title: Melanesians

text: It was once postulated that from this area a very small group of people (speaking an Austronesian language) departed to the east and became the forebears of the Polynesian people. This theory was, however, contradicted by a study published by Temple University finding that Polynesians and Micronesians have little genetic relation to Melanesians; instead, they found significant distinctions between groups living within the Melanesian islands.


title: Melanesians

text: Genetic links have been identified between the Oceanic peoples. Polynesians are dominated by a type of macro-haplogroup C y-DNA, which is a minority lineage in Melanesia, and have a very low frequency of the dominant Melanesian y-DNA K2b1. A significant minority of them also belongs to the typical East Asian male Haplogroup O-M175.


title: Melanesians

text: Some recent studies suggest that all humans outside of Sub-Saharan Africa have inherited some genes from Neanderthals, and that Melanesians are the only known modern humans whose prehistoric ancestors interbred with the Denisova hominin, sharing 4%–6% of their genome with this ancient cousin of the Neanderthal.


title: Melanesians

text: Blond hair is rare in native populations outside of Europe. It evolved independently in Melanesia, where Melanesians of some islands (along with some indigenous Australians) are one of a few groups not descended from Europeans who have blond hair. This has been traced to an allele of TYRP1 unique to these people, and is not the same gene that causes blond hair in Europeans. As with blond hair that arose in Europe and parts of Asia, incidence of blondness is more common in children than in adults, with hair tending to darken as the individual matures.


title: Melanesians

text: The predominantly Melanesian areas of Oceania include parts of the Maluku Islands (Moluccas) of Eastern Indonesia, East Nusa Tenggara, East Timor, New Guinea and surrounding islands, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji. New Caledonia and nearby Loyalty Islands for most of their history have had a majority Melanesian population, but the proportion has dropped to 43% in the face of modern immigration.


title: Melanesians

text: The largest and most populous Melanesian country is Papua New Guinea. The largest city in Melanesia is Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea with about 318,000 people, mostly of Melanesian ancestry.


title: Melanesians

text: In Australia, the total population of Torres Strait Islanders, a Melanesian people, , was about 38,700 identifying as being of Torres Strait Islander origin only, and 32,200 of both Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander origin (a total of 70,900).


title: Melanesians

text: Eastern Indonesia is inhabited by Melanesians, who are indigenous to New Guinea and the Maluku Islands, though there is a sizable minority of Javanese who migrated during Dutch colonial rule. The Melanesians living in Eastern Indonesia mostly practice Christianity, in contrast to the Malay and Javanese people in the Western part of the archipelago who mostly practice Islam.


title: Bicameralism

text: Bicameralism is a type of legislature, one divided into two separate assemblies, chambers, or houses, known as a bicameral legislature. Bicameralism is distinguished from unicameralism, in which all members deliberate and vote as a single group. , about 40% of world's national legislatures are bicameral, and about 60% are unicameral.


title: Bicameralism

text: Often, the members of the two chambers are elected or selected by different methods, which vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. This can often lead to the two chambers having very different compositions of members.


title: Bicameralism

text: Enactment of primary legislation often requires a concurrent majority—the approval of a majority of members in each of the chambers of the legislature. When this is the case, the legislature may be called an example of perfect bicameralism. However, in many parliamentary and semi-presidential systems, the house to which the executive is responsible (e.g. House of Commons of UK and National Assembly of France) can overrule the other house (e.g. House of Lords of UK and Senate of France) and may be regarded as an example of imperfect bicameralism. Some legislatures lie in between these two positions, with one house able to overrule the other only under certain circumstances.


title: Bicameralism

text: The British Parliament is often referred to as the "Mother of Parliaments" (in fact a misquotation of John Bright, who remarked in 1865 that "England is the Mother of Parliaments") because the British Parliament has been the model for most other parliamentary systems, and its Acts have created many other parliaments. The origins of British bicameralism can be traced to 1341, when the Commons met separately from the nobility and clergy for the first time, creating what was effectively an Upper Chamber and a Lower Chamber, with the knights and burgesses sitting in the latter. This Upper Chamber became known as the House of Lords from 1544 onward, and the Lower Chamber became known as the House of Commons, collectively known as the Houses of Parliament.


title: Bicameralism

text: Many nations with parliaments have to some degree emulated the British "three-tier" model. Most countries in Europe and the Commonwealth have similarly organised parliaments with a largely ceremonial head of state who formally opens and closes parliament, a large elected lower house, and (unlike Britain) a smaller upper house.


title: Bicameralism

text: The Founding Fathers of the United States also favoured a bicameral legislature. The idea was to have the Senate be wealthier and wiser. Benjamin Rush saw this though, and noted that "this type of dominion is almost always connected with opulence". The Senate was created to be a stabilising force, not elected by mass electors, but selected by the State legislators. Senators would be more knowledgeable and more deliberate—a sort of republican nobility—and a counter to what James Madison saw as the "fickleness and passion" that could absorb the House.


title: Bicameralism

text: He noted further that "The use of the Senate is to consist in its proceeding with more coolness, with more system and with more wisdom, than the popular branch." Madison's argument led the Framers to grant the Senate prerogatives in foreign policy, an area where steadiness, discretion, and caution were deemed especially important. State legislators chose the Senate, and senators had to possess significant property to be deemed worthy and sensible enough for the position. In 1913, the 17th Amendment passed, which mandated choosing Senators by popular vote rather than State legislatures.


title: Bicameralism

text: As part of the Great Compromise, the Founding Fathers invented a new rationale for bicameralism in which the Senate had an equal number of delegates per state, and the House had representatives by relative populations.


title: Bicameralism

text: There have been a number of rationales put forward in favour of bicameralism. Federal states have often adopted it, and the solution remains popular when regional differences or sensitivities require more explicit representation, with the upper chamber representing the constituent states. Nevertheless, the older justification for second chambers—providing opportunities for second thoughts about legislation—has survived. For states considering a different constitutional arrangement that may shift power to new groupings, bicameralism could be demanded by currently hegemonic groups who would otherwise prevent any structural shift (e.g. military dictatorships, aristocracies).


title: Bicameralism

text: The growing awareness of the complexity of the notion of representation and the multi-functional nature of modern legislatures may be affording incipient new rationales for second chambers, though these do generally remain contested institutions in ways that first chambers are not. An example of political controversy regarding a second chamber has been the debate over the powers of the Senate of Canada or the election of the Senate of France.


title: Bicameralism

text: The relationship between the two chambers varies: in some cases, they have equal power, while in others, one chamber is clearly superior in its powers. The first tends to be the case in federal systems and those with presidential governments. The second tends to be the case in unitary states with parliamentary systems. There are two streams of thought: critics believe bicameralism makes meaningful political reforms more difficult to achieve and increases the risk of gridlock—particularly in cases where both chambers have similar powers—while proponents argue the merits of the "checks and balances" provided by the bicameral model, which they believe help prevent ill-considered legislation.


title: Bicameralism

text: Some countries, such as Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Switzerland, and the United States, link their bicameral systems to their federal political structure.


title: Bicameralism

text: In the United States, Australia, Mexico, Brazil and Nepal for example, each state or province is given the same number of seats in one of the houses of the legislature, despite variance between the populations of the states or provinces. This is intended to ensure that smaller states are not overshadowed by larger states, which may have more representation in the other house of the legislature.


title: Bicameralism

text: Canada's elected lower house, the House of Commons, comprises Members of Parliament (MPs) from single-member "ridings" based mainly on population (updated every 10 years using Census data). The Commons is democratically elected every four years (constitutionally up to five years). In contrast, in Canada's upper house, Senators are appointed to serve until age 75 by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister through an Independent Advisory Board as of 2016.


title: Bicameralism

text: The Government (i.e. executive) is responsible to and must maintain the confidence of the elected House of Commons. Although the two chambers formally have many of the same powers, this accountability clearly makes the Commons dominant—determining which party is in power, approving its proposed budget and (largely) the laws enacted. The Senate primarily acts as a chamber of revision: it almost never rejects bills passed by the Commons but does regularly amend them; such amendments respect each bill's purpose, so they are usually acceptable to the Commons. Occasionally, the two houses cannot come to an agreement on an amendment, which results in rare instances of a key Government bill failing. The Senate's power to investigate issues of concern to Canada can raise their profile (sometimes sharply) on voters' political agendas.


title: Bicameralism

text: The bicameral Parliament of Australia consists of two Houses: the lower house is called the House of Representatives and the upper house is named the Senate. As of 31 August 2017, the lower house has 151 members, each elected from single-member constituencies, known as electoral divisions (commonly referred to as "electorates" or "seats") using full-preference instant-runoff voting. This tends to lead to the chamber being dominated by two major groups, the Liberal/National Coalition and the Labor Party. The government of the day must achieve the confidence of this House to gain and hold power.


title: Bicameralism

text: The upper house, the Senate, is also popularly elected, under the single transferable vote system of proportional representation. There are a total of 76 senators: 12 senators are elected from each of the 6 Australian states (regardless of population) and 2 from each of the 2 autonomous internal territories (the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory). This makes the total number 76, i.e. 6×12 + 2×2.


title: Bicameralism

text: Unlike upper houses in most Westminster parliamentary systems, the Australian Senate is vested with significant power, including the capacity to block legislation initiated by the government in the House of Representatives, making it a distinctive hybrid of British Westminster bicameralism and US-style bicameralism. As a result of proportional representation, the chamber features a multitude of parties vying for power. The governing party or coalition, which must maintain the confidence of the lower house, rarely has a majority in the Senate and usually needs to negotiate with other parties and Independents to get legislation passed.


