Mass Effect Take Earth Back - extended trailer

This trailer from Bioware and DigicPictures appears to be very intense both intellectually and emotionally. The story is somewhat simple: aliens attack the earth and destroy everything. Even an innocent little girl. Now its humanities turn to strike back and it is apparently going well or at least has good odds.

On a second thought the trailer is somehow playing around games and reality, humanity and inhuman aggression. I think it suggests that the conflict is about regaining our innocence in gaming.

Let see how far this reading can go. The initial twist from the patrolling fighters and the toy plane connects games with war. There is a trick of illusion as well when we listen to the patrol's radio while we see the toy plane. Some may notice that the illusion is cheated since the toy plane has automatic pads. But I think this level of automation for toys is perfectly conceivable in the near future. Therefore according to the first few seconds it is hard to distinguish between game and reality. But reality is cruel and aggressive while games are peaceful and quite. For the next few seconds we see what does reality do with people. Since it is an aggressive struggle for survival like in a war, it transforms humans to aggressive aliens. Sometimes we do not recognize the people around us when they meet the job market or found their own company, they just become merciless predators.

The emphasis on the transition is clear at 0.54 where a human being transforms to the alien life form. Until this point we have the following narrative. There is an innocent human girl in her natural environment. This scene is bound to playing, suggesting that playing is the natural human behavior. The game is flying a fighter jet. To fly is the archetype of freedom (even in the standard interpretation of dreams). This freedom is bound to playing by following the same type of jets from the game to reality. And there they come, the aliens who destroy this freedom, our toys. And when the transition at 0.54 happens we realize that these aliens are former human beings. 

And now we arrive to the classical crisis of growing up. But these grown-ups who come to destroy our playground (basically our innocence and freedom) are savage predators. This is supported by the next picture (1.03) when the sniper kills one of them who is chasing a child who is defended by her mother. Note that here we have a small family picture: the child and her mother running and the man who is defending them (the father-like person in this picture). Then we see some war scenes before we get a full view on the destroyed city first then the whole globe.

The second part starts very slowly giving us time to think about the scene. For now it should be clear that children are very important in this piece of video. Actually if you watch closely we have four occasions when aliens attack humans (1.03, 1.14, 1.23, 2.00) and two of them (the first and the last) are moments when they attack children (not counting the one when they shoot the jet). I think this ratio speaks loudly for children and innocence. In this part we see that this monstrous alien machine enters to the most natural environment for humans, the natural playground of a child. This moment has a very sensitive sense of violence. This machine breaks into this very intimate dreamy place which represents (according to our initial interpretation) the beauty of the innocent human nature. 

At 2.11 we see a very strong picture a man and a woman in arms find the little toy jet in the dust. Behind them there is a real working jet and the little girl is missing, the whole environment is ruined.

This conclusion can be understood as another family picture but without a child. In this interpretation daddy and mommy arrives to look for their daughter and they are prepared to save her. The jet behind them means that they still can fly, they are still free. However they are armed which means that they are strong and they fight. This together suggests that our heroes are those adults who preserved their freedom and fought for their survival without becoming similar to those alien predators.

Considering the look of the video primarily note the mimic of the girl. I am not sure whether it is captured with motion/face cap or made manually. I think it is more likely to be made manually and it works really well. You see on her face that she feels enthusiastic for playing with the little ladybird. I like the animation of the ladybird as it lands onto the sunflower then flies away. And that sunflower, that is really realistic. I freeze it after the ladybird left and it could be on a postcard anytime. The changing focus between the girl and the bug gives a great deal of dynamism to the scene. This correlates nicely with the music. 

The human-alien transition is not that smooth, but it is really fast. This flashlight method for transition is risky since it can look very odd, however here you only notice it when you watch closely. We see some very beautiful collapses and explosions in the devastation view. However I don't understand how with so much explosion can some soldiers just wonder around with no fire in the background. Of course one could say that this is just "anywhere" but from the wide perspective shots you see that literally everything is on fire in that city. Another thing: the street lights are on. But this is still daytime. And they are on while the whole city is in fire, so I suppose there is no electricity in the city. 

