RPGs tend to always intimidate me before I start one: upon estimating the hours I’m going to need to commit towards understanding the equipment system, not to mention navigating all those menus and grasping the fictional history as well as figuring out the combat tactics, it worries me ever so greatly and yet, strangely, I am never sufficiently put off enough to avoid the genre altogether. The worry stems from a selfishness: a concern borne out of a fear of what will happen to meif I actually like the game. Or rather more specifically, what will happen to me if I actually, sincerely, love the game.
Despite all the great reviews DA:O has received, that wariness still existed in the back corners of my mind, particularly after my last attempt at an RPG – the ever-frustrating Lost Odyssey - ended with me angrily cursing, switching off and trading the game in after having to put up with one too many twenty-minute-long ‘random encounters’ despite my best efforts to excuse them. The short story ‘Dream’ segments unlocked in the game were amazing and beautifully written, but they were way too few and far between amidst such an archaic turn-based RPG gameplay system filled with uninteresting, lacklustre characters and a completely forgettable plot seemingly incongruent to those bonuses.
Dragon Age Origins, on the other hand, was developed by Bioware, responsible for completely captivating me with Mass Effect and many others prior with the Baldur’s Gate series and that ever-mentioned beloved acronym, KOTOR, and I really should have seen the impact of DA:O coming from a mile away given the developer’s reputation as I picked the game up more out of curiosity than anticipation: an epic story, well-written and realised characters, and most impressively, an entire backstory of Tolkien proportions. So amazing in fact that it’s produced yet another variation of that RPG fear of mine: a simple question of whether I will have the time to play through as all the different races to fully experience all the variation in the titular ‘origin stories’ this game has to offer, not to mention going through all the DLC… and then there’s still that Mass Effect 2 second playthrough I’ve been meaning to get through continuing to tease and tempt me in the background.
I adore a great story and the experience of a quality game. I love being transported into that fictional world, becoming as one with my on-screen character. I get disappointed when game stories are terrible, akin to awful Hollywood movies all about explosions and visuals without even a hint of a soul in sight. A soul, you ask? In a game? Perhaps I do have unrealistically high expectations of video games and am often left pondering their true power as a medium, but then something like DA:O shows up with not only a soul, but also a heart in the form of its characters and an entire in-game history to be studied.
And I mean studied, too. Given the number of codex entries in the game, even dwarfing that of Mass Effect, I couldn’t help but realise that this was the digital equivalent of Tolkien’s Silmarillion. Indeed, the main story and Darkspawn enemies are reminiscent of Lord of the Rings, but it’s how all those individual story elements and themes are brought together for Dragon Age – the races, the mythology, the history; the way it all collides and the conflict caused as a result – which has really touched me. Every single aspect of the game comes with its own explanation and backstory where discussions on racism and discrimination (both across as well as within races), religion, and class are all presented from both sides of the coin and presented in the form of difficult decisions accompanied with much moral conflict, with it being up left solely up to the player which path they wish to choose. As a result not only has my faith in quality RPGs been restored, so too has my belief that the medium can continue to achieve an unmatched form of emotional power.
The relationships you form with your recruited allies is incredible thanks to excellent voice acting, with the conversations and interaction between all the 3-plus-yourself combinations of party members a particular standout. Taking a break in-between quests at your party camp not only offers a reprieve from the often-difficult but rewarding combat itself but also serves as the perfect opportunity to get to know the characters in the game. Even non-playable characters possess charm and presence, my particular favourites being Wade the armourer and his impatient shop-assistant in Denerim. There is a deep sense of attachment in DA:O which improves on what was offered in Mass Effect 1, but is sadly missing in Mass Effect 2 as the latter game favoured action setpieces ahead of the original’s purer RPG character development elements. Not to say that ME2 is lacking story and character-wise, but playing it after DA:O I do feel as if ME2’s characters and their motivations weren’t as well-defined or expanded upon as they could have been.
Dragon Age Origins is the kind of game where pictures, or in this case screenshots, cannot do justice to the content on offer. The impact it’s had on me is really something I didn’t expect, and never have I felt so touched in a video game as during the Urn of Sacred Ashes quest when the Guardian revealed the very essences of my character and those of my party, in particular, Leliana. An Orlesian bard who had placed her complete faith in the Chantry – i.e. a female songstress who had given up a shadowy past to become a devout believer of the Maker, the game’s representation of the Judaeo-Christian God and its delivery through Catholicism – and being told that her faith was misguided, deluded and selfish, was an incredibly powerful and almost soul-destroying moment. It was also the instant when I understood how deep this game really was.