title: Bicameralism

text: In German, Indian, and Pakistani systems, the upper houses (the Bundesrat, the Rajya Sabha, and the Senate respectively) are even more closely linked with the federal system, being appointed or elected directly by the governments or legislatures of each German or Indian state, or Pakistani province. This was also the case in the United States before the Seventeenth Amendment was adopted. Because of this coupling to the executive branch, German legal doctrine does not treat the "Bundesrat" as the second chamber of a bicameral system formally. Rather, it sees the "Bundesrat" and the "Bundestag" as independent constitutional bodies. Only the directly elected "Bundestag" is considered the parliament. In the German "Bundesrat", the various "Länder" have between three and six votes; thus, while the less populated states have a lower weight, they still have a stronger voting power than would be the case in a system based proportionately on population, as the most populous "Land" currently has about 27 times the population of the least populous. The Indian upper house does not have the states represented equally, but on the basis of their population.


title: Bicameralism

text: There is also bicameralism in countries that are not federations, but have upper houses with representation on a territorial basis. For example, in South Africa, the National Council of Provinces (and before 1997, the Senate) has its members chosen by each province's legislature.


title: Bicameralism

text: In Spain, the Senate functions as a "de facto" territorially based upper house, and there has been some pressure from the Autonomous Communities to reform it into a strictly territorial chamber.


title: Bicameralism

text: The European Union maintains a somewhat close to bicameral legislative system consisting of the European Parliament, which is elected in elections on the basis of universal suffrage, and the Council of the European Union, which consists of one representative for each government of member countries, who are competent for a relevant field of legislation. Though the European Union has a highly unusual character in terms of legislature, one could say that the closest point of equivalency lies within bicameral legislatures. The European Union is considered neither a country nor a state, but it enjoys the power to address national Governments in many areas.


title: Bicameralism

text: The best known example is the British House of Lords, which includes a number of hereditary peers. The House of Lords is a vestige of the aristocratic system that once predominated in British politics, while the other house, the House of Commons, is entirely elected. Over the years, some have proposed reforms to the House of Lords, some of which have been at least partly successful. The House of Lords Act 1999 limited the number of hereditary peers (as opposed to life peers, appointed by the Monarch on the advice of the Prime Minister) to 92, down from around 700. Of these 92, one is the Earl Marshal, a hereditary office always held by the Duke of Norfolk, one is the Lord Great Chamberlain, a hereditary office held by turns, currently by the Marquess of Cholmondeley, and the other 90 are elected by all sitting peers. Hereditary peers elected by the House to sit as representative peers sit for life; when a representative peer dies, there is a by-election to fill the vacancy. The power of the House of Lords to block legislation is curtailed by the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949. Peers can introduce bills except Money Bills, and all legislation must be passed by both Houses of Parliament. If not passed within two sessions, the House of Commons can override the Lords' delay by invoking the "Parliament Act". Certain legislation, however, must be approved by both Houses without being forced by the Commons under the "Parliament Act". These include any bill that would extend the time length of a Parliament, private bills, bills sent to the House of Lords less than one month before the end of a session, and bills that originated in the House of Lords.


title: Bicameralism

text: Life Peers are appointed either by recommendation of the Appointment Commission (the independent body that vets non-partisan peers, typically from academia, business or culture) or by Dissolution Honours, which take place at the end of every Parliamentary term when leaving MPs may be offered a seat to keep their institutional memory. It is traditional to offer a peerage to every outgoing Speaker of the House of Commons.


title: Bicameralism

text: Further reform of the Lords has been proposed; however, no proposed reforms have been able to achieve public consensus or government support. Members of the House of Lords all have an aristocratic title, or are from the Clergy. 26 Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of England sit as Lords Spiritual (the Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop of York, the Bishop of London, the Bishop of Durham, the Bishop of Winchester and the next 21 longest-serving Bishops). It is usual that retiring Archbishops, and certain other Bishops, are appointed to the Crossbenches and given a life peerage.


title: Bicameralism

text: Until 2009, 12 Lords of Appeal in Ordinary sat in the House as the highest court in the land; they subsequently became justices of the newly created Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. As of 16 February 2021, 803 people sit in the House of Lords, with 92 Hereditary Peers, 26 Lords Spiritual and 685 Life Peers. Membership is not fixed and decreases only on the death, retirement or resignation of a peer.


title: Bicameralism

text: Another example of aristocratic bicameralism was the Japanese House of Peers, abolished after World War II and replaced with the present House of Councillors.


title: Bicameralism

text: Many unitary states like Italy, France, the Netherlands, the Philippines, the Czech Republic, the Republic of Ireland and Romania have bicameral systems. In countries such as these, the upper house generally focuses on scrutinizing and possibly vetoing the decisions of the lower house.


title: Bicameralism

text: On the other hand, in Italy the Parliament consists of two chambers that have the same role and power: the Senate (Senate of the Republic, commonly considered the "upper house") and the Chamber of Deputies (considered the "lower house"). The main difference among the two chambers is the way the two chambers are composed: the deputies, in fact, are elected on a nationwide basis, whilst the members of the Senate are elected on a regional basis: this may lead to different majorities among the two chambers because, for example, a party may be the first nationally but second or third in some regions. Considering that in the Italian Republic the Government needs to win confidence votes in both the chambers, it may happen that a Government has a strong majority (usually) in the Chamber of Deputies and a weak one (or no majority at all) in the Senate. This has led sometimes to legislative deadlocks, and has caused instability in the Italian Government.


title: Bicameralism

text: In some of these countries, the upper house is indirectly elected. Members of France's Senate and Ireland's Seanad Éireann are chosen by electoral colleges. In Ireland, it consists of members of the lower house, local councillors, the Taoiseach, and graduates of selected universities, while the Netherlands' Senate is chosen by members of provincial assemblies (who, in turn, are directly elected).


title: Bicameralism

text: In Hong Kong, members of the unicameral Legislative Council returned from the democratically elected geographical constituencies and partially democratic functional constituencies are required to vote separately since 1998 on motions, bills or amendments to government bills not introduced by the government. The passage of these motions, bills or amendments to government motions or bills requires double majority in both groups simultaneously. (Before 2004, when elections to the Legislative Council from the Election Committee was abolished, members returned through the Election Committee vote with members returned from geographical constituencies.) The double majority requirement does not apply to motions, bills and amendments introduced by the government.


title: Bicameralism

text: Another similar situation are cross-community votes in Northern Ireland when the "petition of concern" procedure is invoked.


title: Bicameralism

text: Norway had a kind of semi-bicameral legislature with two chambers, or departments, within the same elected body, the Storting. These were called the Odelsting and were abolished after the general election of 2009. According to Morten Søberg, there was a related system in the 1798 constitution of the Batavian Republic.


title: Bicameralism

text: In some countries with federal systems, individual states (like those of the United States, Argentina, Australia and India) may also have bicameral legislatures. A few such states as Nebraska in the U.S., Queensland in Australia, Bavaria in Germany, and Tucumán and Córdoba in Argentina have later adopted unicameral systems. (Brazilian states and Canadian provinces all abolished upper houses).


title: Bicameralism

text: In the Argentine Republic, eight provinces have bicameral legislatures, with a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies: Buenos Aires, Catamarca, Corrientes, Entre Ríos, Mendoza, Salta, San Luis (since 1987) and Santa Fe. Tucumán and Córdoba changed to unicameral systems in 1990 and 2001 respectively. Santiago del Estero changed to a bicameral legislature in 1884, but changed back to a unicameral system in 1903.


title: Bicameralism

text: When the Australian states were founded as British colonies in the 19th century, they each had a bicameral Parliament. The lower house was traditionally elected based on the one-vote-one-value principle, with universal male suffrage, later expanded to women, whereas the upper house was either appointed on the advice of the government or elected, with a strong bias towards country voters and landowners. After Federation, these became the state Parliaments. In Queensland, the appointed upper house was abolished in 1922, while in New South Wales there were similar attempts at abolition, before the upper house was reformed in the 1970s to provide for direct election.


title: Bicameralism

text: Beginning in the 1970s, Australian states began to reform their upper houses to introduce proportional representation in line with the Federal Senate. The first was the South Australian Legislative Council in 1973, which initially used a party list system (replaced with STV in 1982), followed by the Single Transferable Vote being introduced for the New South Wales Legislative Council in 1978, the Western Australian Legislative Council in 1987 and the Victorian Legislative Council in 2003.


title: Bicameralism

text: Nowadays, the upper house both federally and in most states is elected using proportional representation while the lower house uses Instant-runoff voting in single member electorates. This is reversed in the state of Tasmania, where proportional representation is used for the lower house and single member electorates for the upper house.


title: Bicameralism

text: The Legislature of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is a bicameral legislative body. It consists of two chambers. The House of Representatives has 98 delegates, elected for four-year terms by proportional representation. The House of Peoples has 58 members, 17 delegates from among each of the constituent peoples of the Federation, and 7 delegates from among the other peoples. Republika Srpska, the other entity, has a unicameral parliament, known as the National Assembly, but there is also a Council of Peoples who is "de facto" the other legislative house.


title: Bicameralism

text: The German federal state of Bavaria had a bicameral legislature from 1946 to 1999, when the Senate was abolished by a referendum amending the state's constitution. The other 15 states have used a unicameral system since their founding.


