Dante's Inferno (part two).

Having now finished the game, I think I can finish this post to its full accord.

After reaching the end of the circle Anger, Dante reaches the River Styx and begins to float across it on what is later to be revealed as the head of the demon Phlegyas, who attacks Dante. Overcoming this gargantuan enemy, Lucifer appears with Beatrice in tow, and drawing here from the myth of Persephone in the Greek mythological canon, offers Beatrice seeds of the forbidden fruit (pomegranate) which she willingly takes as a final act of defiance of Dante and his defilement of his vows to her. Lucifer whisks his new Queen of Hell away (after a rather graphic kiss) and Dante is left to take Phlegyas into the city of Dis and the sixth circle of Heresy. After quite literally smashing through Heresy Dante arrives in Violence, where those violent in life against others or themselves are condemned to one of the segments within to suffer their punishments. Within this circle he meets his mother, a suicide, whom Dante absolves after learning that she took her own life to escape the cruelty of his father, instead of falling afoul to plague as he was told. On entering the next area where those violent against God are entombed in a desert of burning, raging sands, Dante encounters his brother in law Francesco, condemned to this area for his part in the massacre of "heathens" in the Holy Land Dante began. Francesco was sentenced to death by taking full responsibility for the massacre, protecting Dante and condemning himself.

From Adaptations: The Contemporary Dilemmas:"In the quest to find a mode of expression that explains the point of collision between the two media, one alternative angle of investigation might lie in the area of research seeking explanations for the success with audiences (in particular) of classic adaptations, and to speculate on the ways that the interface between a literary text and its film tribute(s) is interpreted and used by its audience." With Dante's Inferno the game, EA took a classic literary text, kept the narrative core of the nine circles of hell and Dante's journey through them and used it as an artistic license to fully explore the depths of human sin and the damning, warping ability it renders on the human soul. The game's developers have fully realised every inch of Hell in its most terrible forms, from the sirenesque temptresses of Lust whose shall we say feminine areas have lives of their own, to the grotesquely obese behemoths of Gluttony who spew forth their body's contents as a method of attack upon the player. Each circle however abbreviated from its literary version (whether that be for pacing issues or the enormous technological feat of rendering every circle of Hell fully in game) feels as different and disgusting as the last. Herein lies the heart of the adaptation and its analogy: EA Games chose to lift the setting of the Inferno and market it en masse to an audience of gamers, who may be unfamiliar with the original text, but with a setting such as Hell itself and a storyline as riveting as the Inferno created a blockbuster. No longer the man lost in the woods, EA and Visceral Games (a rather apt name for the studio's creation) Dante became the sinful crusader whose love was stolen from him by the Devil himself. Thus, the quest changes in nature from a simple journey of exploration and education through Hell into one of redemption through love and the inevitable self sacrifice.

In the game Dante goes on to Fraud to face ten challenges set forth by Beatrice, occurring in game as a series of combat related challenges. Once the player overcomes all ten, Dante reaches the entrance to the final circle, Treachery, where Beatrice appears to berate Dante. Insistent that he has faced all of his sins in coming this far, his sudden realisation that it was he who slaughtered the prisoners of Acre through sheer frustration and helplessness at his position he is damned to the deepest circle of Hell for his treachery to Francesco and Beatrice herself. On acceptance of his damnation, Dante sinks to his knees and Beatrice's cross falls from his person. On seeing it she realises his repentance for his sins and she is returned to her former self. The archangel Gabriel descends from Heaven to retrieve Beatrice now that Dante has sacrificed himself for her, and promises Dante that it is not the last he will see of him. Armed now with nothing to lose, Dante carries on to the centre of Treachery where Lake Cocytus sits frozen with Lucifer's true form imprisoned at the centre; a giant demon imprisoned upon the frozen lake.

