By Anonymous on Jan 01, 2019 10:48 pm Find out exactly where the Destiny 2: Forsaken Ascendant Challenge portal location is for Week 6 of the expansion and what you have to do to complete it.
With the new year comes Destiny 2's weekly reset, and while the game's holiday event, The Dawning, might have ended, there are still lots of ways to chase Powerful gear to get up to the new Power level cap of 650. Most notable is the rotating Ascendant Challenge, which takes you into the strange recesses of the Dreaming City. This is the end of the six-week cycle of challenges, and it's one of the most spookiest and most involved. Here's where to find the Taken portal and what to do once you're inside.
As always, the first step is to pick up the Ascendant Challenge from Petra--this is what nets you a piece of Powerful gear for completing it. Once that's done, make sure you have a Tincture of Queensfoil. With that in hand, you'll enter the Lost Sector in Rheasilvia, the Chamber of Starlight. You'll need to make your way through the entire thing, as the portal is located just behind the chest that unlocks after killing the boss. While optional, you might as well complete the Lost Sector to make things easier on yourself. With that out of the way, use the Tincture to gain the Ascendance buff, which allows you to see the Taken portal. The exact location can be seen in the video above and map below.
Jump through the portal to head to Cimmerian Garrison, located in the Ascendant Plane. Here, you'll be faced with what amounts to a gauntlet--you'll need to make your way through and kill an enemy at the end. Once you go inside, you'll be chased by three knights. As you progress, you'll have to deal with various enemies, including hobgoblins, shriekers, and thrall with yellow health bars. Take them out as you go, and you'll reach a point where you have to platform across some rocks (because it wouldn't be an Ascendant Challenge without some first-person platforming). Along the way, be mindful of the Taken corruption that will periodically explode with a blast of energy, which can send you falling you to your death if you aren't careful.
Once you're done platforming, you'll have to kill a knight to finish things out, but beware the shrieker that spawns nearby. With the knight dead, open the chest to complete the Ascendant Challenge. There may not be any special rewards inside there, but you'll get a piece of Powerful gear for turning in the associated bounty.
This week's reset marks the end of the Iron Banner as well as The Dawning, and you'll have to wait a bit if you're itching for something new to do. There's one last Forge activity to unlock in Destiny 2's latest expansion, The Black Armory, but it won't become available for to find and unlock until the weekly reset on January 8. In the meantime, though, there's the Izanami Forge, which is the toughest and most involved to unlock yet--check out our guide for help.
Of course, the year's most bonkers superhero movie had to be jam packed with equally bonkers references and comic book shout-outs--what would you expect from a movie with a battle drum-playing, bejeweled octopus?
Though they might not be as many direct comics winks and nods as you could find in something from the MCU, the DCEU does a fantastic job of adapting its often densely packed source material for the screen, and Aquaman is no different. Adapting Arthur's myriad stories and origins into one cohesive, two and a half hour movie meant the movie took plenty of cues from the source material, and in the process managed to sneak in some off-kilter Easter Eggs along the way.
In our review, we highlighted just how absolutely over the top a movie Aquaman really was--and why that wound up being a perfect decision for both tone and aesthetic for the DCEU. "Aquaman is creatively bonkers--the insanity in the movie is a choice that was made, over and over, in every aspect of the film's creation. Atlantean battle armor looks like something the invading Martians would wear in campy mid-century science fiction, while Jason Momoa's Arthur Curry and Patrick Wilson's King Orm battle to the death in an underwater stadium that seems to hold millions and millions of people. These are elements that would have probably been toned down and reduced to something less heightened in another superhero movie, but with Aquaman, director James Wan has declared the DCEU the place where comic books movies can just be comic book movies."
1.) Dr. Shin
Randal Park made a surprise cameo as Dr. Stephen Shin, a character from the New 52 era of Aquaman comics who, much like his on-screen incarnation, is a human obsessed with finding Atlantis. It's hugely apparent that we haven't seen the last of Dr. Shin in the live action universe, so it would be best to keep an eye out for him in the future.
2.) Topo
Did you catch that octopus absolutely wailing on the drum set during Orm and Arthur's big arena fight? That was a wink to Topo, the musically talented aqua-pet who, yes, really did exist in the comics.
3.) Arthur's Seahorse
During the final battle, Arthur rides into the fray on a giant war-seahorse., This is a nod to yet another one of his aqua-pets, Storm the seahorse, Aquaman's trusty steed.
4.) The Trench
The terrifying deep sea monsters Arthur and Mera encountered on their way to the final resting place of the trident were The Trench, an offshoot race of Atlantis who, after being sent deep into the Marianas Trench eons ago, evolved into monstrous humanoids able to survive without light or much food.
5.) Leigh Whannell
The pilot of the plane that (literally) drops Mera and Arthur off in the Sahara is Leigh Whannell, director James Wan's long time collaborator and occasional leading man--you can spot him in Wan's other projects like Saw, Insidious, and The Conjuring.
6.) Dinosaur Island
The strange, dinosaur infested dimension that Arthur and Mera find Atlanna trapped in along with the trident is never specifically named in the movie but is a clear nod to one of the weirdest locations on DC's Earth: Dinosaur Island, a magically cloaked Land of the Lost style island where dinosaurs reign supreme.
