Leighton's Blog

Hey guys! Leighton here with some SLY Games updates! First however I decided I would say something about movies.

Last night I watched a “G Rated” (quotes intended) movie called The Last Unicorn. It was one of those classic animated films that no-one really knows about. It was SICK! I came away feeling:

• Cheated
• Angry
• Insulted
• Inspired

First before I explain why I felt those seemingly contradicting emotions let me tell you more about the movie. (I don’t expect to be spoiling anything for you since I HIGHLY discourage you from watching it)

The Last Unicorn is about a fantasy world which used to be populated with Unicorns. A unicorn is portrayed as a kind of immortal super-human horse like creature that is full of “Magic” and beauty. The unicorn specifically covered in the movie finds out that she is THE LAST of a race that once brought good to the world.

She goes off in search of the rest of her kin, with the help of a magician/sorcerer who relies on freak accidents and bursts of inspiration to work real magic, otherwise relying on card tricks to fool people.

They come to a barren kingdom (after having an interesting run in with an outlaw band who don’t believe in Robin Hood *sniff*) rumored to contain the other unicorns who have been chased there by a fiery red bull of phantasmic power.

Unfortunately the bull finds them at night and attempts to drive the last unicorn into the sea to join (as they find) her other kin.

The Magician (who, let me inform you, stole the outlaw leader’s wife) changes the unicorn into a human girl to save her from the bull who somehow doesn’t realize that they are the same person and goes off in a huff, cheated of his prey.

The small band then travels to the (REALLY evil looking) castle of King Haggard and his son. They are accepted as castle employees (sort of) as they try to figure out how to save the unicorns trapped in the sea from the red bull. Meanwhile the unicorn (humanized) unwitting bewitches the King’s son who promptly tries to court her.

After they find the key to the red bull’s lair by lying to a talking skeleton, the unicorn, the magician, the prince and the outlaw’s ex wife traverse the red bull’s lair. Meanwhile the unicorn (starting to become more human by the moment) falls in love with the overjoyed prince. Unfortunately the foursome encounter the bull who (this time, idk why not before) recognizes the unicorn in her human form and tries to capture her and stick her in the sea.

Somehow, the bumbling magician (out of selfishness as explained in the movie) manages to turn the human girl back into a unicorn,  who is then in more danger (and thus unable to marry the prince unless turned back into a human) backed up almost into the sea when the prince attempts a heroic act (coincidentally getting killed in vain because of it) and the unicorn has to save herself which she does by pushing the red bull (wimpy guy) back into the sea himself and thus rescuing all the unicorns.

She brings to life the prince and goes off and joins the other unicorns who go back to their magical forest with a wannebe happily-ever-after ending.

Now that I have wasted your time telling you all that, you can properly understand my reaction. For those of you who don’t, let me explain. Not only did the movie have swearing and gratuitous near-nudity (and it was rated G!!!) but it had several bad messages. Here goes:

• Don’t get married, if you fall in love, just break it up and go off and be yourself.
• Adultury? What’s that?
• Magic is a god-like force. (I know I didn’t cover that in the synopsis but yeah)
• Selfish gain is more important than others.
• Animals are more important (and smarter) than people. (especially guys)
• And for the biggest one: HEROISM DOESN’T WORK!!!

I know those are some pretty heinous accusations but they are all in there. As I said before, it was a pretty sick movie. What a thing, trick the parents with promises of a fairy-tale ending and cutting edge animation and then stuff the kids full of all kind of secular, new age propaganda. That’s why I came away feeling angry. I felt cheated because the Hero and the Heroine didn’t get married in the end (although they were in love), as well as other Heroism related problems. I felt insulted because there was a strong anti-guy thing throughout the movie.

Ok, you may be wondering why I felt inspired. I felt inspired because I am currently planning/making/learning a video game off of my sister’s novel, Wolf’s Bard, and a big theme in there is Heroism. In fact that’s all it is about; God driven Heroism. So when I see things that absolutely drag heroism in the dust it makes me want to wave it high where it belongs. You see? Also, I watched another video recently that Jay Lauser recommended, this one a short. It is a VERY good movie.  You guys will have to tell me what you think of it:

Haha, anyway… It’s time for my SLY Games update! I recently was researching several different college courses on Interactivity Development and found a lot of them were being taught using a game engine called Unreal. I had heard other vague references to this piece of software before but hadn’t paid them much time. This time I took the time to research it a little. I came with two conflicting pieces of info:

• Unreal is FREE!!!!
• Unreal costs 700,000 dollars. *dies*

Ok, haha. You guys are probably laughing right now. How could two such conflicting reports exist?!

They are both true. LOL

The Unreal engine is available to ANYBODY for free download. Yes, there is a catch. It’s for noncommercial purposes only. BUT not REALLY! You can sell anything you make in it for a profit, you just have to pay Unreal Technologies a royalty. Once you get enough money you can BUY the official software and then not have to pay any royalties on any software made with that version. Obviously that’s dependent on how MUCH money you make off of your video game. LOL