Similarly with the game’s choices, never before have I come across a title which has really nailed the idea of consequence and regret. Fallout 3 almost did it to me when Dogmeat died and I felt compelled to load up my last save game and lose several hours of play just so he could live again, and also when Jericho was finished off after we were ambushed in the Wasteland by multiple albino radscorpions, but ultimately it was too personal and individual a game in that everything I did essentially only affected myself and my own feelings and style of play. Mass Effect 2’s imported files from the first game offered little more than brief cameos of the outcomes of my actions in the first game as the sequel focused mainly on the new story. In both cases there was no tangible sense of dwelling on and acknowledging that a mistake had been made if or when the repercussions came back to haunt me.
By the end of my first playthrough as a ‘good’ character I had become so attached to my party members that all of my choices were based entirely on a sense of responsibility which had slowly evolved over the course of the game, whereas the second time round in being a ‘bad’ character my poor and inconsiderate decisions led to Leliana and Alistair leaving in disgust, several others rebelling, and me greatly regretting the course of my actions. To compare it to Mass Effect, these harsh consequences were no doubt inspired by the confrontation with Wrex in ME1, but even considering the finale of ME2 where the lives of your crew were at stake, there was never that fear throughout the game that you could hurt or offend someone so irreversibly that they would hold a grudge against you for good. In other words, being responsible for lives being lost is one thing. Being responsible for betraying someone you had become attached to while they still lived is quite another.
For a game to make me believe in the fantasy and to then make me feel something from it is a rarity. My choices were hardly ever beneficial for everyone concerned, and there were many occasions where I wish I had said or done things differently because of the consequences that followed. That fear of playing an intimidatingly large RPG has translated into a fear of hurting a character’s feelings, and it is a credit to the game that multiple playthroughs as different races produces a different experience as, for instance, background characters encountered in previously end up being your close friends the next time you encounter them, completely changing the context of your actions. To be drawn to the story and the characters so much that choice becomes an emotional effort rather than a curious novelty of the game is Dragon Age Origins’ greatest strength, leaving me with yet another important decision: determining when next to dedicate the time to play through it again, just to see what other outcomes and ramifications are on offer.
This is the first part of a new interview series, “Unmasking the Gamers,” humanising the people who play video games: the real character controlling that fictional character, the ‘person’ behind the First Person Genre.
Brendan has always struck me as a guy possessing a real passion for the medium – in particular story and morality-based titles – as well as being a strong advocate for gaming to be recognised as a legitimate entertainment medium. He lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife Megan (they pronounce it ‘Meggen’ over there), and we have spoken at length on Xbox Live chat about Australian, Canadian and American culture, the deeper meaning of games, and the patenting of Brendan’s ingenious idea of ‘Ninjabread cookies’.
His comments in this interview on the topic of ‘Games as Art’ and thoughts on the ‘virtual embodiment’ of Bioshock are a particular standout.
WillOoi:Hi Brendan, thank you for your time in taking part in this. May I begin by asking you how you got into gaming in the first place? First console, first game, that type of thing.
IncredibleBrendan: Hello Will, thank you for putting together this interview; I feel honored that you’d be interested in what I have to say!
So, how I got into gaming…when I was a kid, my parents didn’t have a television. Rather, they did, but it was kept, unplugged, in the attic, and eventually they junked it. They didn’t want my sister and I to watch too much TV, and figured the most certain means to that end was to remove it from the house completely. So gaming didn’t enter the house without some effort on my part! But I knew I wanted a game console after playing my friends’ Nintendos and Sega Master Systems, and in ‘92 when I was 12, I knew I wanted that system to be the Sega Genesis. I saved my allowance, I worked at my mom’s store a couple days a week, and I worked out a deal with my aunt that for my birthday she would get me a television from a motel auction on the cheap; after saving for what seemed an impossible amount of money to a 12-year-old, I was the proud owner of a Sega Genesis, which came packaged with one of my favorite all-time games,Sonic the Hedgehog. I beat the game the day I brought it home, but played it for months before I even bought another game.