But the particle systems are great there. They elevate smoothly and they are very logically follow the environment. Flying blood, emerging dust, smoke of various kinds they are all in their proper place. Really nice variation of such things. 

On the next scene the switch from sunshine to shade is a nice example of lighting. The change is so sensitive you cannot really name the shadows or the colors. But they together do the job. You almost feel how much colder the air became. And the best thing it it I think that it does not follow the camera conventions. I am not sure one could make such pictures with a real camera but it illustrates how do we feel ourselves in such sun-shade transitions. You cannot do them because light measurement cannot let you do them. For such effects you would have some highlights or deep shades for sure. At least for the transition time while the light-measure system adapts to the new environment. 

I was thinking a lot on the images when we see the little girl's eye reflecting the space ship. Somehow I feel that her skin is too sterile at that moment. I know nowadays I arrived to this but here as well I see it unnaturally clean. She is playing on the ground at a farmland maybe, there should be some dirt on her face and clothes as well. But nothing. I think some dust could fly off the ground for the beginning as well. The anatomy is very nice, but somehow the skin does not fit well. It still has some rubbery feeling. 

The eye on the other hand is beautiful. I think the reflection in it is great as well, maybe a little bit too strong but I think it is hard to decide. Look at the corner of her eye, it even has some redness from maybe the dust which drys it out. 

Now again something which is beautiful but totally unrealistic. We see the stars on blue sky. Now from the sunflowers it should be late summer and the sun is setting down, but still is very high. I think it is very hard to see the stars on the sky in such a sunshine. No matter how big the shadow of the spaceship is. Assume it is a very big spaceship. Still even when you see a total eclipse you only start to see the stars when the moon shades the full circle of the sun. And with so much clouds on the sky humidity should be very high. So visual range is decreased as well. 

But anyway if it could happen it would look like this I am sure. And it looks nice.
For the next scene we have great motion capture for the soldiers. Somehow the faces are too dry they have no shine on them at all. I think this could have been avoided with some dust on them, or at least on the hair of the characters. I like that the guy has some stubble on his jaw.
Look when the vehicles launch their offence how they create a mist of ash by the turbulence. This is a great detail.
A nice little detail when one sunflower falls in the turbulence. Its nicely done, and strongly supports our general psychology to create what happens.
For the action part at the end we have a lot of blurs, actually we have more blurred pictures then normal ones. But since they are too fast for human eye we only notice the the sharp ones. This makes the whole action very intense and very realistic.

Story: 10/10 (The background idea of the whole is very nice. It fits well with the invasion concept of the whole project.)
Director: 9/10 (Great transition of the scenes and great dynamism for the whole. The ratio of motion and rest or action and stills is a very delicate matter and it is handled well in this video. However there are some major mistakes but they are not that important like wet ash - dry ash at the end scene, working street lights in an invasion, clean clothes on a playing girl in the countryside. These mistakes are somewhat shared with other members of the team)

Modelling: 10/10 (Perfect details of anatomy and nice overall modelling.)

Animation: 10/10 (Some minor strangeness in very uncommon scenes, but great sensitive details elsewhere)
Render and lights: 9/10 (Beautiful and brave lighting I miss some reflection on the skyscrapers though when the laser beams cut the buildings into pieces. This buildings should affect as giant mirrors.)
Material/textures: 9/10 (Skin is still a hard issue to handle. I really miss some dirt from the faces, hairs and clothes somewhere)
Photography: 10/10 (Very good compositions. I love the UV effect in the transition from the sunflower scene to the city scene. The change of focus is brilliant as well.)
Editing/effects: 10/10 (Really properly done. A great repertoire of different types of switches from slow transition to fast chopping.)
Music: 10/10 (It is a really nice track. The great thing about this trailer is that it uses the track and classic movie soundtrack as well. In such a short video I think it is very hard to include all this. And they all fit together and with the images well)
Visual concept: 9/10 (It is really hard to judge here. Some of the mistakes however minor they are, are shared with the mistakes of the direction, like wet ash - dry ash, working street lights in an invasion, clean clothes on a playing girl in the countryside.)

