Daemon reviews Untitled

I'm just glad to see that people from that bygone era of machinima are still alive and kicking. Now we just need Khan to explode back onto the scene and I might be able to convince myself that machinima doesn't suck anymore.

Well would you look at that! Scant days after I wrote this in my Unlucky Elite review, Khan just appeared out of nowhere and uploaded a machinima! Now what are the odds of that?

Considering that I've been following this guy like a hawk I'd have to say they'd be pretty high. Khan's always been one of my favorite directors at M.com because we're pretty much in this for the same reasons: we want to make people think and feel in ways that they don't usually think or feel. You can see that in a lot of his works, especially Misconception. I didn't always like them, to be sure, but what's important is that his heart was in the right place. The guy makes quality machinima that focuses on narrative.

It says volumes about him when, instead of being nervous, I actually got excited that he was going to make a Call of Duty machinima, an engine that ranks below Runescape as far as aesthetic appeal and usefulness goes. Would this be the machinima to break Randomjack's open challenge to make a good machinima in the Call of Duty engine?

Short answer:

Khan breaks the challenge over his knee and uses the pieces to fight off legions of commentaries and stupid comedies. Not only is Untitled the best CoD machinima I've ever seen, it's one of the better machinimas I've seen in recent memory.

For starters, it's beautiful. Khan's always had a real talent for cinematography, color correction and in general convincing us that what we're watching isn't game footage, but film footage. The more I watched and took in the framing and the detailing for each shot, the more it dawned on me that maybe the engine wasn't what was weak, but the film makers who work with CoD. If CoD machinima is capable of looking this good, then there's no longer any excuse for other CoD machinimas to be crap. The bar has been raised, people. Time to start expecting more from the engine.

The song itself, 'Abide with Me', is the real MVP here. It compliments the visuals and fills the whole project with a sense of grandeur. But what exactly does it mean in the context of the video?

This is where the genius of the video really shines. Khan's been a fan of making videos that don't wear their moral on their sleeve, which is something I agree with. See, what a work of art means to the creator is far less important then what it means to the audience. The audience are the people who need to like your characters, follow your plots, and ultimately watch your movie. They need to be able to follow what's going on while still being given enough range to come to their own conclusions.

While you could argue that this film could have easily been named 'Abide with Me', that takes away the open nature of the film. This film is about more then just its song. The song is just a literary tool, just like the cinematography. The point of the video is not the song, it's the song paired with the imagery to pose a simple work that the viewer must find meaning in. It's like a Rorschach test of machinima.

So what did college-educated Daemon think it meant?

Well, I did some research and found out that the song was written by Henry Francis Lyte as he was dying from Tuberculosis. The song itself is basically Lyte asking if God will stay by him, even after death (what with the constant repetition of 'abide with me', which means 'stay with me'). Combined with the visual imagery of a battle being played over what we assume is a nuclear missile being launched, I'd personally say that the video poses the question of 'Does God still love us and care for us after all the horrible things we do to each other'? It's certainly an intriguing question that anyone who has ever questioned their faith has probably asked themselves at one point or another in their lives.

Of course there are many arguments you could raise for what this video is about, and that's what makes this video so great. It accomplishes what Curiosity set out to do, without having to flat-out say what the questions are. It's machinimas like these that make me glad to be a part of this community and remind me why I started making machinima in the first place. As if the rest of the review wasn't an indicator, definitely go check this out.