WillOoi: The IncredibleBrendan I know is a keen gamer and community member on the 1up network (as first IncredibleBrendan, now IgnipotentBrendan). Your thoughts on games and, in particular, the power they have to consume and influence the gamer, are very passionate. You are also a rather cultured academic, fond of writing and presenting your papers on gaming as a medium. How did this all begin?
IncredibleBrendan: Because I grew up without a television, I read a lot, one of many things for which I’ll always be indebted to my parents. I enjoy literature; as far as mediums go, it’s difficult to compete with the profoundly compelling power behind words. But games have always been something I’ve found a lot of pleasure in as well. While I was studying for school, or writing a paper, break time would always be game time, and so initially games and literature occupied separate, but spatially adjacent realms. Then in junior high school I was writing a paper and taking breaks playing Flashback, another great Genesis game, and I thought I may just as easily write my paper about Flashback. So I did. And I got away with it! Kind of. The teacher wasn’t thrilled, but the writing was good and it was clear my understanding of the literary concepts we were assigned to address was on par with expectations, so I was awarded an ‘A’ with the understanding that I should never take similar initiative in the future without at least consulting with her first. After that I guess I just decided that the more things I could stuff into the realm of ’study’ that I enjoyed, the more it would become something other than work. So, someday, I want people to pay me to read, play games, and write!
WillOoi: Where did your screen-name ‘IncredibleBrendan’ originate from? Are you a Hulk fan?
IncredibleBrendan: Haha no, actually I never liked the Hulk. I always thought in real life Banner would have suffered a nervous breakdown or something. The name incrediblebrendan is one that I use all over the internet, for all kinds of things, but it was born right here on 1up. 1up is the first and only online community I’ve belonged to, and in joining, I wanted to get the name thing right. It’s the type of thing I agonize over, stupidly enough. Anyway, personal identity is kind of an interesting dilemma on the internet. I decided to include my name so I could kind of just give a part of mine away, experience the endless digital dissemination that’s so cool with all the kids these days. The identity of the internet itself is also kind of an interesting thing, and a lot of hyperbole tends to get sandwiched in with its descriptors. It’s the best, the fastest, the grandest…it’s just incredible. So naturally, if I’m to translate my ’self’ into this realm of superest of everything, I should expect Digital Brendan to be nothing short of me in my most incredible capacity. Actual experiences may vary, of course.
WillOoi: What else don’t we know about you, Brendan? Do you have, say, a secret underground lair where most of your gaming is done? The things that, you know, people wouldn’t be able to find out through simply stalking your Facebook profile
IncredibleBrendan: With the economy being what is and all that, plans for the lair are on hold. I’m sure Megan will thank you for putting that idea in my head! *laughs* No, my gaming is done right in the living room, which is pretty standard as far as living rooms go. Various curio about me: I play weird numbers games in my head, breaking numbers down into digits and repeatedly adding them until I have a single digit, and then deciding the ‘feel’ or ‘value’ of the number by which number the digit is, each digit having an assigned meaning, or feeling, to me; at the end of each shower every morning, I spit at the drain – the closer I get to a bullseye, the better the day, or if I’m thinking of something in particular, the better the outcome of whatever I’m thinking; I only started using soap regularly after I met my wife – before that, I’d just use the shampoo suds.
WillOoi: What are a few of your most beloved gaming memories?
IncredibleBrendan: The first playthrough of Sonic that I mentioned, absolutely. The Starlight Zone was a sublime moment in gaming history, as far as I’m concerned. Staying up until 5am playing Mario 64, earning all those 120 stars…and then forgetting all about Mario after playing Ocarina of Time. Man I love that game, the feeling that you were finding something new, that your experience in the gameworld was unique. Pure genius. Panzer Dragoon Saga. Strange, otherworldly, utterly enchanting. I haven’t really liked a Final Fantasy game since. I’ve got to throw Half-Life 2 in there. It was the first game I played where, simultaneous to my playing, I was applying different critical schools of thought to the world, mostly Marxiststuff, Althusser and all that nonsense; power to the people! And it made me realize that, done right, a shooter doesn’t just have the potential to draw you into its world, to actually make you care about the characters, it may be the ideal genre to form that elusive bridge between the player and their avatar, to really achieve a sense of telepresence in the player. And I can’t forget Bioshock. The game where the meta side of the story was brought to the fore of the plot and I thought “This is it. This is a seminal moment in gaming. This is what I want from my serious games from now on!”