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Still very great job with an

Overall: 9.6

Copyright Notice: The video is made available by http://www.youtube.com/user/biowaremasseffect youtube channel by leaving the embed option open for everyone. All intellectual rights for the video are reserved for Bioware and DigicPictures. I only claim the copyright for its interpretation and evaluation.

Human Head: Prey 2 - Bounty trailer

Human Head created a world by mixing the best of sci-fi western so far (most people identify the genre with Star Wars and Blade Runner which is a good guess but it still oversimplifies the issue). Primarily I would distinguish sci-fi western from the genre of Cowboys and Aliens. This is not the type of world where cowboys wear hats and ride horses. It is the future of that world where people and culture are the same but adopted to  a more advanced technical level.

They begin with a 20th century airplane scene, we do not know why we are there but clearly we are on a journey. Airplanes are the symbols of many things and I think it is a very strong thing for an overture. In one hand the airplane is the symbol of safe travel. This aspect is very strong in the trailer. In the other hand airplanes are the tools for conquering the world and make it similar to the wild west globally. This is less important here. And thirdly airplanes and the ability to fly altogether is the symbol of human capability to face and overcome any (sometimes impossible) challenges. This can be read into this but not a necessary part of the thing. 

However strong the different aspects are I believe that all are present among these cuts. 

On the airplane, we are safe and calm, this is emphasized by showing the air-marshal on the first shoot walking between the line of seats. We watch people looking out of the window. There are empty seats so we know that there is no emergency, just an ordinary Sunday flight from LA to New York (or whatever). By having the air-marshal on board we see that it is (still) the wild west where they had Marshals to accompany and defend the property of the state on travel (mainly cargo owned by the treasury or criminals as he does here). Just to clarify some confusions about this concept let me give a short historical summary of these services. United States Marshal Service was founded in 1789 while Federal Air Marshal services started by Kennedy (1963) to secure important or high risk flights. An air marshal in this sense is not to be confused with an air marshal in the military ranking system which is a high responsibility rank.  

The wild west aspect is emphasized by a historical confusion in the trailer. Our hero has the Federal Marshal Service badge instead of the Air Marshal Service badge. This can be considered as a mistake but since we are in the future the two services could have been merged by that time so this is not necessarily a mistake. I would understand this as being the artistic expression of the above detailed complex symbolism and therefore an alteration by intention. 

The two different badges

Of course suddenly something terrible happens and our Deputy U.S. Marshal crashes with his plane to somewhere out of Earth. Now this part is a little bit confusing. It looks great when earth is way behind the horizon but the audience just needs to make an intellectual jump about where we are at the moment.

This intellectual jump creates the atmosphere of being lost. We feel exactly the same as one would after such a crash. The only possible crash site seems to be the Moon. But wait a minute. On the moon our hero could not really survive. So where we are? And how a plane crashes to the moon. That thing cannot be that simple. Then comes the relief: "ah the aliens... that explains everything". 

Now if we stop for a minute. The highest expectations from the human capability to fly was to reach the stars or at least the moon. This was at the top of the twentieth century's technical advancement. We could say that we almost crashed into the moon (metaphorically speaking) by the speed of the technical development of the last few decades. There are people out there in their 40s who just could not catch up and are still shocked by the new world just have been built. A great number of people could not adapt to this new world and they feel like our hero in the trailer. They remember where they came from (Earth in the trailer, wild west of the '60s-'80s in their minds). If one thinks that this is an old generation one should think about the origin of the education and cultural heritage of our generation. Kids born around 1990 still played more cowboy games back in the garden then WOW. Now these kids face those aliens who were raised on e-mail, facebook, x-box. What can a wannabe cowboy guy do on this new planet? I think this is the question through which this genre should be understood. I know its sounds oldish but hello (!!!) its a PG18 game. 

So we are crashed into the future, where there are only aliens... and Johny Cash so the wild west survives as it always does. By the opening shot on this new world our deputy marshal jumps into this messy jungle and starts to kick ass. I think, but this is not the strongest claim about the trailer, that there is something supporting my interpretation in the appearance of the aliens he hunts down. Both suffer from the stereotypical physical symptoms of being an info-mage.

