about Marty's relationship with his family and his own past/future. The third film doesn't add to this in any significant way, and it feels kind of extraneous to me - like an episode of the animated series or something.

 

They lean on the "Are ya CHICKEN" bit so hard in 2 and 3 that I was convinced it was set up in Part 1 for years....

[BaronGrackle]

"What's the matter, Threepwood? You don't like porcelain?"

[ThunderPeel2001]

Prepare yourself for some serious BTTF2 bashing (this should probably be moved to the "Unpopular Opinions" thread)...

 

Back to the Future: Part II, like Temple of Doom or The Goonies, can only be truly loved with rose-tinted glasses.

 

BTTF2 is just a cash-in on the first film. It has no heart and, without any obvious reason for being, it coasts along on the charm of its cast, skill of its director, production values, and little else.

 

You can imagine the Zemekis and Gale, lacking any sort of direction for a story, starting with a list of fan-favourite scenes from the first film:

• Let's do the scene with Lorraine in the dark again!
• Let's do the scene in the cafe where Marty punches Biff again!
• Let's do the skateboard scene again!
• Let's do the Enchantment Under the Sea scene again!
• Let's do the Biff gets covered in manure scene again!

And then stringing together a story that would fit these scenes in.

 

But... having run out of things to fan service with, they were forced to try something else with BTTF3... and they came up with an original story. And it's so much better. It's not BTTF, but it's a far superior film.

 

You care about Doc getting Clara... You care about George getting Elaine... you don't care about Marty getting the Almanac.

[KestrelPi]

1 hour ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

Prepare yourself for some serious BTTF2 bashing (this should probably be moved to the "Unpopular Opinions" thread)...

 

Back to the Future: Part II, like Temple of Doom or The Goonies, can only be truly loved with rose-tinted glasses.

 

BTTF2 is just a cash-in on the first film. It has no heart and, without any obvious reason for being, it coasts along on the charm of its cast, skill of its director, production values, and little else.

 

You can imagine the Zemekis and Gale, lacking any sort of direction for a story, starting with a list of fan-favourite scenes from the first film:

• Let's do the scene with Lorraine in the dark again!
• Let's do the scene in the cafe where Marty punches Biff again!
• Let's do the skateboard scene again!
• Let's do the Enchantment Under the Sea scene again!
• Let's do the Biff gets covered in manure scene again!

And then stringing together a story that would fit these scenes in.

 

But... having run out of things to fan service with, they were forced to try something else with BTTF3... and they came up with an original story. And it's so much better. It's not BTTF, but it's a far superior film.

 

You care about Doc getting Clara... You care about George getting Elaine... you don't care about Marty getting the Almanac.

 

I mean I obviously completely disagree with almost all of this, but all of it I'd file under 'each to their own' apart from the following which I take complete exception to:

 

Quote

Back to the Future: Part II, like Temple of Doom or The Goonies, can only be truly loved with rose-tinted glasses.

 

That's just false. I love it, and I've seen it recently, and I'm very secure in my loving of it. I know when I'm viewing something through rose tinted glasses or not, and I'm not. Don't try to tell me that it's only possible for me to do if I'm looking at it wrong, that's the sort of thing that makes me grumpy. I think about this film a LOT. I'm even planning on recording a podcast about it soon (we decided to look at 2 rather than 1 because we felt that the first one has been talked about plenty, and 2 has just so much to talk about).

 

So, no. I love it. Unreservedly, and glasses off.

 

OK, grump moment over.

[LuigiHann]

BTTF1 is an unparalleled work, a masterful screenplay filled with precise setups and callbacks, so no follow-up could truly do it justice. And really there was nowhere else in time that could really match the impact of a then-modern-day teen meeting his own parents specifically when they were his exact age. So I'm glad they didn't try to rehash that by meeting them again in a different but ultimately-less effective era. But I appreciate the way that the sequels mixed and matched between trying new things to broadly explore the time travel gimmick (visiting the the future, alternate timelines, avoiding crossing paths with yourself, and visiting the distant past basically cover the bases), and also remixed the first film's setups and payoffs to create a sort of unique grammar that makes the first film, on rewatch, feel like it's been setting up even more. The sequels definitely don't surpass the original, but I do think they enrich it. 

