This Is Where They Lost Me

I almost didn’t post it because what’s the point of just saying “eh.. didn’t like it”? But it has to be said. This was an awful movie. And I guess I had more to say than I thought:

Once again, for the record, I *like* some awful movies, and there are some bits that are worth salvaging here, but in general.. awful. I’d say a good 70+% of this movie just should have been redone completely and we might have gotten a more polished turd than what was put out.

Some people blame the fact that this was released as PG-13. I heard a TON of bitching (at least on the former Big O and Dukes show) about this fact. But it goes deeper than that. A lot of things go into the actual production of a movie and you need the strong points to carry the weaker ones. If the writing/story, direction, effects, editing or any of the other factors are kind of weak, you really make up for it somewhere, but the only thing T:S had going for it was some pretty cool robot designs and some effects here and there, but they just weren’t enough to make up for all the other badness.

Maybe it’s that “McG“, the director and producer, has worked more on TV shows and music videos than he has on movies, or maybe it was other factors. I believe that you can take a lackluster performance from your actors and a good director can make them look great by picking just the right shots at the end. Just like I can take 1,000 photographs and if I only published the handful of ones that looked great, everyone would think I was a great photographer. But I think the process worked backwards here. McG somehow took a typically fantastic and dynamic actor, Christian Bale, and just made him look ridiculous. I mean, some of the scenes HAD to have been obviously bad and maybe Bale and company thought they’d be fixed in post production, but guess not.

The dialog was shitty. I wasn’t expecting Shakespeare but not expecting dialog on par with a Dolph Lungren movie.

The acting, also shitty. Or maybe it was just edited that way. The whole thing played out a lot like an 80′s movie. I kept thinking how this would have fit right in with the Robocop franchise. Not all the movie was like that, but a good bit of it, particularly the beginning.

In general, most of the movie doesn’t fit well with the Terminator franchise. It tries hard to fit in while trying something different than the usual terminator/good guy/person-in-distress all going on a long chase to visit someone, destroy something, prevent person-in-distress from being killed. I mean, it sort of does that because that’s just kind of how the franchise goes, but it does it in a more round-about way.

If you’re a fan of Terminator or sci-fi action flicks, then there’s something in there to enjoy. But this won’t go down as a memorable representation of the sci fi genre.

McG should be ashamed of making Christian Bale look bad, although that may be his biggest talent as a filmmaker.

BTW: Thanks to Warner Brothers for offering a free DivX copy of Terminator Salvation. I somehow feel better knowing I didn’t even pay part of my monthly cable bill to watch it.

I watched the first two Twilight movies.. and lived (and remained a straight male) to tell about it.

I went in to this ‘experiment’ making every attempt not to judge Twilight by the drooly half insane rabid female and questionably hetero male fans.  The movie hype machine is mighty powerful, at times, and insane fans can be a huge turnoff to anyone who might otherwise give a movie a chance.  I walked out of Tim Burton’s original “Batman” right into a mall kiosk full of tshirts.  The wave of hype caught me after I saw the movie, otherwise I might never have seen it in theaters.  I still haven’t seen all of “Forest Gump” because the hype was so powerful that I had zero interest in seeing it.  When a movie has hype AND fans are irrationally enamored with the characters, that’s a double turnoff for me.. but I decided to try to push all that aside and watch these two objectively.  I told myself, going in, that this was going to be “Lost Boys” with a slightly different slant.  Just another goofy vampire flick, not to be taken too seriously.  I think that approach worked, for the most part.

First, Twilight…

The first thing that struck me is that, besides Bella and Edward, the other characters were all fairly ‘normal’ for a teen-centric fantasy type movie.  Within that kind of universe, they were all pretty believable.  I really expected a lot of the characters to be the ones that appeal to the drooly fans as much as Bella and Edward, but maybe that would have drawn away from the whole purpose of the Bella/Edward interaction: a Pavlovian “Incredible Machine” of drool and drama production aimed at pulling emotional strings in those who long for a better romantic life.  And people say “Avatar” was engineered for emotional response..

Edward and Bella, on the other hand, are almost farcical parodies of the angsty helpless girl and the metrosexual douchebag vampire.  The other students seem “real enough” for a movie, even if they’re a little fakey, they’re still not as exagerated and overly dramatic as Edward and Bella. And who knew 300+ year old vampires drove little lunchbox cars?  And Bella?  Could she have had any more of a “I smell shit” face the ENTIRE movie?  I kept thinking of The Oatmeal’s analysis of the book where he dubs her “Pants” because the character is so plain and non-description that she might as well not have a name, that she’s just a generic shell that any woman could wear, like pants (get it?), and step into that role and pretend that she was Bella.  Anyway, with all due respect to Kristen Stewart, it was touch looking at her facial expression most of the movie.  I felt in pain FOR her having to hold that expression.