Our old-fashioned marshal arrives to a city merged from classic sci-fi visions like Blade Runner, Judge Dredd, Star Wars (Coruscant), Fifth Element. The interesting thing is that not much transport is present in the city so its a perfect site for freerun or parkour. 

This feature of the set is fully exploited later. The streets have several levels and they are more like little islands to gather on not real routes for handling everyday business or sell or serve any functions. It is true that at the beginning (at 1:36) there is a spot in yellow light what can be a bar or a small shop but it is clearly empty and nobody is there making it completely dead. Of course on could say that after a shootout its normal for the staff to hide but the rest of the civilians seem to be quite ignorant to the gunfire. If this is so then I would assume some of them would continue shopping as well not just standing around the gunfight. This calmness is a little strange though and its only function could be to make the criminal push them out of his way. Since there is even a pause of shock after the murder of the bodyguards one cannot say that they just have no time to react. So either the shop should function as well (even a shocked shopkeeper would be satisfactory) or everybody should break into panic. This all matters because despite the walls and some big functionless boxes I cannot pick any life on the street. Even if it is a getto there should be some citylife. The only people we cross are thugs. But thugs standing around does not make profit without the civilians being terrorized. This is like a bad video game. You reach a point, kill the thugs who just stand there without doing nothing and move on to the next stage. Of course this is a video game trailer but even if the game itself does not create a living city just a jungle of thugs to shoot at, the trailer as a short movie should be more realistic. 

The run through the city is really mad (in a good sense) and clearly shows a great deal of obsession. We don't even think about how this guy is going to get back where he started. That seems to be an other matter.
Thanks to the graduation of introducing new features of the world we are touched with the obsession of the bounty hunter all along the pursuit. First we see that electric bola then suddenly we see the target to teleport forward then a little shootout and the slow-motion/anti-gravity grenade. Then the railway system and finally the capturing device. This all happens under approximately one minute. This much information makes people tired and we feel that after the successful catch we had enough of action. We have that "oh not again" feeling when we see more thugs approaching. Fortunately our hero has additional new devastating weapons so our attention is at the top level again: "now he will blow them!". This is required for the final joke to hit. When we see the big monstrous alien approaching we think we are screwed, this is too much. But then the computer tells us that this is a target and from that time on its just an other job to do and it should be a piece of cake. And this is the point where we are bought completely.
The best novelty is the use of the camera and the cuts. The airplane scene is live action. The crash site is blurred out but its clearly CGI we just do not care because we cannot even see what is on the picture. At the opening pictures of the animation we have unusual lights so we cannot compare it to our everyday experiences. Actually they have a pretty nice leather texture there. At 1.10 when we look down before the jump the interaction of the different lights is just amazing. That richness of lights is taken back when we face the first target. I think that is the point when they switch back to the ordinary CGI visuality. Fortunately we have the helmet-camera to distract this experience.
At the closeup of the alien (1.25) they show its beautiful anatomy but what I miss is some imperfection. Not necessarily on the face but at least some on the clothes. However I love the blood spill onto the camera at 1.31. But if you check 2.36 you clearly see that the clothes of the villain are still sterilized after such a chase. I think this hangs out of the script. He was running, jumping, falling crashing in a getto. He cannot be so clean no matter what they made his clothes of.
About the lights I already mentioned that at 1.10 they are really pretty. Not just pretty but very realistic. But that ends when the villains get some focus. At 1.33 if you freeze its clearly the lighting of a video game. Whites spots are overemphasized and burnt out. This is clearly a conceptual problem since if they put lower lights onto the street this does not happen. If you check how realistic his cap is at 2.08 with only a little shine on it you know what I mean. That much of light intensity could have been enough (for shades not for the whole run).
On the final pictures (at 3.00) we see a very difficult task to accomplish. If you see the big monster's stomach there are smooth shadows while on its head there is a shining burnout surface. It is very difficult to make such a scene to be realistic and I think they did a very good job. But I am still puzzled why did they put so much light around and why are those so strong. I think they still did a nice job at 3.04 on the marshal's shading. But that is clearly not the artificial lighting we saw before. It is more like sunshine (since its completely white).
I think the render is almost perfect, no big mistakes, no messy parts. For the anatomy its funny that they have cut out almost the full brain of the aliens. People usually put more brain to aliens to explain why they are smarter than us. I agree with the creators that this is a stupid assumption. They might have been around for only a thousand years longer and then they could have built up a more advanced culture than we have. Its a good point. And emphasizes the brainless criminal metaphor as well. The design for all the aliens are very original which is a hard work nowadays. I am not  really convinced about the flat-head ones at the beginning though but anyway you never know what nature can produce (I think star wars legalized this type of biology).