WO: What are your general thoughts on Achievements? (You’ve got quite an impressive Xbox Live Gamerscore – at the time of writing, you have a whopping 44, 015 points. AND you have maxed out Dragon Age Origins….how?!)
IB: I love Achievements. I was a crazy completionist as a kid, and mostly, I still am. If there were multiple endings, I had to get them all. I had to get Supersonic. I found the pentagram room in Doom before I even knew it existed, or before my friends had heard about it. And when I was done with those things, I wanted to push the game, to see what I could get away with. Achievements are a natural progression of gaming in my eyes, a way to extend games past the final boss in the same ways I’ve always enjoyed, but now when I do it, my friends have to believe me!*laughs*
Of course, not all games use Achievements as effectively as others. If all the Achievements are story related, that’s a big yawn, and against the whole point of the Achievement meta-game. The games that use the Achievement system the best, I think, are the ones that award you for exhibiting ‘unnecessary’ skills. Half-Life 2 is a great example of this, for doing things like granting you 2pts gamerscore for sinking a basket when you’re playing with Dog. Or, at the very least, the games that use the achievements to steer the player toward a better way to play.
WO: You’re a big fan of RPGs, in particular those made by BioWare. What is it about this developer that attracts you so much?
IB: I used to be really into JRPGs, and I still am, but more recently I’ve loved what Bioware and Bethesdain particular have done to the RPG genre. In particular, I like the ability the player has to really make the story their own, to constantly be given options not just to customize your character’s abilities and attributes, but to describe their moral character, and see that character reflected in how NPCs (non playable characters) in the game respond to your character. There’s a real shift in the direction of data flow there that interests me: traditionally, the ‘R’ole was made out of the player to experience, and it was up to them simply to make their way down the path laid out for them in advance. Now I’m not suggesting that newer RPGs give the player the option to create a character that wasn’t already ‘laid out’ for them in some way, but the increasing ubiquity of choice within games of the genre at least grants the player that much more agency when deciding how the story ends. Whether or not there’s any real change here?…that’s another question entirely…
IB: The cake is a lie! *laughs* Well, following that Bioshock is one of my favorite games, if not my favorite…I think the choice in games is a cool way to create the illusion of freedom. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Game developers like to talk about the freedom players may expect to enjoy while exploring the worlds they create. The thing I liked about Bioshock the most was the developers mocking the player for feeling they may have scrapped together some semblance of freedom in the game’s world by simply making a few choices about whether or not to save a few little girls.
Andrew Ryan said it best: “A slave obeys. A man chooses.” Of course, during the scene, you have absolutely no control over what’s happening, just to underscore how little control you actually have in this world. Everything you can possibly do, you can do only because someone else wanted you to, because someone decided to put it on the disc for you to do. If you’re going to play the game, you play by the game’s rules. But how is this any different than life?
This was the seminal moment in Bioshock; in addressing the issue of choice and freedom, the game is opening a dialog not just about a game world, but about the world writ large, and a particular school of thought in that larger world. That is, most definitely, a function of art. All these things aside though, I love the ever-increasing element of choice in games. Although I’m a big proponent of games that lack choice as well. Games with choice? Those have a great potential to allow me to reflect on who I am, what I personally might want to do in a situation. Games without choice, those have a great potential to become art, I think. Art is not about choice. Art is about control, and the measured effect a converging set of elements will have upon an audience. I think, as games evolve, there’s a lot of room for either category to evolve within the canon of gaming.
WO: You also got me into Left 4 Dead, and I know we’ve spoken of this quite regularly (or even too regularly, arguably), but what would you do in a real life zombie apocalypse? Run or shoot? Both?? And has Left 4 Dead trained you in survival skills and team work?
IB: Both! Run and gun! I would hope that if there is a zombie apocalypse, you’d be in the states, or Meg and I would be in Australia, because then we’d only need one more for our team of four….teams of four seeming to be the way to go about surviving zombie apocalypse. If the Left 4 Dead games are adequate training for ‘Z day’, and I have every reason to believe that they are, I think the zombies had better find some non-gaming country to take root in first. Have you read the blurb Valve sent out? Since the launch of Left 4 Dead 2, over 28 billion zombies have been killed. That’s quite a few more zombies than there are people on the planet, so I think our odds are pretty good. Thanks to Valve, of course!