7.) Orm and Manta
While Orm and Manta's respective comic book origins have been updated and revised dozens of times over, their inherent mutual hatred and shared goal of destroying Aquaman is pretty consistent. In the New 52 era, Orm and Manta even teamed up, much like they do in the movie. The the comic book collabo Orm hired Manta to try and steal Atlan's trident--a plot you'll probably recognize as being used in the film too.
8.) Arthur vs. Orm
Arthur and Orm's bad blood wasn't invented just for the movie--their relationship has always been dicy, even dating back to the pre-1980s comics where Orm was actually Arthur's fully human half-brother named Orm Curry, rather than a full blooded Atlantean. Orm's story was revised after Crisis on Infinite Earths to make him half-Atlantean, and then revised again in The New 52 to make him a full blooded Atlantean war lord.
9.) Mom and Dad
Much like Orm, Arthur's origin story has been updated and revised time and time again, but the version we see on the big screen is actually part of the comic book canon. Arthur's connection to his mother, Atlanna, and his father, Tom Curry, was largely solidified during the New 52 era of DC. Prior to that, Arthur was largely considered to be the son of Atlan The Wizard, an Atlantean magician--he even had a brief period of being raised by dolphins the same way Tarzan was raised by apes. Best not to ask about that one.
10.) Amnesty Bay
Arthur's hometown of Amnesty Bay is also a major component lifted from the comics--but it's not as vintage as you might assume. Amnesty Bay was first named in 2009, during the Brightest Day event which featured Aquaman returning to his father's lighthouse on the water.
11.) Murk
Orm's trusted right hand man, Murk, is another blink-and-you'll-miss-it comic book cameo. A recent addition to the Aquaman pantheon, Murk was first introduced in 2013 as the captain of the Atlantean army, the Men-of-War.. His loyalty to Orm and his hatred of the surface dwellers have been a major part of his character since then, making his role in the movie a very close translation.
12.) Africa by Toto
Where would we be without memes in superhero movies? Of all the completely buckwild audio stingers in Aquaman, perhaps the most buckwild of all was the Pitbull remix of Africa by Toto, the internet's favorite power ballad about blessing the rains and traveling to, well, Africa.
13.) Talking to Fish
Don't lie--even if you've never picked up an Aquaman comic in your life, chances are you know his name and can recall that part of his powers include "talking to fish." Of course, the truth is a little bit more complicated than that--but the movie does a great job of streamline Arthur's weird communication abilities into an easy on-screen representation. It manifests in the movie when he sends a psychic wave through the water and summons a whole army of creatures to fight with him against Orm.
Back in 2016, when Scarlett Johansson was cast as the lead in the live-action Ghost in the Shell remake, critics balked, lamenting that such a prominent blockbuster role, which should have been performed by an Asian woman, was instead given to a white woman. It was part of a larger Hollywood trend, of Asian roles being performed by white leads, that began all the way back in the silent film era, when Mary Pickford performed as Cho-Cho-San in Madam Butterfly. Beyond that, the practice was common in theater as well.
Defenders and justifiers of this practice make their argument upon "pragmatic" concerns -- a rhetorical trick that dismisses the more complex, difficult-to-solve dynamics at play. For example: "Hollywood would create a film with Asian leads," they reasoned, "if those movies made money." "The films would not even be in production," they claimed, "unless a white lead actor signed on in the first place."
This argument, at its core, absolves the studios, the actors, and filmmakers of blame, and instead, places the onus upon the paying audience. But this is a self-defeating, self-serving proposition. The major Hollywood studios are at least complicit in this "whitewashing" effect; they determine what the public consumes, and they help to establish the norms. It's not worthwhile to play "chicken or the egg" over how things got this way; it is worthwhile to break a cycle that was created.
And 2018 will be remembered as the year that the lie--about minority leads and their lack of bankability--got exposed. The hit, minority-helmed films of 2018 were not "niche" interest, making a killing on the awards circuit but nowhere else; they were multi-million dollar blockbusters. Black Panther, released in February 2018, grossed over $1.3 billion at the global box office. It is the highest grossing solo superhero movie, to date, and it is only behind the Avengers films for superhero films overall. That's more than PR talking; that's money talking.
And in what has since become known as "Asian August," Asian-led films led the global box office in August 2018. Crazy Rich Asians, starring Constance Wu, raked in close to $240 million, while low budget indie film Searching, starring John Cho did close to $74 million against a $1 million budget. These actors are not A-List, instant-hit movie stars like Tom Cruise or George Clooney. But backed by a solid script and solid camera work, they shone on their own merits.
Black Panther, Crazy Rich Asians, and Searching were all written and directed by people of color; even writer/director Spike Lee, who is normally minimized as a niche filmmaker, had his biggest hit in 12 years with BlacKKKlansman. All of this raises another key point; it is not enough to cast minorities haphazardly, in a bid for token diversity and the appearance of progressivism. Minorities need to be in control of their own stories and narratives. And audiences need to demand it, rather than accept co-option as a necessary reality to doing business.
There is still work to be done. Minority filmmakers, writers, and actors are empowered and have their foot in the door, but that is all it is; it takes a sustained push over years, not a single month, to move the needle. And one day, these filmmakers should not bear the burden of being THE film that carries an entire group's hopes and expectations. Writer/director Jordan Peele had to clarify that his new horror/thriller film Us, (due out on March 15, 2019) does not make race its main issue. One looks forward to a time, hopefully sooner rather than later, that this is no longer a necessary point of clarification.
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