title: Bicameralism

text: Of the 28 states and 8 Union Territories of India, only 6 states that is Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh – have bicameral legislatures, while the rest all have unicameral legislatures. The lower houses are called Legislative Assemblies, and their members are elected by universal adult suffrage from single-member constituencies in state elections, which are normally held every five years called Vidhana Sabha. In the six states with bicameral legislatures, the upper house is called the Legislative Council ("Vidhan Parishad") or Vidhana Parishat, one-third of whose members are elected every two years. Members of Legislative Council are elected in various ways:


title: Bicameralism

text: From 1956 to 1958 the Andhra Pradesh Legislature was unicameral. In 1958, when the State Legislative Council was formed, it became bicameral until 1 June 1985 when it was abolished. This continued until March 2007 when the State Legislative Council was reestablished and elections were held for its seats. In Tamil Nadu, a resolution was passed on 14 May 1986 and the state's Legislative Council was dissolved on 1 November 1986. Again on 12 April 2010, a resolution was passed to reestablish the council, but was ultimately unsuccessful. Similarly, the states of Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, and West Bengal have also dissolved the upper houses of their state legislatures.


title: Bicameralism

text: In the Soviet Union, regional and local Soviets were unicameral. After the adoption of the 1993 Russian Constitution, bicameralism was introduced in some regions. Bicameral regional legislatures are still technically allowed by federal law but this clause is dormant now. The last region to switch from bicameralism to unicameralism was Sverdlovsk Oblast in 2012.


title: Bicameralism

text: During the 1930s, the Legislature of the State of Nebraska was reduced from bicameral to unicameral with the 43 members that once comprised that state's Senate. One of the arguments used to sell the idea at the time to Nebraska voters was that by adopting a unicameral system, the perceived evils of the "conference committee" process would be eliminated.


title: Bicameralism

text: A conference committee is appointed when the two chambers cannot agree on the same wording of a proposal, and consists of a small number of legislators from each chamber. This tends to place much power in the hands of only a small number of legislators. Whatever legislation, if any, the conference committee finalizes is presented in an unamendable "take-it-or-leave-it" manner by both chambers.


title: Bicameralism

text: During his term as governor of the State of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura proposed converting the Minnesotan legislature to a single chamber with proportional representation, as a reform that he felt would solve many legislative difficulties and impinge upon legislative corruption. In his book on political issues, "Do I Stand Alone?", Ventura argued that bicameral legislatures for provincial and local areas were excessive and unnecessary, and discussed unicameralism as a reform that could address many legislative and budgetary problems for states.


title: Bicameralism

text: A 2005 report on democratic reform in the Arab world by the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations co-sponsored by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright urged Arab states to adopt bicameralism, with upper chambers appointed on a 'specialized basis'. The Council claimed that this would protect against the 'Tyranny of the majority', expressing concerns that without a system of checks and balances extremists would use the single chamber parliaments to restrict the rights of minority groups.


title: Bicameralism

text: In 2002, Bahrain adopted a bicameral system with an elected lower chamber and an appointed upper house. This led to a boycott of parliamentary elections that year by the Al Wefaq party, who said that the government would use the upper house to veto their plans. Many secular critics of bicameralism were won around to its benefits in 2005, after many MPs in the lower house voted for the introduction of so-called morality police.


title: Bicameralism

text: A referendum on introducing a unicameral Parliament instead of the current bicameral Parliament was held in Romania on 22 November 2009. The turnout rate was 50.95%, with 77.78% of "Yes" votes for a unicameral Parliament. This referendum had a consultative role, thus requiring a parliamentary initiative and another referendum to ratify the new proposed changes.


title: Bicameralism

text: A referendum on a new constitution was held on 30 October 2016. The constitution draft would create a bicameral Parliament instead of the current unicameral. The Senate is expected to represent the interests of territorial collectivities and Ivoirians living abroad. Two thirds of the Senate is to be elected at the same time as the general election. The remaining one third is appointed by the president elect.


title: The Doors (film)

text: The Doors is a 1991 American biographical musical film directed by Oliver Stone who also – along with J. Randal Johnson wrote it. The film stars Val Kilmer as lead singer and songwriter Jim Morrison, Meg Ryan as Pamela Courson (Morrison's girlfriend), Kyle MacLachlan as keyboardist Ray Manzarek, Frank Whaley as lead guitarist Robby Krieger, Kevin Dillon as drummer John Densmore, Billy Idol as Cat and Kathleen Quinlan as journalist Patricia Kennealy. The film tells the story and life of Jim Morrison, the lead singer of the American rock band the Doors, and the band's success of their music and influential counterculture.


title: The Doors (film)

text: The film portrays Morrison as a larger-than-life icon of 1960s rock and roll and counterculture, including portrayals of Morrison's recreational drug use, free love, hippie lifestyle, alcoholism, interest in hallucinogenic drugs as entheogens, and, particularly, his growing obsession with death, presented as threads which weave in and out of the film.


title: The Doors (film)

text: Released by Tri-Star Pictures on March 1, 1991, "The Doors" grossed $34 million worldwide against its $32 million production budget and received mixed reviews from critics, audience and fans of the band alike. Kilmer's performance as Morrison was widely praised as well as the supporting cast, the cinematography, the production design and Stone's directing. However, it received backlash for its historical inaccuracy and how Morrison was portrayed.


title: The Doors (film)

text: In 1949, young Jim Morrison and his family are traveling on a desert highway in New Mexico where they encounter an auto wreck and see an elderly Native American dying by the roadside. In 1965, Jim arrives in California and is assimilated into the Venice Beach culture. During his tenure studying at UCLA, he meets Pamela Courson and they fall in love, becoming a couple. He also meets Ray Manzarek for the first time, as well as Robby Krieger and John Densmore, all of whom form "The Doors" with Morrison.


title: The Doors (film)

text: Jim convinces his bandmates to travel to Death Valley and experience the effects of psychedelic drugs. Returning to Los Angeles, they play several shows at the famous Whisky a Go Go nightclub and develop a rabid fanbase. Jim's onstage antics and lewd performance of the group's song "The End" upset the club's owners, and the band is ejected from the venue. After the show, they are approached by producer Paul A. Rothchild and Jac Holzman of Elektra Records and are offered a deal to record their first album. The Doors are soon invited to perform on "The Ed Sullivan Show", only to be told by one of the producers that they must change the lyric "girl we couldn't get much higher" in the song "Light My Fire", due to a reference to drugs. Despite this, Morrison performs the original lyric during the live broadcast and the band is not allowed to perform on the show again.


title: The Doors (film)

text: As the Doors' success continues, Jim becomes increasingly infatuated with his own image as "The Lizard King" and develops an addiction to alcohol and drugs. Jim meets Patricia Kennealy, a rock journalist involved in witchcraft, and participates in mystical ceremonies with her, including a handfasting ceremony. Meanwhile, an elder spirit watches these events.


title: The Doors (film)

text: The rest of the band grows weary of Jim's missed recording sessions and absences at concerts. Jim arrives late and intoxicated to a Miami, Florida concert, becoming increasingly confrontational towards the audience and allegedly exposing himself onstage. The incident is a low point for the band, resulting in criminal charges against Jim, cancellations of shows, breakdowns in Jim's personal relationships, and resentment from the other band members.


title: The Doors (film)

text: In 1970, following a lengthy trial, Jim is found guilty of indecent exposure and ordered to serve time in prison. However, he is allowed to remain free on bail, pending the results of an appeal. Patricia tells Jim that she is pregnant with his child, but Jim convinces her to have an abortion. Jim visits his bandmates for the final time, attending a birthday party hosted by Ray where he wishes the band luck in their future endeavors and gives each of them a copy of his poetry book "An American Prayer". As Jim plays in the front garden with the children, he sees that one of them is his childhood self and comments, "This is the strangest life I've ever known" (a lyric from the Doors song "Waiting for the Sun"), before passing out.


title: The Doors (film)

text: In 1971, Jim and Pam move to Paris, France to escape the pressures of the L.A. lifestyle. One evening, on July 3, 1971, Pam finds Jim dead in the bathtub of their apartment. The film's final scenes before the credits roll are of Jim's gravesite in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, while "A Feast of Friends" (Adagio) plays in the background. Just before the closing credits, the screen whites out and text appears stating that "Jim is said to have died of heart failure. He was 27. Pam joined him three years later."


title: The Doors (film)

text: Film directors Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese and William Friedkin had all flirted with making a Doors biopic over the years. In 1985, Columbia Pictures acquired the rights from the Doors and the Morrison estate to make a film. Producer Sasha Harari wanted filmmaker Oliver Stone to write the screenplay but never heard back from his agent. After two unsatisfactory scripts were produced, Imagine Films replaced Columbia. Harari contacted Stone again and the director met with the surviving band members, telling them he wanted to keep a particularly wild scene from one of the early drafts. The group was offended by this and exercised their right of approval over the director, rejecting Stone.


title: The Doors (film)

text: By 1989, Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna, who owned Carolco Pictures, had acquired the rights to the project and wanted Stone to direct it. The Doors had seen Stone's film "Platoon" (1986) and were impressed with what he had done, and Stone agreed to make the film after his next project, "". After spending years working on "Evita" and courting both Madonna and Meryl Streep to play the titular role, the film fell apart over salary negotiations with Streep and Stone quickly moved into pre-production for "The Doors".


title: The Doors (film)

text: Guitarist Robby Krieger had always opposed a Doors biopic until Stone signed on to direct. Conversely, keyboardist Ray Manzarek had traditionally been the biggest advocate of immortalizing the band on film but opposed Stone's involvement. He was not happy with the direction that Stone was going to take with the film and refused to give his approval. According to actor Kyle MacLachlan, "I know that he and Oliver weren't speaking. I think it was hard for Ray, he being the keeper of the Doors myth for so long". According to Krieger, "when the Doors broke up Ray had his idea of how the band should be portrayed and John and I had ours". Manzarek stated that he was not asked to consult on the film and wanted it to be about all four band members equally, rather than the focus being on Morrison. Conversely, Stone stated that he repeatedly tried to get Manzarek involved, but "all he did was rave and shout. He went on for three hours about his point of view... I didn't want Ray to be dominant, but Ray thought he knew better than anybody else". As Krieger revealed in his book "Set the Night on Fire", Manzarek was also jealous of Stone because he wanted to direct the film himself.


