KINGS AND QUEENS

Version: MySpace Video Player

Welcome to my first music video review! Now, this may seem out of place, but I have two reasons. First, I am a big 30 Seconds to Mars fan, so they get special treatment. Second, Jared Leto tends to style his videos as "short films", so technically I am in the clear. ;)

A little background. Kings and Queens is the first video from 30 Seconds to Mars' new album This is War. This is their seventh video, and continues Leto's habit of making grand videos (see From Yesterday, The Kill, and A Beautiful Lie). Actually, you could consider this their eighth, since that Dragon Age: Origins commercial was totally awesome.

Kings and Queens wasn't as cool as I thought it was going to be. The fire-breather trailer given out a little bit ago had me thing "epic", like From Yesterday, but in all honesty this is not in the same ballpark. The whole thing is just Jared and co riding around the streets of Los Angeles along with a bunch of cyclists spliced in with footage of the band playing and the California fires.

I feel bad for Tomo, because you only get to see a couple shots of him. Tomo is awesome, and he deserves more screen time! Shannon gets more than Tomo, but of course Mr. Bartholomew Cubbins himself takes the cake. We've got a whole host of Jared shots here, and I suppose it makes up for the long wait for this video.

Now that I'm done bitching, let me praise. Jared looks awesome. I guess the emo days are over, because he doesn't have near as much of the guyliner as From Yesterday. I suppose this video has a message, but it's not as apparent as A Beautiful Lie. The slo-mo from ABL is not used here as much, and I like that. I'm a little disappointed, though, because the dark LA atmosphere doesn't bring out Jared's baby blues as much as the Arctic did.

The video I watched was very stop and go, but I'm going to blame that on the crummy Myspace player. The runtime was 8 minutes, but the credits took up a big chunk of it. I'm hoping there's a longer version floating out there...

The good: Jared looking less emo The bad: Hardly any Tomo! Overall: Awesome.