After defeating this form, Lucifer reveals that by reaching the final circle, Dante has proved himself worthy of freeing him from that body and will emerging in his true form. Battling Dante, Lucifer gleefully announces that Dante will never leave Hell, as he was killed in Acre by the brother of the woman he committed adultery with. Lucifer monologues that now free, he will rise from Hell, overthrow God and seize Heaven, but through the power given by all the souls he has liberated from Hell, Dante re-imprisons Lucifer in the lake and an archangel appears to carry Dante to purgatory. The End: until the game sequel, recently confirmed as in development appears on shelves. It is currently unknown if the sequel will follow the second poem and head through Purgatory or a new story will be fabricated of another journey through Hell and another attempted escape from Lucifer. Watch this space.

The production of sequels to such a closed story opens the debate of the necessity of such an adaptation in the first place. If the nature of the market is such that a sequel will be produced when the profit made is high enough, will the quality of the adaptation be tainted? "Rather than a tendency to see the film/TV adaptation of a literary text as necessarily lacking some of the force and substance of its original, it might be more fruitful to regard this and subsequent adaptations of a novel in terms of excess rather than lack. Research into fandom in cultural studies documents the way that fan communities constantly produce new narratives about favourite characters or authors, as if what they find in the original text frustrates a quest for wholeness and completeness which can only be satisfied by the creation and dispersal of narratives which somehow fill in the 'gaps'." Thus it is argued that when an audience member invests in a story or character so much, the end as it is given by the author of the text is not enough. Repeated readings or viewings are inadequate and the reader seeks to expand into further mediums in order to fully explore a story. With Dante's Inferno there is the original text (Inferno), its subsequent sequels (Purgatorio and Paradiso) an animated film and Downloadable Content produced on each of the game's platforms to keep the audience captivated. The production of a sequel continues the narrative and undoubtedly a quick search online will produce several further results of fan fictions and expanded narratives within the established universe. Thus, the original text loses importance in the eyes of the audience when modernised versions exist on more accessible wavelengths, such as the animated DVD and this videogame adaptation.

Textbook used in this and the previous article is Adaptations: From Text to Screen, Screen to Text, various authors and Edited by Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan, first published in 1999 by Routledge.

Adaptations: Dante's Inferno.

Recently in an effort to keep my brain doing something somewhat productive Ive taken to actually reading the text books I bought at university to use with my dissertation.

The hot topic is adaptations, as I wrote about the adaptation of Hellboy from page to screen and the folklore and mythology behind it, as well as how these various tales were adapted to suit the narrative of the graphic novels.

So it is widely accepted that there are three types of adaptation, as put forth by Wagner: Transposition, a literal translation of a text or a novel "given directly on screen", Commentary - "where an original is taken and either purposely or inadvertently altered in some respect" and Analogy - where the core of the text is intact but the setting, costume, time period etc of the text can be changed and adapted to suit a new purpose.

Now what interests me in particular about the academic side of adaptation is that video games have not been studied in depth. For such a largely circulated form of new media, no prominent text immediately springs to mind as research into the adaption of game to film or vice versa, or subsequent video game adaptations of written media, such as Dante's Inferno from EA or the upcoming Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, based loosely on a Chinese fable. So, undertaking the layouts set forth by Wagner, we can see that these two particular examples (although I must make it clear I have yet to play Enslaved) are pure analogy.

Dante's Inferno takes the basic premise of the poem, the nine circles of hell and Lucifer frozen in the very centre, and changes the story from a journey through hell and a subsequent escape into an epic love story centred on Dante committing adultery whilst off on a Crusade in the Holy Land, losing his life and then fighting Death himself to claim his scythe and stave off his own demise. On returning home he discovers Beatrice, his love, murdered and her soul taken by Lucifer himself. Death's scythe allows Dante to enter Hell, the Inferno and chase after Beatrice in order to reclaim and liberate her from Lucifer's clutches.

Now to remain spoiler free, and as I haven't finished the game myself yet... I shall speak strictly of the way Dante's Inferno functions as an adaptation. The poem itself, Inferno, is the first of a trilogy of poems written by Dante Aligheri. In the source text, Aligheri finds himself lost in a forest and set upon by three beasts: a lion, a leopard and a she-wolf. As he realises the deeper into the forest he flees that he cannot escape, the Roman poet Virgil rescues him and takes him into the underworld, containing the nine circles of hell and the poetically just punishments for the sins and sinners contained within. After passing through an area known as the vestibule, containing those in life who did naught strictly good nor evil, suffering the constant sting of wasps and bees as maggots and other insects drink their blood and tears, to eternally remind them of the sting of sin at their backs (among them Pontius Pilate, the man who condemned Jesus to the cross).

