Vickiepedia

Cybil Covers Cleavage

… and I shouldn’t have. Not while I have 10 more papers to write.

But whatever.

If you’re not a gamer, you’d probably still have heard of Silent Hill the movie, and have probably seen the Cybil Bennett police officer character in it. Yeah, the one who spoiler spoiler spoiler spoiler. Cybil in the game is quite different.

Now I can’t tell you what her exact purpose in the game is (there are tons of theories out there if you felt like breaking your brain), but this is what I believe Cybil is not: male protagonist’s love/sex interest, cleavage, blonde bombshell, damsel in distress. She is just a female police officer who happened to be blonde, beautiful and very well-proportioned, like the rest of the young women in the whole of the game universe.

I was quite thrilled when I first read about Konami’s “reimagining” of the original Silent Hill game. Okay, so remakes have never been all that exciting, but this is Silent Hill. Silent Hill is Silent Hill, is Silent Hill, is Silent Hill. Or so I was chanting half in disbelief when I was looking at the screenshots of the now wearing glasses and looking 100 times more distraught Harry Mason (the protagonist).

It really wasn’t until I saw this one screenshot with Cybil… Let’s put the two Cybils side by side. On the left is the Cybil from the 1999 PlayStation days; on the right, Cybil in the upcoming Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.

She may still not be a damsel in distress, but poor, poor Cybil, who did you piss off at BPD, SHPD and/or Konami to deserve this?

I can actually already see why they named the reimagining “Shattered Memories” now.

I’m not a blogger who likes to blog about the latest trends or hits; but when it’s a movie based on a video game — a video game I’ve played and enjoyed for years at that — nothing could silent me. Hehe, pardon my bad pun.

Silent Hill the movie wasn’t released in Hong Kong until the day before, so naturally I went to the movies with Bro first thing after work that night. We actually made it on time for it (and even had time to be subjected to the torture of slimming product ads before it started), seeing how we didn’t usually get to see the first 10-15 minutes of other films. My first impression of the movie actually had nothing to do with the production itself. Just look at this.

What the hell is up with the Chinese title, “鬼魅山房”? The direct translation of Silent Hill wasn’t powerful enough, so they justify themselves in making up a name that isn’t accurate to the movie or the game, huh? Well, Bro and I already mocked at it enough, so let’s move on to the movie.

(read more…)