The lights (despite the concept) are very consistent and the particle systems are very nice. The background is all deeply detailed even when you see a great landscape or a long tunnel in the background. A lot of leading companies don't do that, they cover up complex details with 2D visuals. 

The only mistake I have discovered in animation is at 2:32 when the marshal jumps onto his target from the train and they both fall back. I think this is not proper physics there. If the target falls into the wall (several meters forward) the marshal should have landed there as well. It is conceivable but I think people notice that it is at least rare to happen. Actually on this part, I just have to note that I love that the villain has some accent. This is a great detail however unlikely it is for an alien to have a Russian-like English accent. (Maybe when they first arrived to earth they considered Russia as the main market?)

Story: 9/10 (Not too much happening there but it still has a lot to tell in metaphors, definitely more than a simple shootout but we barely know anything about the people or the world or even what is happening there)
Director: 9/10 (Great smooth symbolism, nice gradual storytelling, its a shame that the city is that empty of real life)

Modelling: 10/10 (Great, creative anatomy, perfect details)

Animation: 9/10 (One minor mistake with the jumping capture, otherwise perfect)
Render and lights: 10/10 (I have not found any mistake, still looking. Great job)
Material/textures: 10/10 (Same thing for the materials and textures but hey its easy for a sci-fi)
Photography: 10/10 (Dynamic camera movement. I love the switches between first person and ordinary cameras. And it is used creatively.)
Editing/effects: 10/10 (I think the switching between the different types of cameras is very demanding for the editor. More would have been too much since the action is already very exhausting to watch.)
Music: 7/10 (Not the greatest toon, but perfectly fits to the rest of the movie. However it gives too much resemblance to chasing scene from Public Enemies. The reference is very nice, its the too much part only which could have been avoided.)
Visual concept: 8/10 (The overall visual concept is not that original however it uses great reference and I love it. The anatomy is super-original but the city itself does not really show anything new. Its really similar to Star Wars and especially the video games. This is supported by the lack of real life of civilians. I cannot even see real doors on the street. How these people get there where they are? The embarrassing thing is that a few more detail would have been completely enough. But our job here is to push these things not to overlook them. And I still insist that they should have lower the lights of the city a little bit.)

___________________

Overall: 9.2

Transformers Fall of Cybertron Cinematic Trailer

So in my Monday post I promised that I will tell you which brand new game trailer uses the Puscifer track: The Humbling River as its soundtrack. It is the new cinematic trailer of the under development transformers game: Fall of Cybertron. This is not an epic trailer, neither it is intended to be one. It is really a teaser since we just have the feeling that it is too short. However with the smooth music of Puscifer we are satisfied and relaxed. So it make the feeling that it is a complete and finished thing. We only know that the big robots are in a deperate fight and one of their best (everybody"s favourite) Bumblebee. We easily figure it out that this is a futile and already lost battle. So the set is very dramatic (and in this sense epic). We see that these robots have a good standard of camaraderie so they help the wounded Bumblebee (actually it is Optimus Prime himself if I 

am right).