title: The Doors (film)

text: Stone first heard the Doors in 1967, when he was a 21-year-old soldier in Vietnam. Before filming started, Stone and his producers had to negotiate with the three surviving band members and their label, Elektra Records, as well as the parents of both Morrison and his girlfriend Pamela Courson. Morrison's parents would only allow themselves to be depicted in a dream-like flashback sequence at the beginning of the film. The Coursons wanted there to be no suggestion in any way that Pamela caused Morrison's death. Stone found the Coursons the most difficult to deal with because they wanted Pamela to be portrayed as "an angel". While researching the film, Stone read through transcripts of interviews with over 100 people. Stone finally penned the film script in the summer of 1989, later stating that ""The Doors" script was always problematic. Even when we shot, but the music helped fuse it together". Stone first picked the songs he wanted to use and then wrote "each piece of the movie as a mood to fit that song". The Coursons did not like Stone's script and tried to slow the production down by refusing to allow any of Morrison's later poetry to be used in the film. (When Morrison died, Courson acquired the rights to Morrison's poetry; when she died, her parents got the rights.)


title: The Doors (film)

text: For nearly 10 years prior to production, the project went through development hell after being considered by many studios and directors. Several actors, including Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, John Travolta and Richard Gere, were each considered for the role of Morrison when the project was still in development in the 1980s, with Bono of U2 and Michael Hutchence of INXS also expressing interest in the role. Stone initially offered the role to Ian Astbury of the Cult, who declined the role because he was not happy with the way Morrison was going to be represented in the film.


title: The Doors (film)

text: When Stone began talking about the project in 1988, he had Val Kilmer in mind to play Morrison, after seeing him in the Ron Howard fantasy film "Willow". Kilmer had the same kind of singing voice as Morrison and, to convince Stone that he was right for the role, spent several thousand dollars of his own money and made his own eight-minute audition video, singing and looking like Morrison at various stages of his life. To prepare for the role, Kilmer lost weight and spent six months rehearsing Doors songs every day; the actor learned 50 songs, 15 of which are actually performed in the film. Kilmer also spent hundreds of hours with the Doors' producer Paul A. Rothchild, who related "anecdotes, stories, tragic moments, humorous moments, how Jim thought... interpretation of Jim's lyrics". Rothchild also took Kilmer into the studio and helped him with "some pronunciations, idiomatic things that Jim would do that made the song sound like Jim". Kilmer also met with Krieger and Densmore but Manzarek refused to talk to him. When the Doors heard Kilmer singing they could not tell whether the voice was Kilmer's or Morrison's.


title: The Doors (film)

text: Stone auditioned approximately 60 actresses for the role of Pamela Courson. The role required nudity and the script featured sex scenes, which generated a fair amount of controversy. Casting director Risa Bramon felt that Patricia Arquette auditioned very well and should have gotten the role. To prepare for the role, Meg Ryan talked to the Coursons and people that knew Pamela. Before doing the film, she was not familiar with Morrison and "liked a few songs", adding, "I had to reexamine all my beliefs about [the 1960s] in order to do this movie". In doing research, she also encountered several conflicting views of Pamela.


title: The Doors (film)

text: Krieger acted as a technical advisor on the film, chiefly to show his cinematic alter ego, Frank Whaley, where to put his fingers on the guitar fretboard during the mimed performance sequences. Similarly, Densmore also acted as a consultant on the film, tutoring Kevin Dillon.


title: The Doors (film)

text: With a budget set at $32 million, "The Doors" was filmed over 13 weeks, predominantly in and around Los Angeles, California; Paris, France; New York City, New York; and the Mojave Desert. Stone originally hired Paula Abdul to choreograph the film's concert scenes, who dropped out of the project because she did not understand Morrison's on-stage actions and was not familiar with the time period. Abdul recommended Bill and Jacqui Landrum, who watched hours of concert footage before working with Kilmer and got him to do dance exercises to loosen up his upper body and jumping routines to develop his stamina.


title: The Doors (film)

text: During the concert scenes, Kilmer did his own singing, performing over the Doors' master tapes without Morrison's lead vocals, avoiding lip-synching. Kilmer's endurance was put to the test during the concert sequences, which took several days to film, with Stone stating "his voice would start to deteriorate after two or three takes. We had to take that into consideration". One sequence, filmed inside the Whisky a Go Go, proved to be more difficult than others due to all the smoke and sweat, a result of the body heat and intense camera lights. "The End" sequence took five days to shoot, spanning 24 takes for Stone to get what he wanted, after which Kilmer was completely exhausted.


title: The Doors (film)

text: Controversy arose during filming when a memo linked to Kilmer circulated among cast and crew members, listing rules of how the actor was to be treated for the duration of principal photography. These provisions forbade people to approach him on set without good reason, address him by his own name while he was in character or stare at him on set. An upset Stone contacted Kilmer's agent and the actor claimed it was all a huge misunderstanding and that the memo was for his own people and not the film crew.


title: The Doors (film)

text: The film contains over two dozen of the Doors' songs, although only half of these appear on the accompanying soundtrack album. In the film, original recordings of the band are combined with vocal performances by Kilmer himself, although none of Kilmer's performances appear on the soundtrack album. In addition, two songs by the Velvet Underground ("Heroin" and "Venus in Furs"), are also heard throughout the film, with the former appearing on the soundtrack.


title: The Doors (film)

text: The film is based mostly on real people and actual events, with some segments reflecting Stone's vision and dramatization of those people and events. For example, when Morrison is asked to change the infamous lyric in "Light My Fire" for his appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show", he is depicted as blatantly ignoring their request, defiantly shouting the words "higher! Yeah!" into the television camera. However, during the actual broadcast, Morrison had simply sung the vocal with the same emphasis as on the record. Morrison later said the inclusion of "higher" in the live version was an accident, and that he had meant to change the lyric but was so nervous about performing on live television that he simply forgot to change it. Conversely, Ray Manzarek said the Doors only pretended to agree to the changing of words and deliberately played the song as they always had, albeit without any added emphasis on the offending words. Kilmer as Morrison is also shown wearing a black shirt in the scene, when in reality Morrison had wore a white shirt and black leather jacket for his performance on the show.


title: The Doors (film)

text: Another inaccuracy can be found in the character of a seductive female magazine photographer played by Mimi Rogers, who appears to be based on "16" magazine editor Gloria Stavers. (The dialogue in this scene is based on a conversation Stavers had with Morrison during a photo session in her Manhattan apartment.) This character is portrayed as having taken the famous "young lion" picture of Jim Morrison in New York City in 1967, when in fact this particular photograph (as well as nearly all the other publicity photographs for the Doors' first album) were taken by a male photographer, Joel Brodsky, in Los Angeles in November 1966.


title: The Doors (film)

text: Several acts of violence portrayed in the film are also disputed: Morrison is depicted as locking Pamela Courson in a closet and setting it on fire, which has been denied by people; having a violent argument with Courson at a Thanksgiving celebration, where they both threaten each other with a knife; and angrily throwing a television set at Manzarek for licensing the use of "Light My Fire" in a Buick television commercial. Even though Manzarek was frank about Morrison's tendency to go into senseless rages, participants in the film agree that Stone took many liberties in fabricating events and that none of these incidents actually occurred. Stone himself readily admits in the DVD director's commentary that the Thanksgiving scene never actually took place, nor the scene when the band members travel to a desert where Morrison encourages them to trip into psychedelic drugs.


title: The Doors (film)

text: Dialogue from Kennealy that took place between her and Morrison is reassigned to Courson, and Courson is depicted as saying hostile things to Kennealy, when by Kennealy's reports their interactions were polite. Kennealy is also portrayed as being the girl Morrison was with in the shower stall backstage before the December 9, 1967 New Haven concert, when in fact he was having a conversation with a local teenage co-ed from Southern Connecticut State University. Additionally, the New Haven venue is presented in the film as a gorgeous amphitheater with a large balcony and a packed audience, when in reality it was a rather decrepit, half-empty hockey rink with audience members sitting on foldable wooden chairs. Similarly, in an earlier scene of a press conference set in New York City in 1967, when Kennealy is first introduced to Morrison, the singer is asked a question regarding "the dreadful reviews your new poetry book has received"; at that time, Morrison had not yet published any volumes of his poetry.


title: The Doors (film)

text: John Densmore is portrayed as hating Morrison when the singer's personal and drug problems begin to dominate his behavior. However, Densmore states in his biography "Riders on the Storm" that he never directly confronted Morrison about his behavior. Other questionable portrayals include those of Andy Warhol, who is presented as a leering homosexual caricature.


title: The Doors (film)

text: Krieger, Densmore and Kennealy are all credited as technical advisors for the film; however, they have all commented that, although they may have given advice, Stone often chose to ignore it in favor of his own vision of the story. The settings for the film, particularly the concert sequences, are depicted in mostly chronological order, although the crowd scenes contain many blatant exaggerations, such as portrayals of public nudity, bonfires, and group revelries that did not occur. For example, in the concert sequences naked women are shown prancing around onstage, when in reality Densmore said that didn't happen in any of the Doors' concerts.


title: The Doors (film)

text: In the film's climactic scene of the infamous concert at the Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami on March 1, 1969, Morrison is shown as leaving the stage to join the audience for a singalong medley of "Break on Through" and "Dead Cats, Dead Rats", a portrayal which is likewise exaggerated and inaccurate. Previously in the scene, Morrison is also heard shouting to the audience "You're all bunch of fucking slaves!" but in reality he actually said "You're bunch of fucking idiots!", although he did call the audience "slaves" later in his rant. Also, prior to the concert, a reporter on the scene makes a derogatory comment about the band's fourth studio album, "The Soft Parade", which had not yet been completed and would not be released until July of that year. Additionally, Krieger said that he didn't take acid prior to the start of the concert as depicted in the film.