WO: What game genres do you enjoy?
IB: Shooters and RPGs are my two favorites, but I also really enjoy action games, the occasional racer, and a quality platformer here and there. And every once in a while a puzzle game comes out that I just. Can’t. Put. Down! And by that I mean Lumines. In which, if I remember correctly, you currently hold one more Achievement than I do…mostly though, I just like a really well-made game.
WO: How would you rate your experience with the 360 against all the consoles you’ve played?
IB: Oh no, don’t make me rate things! I love my 360. I didn’t think another system would come out that would challenge the Dreamcast as my all-time favorite system, but…well, they’re neck-and-neck, really. And soon, the Dreamcast may be running more on nostalgia than anything to keep up. That nostalgia was well-earned though, so there’s nothing wrong with that. I think the Dreamcast library still holds the highest average rating for games, which tells me my Dreamcast lenses aren’t too rose-tinted…
WO: We’ve mentioned that you’ve written papers and presented talks on the medium of video games. In an ideal world, how would you like the industry to be seen? And for you currently, are games art?
IB: I’d like the industry to be seen as something other than simply children’s toys. I’d like it to be seen as another aspect of our culture, just as books, movies, and television are. I think the whole games as art thing took a wrong turn somewhere. Why is everyone obsessed with finding the equivalent of Citizen Kanein a game? What made Citizen Kane such a definitive piece of art, presented as a movie, was that it presented the art as only a movie could. There are things done in that movie that you simply can not do in a book, or on the stage, or in a painting. Who says this hasn’t happened in games yet? Who says this has to happen in games for games to be art? Where is music’s Citizen Kane, or painting’s Citizen Kane? You could give multiple examples, I think, very readily. And I think you could with games as well. That just one example springs to mind for so many people may just highlight a lack of art in the movie business, I could argue. I’m not going to, but…you know. Games are art. Everything is art, if you want it to be. What the heck is art, anyway? As far as i know, no one’s ever given a definitive answer to that question.
WO: You are also a married gamer =) How does being married fit in with your gaming lifestyle?
IB: Well, I try to only game after my wife’s fallen asleep, because she doesn’t enjoy games as much as I do. And the games she does like mostly don’t involve me running around in the same eight or so multiplayer maps shooting zombies or Nazis or covenant, so I try to spare her that. But she has gotten into a few games, which has been fun. We spent a lot of time playing Lumines together, which she became very good at extremely quickly for someone who doesn’t play games at all. She’s a natural! And when Bioshock came out, I was not allowed to play while she wasn’t there. Not so she could play, but just so she could watch as the story of Rapture unfolds. We’re now playing through the second one, in fact! Mostly though, I’m really thankful that I found a woman who’s willing to put up with my gaming habits. Because once I get into a game…well, the game never stands a chance would be one way to put it.
WO: What games have stood out for you this generation? What has made them special?
IB: I know it keeps coming up, but first and foremost, Bioshock, for all the reasons we’ve already discussed. And most recently, Dragon Age, for its incredible plot juggling, and the way the writers wove so many characters together, each with their own unique story. Modern Warfare stood out as well, not for its story, but for its ability to set the bar for intensity, and its novel approach to multiplayer. By offering XP rewards, the game effectively removes a lot of the frustration of losing an online match. And Elder Scrolls: Oblivion too. I know that kind of game has been around for longer than this generation, but I feel this generation was the first to truly afford developers the resources they need to realize the level of exploration and customization they desired from the worlds they create. And it was a much smaller game, but Braidreally stood out as well. The indie scene has made a triumphant return to gaming concurrent with the rising popularity of downloadable titles, and Braid embodies everything I’d want to expect from that indie scene: a smart game, beautifully presented, that pushes and bends the genres it occupies with new ideas from a young developer.
WO: What are your views on the ‘casualisation’, shall we say, of the market – what with the appearance of the Wii, followed by the upcoming PS3 ‘Arc’ Motion Controller and the Xbox 360 Project Natal
IB: Well…I’ll say this about casual gaming: at least its helping games to occupy a place within our culture, rather than just in the toy chest. That said, I’m not much of a casual gamer. The Wii doesn’t do much for me, although I would love to play through the new Mario and Zelda games. And honestly, I’m more interested in Natal as a remote control substitute than I am a game controller. I do think it could prove to be an important step toward developing something much more exciting in the future, but for now, it all feels just a little too gimmicky for me.