 

Some early drafts of BTTF2 are readable online or otherwise well-documented... so it's known that the 1955 revisit was a late-ish change (originally that segment was written to take place in 1967) and the wild west segment that became the whole of BTTF3 was going to be the final act of BTTF2 until they decided it would be too many characters to introduce that late in the film. Revisiting 1955 is admittedly efficient in terms of both casting and storytelling, and I guess you could see it as cynical but it seems pretty whimsical to me. And BTTF3 has grown on me as well, but I feel like when they expanded it from a single act to a full film, they went through and added plenty of what had become "cliches" of the franchise there as well. The chase, the dance, the punch, the manure, the climactic race against time. Even the "waking up with Lorraine in the dark" scene was there, arguably much more awkwardly shoehorned in. Part of what's charming about BTTF3 is that it shuffles roles within the now-familiar structure, where sometimes Doc has become the Marty, and such. 

[BaronGrackle]

So... weren't BTTF2 and 3 made at the same time?

[LuigiHann]

1 hour ago, BaronGrackle said:

So... weren't BTTF2 and 3 made at the same time?

 

Yeah, they shot them back to back after expanding one big script into two films

15 hours ago, Aro-tron said:

They lean on the "Are ya CHICKEN" bit so hard in 2 and 3 that I was convinced it was set up in Part 1 for years....

 

My headcanon is that once the time-ripple-effect catches up to our Marty, he gradually becomes the Marty that was raised by confident parents, and thus his insecurity has taken a different form

[Al.DeHyde]

Tried to get my 4-year-old interested in BTTF when it was on telly the other day but unfortunately she was having none of it. She has shown some interest in Monkey Island though.

 

9 hours ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

Back to the Future: Part II, like Temple of Doom or The Goonies, can only be truly loved with rose-tinted glasses.

 

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! I can not accept this slander! I love all three Back To The Futures with Part 2 probably being my favourite these days. The alternate timelines, the dystopia, the mixing in of the first film, the hoverboard. Temple Of Doom is also my favourite Indy film and always has been. The Goonies may well be rose-tinted glasses for me though.

 

[Wally B.]

Where does all this Goonies hate come from??? 

[Al.DeHyde]

I certainly don't hate it, just haven't watched it for years! Might have to have a re-watch to see if it's still great 😁

[Aro-tron]

I think we're at risk of turning this into a BTTF thread, but I am going to come to the defense of part 2. The Almanac is just a McGuffin, the film is about him saving his family and preventing a Biff-led dystopia. I don't think you can criticize BTTF2 for coasting on all the things that made the first film good, when it subverts and changes the formula of the first film in ways that I think are as ambitious as the Godfather Part II (while admittedly not as successful, but in a fun way).

The easy thing to do would have just been to have Marty have to travel to 1965 and prevent his parents from splitting up again.

 

To bring this back to Monkey Island, I think it's fun when a sequel to an impeccably crafted Part 1 take some liberties to do weird things that stretch and extend the concept in ways that are less 'perfect', but more interesting. Raiders, MI1, and BTTF1 are all structurally very tight, inventive and nearly unimpeachable. They all have sequels that are darker, weirder and messier, and threequels that are safer, cuddlier reversions to a more crowd-pleasing structure. Still good, but less exciting. I suppose the original Star Wars films are a bit like that as well. That seems to be the "trilogy" format that I grew up with, it seems!

[BaronGrackle]

On the topic of sequels... is it or is in not fair to label Curse as a safe reboot to Secret? Because I'm having doubts.

 

"Map, Ship, and Crew" is the matra early in MI3, but that's not the same as the beginning of MI1.
MI1 had its first puzzle chain as the Three Trials, followed by puzzles for a ship and one crewman (I'm not sure recruiting Carla and Meathook qualify as puzzles).

Even MI2 has a comparable start with Four Ingredients for a voodoo doll, along with puzzles for the ship and crew. It's just that the crew is the captain, and the two puzzles are both for his sake (money and monocle).