title: The Doors (film)

text: The surviving Doors members were all, to one degree or another, unhappy with the final film, and were said to have heavily criticized Stone's portrayal of Morrison as an "out of control sociopath." In a 1991 interview with Gary James, Manzarek criticized Stone for exaggerating Morrison's alcohol consumption in the movie: "Jim with a bottle all the time. It was ridiculous... It was not about Jim Morrison. It was about Jimbo Morrison, the drunk. God, where was the sensitive poet and the funny guy? The guy I knew was not on that screen." In the afterword of his book "Riders on the Storm", Densmore says that the movie is based on "the myth of Jim Morrison" and criticizes the film for portraying Morrison's ideas as "muddled through the haze of the drink [alcohol]." In a 1994 interview, Krieger said that the film doesn't give the viewer "any kind of understanding of what made Jim Morrison tick." Krieger added, "They left a lot of stuff out. Some of it was overblown, but a lot of the stuff was very well done, I thought."


title: The Doors (film)

text: In Manzarek's biography of the Doors, "Light My Fire", he often criticizes Stone and also includes myriad details that discredit Stone's account of Morrison. For example, in Stone's "re-creation" of Morrison's student film at UCLA, he has Morrison watching a D-Day sequence on television and shouting profanities in German, with a near-nude German exchange student dancing on top of the television sporting a swastika armband. According to Manzarek, the only similarity between Stone's version and Morrison's was that the girl in question was indeed German. Furthermore, Manzarek described Stone's version as a "grotesque exaggeration", and recalled that Morrison's film was actually a "much lighter, much friendlier, much funnier kind of thing."


title: The Doors (film)

text: As the credits point out and as Stone emphasizes in his DVD commentary, some characters, names, and incidents in the film are fictitious or amalgamations of real people. In the 1997 documentary, "The Road of Excess", Stone states that Quinlan's character, Patricia Kennealy, is a composite, and in retrospect should have been given a fictitious name. Kennealy in particular was hurt by her portrayal in the film and strongly objected to a scene in the film where Morrison states that he did not take their handfasting ceremony seriously. In addition, Kennealy is credited as a Wiccan priestess for her cameo role, when in reality her appearance in the marriage involved into Celtic paganism.


title: The Doors (film)

text: Ryan's character, Pamela Courson, involves liberties of a different sort. The former Doors think the movie depiction of her is not accurate at all, as their book "The Doors" describes this version of Courson as "a cartoon of a girlfriend". Courson's parents had inherited Morrison's poems when their daughter died, and Stone had to agree to restrictions about his portrayal of her in exchange for the rights to use the poetry. In particular, Stone agreed to avoid any suggestion that Courson may have been responsible for Morrison's death. However, Alain Ronay and Courson herself had both said that she was responsible. In "Riders on the Storm", Densmore says Courson said she felt terribly guilty because she had obtained drugs that she believed had either caused or contributed to Morrison's death.


title: The Doors (film)

text: "The Doors" was entered into the 17th Moscow International Film Festival. In April 2019, a restored version of the film was selected to be shown in the Cannes Classics section at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.


title: The Doors (film)

text: In a contemporary review, Roger Ebert gave "The Doors" two-and-a-half out of four stars. Ebert maintained that Stone failed to make any streaming depiction of the Doors and especially Jim Morrison, but praised the acting performances as "the best thing in the movie". Conversely, "Rolling Stone" wrote a glowing review, rating it with four out of four stars. In a 2010 piece for "Q" magazine, Keith Cameron stated that "few people emerged from seeing the film having raised their opinions of that band and especially its singer Jim Morrison." The problem, as critic Cameron put it, was not so much that "Stone dwelled upon Morrison the inebriate, the philanderer, or the pretentious Lizard King", but rather the "clichéd Hollywood devices for sucking the wonder from the pioneering band: actors with fake hair saying silly things..." and "a self-important director's turgid attempts to make grand statements about America."


title: The Doors (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 57% approval rating based on 60 reviews and an average rating of 6.00/10. The site's consensus states: "Val Kilmer delivers a powerhouse performance as one of rock's most incendiary figures, but unfortunately, Oliver Stone is unable to shed much light on the circus surrounding the star." Metacritic reports a 62 out of 100 rating, based on 19 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews."


title: The Doors (film)

text: "The Doors" was released on DVD on August 14, 2001 and was later released on Blu-ray on August 12, 2008. The film was released on 4K Blu-ray on July 23, 2019, with a new version of the film dubbed "The Final Cut". Supervised by Stone, it features remastered sound and removes a scene where Morrison, following his trial, almost commits suicide.


title: The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)

text: The Manchurian Candidate is a 1962 American neo-noir psychological political thriller film directed and produced by John Frankenheimer. The screenplay is by George Axelrod, based on the 1959 Richard Condon novel "The Manchurian Candidate". The film's leading actors are Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, and Angela Lansbury, with co-stars Janet Leigh, Henry Silva, and James Gregory.


title: The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)

text: The plot centers on Korean War veteran Raymond Shaw, part of a prominent political family. Shaw is brainwashed by communists after his Army platoon is captured. He returns to civilian life in the United States, where he becomes an unwitting assassin in an international communist conspiracy. The group, which includes representatives of the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union, plans to assassinate the presidential nominee of an American political party leading to the overthrow of the U.S. government.


title: The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)

text: The film was released in the United States on October 24, 1962, at the height of U.S.–Soviet hostility during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was widely acclaimed by Western critics and was nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress (Angela Lansbury) and Best Editing. It was selected in 1994 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".


title: The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)

text: Soviet and Chinese soldiers capture a U.S. Army platoon during the Korean War, taking them to communist China. Three days later, Sergeant Raymond Shaw and Captain Bennett Marco return to UN lines. Upon Marco's recommendation, Shaw is awarded the Medal of Honor for saving his soldiers' lives in combat, though two men were killed in action. Shaw returns to the U.S., where his heroism is exploited by his mother, Eleanor Iselin, to further the career of her husband, Senator John Iselin. When asked to describe Shaw, the other soldiers in his unit flatly respond, "Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life." In contrast to this description, Shaw is a cold, sad, unsympathetic loner.


title: The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)

text: After Marco is promoted to major and assigned to Army Intelligence, he has a recurring nightmare: a hypnotized Shaw blithely murders the two soldiers from his own platoon before an assembly of communist military leaders to demonstrate their revolutionary brainwashing technique. Marco learns that another soldier from the platoon, Allen Melvin, has the same nightmare. When Melvin and he separately identify photos of the same two men—leading figures in communist governments—from their dreams, Army Intelligence agrees to help Marco investigate.


title: The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)

text: During captivity, Shaw was programmed as a sleeper agent, who obeys orders to kill without any memory of his crimes. His battle heroism is a false memory implanted during the brainwashing. Agents trigger Shaw by suggesting he play solitaire; the queen of diamonds activates him. Eleanor masterminds the ascent of John, a demagogue who makes baseless claims that communists work at the Defense Department. Shaw repudiates his mother and stepfather by taking a job at a newspaper published by their critic, Holborn Gaines. Communist agents have Shaw murder Gaines to confirm that his brainwashing still works.


title: The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)

text: Chunjin, a Korean agent who posed as a guide for Shaw's platoon, comes to Shaw's apartment asking him for work. The unsuspecting Shaw hires him as a valet and cook. Marco recognizes Chunjin when he visits Shaw's apartment; he violently attacks him and demands to know what happened during the platoon's captivity. After Marco is arrested for assault, Eugenie Cheyney, a woman he met on a train, posts his bail and breaks her engagement to date him.


title: The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)

text: Shaw rekindles a romance with Jocelyn Jordan, the daughter of liberal Senator Thomas Jordan, the Iselins' chief political foe. Eleanor arranges their reunion to garner Senator Jordan's support for John's vice-presidential bid. Unswayed, Jordan insists he will block Iselin's attempts to seek the party's nomination. After Jocelyn inadvertently triggers Shaw's programming by wearing a queen of diamonds costume at a party for her thrown by the Iselins, they elope. Furious at Senator Jordan's rebuff, Eleanor—who is Shaw's American handler—sends him to kill Jordan at his home. Shaw also kills Jocelyn when she stumbles upon the murder scene. Afterward, he has no memory of the killing and is grief-stricken upon learning they are dead.


title: The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)

text: After discovering the card's role in Shaw's conditioning, Marco uses a forced deck to deprogram him, hoping he will reveal his next assignment. Eleanor primes Shaw to assassinate their party's presidential nominee at the height of its convention so that Iselin, as the vice-presidential candidate, will become the nominee by default. In the uproar, he will seek emergency powers to establish a strict authoritarian regime. Eleanor tells Shaw that she requested a programmed assassin, never knowing it would be her own son. She vows that when she takes power, she will exact revenge upon her superiors for selecting him.


title: The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)

text: Shaw enters Madison Square Garden disguised as a priest, taking up a sniper's position in an empty spotlight booth high above. Marco and his supervisor, Colonel Milt, race to the convention to stop him. At the last moment, Shaw aims away from the presidential nominee and instead kills Senator Iselin and Eleanor. When Marco arrives inside the lighting booth, Shaw tells him that not even the Army could have stopped them, so he had to. Then Shaw, wearing the Medal of Honor around his neck, commits suicide. That evening, Marco, speaking to Eugenie privately, mourns Shaw's death.