WO: To wrap up, lets say you can only take three games with you onto a desert island – which ones would you bring along?
IB: Three?! You’re killing me here! Ok, ok…um…Bioshock. Half-Life 2. Ocarina of Time.
George Clooney regularly plays that guy many of us secretly wish we were: suave, well-groomed, handsome, charismatic, confident – in other words, the Oceans Eleven Clooney – or for that matter, simply that general image we have of George Clooney with those aforementioned qualities, devoid of any discernible weaknesses or personality flaws. Certainly he has also played roles where he is paranoid, troubled, even ‘kooky’, but regardless of the odd exception which has seen him gaining weight or growing a beard for certain parts, there’s that marked disconnection between the audience and him and his characters – where its particularly difficult to even picture him wearing anything other than a suit or even just with a different hairstyle. In fact I’ve often wondered whether he’s been ‘doing a Hugh Grant’ this whole time by simply playing himself in most of his parts – where the on-screen Clooney is almost inseparable from his celebrity persona.
In Up in the Air it comes as no surprise when he initially appears to fit the bill again – a sharply dressed, handsome, confident, silver-tongued devil. But as we delve deeper into this character of Ryan Bingham – a ‘corporate downsizing expert’ who has prioritised professionalism and self preservation above all else and has micromanaged to a clockwork efficiency every little last detail of his working life spent mainly at airports and within planes and hotel rooms and who is, as a result, completely detached from remorse and emotional reality – we see something we haven’t seen before; the polar opposite of what George Clooney stands for and what that overall image of George Clooney is. Avulnerable human being.
Bingham comes across as very similar to the character of Nick Naylor in Thank You For Smoking, also directed by Jason Reitman, the former a professional firer of people with zero empathy and the latter a pro-tobacco spokesperson, the both of them unscrupulous champions of capitalism who we ought to really hate but somehow, through those innate snake-like charms of theirs, manage to win us over with a surprising likeability. The main difference between them is that in Up in the Air we catch a glimpse of the life Bingham has left behind and the pain caused by the ramifications of his choices, concealed behind that all-too-familiar smiling Clooney exterior.
This is a film many of us can relate to. It deals with the pursuit of a career and the security of a salary versus the dreams that may not pay off and which we may well never achieve. It explores the trade-off between excelling in what you need to do and not doing the best you can in what you want to do, and vice-versa. We are confronted with that awful fear in the back our minds that there is an extremely high probability that our lives will probably not turn out the way we wished, and how powerless we are to truly prevent ourselves from harm. We see human fragility in the face of love and pride, where a compromise needs to be made and where something usually needs to be sacrificed.
All of these worries are present in the characters in Up in the Air: dreamers and cynics, sometimes a bit of both. Bingham’s love interest in the film, Alex, shares the almost exact same lifestyle but ends up affecting him profoundly. The young hotshot Natalie Keener believes in true love and the importance of seeking it, refusing to even imagine life without it and disagreeing with Bingham’s outlook and the emotionless prerequisites of the horrible nature of their work. These characters impart their beliefs on one another, but the one who ‘learns’ the most from it is Ryan Bingham who, as a downsizer whose life philosophy all along has been to reduce the load of his own emotional baggage while reaching his life target of 50 million frequent flyer miles, eventually comes to terms with the harsh reality that he has, consequently, made redundant his own opportunities of truly living. The scene where he is required to give a potential future brother-in-law advice on the importance of marriage – a decision he has up until then personally staunchly opposed – exposes a hypocrisy he can’t help but self-deprecatingly acknowledge and yet, through this, we feel a strange empathy forhim, a character who is seemingly heartless, and see how even the most rock-hard stubbornness can still be swayed. Bingham is heartbroken in the end, but the fact that his heart was able to be broken at all really solidifies his character.
And that’s what really got me in this movie. Far from being depressing, there is a hope that’s revealed through Ryan Bingham: the moment he accepts the flaws of his own beliefs and comes to terms with the pure fact that life cannot be lived alone coincides with the audience’s discovery that, instead of constantly being that guy we wanted to be, this time round George Clooney is playing the guy who kind of reminds us of ourselves. We might not have that exact same external charm or the trademark grey hair or display such confidence in public speaking but inside, we all feel the same things, and that’s what makes Up in the Air hit home so convincingly and accessibly on a human level.