Add to this, MI3 has a prelude act in its Part I, comparable to what we saw in every other MI game EXCEPT FOR MI1 and MI2.

 

I think people look to Insult Swordfighting as the main reason to call MI3 a reboot, but is one gameplay element enough to make something a reboot? MI3 incorporated swordfighting completely differently than MI1... instead of an uneven subsection of Part I, it was the focus of an entire part itself and combined with a ship-to-ship combat arcade sequence. It's arguable that MI3's Three Sheets to the Wind fulfilled Ron Gilbert's initial plan for ship combat and gave players a rare instance of literal piracy, instead of a set of puzzles akin to MI1's The Journey or MI6's A Dangerous Journey. There was certainly no arcade sequence in MI1, or MI2.

Edited October 12, 2022 by BaronGrackle

[TimeGentleman]

It's not a reboot, because it maintains the continuity.

[LuigiHann]

Plot-wise I would call Curse a classic "soft reboot," in the sense that continuity is maintained but it's written and marketed to be consumed by fans and newcomers alike. The kind of fresh start that means people don't need to do homework to enjoy it. In theory all of the MI sequels are designed to be like that on some level, with Guybrush expositing to get people up to speed quickly on the few crucial narrative threads directly connecting the games.

 

In terms of shared gameplay structures and mechanics, the rearranging and one-upping of gimmicks from the first game is pretty typical fare for game sequels. 

 

I do agree it's interesting to look back at MI2 in the context of the whole series, as it's the only sequel that totally leans away from rehashing elements of the first game, where the sequels generally lean way in. Certainly there are still shared characters and elements across MI1 and MI2, but since MI1 hadn't become legendary yet, there was no incentive to specifically recreate the feel of the first game. By Curse, MI1 had become a legacy sort of game, so they had to weave their own inventions into a concerted effort to feel familiar.

 

Personally I also find Escape fascinating, because it apes so many settings and plot elements from the first game, but nonetheless probably "feels" the most different. 

 

Overall it is a fun series to observe as a whole

[ThunderPeel2001]

On 10/12/2022 at 12:54 AM, KestrelPi said:

That's just false. I love it, and I've seen it recently, and I'm very secure in my loving of it. I know when I'm viewing something through rose tinted glasses or not, and I'm not. Don't try to tell me that it's only possible for me to do if I'm looking at it wrong, that's the sort of thing that makes me grumpy. I think about this film a LOT. I'm even planning on recording a podcast about it soon (we decided to look at 2 rather than 1 because we felt that the first one has been talked about plenty, and 2 has just so much to talk about).

 

I wasn't directly addressing you, but anyway, I don't believe anyone can ever be sure they're not wearing rose tinted glasses. You kind of has to listen to those around you. If everyone is saying, "this isn't fun" I think have to accept that maybe something hasn't aged as well you think it has. (I had this experience with The Goonies, which is why I used it an example -- I think it's great fun!)

 

As for BTTF2 being the best of the trilogy, and BTTF3 being reassessed... the prevailing critical sentiment has always been that BTTF2 is the weakest. So nothing has changed.

 

As for my opinion, I will say this for 2... it's FUN. It's the cast (brilliant performers with great chemistry), excellent direction (Zemekis in his prime) and top-notch production values (it's always a fun world to inhabit) that make a weak story work.

 

Edited October 13, 2022 by ThunderPeel2001

[BaronGrackle]

On 10/11/2022 at 6:54 PM, KestrelPi said:

I'm even planning on recording a podcast about it soon

Please link us to any podcast you have or will have.

[Al.DeHyde]

10 hours ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

 

You kind of has to listen to those around you. If everyone is saying, "this isn't fun" I think have to accept that maybe something hasn't aged as well you think it has.

 

I see what you're saying there but I wouldn't want to think I didn't really like something just because other people don't anymore.

[ThunderPeel2001]

3 hours ago, Al.DeHyde said:

I see what you're saying there but I wouldn't want to think I didn't really like something just because other people don't anymore.

 

What I said has got nothing to do with how YOU like something...

 

14 hours ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

(I had this experience with The Goonies, which is why I used it an example -- I think it's great fun!)

 

Edited October 14, 2022 by ThunderPeel2001