As the two arrive at the edge of the vestibule they see Charon, the boatman from Greek Mythology awaiting recently demised souls to ferry them across Acheron into Hell itself. Reluctant to take Aligheri as a living soul, Charon is eventually swayed by Virgil, who deems Dante's journey of higher importance. It is here the game initially differs from the text, as this is an action game, Dante must fight Charon to gain entrance to the underworld, when he arrives at purgatory to witness a deformed King Minos judging the recently departed and condemning them to the circle attuned to the sin they were most guilty of in life. Throughout the game, several other prominent historical figures are present in the various circles as twisted shadows of their living selves. The game also provides a number of figures outside of the boss encounters the player has the chance to punish or redeem through cleansing of their sins, allowing them to enter the kingdom of heaven (performed in game through a button pressing minigame). Each of these appear in the circle they were condemned to, for example Cleopatra and Marc Antony in Lust, Pontius Pilate in Limbo, Orpheus in Blasphemy and Electra in wrath. Through alleviating or punishing these souls, the game's upgrade system, aligned with Holy or Unholy powers and magicks becomes a prominent tool for survival in the underworld, yet seemingly opposes the game's strong Christian ideology and chooses to ignore the original text's ideas that those who performed alchemy or magic were condemned to the eighth circle of Hell, Fraud, for demonstrating skills they did not actually possess. However this could be seen to keep in touch with the text as Dante's personal sins and quest for redemption is a thematically sound plot device in accordance with the game's achievements and endings.

Update!

Well I havent posted here in quite some time so I thought I would...

A lot has changed! Im now a graduate from Lincoln University and working as a Games Tester. Same passions still exist though, and Im going to try to write on here more frequently, hopefully to keep myself occupied.

Frank Darabont's adaptation of Stephen King's The Mist.

Now this is one amazing film. I think this would be a good point to kick off this blog on as I am writing my dissertation next year on adaptations of graphic novels to film. Now I know this isnt a graphic novel, but it is an adaptation of Stephen King's short story titled The Mist, from the book Skeleton Crew. It follows David Drayton, an everyman who, after being in a huge storm which causes a lot of damage to his house and the surrounding area, departs with his son and neighbour to a local supermarket for supplies, due to the lack of power and water following the storm. Soon after their arrival, a thick mist begins to envelop the town and a man runs into the store warning everyone not to go out into the mist, as there is something in it.

Now if you dont want to be spoiled on the book or the film, please DON'T READ ON!!!

The brown stuff really starts to hit the fan as the inhabitants of the supermarket are caught up in a massive earthquake, and the generator breaks down. David, Ollie Weeks, a store clerk, Norm the bag boy and two other locals go into the back to try and fix it, with Norm volunterring to go under the shutter door, unblock the generator's blocked output vent to stop it from overheating and get it started again. Simple on paper. On restarting the generator and opening the door enough for Norm to get out, a large tentacle appears through the mist into the store room and wraps itself around Norm, injuring him from its barbed suckers and trying to drag him away to whatever the tentacles are joined too. David tries in vain to save him and they manage to shut the door, cutting off part of one of the tentacles, and they leave the stinking store room for the shop.

On their return, the most interesting theme of the mist begins to surface. Are the monsters and things in the mist really the true threat, or are the people inside much worse?

David and the others, clearly in shock, return to the shop floor and promise not to tell the rest of the shop's inhabitants yet, as doing so may cause them to panic unnecessarily. David, enraged that the two locals allowed Norm to go out there at all punches Jim, one of the locals, in his rage. Jim and Myron turn to the beer fridge to soothe their grief. Norton, David's neighbour who has until the storm's fallout been estranged, as a bitter property dispute left them not on the best of terms, learns of the happenings in the store room and laughs it off as a joke, yet wont go check the store room for himself. At the end of this scene, David returns to his son Billy with Amanda, Billy's teacher, and after having told the store of the monsters, a divide becomes prominent/

Group 1: Norton and his group of followers, who dont believe in this monster nonsense and think there must be a rational, logical explanation.