Created by: High Moon Studios (Activision, Blizzard,) Hasbro,
Release date: 2011.dec.06.
Official title: Transformers: Fall of Cybertron - Cinematic Trailer

Well Transformers is a franchise where you can easily lost. A lot of complex and difficult things are going on. Mechanical life forms, time fluctuations, planet-transformers, great upgrades etc. So I will not try to untangle the lines (actually time fluctuation allows the story to be inconsistent as well so no hope to get around in one round).But the trailer is nicely done. In general you have smooth music with fitting slow motion animation of a great battle. It has a very heroic atmosphere which fits the story and the set.
We see some blue smoke or mist and the eyes of Optimus are slowly unfolding of this blue mist. The camera starts to pane back from his head and in the background we see some explosions so we realize that it is a war. I think this gradual way of composition is very smooth. Then we have our first shock. Oh My Dear Old... Bumblebee!!!! Cries out the kid in our heart. "WHAT HAPPENED WITH BUMBLEBEE?!!!" And we are already bought.Very cheap buy but certainly effective. Not only seeing them in a great war, but in such an EPIC!, GREAT!!, APOCALYPTIC!!! war where Bumblebee is injured so badly. And we see the robot with an injury and fading (by the loss of sparks?). Anyway the scene from the blue, uninteresting mist elevates to the highest tension in 20 seconds. Hm... that is an acceleration. Well done. The incoming attacking robots cannot reach Optimus and he does not fight for everybody's greatest concern is poor Bumblebee. Well all of us (you can admit) agree with those guys. NO MATTER WHAT BUT DEFEND BUMBLEBEE!

And again! Optimus puts him down and like a father (well a father robot at least) blinks his eyes and "tells him" that everything will be all right. Really touching scene. No matter whether robots can have feelings, no matter what will happen next we now know that it is all safe.

I think this trailer just lets us be kids again. And this is a good thing. It is really innocent. We have those feelings don't we? That these robots are strong allies of us. And we admire them for that.
Of course the final battle is not on the set. They leave us here obviously because the final battle will be included in the game. We only see the higher upgraded dinosour-like robot to throw some fire onto the enemy. And we know that everything will be ok now.

Concerning the render there are some nice things to mention. I think the lights are very evenly distributed while it is really hard to decide how such lights would look like this a good way to make the light-set. It is believable so it might be true. And that is well-enough. Same is true for the animation. This is an other planet (it is not really determined by the comic book how big it is exactly but it is determined definitely that it is indereminate what material builds it up :) no more puzzle please!) where strange creatures live. So we have no idea what is the proper setting for the gravitation. I think they could have been a little bit heavier. But how would you show that? You cannot show it by the damage they make to the environment (it is their own planet) and nor by mass movement (they should have develop some proper muscle-like things to move smoothly). So this is a really difficult task. My suggestion would be that explosion-fire should work the same way as they do on earth since we know that the atmosphere is very similar to our owns. So I think if things blow up the same way there as they do here but everything is more massive and heavier than here then there should be some different relation between explosion there and here. Maybe if bigger explosions would happen and if they would move them to less distance than they would on earth the whole thing would get a better, more alien-like framing.
The textures and materials are good enough, they are mostly the usual damaged metal. The fast changes of light makes it hard to judge what we see but I am sure about one thing. At the beginning Optimus' head looks like as if it was made of plastic. This is an easy mistake since most of us remember these guys from the toys we used to get. But I think this mistake especially for the beginning, and for a closeup and for a slow-motion is just too much. Of course we do not care but they are apparently able to make good materials so they should have corrected this.
The models are of course perfect, they are vividly animated, always turn and tumble and move their parts. So that is really nice. Huge amount of beautiful fires of explosions pampers the eye.
The only thing I miss is some particle systems. So much explosion and fire would certainly produce some soot flying in the air. And a lot of smoke probably. That would improve the visual a lot.
And two more things. One is that if there is fire on this planet there must be flammables as well. But nothing actually burns or heats (so many explosions but no heated or melted metal on the set). And if this is a war, at least some wounded dead robots would be nice since now there is only one wound on the scene the one of Bumblebee. Megatron beats one to death but then it disappears from the set. And if one is beaten to death some external marks are usually present. Like sparks, or short circuits, twitches of the body, malfunction, etc. Something indicating their agony. I think this is important for every fight scene.


Scores:

Story: 8/10 (Heroic, Romantic, Innocently touching. The "I am big but we are bigger" cliché at the end is a usual transformers thing but not necessarily applicable.)
Director: 10/10 (Nice gradual elaboration of the story and the set, and even the transformers universe.)

Modelling: 10/10 (Perfect Meshes.)