title: The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)

text: Sinatra suggested Lucille Ball for the role of Eleanor Iselin, but Frankenheimer, who had worked with Lansbury in "All Fall Down", insisted that Sinatra watch her performance in that film before a final choice was made. Although Lansbury played Raymond Shaw's mother, she was, in fact, only three years older than Laurence Harvey, who played Shaw. An early scene in which Shaw, recently decorated with the Medal of Honor, argues with his parents was filmed in Sinatra's own private plane.


title: The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)

text: Janet Leigh plays Marco's love interest. In a short biography of Leigh broadcast on Turner Classic Movies, actress Jamie Lee Curtis reveals her mother had been served divorce papers on behalf of her father, actor Tony Curtis, the morning that the scene where Marco and her character first meet on a train was filmed.


title: The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)

text: In the scene where Marco attempts to deprogram Shaw in a hotel room opposite the convention, Sinatra is at times slightly out of focus. It was a first take, and Sinatra failed to be as effective in subsequent retakes, a common factor in his film performances. In the end, Frankenheimer elected to use the out-of-focus take. Critics subsequently praised him for showing Marco from Shaw's distorted point of view.


title: The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)

text: In the novel, Eleanor Iselin's father had sexually abused her as a child. Before the dramatic climax, she uses her son's brainwashing to have sex with him. Concerned with the reaction to even a reference to a taboo topic like incest in a mainstream film at that time, the filmmakers instead had Eleanor kiss Shaw on the lips to imply her incestuous attraction to him.


title: The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)

text: Film critic Roger Ebert listed "The Manchurian Candidate" on his "Great Movies" list, declaring that it is "inventive and frisky, takes enormous chances with the audience, and plays not like a 'classic', but as a work as alive and smart as when it was first released".


title: The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, "The Manchurian Candidate" holds an approval rating of 97% rating based on 60 reviews, with an average rating of 8.70/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "A classic blend of satire and political thriller that was uncomfortably prescient in its own time, "The Manchurian Candidate" remains distressingly relevant today." On Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, the film has a score of 94 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)

text: In 1994, "The Manchurian Candidate" was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The film ranked 67th on the "AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies" when that list was first compiled in 1998, but a 2007 revised version excluded it. It was 17th on AFI's "AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills" lists. In April 2007, Lansbury's character was selected by "Time" as one of the 25 greatest villains in cinema history.


title: The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)

text: According to a false rumor, Sinatra removed the film from distribution after John F. Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963. Michael Schlesinger, who was responsible for the film's 1988 reissue by MGM/UA, has helped debunk the rumour. According to him, the film was not removed, but public interest in it was small immediately before the assassination. The autumn 1962 release had run its course. Box-office successes in the U.S. immediately before the shootings in Dallas were comedies, notably "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World", and movie distributors avoided reviving a thriller with a bleak ending that millions of people had seen barely a year earlier. Newspaper display ads indicate that after the assassination, "The Manchurian Candidate" was not rereleased as frequently or as widely as other 1962 movies, but it was indeed revived and never banned. The movie played at a Brooklyn cinema two months after the assassination (January 1964), and that same month, in White Plains and Jersey City, New Jersey. It was televised nationwide on "CBS Thursday Night at the Movies" on September 16, 1965.


title: The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)

text: Sinatra's representatives acquired rights to the film in 1972 after the initial contract with United Artists expired. The film was rebroadcast on nationwide television in April 1974 on "NBC Saturday Night at the Movies". After a showing at the New York Film Festival in 1987 increased public interest in the film, the studio reacquired the rights and it became again available for theater and video releases.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: Microsoft Flight Simulator is a series of amateur flight simulator programs for Microsoft Windows operating systems, and earlier for MS-DOS and Classic Mac OS. It was an early product in the Microsoft application portfolio and differed significantly from Microsoft's other software, which was largely business-oriented. In November 2022, "Microsoft Flight Simulator" is the longest-running software product line for Microsoft, predating Windows by three years. "Microsoft Flight Simulator" is one of the longest-running PC video game series of all time.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: Bruce Artwick began the development of "Flight Simulator" in 1977. His company, Sublogic, initially distributed it for various personal computers. In 1981, Artwick was approached by Microsoft's Alan M. Boyd who was interested in creating a "definitive game" that would graphically demonstrate the difference between older 8-bit computers, such as the Apple II, and the new 16-bit computers, such as the IBM PC, still in development. In 1982, Artwick's company licensed a version of "Flight Simulator" for the IBM PC to Microsoft, which marketed it as "Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.00".


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: In 2009, Microsoft closed down Aces Game Studio, which was the department responsible for creating and maintaining the "Flight Simulator" series. In 2014, Dovetail Games were granted the rights by Microsoft to port the Gold Edition of Microsoft's "Flight Simulator X" to Steam and publish "Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition".


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: Microsoft announced a new installment at E3 in 2019, simply titled "Microsoft Flight Simulator", to be released initially on PC and ported over to the Xbox Series X at a later date. On July 12, 2020, Microsoft opened up preorders and announced that "Microsoft Flight Simulator" for PC will be available on August 18, 2020. The company announced three different versions of the title – standard, deluxe, and premium deluxe, each providing an incremental set of gameplay features, including airports, and airplanes to choose from. The Xbox edition was released on July 27, 2021.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: "Microsoft Flight Simulator" began as a set of articles written by Bruce Artwick in 1976 about a 3D computer graphics program. When the magazine editor said that subscribers wanted to buy the program, Artwick set to work to create it and incorporated a company called Sublogic Corporation in 1977. The company began selling flight simulators for several computer platforms, including the 8080, Altair 8800, and IMSAI 8080. In 1979 Sublogic released "FS1 Flight Simulator" for the Apple II. In 1980, Sublogic released a version for the TRS-80, and in 1982 they licensed an IBM PC version with CGA graphics to Microsoft, which was released as "Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.00" on a self-booting disk. In the early days of less-than-100% IBM PC compatible systems, "Flight Simulator" and Lotus 1-2-3 were used as unofficial compatibility test software for new PC clone models.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: Sublogic continued to develop for other platforms and ported "Flight Simulator II" to the Apple II in 1983; the Commodore 64, MSX, and Atari 800 in 1984; and to the Amiga and Atari ST in 1986. Meanwhile, Bruce Artwick left Sublogic and founded The Bruce Artwick Organization to continue his work on subsequent Microsoft releases, beginning with "Microsoft Flight Simulator 3.0" in 1988. "Microsoft Flight Simulator" reached commercial maturity with version 3.1, and went on to encompass the use of 3D graphics and graphic hardware acceleration.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: Microsoft continued to produce newer versions of the flight simulation software, adding features, such as new aircraft types and augmented scenery. The "2000" and "2002" versions were available in "Standard" and "Professional" editions, where the latter included more aircraft, tools and scenery options. The "2004" release (version 9) marked the celebration of one hundred years of powered flight and had only one edition. "Flight Simulator X", released in 2006, returned to dual versions with a "Standard" and a "Deluxe" edition.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: The flying area encompasses planet Earth with varying degrees of detail and includes over 24,000 airports. There is an ever-growing list of scenery representing major landmarks and popular cities. Landscape details become sparse as gameplay moves away from population centers within the flight simulator, particularly outside the United States, although a variety of websites offer scenery add-ons to remedy this.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: The three latest versions incorporate sophisticated weather simulation, along with the ability to download real-world weather data (first available with "Flight Simulator 2000"). Additional features in these newer versions include air traffic environments with interactive air traffic control functions, new aircraft models from the historical Douglas DC-3 to the modern Boeing 777, interactive lessons, challenges, and aircraft checklists. The two latest versions of "Microsoft Flight Simulator" have a "kiosk mode", which allows the application to be run in electronic kiosks located in public places like shopping malls. "Microsoft Flight Simulator" has a wide selection of upgrades and add-ons, both free and commercial, official and fan-made.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: "Microsoft Flight Simulator X" is the third most recent major release of "Microsoft Flight Simulator", and the last one developed by Aces Game Studio. It includes a graphics engine upgrade and compatibility with preview DirectX 10 and Windows Vista. It was released on October 17, 2006, in North America. There are two versions of the game, both on two DVDs. The "Deluxe" edition contains the new Garmin G1000 integrated flight instrument system in three cockpits, additional aircraft, and missions; Tower Control capability in multiplayer mode; higher detail scenery for cities and airports; and a Software Development Kit (SDK) for development. The main improvements are graphical.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: Microsoft has also released a "Flight Simulator X" demo, which contains three aircraft, two airports, and two missions. It is compatible with Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: On January 22, 2009, it was reported that the development team was heavily affected by Microsoft's program of job cuts, with indications that the entire "Microsoft Flight Simulator" team had been laid off. Microsoft confirmed the closure of the Aces Game Studio on January 26, 2009, in a post on the official FSInsider Web site. stating ""This difficult decision was made to align Microsoft's resources with our strategic priorities. Microsoft Flight Simulator X will remain available at retail stores and Web retailers, the Flight Sim community will continue to learn from and encourage one another, and we remain committed to the Flight Simulator franchise for the long term.""