Group 2: Mrs Carmody, the town crazy lady and her followers who believe the mist and its contents are a punishment from God, the end of days or the apocalypse, which only prayer and blood sacrifice will soothe.

Group 3: David, Billy, Amanda, Ollie and the rest of the locals who just want to get on with life yet remain wary of the fact that there are things in the mist, which could burst through the glass fronted store at any time.

Norton and his group soon decide to leave the supermarket

The tagline for this film was great. "Fear changes everything". And we can see that it does. After another incident involving giant killer bugs getting into the store and something resembling a skinless pterodactyl similar to the first silent hill game, people are dead and the survivors are distraught. One man is in desperate need of medical attention after being severly burned in the attack, and David and a few others decide to go to the pharmacy next door to the supermarket in order to get some help, much to the dismay of Mrs Carmody, who repeats her warning of the mist is death. The group arrives at the pharmacy without incident, but find the place inhabited by spiders who weave acidic webs. After suffering another casualty the group arrives back at the store with the medicine, only to find that the man has died, and the inhabitants of the market have fallen into Mrs Carmody's preaching.

The group calls for blood sacrifice and "expiation" in order to soothe the wrath of God that has supposedly been cast upon them in the form of the Mist. They lay blame for the plagues on the military men amongst them, who work on something called "The Arrowhead Project" in the mountains around town, and the mob kills one of the last remaining soldier after the other two have committed suicide. The origin of the mist is believed to be from an interdimensional portal opened by the project into the spaces between dimensions, allowing whatever it is that lurks inbetween into our world. Yep, its all these Lovecraftian beasties that have emerged from todash (a key work for dark tower readers) to wreak havoc in our world.

David, Amanda and Billy decide to leave the mall with Ollie, Dan and Irene, but they are met by Mrs Carmody and her mob, who want David's son Billy as the next sacrifice. A fight ensues, ending with Mrs Carmody being killed by Norm, and being spreadeagled in her own blood on the shop floor, in an iconic pose reminiscent of Jesus's crucifixion. The group runs through the parking lot to David's car, with Ollie meeting his end on the way in the webs of the spiders. David takes Ollie's gun and they speed off into the mist away from the supermarket and the hell within.


Soon after, the mist reaches its climax. The passengers of the car run out of petrol with no end to the mist seemingly in sight. The roars and movements of the monsters can be heard all around the car, and they choose another way out rather than consumption at the hand of a monster. Five passengers, but only four bullets. And here the mist hits its high: the incredible ending. David shoots Billy, Amanda, Irene and Dan, choosing another ending for himself. He gets out of the car and breaks down in the middle of the road, demanding that he be killed by whatever is out there. But nothing comes.

Except an army convoy and the clearing of the mist. Civilisation didnt come to a complete standstill and if only they had waited a few minutes more, instead of losing all hope, the car's passengers would have been saved. David is now clearly a broken man, and the credits roll. My description doesn't really do it justice but it is one of the best endings I have ever seen on film. Non cliche, unforced, completely out of the blue and entirely fitting to the seemingly hopeless situation these people found themselves in. Really powerful, explicitly human stuff, which may leave some viewers angry at the difference to the novel or how easily the passengers surrendered to death. But after what they had suffered at the hands of fellow humans already and the unknown creatures in the mist, is it really so hard to believe?

Apologies for the details missed from this summary, I was skimming over some of the details.

First post!

So basically I decided to write a blog about everything I see or hear from the media industries. Ive just finished my second year of a Media, Culture and Communications course and Im very interested in specifically film and video games and the criticisms or praise they receive in the media and from the individual. As Im doing a joint degree with Journalism its interesting to look at what Im taught on both courses and relate it to all the media I consume, as anyone who knows me longer than ten minutes can see Im really into films and games. This blog is really just to vent about anything I observe in either industry, theres no real point to it but its something to do!