Animation: 8/10 (Consistently animated characters but no particle systems. Really rich fire animation but again no smoke or dust.)
Render and lights: 10/10 (There are no inconsistencies in lights they affect beautifully the environment.)
Material/textures: 7/10 (Good overall performance but one serious mistake at the beginning.)
Photography: 9/10 (Nice composition, no messy or empty spaces, no imbalances but there are some "we are posing together on the placard of the game" settings.)
Editing/effects: 10/10 (Very tough work. In such a short video a lot of thing happens. And we don't even feel that we are switching.)
Music: 10/10 (I have been listening to this music for almost a whole day. Great choice. And the audio is again very nicely attached to the music. I appreciate that the music set is not mute but in accordance with the track.)
Visual concept: 7/10 (Overall transformers illustration with some already mentioned mistakes - wounds, smoke.)

____________________
Overall: 8.9

Copyright Notice: The video is made available by http://www.transformersgame.com's youtube channel transformersgame1 by leaving the embed option open for everyone. All intellectual rights for the video are reserved for Activision and High Moon Studios. I only claim the copyright for its interpretation and evaluation.

HASBRO and its logo, TRANSFORMERS, and its associated characters are trademarks of Hasbro and are used with permission. © 2011 Hasbro. All rights reserved. Game © 2011 Activision Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. Activision is a registered trademark of Activision Publishing, Inc.

Deus Ex - Human revolution trailer II. (Director Cut)

"These people Adam, they are like ghosts..." says the oracle, expressing our own feelings about today's social life. Of course we want to hear that these guys are the past and they cannot stop us, the future.
I think most of us are in when he says that. And of course even more enthusiasm comes when he says that to Adam who is the first man created by God, and the hero we would very like to identify ourselves.
continued from Deus Ex - Human revolution trailer I.  (Director Cut)

Deus ex 2011

Terminator 2 1991

Here the render is just great. The reflection of the face on the window with the beautiful sight of the city and the sides of the great neo-neo-gothic window pillars. And for the word "future" a plane from Terminator 2 flies away from the window. And most of us do not care because the moment is just great despite of the unnoticeable window frames (which looked so great from the side). These frame is alike a UI frame which is pretty bad if you re-start the video from that point as I just did :). But in the flow of the trailer you just do not notice it for there are so many things happening there.

Then we change to the view where Adam is recreated by the machines. This is again a great metaphor. Since originally God created Adam, now Adam is created (or at least re-formed) by machines. Only one doctor is there with the machines not the bunch of people as they used to be in the renaissance scene. And meanwhile the doctor says that the body may heal after recreation but the mind... Well the mind is not simply weaker but "not always so resilient". This leads us to the social aspect of the metaphor: society may find new ways of existence but the mind of the people remains the same so humanity falls back again and again to the same historical states as we see from the scope of the trailer. And after this a short reference to psychology as Adam is shown in two short shots. The first when he faces the camera the looks into it. The other is when the camera shows us the side view and he turns to us, and suddenly shots his shades and his face becomes aggressive. This shows exactly the former statement of the doctor on a personal level and makes reference to the historical heritage of humanity of aggression and war (well I am not sure whether on this point I go too far about this).
And that old way of living is of course the Darwinian struggle for survival. As Adam attacks the wall and breaks a hole into it the next picture suggests that he breaks through the web of secrets of this world and again he breaks through ourselves.
This claim is supported by the next event with the hacker. Adam cannot save him for the web is stronger and faster than him. Before going further let us have a look at the view for a second.