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: According to former Aces employee Phil Taylor, the shutdown was not due to sales performance of "FSX", but due to management problems and delays in project delivery, combined with increased demand for staff. Speculation in the mainstream and gaming media was that future versions could be released as an Internet-based version, or on Microsoft's Xbox platform.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: In October 2009, two (out of over fifty) former members of the Aces Game Studio formed a new game studio called the Cascade Game Foundry for the development of simulation games.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: In late 2007, Aces Game Studio announced Microsoft ESP (Enterprise Simulation Platform), a development platform for companies that want to create products that use the technology in "Flight Simulator". Following the closure of the Aces Game Studio in January 2009, Lockheed Martin announced in late 2009 that they had negotiated with Microsoft a licensing agreement to purchase the intellectual property (including source code) for the Microsoft ESP product. It is the commercial-use version of "Flight Simulator X" SP2. On May 17, 2010, Lockheed announced that the new product based upon the ESP source code would be called Prepar3D (P3D). Lockheed hired members of the original Aces Game Studio team to continue development of the product.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: In November 2010, Lockheed Martin debuted "Prepar3D" version 1. Version 1.1 was released in April 2011, with a retail license cost of US$499. A developer license is also available for a monthly fee of US$9.95. In March 2012, along with the release of version 1.3, the pricing strategy was revised. The Professional edition is now available for US$199, with an Academic License available for US$59.95.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: Often touted as 'FSX on steroids', P3D has so far had 5 versions, with the latest launched on April 14, 2020. Version 5 features 41 aircraft and over 23000 airports. Before that, version 2, 3 and 4 saw releases in 2013, 2015, and 2017 respectively.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: Due to the changes in elevation between version 4 and version 5, many developers charged for upgrades to make their airport sceneries compatible with the new elevation. This elevation issue, in turn, created new developers to pop up to create "compatibility files" for older version 4 airports to work on version 5. Companies such as iniBuilds and Scandinavian Mountains lead the development of compatibility files.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: On July 9, 2014, Dovetail Games announced that Microsoft had granted them rights to develop the next "Flight Simulator" in the series. Dovetail Games also announced the release of "Flight Simulator X: Gold Edition" on Steam for late 2014, titled "Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition". It was released on December 18, 2014. It is a re-release and includes content that was provided with the original "FSX: Gold Edition" which includes "FSX: Deluxe Edition", the "Acceleration" expansion pack, and both official Service Packs and repackages them in one bundle and a single installation. The "Steam Edition" includes "all standard Steam functionality", including an overhaul of the multiplayer support to go through Steam rather than the now-defunct GameSpy, improved stability on Windows 7 and 8, and features minor performance tweaks including a complete recompile using VS2013.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: Additionally, Dovetail Games has worked with existing developers and publishers to distribute their content on Steam as DLC. Currently, there are over 100 add-ons for FSX: Steam Edition from over 35 developers available on the Steam store including Aerosoft, Captain Sim, Orbx Simulation Systems, Real Environment Xtreme (REX), Carenado, Virtavia, and others.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: In May 2017, Dovetail Games announced "Flight Sim World", based on the codebase of "Flight Simulator X", and released later that month. Only a year later, on April 23, 2018, Dovetail announced end of development of "Flight Sim World" and the end of sales effective May 15, 2018.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: Microsoft released a new flight simulator titled "Microsoft Flight" in February 2012. Developed by The Coalition (as Microsoft Game Studios Vancouver), it was not part of the "Microsoft Flight Simulator" series, but instead was designed to replace it and aimed at drawing new users into flight gaming. While claiming to be simpler to use for inexperienced users, it is incompatible with "Flight Simulator" and does not allow the use of existing "Flight Simulator" add-ons (including aircraft, objects, and photographic scenery).


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: The game was "pay to play", as only the single island of Hawai'i and one aircraft was available without buying downloadable content. On July 26, 2012, Microsoft cancelled further development of "Flight".


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: On June 9, 2019, as part of their E3 conference announcements Microsoft revealed that they would be bringing back the "Flight Simulator" series with an updated release, simply titled "Microsoft Flight Simulator". On the same day, Microsoft launched a new website for the title and posted a teaser video on their Xbox YouTube channel. The new version features tight integration of ground satellite data and Microsoft's own Azure AI into the simulator's engine to generate near-photorealistic graphics. Asobo Studio is the lead developer.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: The game is Microsoft's first simulator since "Microsoft Flight" in 2012. In addition to the PC release it was also released for the Xbox Series X and Series S, making it the first entry in the "Microsoft Flight Simulator" series to be released for a gaming console. The Windows PC version of the simulator was released on August 18, 2020. "Microsoft Flight Simulator" launched for Xbox Series X and Series S on July 27, 2021.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: The long history and consistent sales of "Flight Simulator" has encouraged a very large body of add-on packages to be developed as both commercial and volunteer ventures. A formal software development kit and other tools for the simulator exist to further facilitate third-party efforts, and some third parties have also learned to 'tweak' the simulator in various ways by trial and error. As for number of add-ons, tweaks, and modifications "Flight Simulator" can accommodate solely depends on the user's hardware setup. The number is not limited by the simulator, and when multiple computers are linked together with multiple monitors and third-party software and controls, "Flight Simulator" enthusiasts can build their own realistic home cockpits.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: Individual attributes of "Flight Simulator" aircraft that can be customized include; cockpit layout, cockpit image, aircraft model, aircraft model textures, aircraft flight characteristics, scenery models, scenery layouts, and scenery textures, often with simple-to-use programs, or only a text editor such as 'Notepad'. Dedicated 'flight simmers have taken advantage of "Flight Simulator's" vast add-on capabilities, having successfully linked "Flight Simulator" to homebuilt hardware, some of which approaches the complexity of commercial full-motion flight simulators.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: Most versions of "Microsoft Flight Simulator" include some of the world's most popular aircraft from different categories, such as the Mooney Bravo and Beechcraft Baron 58, which fall into the general aviation category; the Airbus A321 and Boeing 737, which fall into the civil jets category; the Robinson R22, which falls into the helicopter category; the Air Scheffel 738, which falls into the general aviation category again; and many other planes commonly used around the world.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: Not being limited to using the default aircraft, add-on planes can be downloaded from many sources for free or purchased, which can then be installed into "Microsoft Flight Simulator". The Beechcraft 1900D pictured above, is an add-on aircraft. Similarly, add-on repaints can be added to default aircraft; these repaints are usually downloaded for free.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: A growing add-on category for the series is AI (artificial intelligence) traffic. AI traffic is the simulation of other vehicles in the "FS" landscape. This traffic plays an important role in the simulator, as it is possible to crash into traffic (this can be disabled), thus ending your session, and to interact with the traffic via the radio and ATC. This feature is active even with third-party traffic. Microsoft introduced AI traffic in MSFS 2002 with several airliners and private aircraft. This has since been supplemented with many files created by third-party developers. Typically, third-party aircraft models have multiple levels of detail, which allow the AI traffic to be better on frame rates, while still being detailed during close looks. There are several prominent freeware developers. Some third-party AI traffic can even be configured for "real-time" departures.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: Scenery add-ons usually involve replacements for existing airports, with enhanced and more accurate detail, or large expanses of highly detailed ground scenery for specific regions of the world. Some types of scenery add-on replace or add structures to the simulator. Both freeware and payware scenery add-ons are very widely available. Airport enhancements, for example, range from simple add-ons that update runways or taxiways to very elaborate packages that reproduce every lamp, pavement marking, and structure at an airport with near-total accuracy, including animated effects such as baggage cars or marshalling agents. Wide-area scenery enhancements may use detailed satellite photos and 3-D structures to closely reproduce real-world regions, particularly those including large cities, landmarks, or spectacular natural wonders.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: Virtual flight networks such as IVAO, VATSIM, and Pilot Edge as well as Virtual Skies, and Mindstar Aviation's AirspaceVR use special, small add-on modules for "Flight Simulator" to enable connection to their proprietary networks in multiplayer mode, and to allow for voice and text communication with other virtual pilots and controllers over the network. These networks allow players to enjoy and enhance realism in their game. These networks are for ATC (air traffic control).


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: Some utilities, such as FSUIPC, merely provide useful tweaks for the simulator to overcome design limitations or bugs, or to allow more extensive interfacing with other third-party add-ons. Sometimes certain add-ons require other utility add-ons in order to work correctly with the simulator.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: Other add-ons provide navigation tools, simulation of passengers, and cameras that can view aircraft or scenery from any angle, more realistic instrument panels and gauges, and so on.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: Some software add-ons provide operability with specific hardware, such as game controllers and optical motion sensors.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: FSDeveloper.com is one website that host a forum style knowledge base aimed at the development of add-on items, tools, and software.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: Excel Unusual hosts two versions of flight simulator downloads and tutorials, built from scratch with only VBA and cell formulas, in both 2D and 3D.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: A number of websites are dedicated to providing users with add-on files (such as airplanes from actual airlines, airport utility cars, actual buildings located in specific cities, textures, and city files). The wide availability over the internet of freeware add-on files for the simulation package has encouraged the development of a large and diverse virtual community, linked up by design group and enthusiast message boards, online multiplayer flying, and 'virtual airlines'. The internet has also facilitated the distribution of 'payware' add-ons for the simulator, with the option of downloading the files, which reduces distribution costs.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: "PC Magazine" in January 1983 called "Flight Simulator" "extraordinarily realistic ... a classic program, unique in the market". It praised the graphics and detailed scenery, and concluded "I think it's going to sell its share of IBM PCs, and will certainly sell some color/graphics adapters". "BYTE" in December 1983 wrote that "this amazing package does an incredible job of making you think you're actually flying a small plane". While it noted the inability to use a RGB monitor or a joystick, the magazine concluded that "for $49.95 you can't have everything". A pilot wrote in the magazine in March 1984 that he found the simulated Cessna 182 to be "surprisingly realistic". While criticizing the requirement of using the keyboard to fly, he concluded ""Microsoft Flight Simulator" is a tour de force of the programmer's art ... It can be an excellent introduction to how an aircraft actually operates for a budding or student pilot and can even help instrument pilots or those going for an instrument rating sharpen their skills".