After the beautiful city view we see the landing air plane and I just cannot decide whether it is made of painted steel or plastic. And I am tempted to the latter one. Its not even chromed which is a shame. Even the 20 years older terminator plane looks more realistic at least on this picture above. It does not take a long time so it can be considered as a minor problem, but still it is not a real big deal to chrome a surface with maya 3d either...
The robots re-framing Adam have the same little bit of strange materials on them but well they are hi-tech  medical tools so they can be built from any UFO metals. However I still think that the arms are beautiful but I think the their chrome-rubbery material is a little bit too original. Its seems to be just strange and it is not introduced well enough to make sense in the context. I only mean here that I had to think what they look like for the first time. The x-ray see is nice and the movement of the soldier is dynamic enough. And now the break through. Well I think it is really hard to sneak-break-through a wall. I think most of you agree with me :). I would have used faster and stronger moves and rapid-cut for this. If one blows the bricks off the walls just behind you, you would be thrown away by the bricks only unless he is fast enough to grab the soldier before he is knocked down by the bricks. The hole and the lights are nice afterwards and the little pace is again a good catch. But the way the bricks fall down from nothing is... well believable but it would have been nicer if they extend the hole I think. The sparks are on the other side not realistic and while I understand that they are the wires in the wall or some security system, they are really unnecessary. So I think if there are any major ones, this is a major mistake in the trailer. However for this far you are way behind the line when you are already bought by the authors so you just don't listen to such details. The disappearance is again a very nice thing after this. And if I'm at my charity-side of understanding I think the sparks emphasize that phenomena. But well they are again unnecessary.
The 2d footage is nice again while the music elevates to a next level of intensity. I think the sparks of electricity at the hackers head are much nicer than the ones from the wall (that is again a puzzle in understanding the former ones). However again I think those are unnecessary, almost stupid. Since Adam shouts "No!" we know that he is not the killer. But such sparks should burn the hacker so much we should see some smoke and way more pain on his face.

The transition to the fight is beautiful, first everybody thinks that these two are the same scene. The animation is a nice combination of rapid-cutting and motion capture. Fast camera movements emphasize the heroic pictures of the scene and I am soo glad that we do not see some ugly animation of the smashed head of one of the soldiers.
Then again the riot view. I just cannot identify the mats of the people's clothes. I admit that I don't care about the mats on Adam and the soldiers for those may be of special tissue. Again nice sparks on the disappearing girl but her face is expressing too much pleasure (like a child) and less concentration. Of course she must be mad, but this madness is not analysed deeply. She could have a personality as well. She is now simply an idiot. But still a professional. It has the Mad Max atmosphere. I doubt that in such a world of "ghosts" such mad people gain high-tech equipment. The feeling of the "enemy" is way more professional during the whole intro than her face in the crowd.

The riot-scene and Adam's struggle merges into one big chaotic battle which clears away at into the clean picture of the sun.I again don't really understand this "sun against the black sky" thing. This could be a reference to Blade Runner again where in the night-rain-scene a pigeon flies towards the blue sky but that mistake has been corrected since that time.

So as an overview I really liked this clip. The details are much better at the beginning than in the end, but I think this is not from a lack of attention but maybe some open-air render mistake which is responsible for some constant minor mistakes. But it is a hard task to render night-scenes in artificial futuristic lights. I think less light would make a great deal of improvement on those scenes. If the authors had some night-riot footage from youtube as reference they would have added fewer lights maybe.

So my final evaluation:

Story: 10/10 (epic!)
Director: 10/10 (great job!)
Modelling: 10/10 (great job while simplified surfaces) 
Animation: 9/10 (Minor mistakes in details)
Render and lights: (7/10) (Could not reach some almost impossible goals. One major mistake. Some mistakes in details)
Material/textures: 8/10 (constant but minor ambivalences)
Photography: 10/10 (nice sets and pictures)
Editing/effects: 10/10 (Despite that one cutting mistake great)
Music: 10/10 (I have the soundtrack on my playlist now on youtube, check the piano version as well)
Visual concept: 9/10 (minor mistakes, some non-contextual reference)
____________________
Overall: 9.3

Deus Ex - Human revolution trailer I. (Director Cut)

It is great to have so much remakes these days. This can be either a historical reflection or a cultural self-reinterpretation. Whatever is the case, it is a great gift to the middle aged guys to revive their childhood. Deus Ex (2000) was one of the enigmatic games of the millennia taking place in 2052's cyberpunk future. However it is only a ten years old game, it already has the sense of a remake and a nostalgic ambience. However it is a sequel to the old game and a prequel to the story of the 2000 game. But actually it is not why I am talking about its trailer. No my friends, the reason is that this is supposedly one of the best cgi clips of these days.