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: Another pilot similarly praised "Flight Simulator 2.0" in "PC Magazine" that year, giving it 18 out of 18 points. He reported that its realism compared well to two $3 million hardware flight simulators he had recently flown, and that he could use real approach plates to land at and navigate airports "Flight Simulator"s manual did not document. "Compute!" warned "if you don't know much about flying, this program may overwhelm you. It's not a simple simulation. It's a challenging program even for experienced pilots". The magazine concluded that "Flight Simulator" "is interesting, challenging, graphically superb, diverse, rewarding, and just plain fun ... sheer delight". "Flight Simulator 2.0" was reviewed in 1989 in "Dragon" #142 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 5 out of 5 stars.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: "Computer Gaming World" stated in 1994 that "Flight Simulator 5" "is closer to simulating real flight than ever before".


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: "Microsoft Flight Simulator X" was reviewed in 2006 by "GameSpot". The reviewer gave the game an 8.4 out of 10 and commented on how it was realistic enough to be used for real-life flight training.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: By June 1999, the series had sold units worldwide, for which it was awarded the Guinness World Record for best-selling flight simulator series.


title: Microsoft Flight Simulator

text: The success of the "Microsoft Flight Simulator" series has led to Guinness World Records awarding the series seven world records in the "Guinness World Records: Gamer's Edition 2008". These records include "Longest Running Flight Sim Series", "Most Successful Flight Simulator Series", and "Most Expensive Home Flight Simulator Cockpit", which was built by Australian trucking tycoon Matthew Sheil, and cost around $200,000 to build.


title: Metal Gear (video game)

text: Players control Solid Snake, an operative of the special forces unit FOXHOUND, who goes on a solo infiltration mission into the fortified state of Outer Heaven to destroy Metal Gear, a bipedal walking tank capable of launching nuclear missiles from anywhere in the world, as well as rescue a number of fellow agents who have been captured by the enemy. The game was a major international success, with the NES version selling 1million units in the United States.


title: Metal Gear (video game)

text: The player controls a military operative codenamed Solid Snake, whose objective is to infiltrate the enemy's base while avoiding visual contact and direct confrontation with patrolling guards. If the player is seen, the game enters the "Alert Mode". In this situation, Snake must escape from the enemy's sight in order to resume infiltration. The method of escaping varies depending on the circumstances behind discovery:


title: Metal Gear (video game)

text: Snake starts his mission unarmed, but can arm himself with numerous firearms and explosives that can be obtained throughout the enemy's stronghold. Each weapon has limited ammunition, these can be replenished by obtaining ammunition caches. A suppressor can be obtained that allows the player to fire the handgun and submachine gun without making a noise. Some weapons can be used to clear obstacles such as hollow walls and electrified floors. Snake can use his fists to punch and defeat patrolling enemies. Occasionally, if the player defeats a guard with punches without alerting anyone, the defeated guard will yield a single unit of rations or an ammo box that can be picked up. In addition to enemy guards, the player will be confronted by mercenaries who will challenge the player to combat, serving as the boss characters.


title: Metal Gear (video game)

text: The enemy base consists of three different buildings, with multiple floors (including basement levels) within them. The player uses key cards and other items to unlock doors and explore new areas. Each door will only open with a corresponding key card. Information can be obtained by rescuing hostages being held within the buildings. After rescuing five hostages, the player's rank will increase by one star (with the maximum rank being four stars), allowing for increased carrying capacity and maximum health. However, if a hostage is killed, the player will be demoted to the previous rank.


title: Metal Gear (video game)

text: A transceiver is available for Snake to keep in touch with his commanding officer, Big Boss, or one of the resistance members operating covertly near Outer Heaven (Schneider, Diane, and Jennifer). Each of Snake's allies specializes in a specific subject and will usually provide information or advice based on the player's current area, although a reply is not always guaranteed. The player must keep track of each character's frequency number in order to remain in contact with them throughout the game.


title: Metal Gear (video game)

text: The MSX2 version requires the use of a tape drive (such as the Sony Bitcorder) in order to save and load game progress from checkpoints. A Game Master II cartridge can also be used to enable save states via floppy disks at any point. Versions on later platforms eliminated these complicated requirements thanks to standardized storage devices such as memory cards and internal disk drives.


title: Metal Gear (video game)

text: "Metal Gear" takes place within an alternate history where the Cold War does not end after the 1980s but continues into the 1990s, with the game's events taking place during 1995 while not defined in the Japanese MSX2 version of the game, which referred to the year as "19XX", the release of "Metal Gear Solid" established the date within its narrative. The game forms the first entry in an overarching plot concerning the character of Solid Snake, with the origins of the game's plot being later explored in 2015's "".


title: Metal Gear (video game)

text: The player's character is Solid Snake, a rookie member of the special forces group FOXHOUND sent on his first mission. He is assisted via radio by his commanding officer Big Boss, who offers information about mission objectives and items; as well as a local Resistance movement composed of leader Schneider, a former architect who guides Snake through the layout of the fortress and knows the locations of key items; Diane, a former positive punk vocalist who provides information on the enemy forces from her home; and Jennifer, who infiltrated Outer Heaven's medical staff to find her missing brother and assists Snake as an inside agent. Among the prisoners Snake rescues includes Grey Fox (Gray Fox in the later versions), a FOXHOUND agent who was captured during a previous mission; Dr. Pettrovich (Dr. Drago Pettrovich Madnar in later releases), a robotic engineer who is working for Outer Heaven against his will; and the doctor's daughter, Elen, who was kidnapped by the enemy to coerce her father into developing Metal Gear.


title: Metal Gear (video game)

text: The bosses include Shoot Gunner (renamed Shotmaker in later versions), a former Spetsnaz agent specializing in the riot gun; Machinegun Kid, a former SAS operative armed with a machine gun; Fire Trooper, a former GSG 9 operative who uses a flamethrower; Coward Duck (Dirty Duck in later releases), a boomerang throwing terrorist who shields himself with hostages; Arnold (Bloody Brad in later releases), two TX-11 class androids designed by Dr. Pettrovich; and the legendary mercenary who founded Outer Heaven, whose true identity is unknown until the end.


title: Metal Gear (video game)

text: Near the end of the 20th century, the West discovers that a weapon of mass destruction is being constructed inside Outer Heaven, a fortified state founded by a "legendary mercenary" 200 km north of Galzburg, South Africa. The special forces unit FOXHOUND sends top agent Gray Fox to infiltrate the fortress, assess the situation and neutralize the threat. FOXHOUND loses contact with Gray Fox a few days later, with his last transmission being "METAL GEAR..." To discover what happened to Gray Fox, FOXHOUND commander Big Boss sends his newest recruit, Solid Snake, into the area in an operation codenamed Intrude N313.


title: Metal Gear (video game)

text: Upon insertion into Outer Heaven, Snake makes contact with local resistance members Schneider, Diane, and Jennifer. Using all of his skills and the equipment he procures on site, he manages to rescue Fox. Fox explains that Metal Gear is the codename of a nuclear-equipped bipedal walking tank, which can engage in all forms of combat and launch nuclear weapons from any location. Outer Heaven plans to use Metal Gear to impose itself as the new world superpower.


title: Metal Gear (video game)

text: To destroy Metal Gear and topple the Outer Heaven mercenaries, Snake rescues lead Metal Gear engineer Dr. Pettrovich and his daughter Elen. The scientist explains how Metal Gear can be destroyed, and Snake takes on Outer Heaven's troops. However, he begins to notice that the traps put in his way are too precise and wonders how information on his activities are being tracked. Big Boss begins to act strangely, giving misleading advice that leads Snake into several traps, and eventually ordering him to abort the mission (breaking the fourth wall by telling the player to turn off the system). Moreover, Schneider is ambushed by hostiles and is presumed dead after losing contact with Snake.


title: Metal Gear (video game)

text: Snake penetrates Outer Heaven's main base and takes out Metal Gear before it reaches completion. As he safely escapes the compound's basement, he is confronted by the mercenary leader of Outer Heaven, who turns out to be Big Boss. The corrupt leader reveals that he had been using his connections to steal military intelligence, establish his own mercenary force, and fund his activities. It was his aim to have Outer Heaven become the world's greatest superpower, able to bring even the West to its knees. He had the rookie Snake sent in, hoping to have him captured and feed misinformation to authorities but had quite obviously underestimated Snake's capabilities.


title: Metal Gear (video game)

text: Having lost Metal Gear and much of his force, Big Boss starts the self-destruct sequence for the compound, and promises he will not die alone; Snake will join him. Snake defeats Big Boss in the last battle and escapes the Outer Heaven compound as it crumbles in flames behind him. After the end credits, a message from Big Boss is displayed saying that he will meet Solid Snake again.


title: Metal Gear (video game)

text: Director Hideo Kojima was asked to take over a project from a senior associate. "Metal Gear" was intended to be an action game that featured modern military combat. However, the MSX2's hardware limited the number of on-screen bullets and enemies, which Kojima felt impeded the combat aspect. The MSX2 also had limited scrolling capabilities, which made it difficult to produce a smooth scrolling shooter, like Konami's arcade hit "Scramble" (1981). Inspired by "The Great Escape", Kojima reversed the focus of the gameplay from shooting down the enemy to avoiding capture. The game design was no longer about shooting but about "trying to form the tension of hide and seek" according to Kojima, subverting the shoot 'em up genre popular at the time. Kojima designed the game so that, when Snake is discovered, the gameplay changed to become a puzzle video game "like "Pac-Man"" (1980) where the enemy guards behave like "Pac-Man" ghosts that Snake needs to avoid.


title: Metal Gear (video game)

text: The game was titled "Intruder" during the early planning stages. The packaging illustration used for the retail releases of the game, which depicts the protagonist Solid Snake holding a gun, was traced over a publicity still of Michael Biehn posing as his character Kyle Reese from the 1984 film "The Terminator". Kojima, who was still newly employed at Konami at the time, had no involvement with the production of this illustration.