Blech.

A couple of nagging points:

• “Vegetarian vampires”?  Ok, I get the analogy, but that was groan-worthy.
• Some of the worst trapeze work I’ve seen in ages. They totally punted there and it’s almost shameful, in the age of such amazing special effects, that people still shortcut some effects like this.
• Speaking of bad effects, when Edward jumps into the truck when she’s driving, it totally looked like a car standing still with a greenscreen backdrop.  That effect won’t age well at all.  It looked like the outtake reels when some actors runs up beside a supposedly moving car and makes the actors in the scene do a virtual spit take.
• We get it.. you kill a vampire by “tearing them apart and burning the pieces”.  Repeating it verbatim twice with the delivery of a “nod and wink to the camera” earned another groan.  Don’t they teach writers to reword things a little sometimes?
• At this point in the story, Jacob doesn’t know that werewolves really exist.  He treats his (grand?) father’s stories with heavy skepticism and seems hesitant to even mention them because they’re so silly sounding, yet he’s still really REALLY opposed to Bella hanging out with Edward.  Didn’t seem like jealousy, it seemed like he was reading ahead and was already in the “wolf vs vamp” mode.  Just an odd shift in character that wasn’t played very well.  In an 80′s campy fantasy flick like this, the character would have strongly cautioned the lead character and probably come to their rescue later aided by one of the Coreys or something.

One thing that I was amazed with were the end credits.  They were really amazingly well done.  Silly thing to compliment, but you gotta give props where they’re due, right?

Now for an intermission before we get into “New Moon”….

I noticed some odd similarities of some characters and other people we may know.

Edward Cullen (Image Source) vs Christopher Walken (Image Source)

Mike Newton (Image Source) vs Edward Norton (Image Source)

Jacob vs Sharkboy (Image Source)

Oh that’s right… they’re not different people.  From shark boy to wolf boy.  What’s next?  Sloth man!!!!!!!!!

Ok, time for the lightning round.  On to “Twilight: New Moon!”

Looked like it was filmed immediately after the first one. I don’t care to research if it was or not, but watching the two back to back, it held together nicely.  Kudos on that!

Edward upgraded his car!  WOO HOO for corporate sponsorship!  It’s not James Bond, Bourne or Transporter upgrade, but it’ll do.

Edward’s a little warmer, Bella’s a little less “I smell shit” and more like your standard movie emo girl.  A step in the right direction.

Jacob bulks up.  Oh for Christ’s sake.  I know it works into the story and all, but it was a bit of a dramatic change when everything else seemed to happen 3 days after the end of the first movie.

Jacob’s gives dreamcatchers as a birthday present?  Really?  Was it a choice between that, a chief’s headdress and a tomahawk at the reservation gift shop?  We get it, he’s Native American.  I think in 2010, they’re allowed to shop at last at Walmart, if not jewelry stores or something.  Call me progressive.

Volturi.. vulture.. vulture? vulturo.. *ahem*.. *coughs up squirrel* ( 0:46 )

The birthday party that gets totally out of hand looked like a setup for a larger betrayal later, but it was just to overly dramatacize the point of her being human is an issue around the bloodlusty vampries.  QQ

Bella’s attempts to risk her life were retarded and contrived.  I know what they were going for, but it wasn’t played out naturally.  Just poor writing/acting in general.

Jacob chops off his hair to become one of the “Stepford Wolves” (what? packs can’t have individuals? do they really ALL have to look exactly the same?) and somehow becomes a Native American Matt Damon?  WTF?  Blarg.   More drool farming from all the prepubescent girls and like minded adult women and men.

And finally some choice dialog nuggets:

• “Guess the wolf’s out of the bag” – groan
• “Can’t really run with vampires… cuz THEY’RE FAST!” – double groan
• “We’re faster… FREAKED OUT YET??” – ouch groan..
• “Can’t you just find a way to stop?” – So… being a werewolf is exactly the same as being gay.  I got it.  You learn to groom yourself properly, buff up, oil your chest, hang out with a lot of other guys who do the same thing, have gay sex in the woods…  in a way, it’s exactly like being gay.

All in all… the first movie was ok.  The baseball thing amused me, I like the fact that they were reconceptualizing the vampire thing.  The sparkley skin, not so much, but the baseball thing made me chuckle a little.  Until they suddenly tried to go from Lost Boys to Blade with the bad vampires.  In general, it was semi cohesive and not too shabby, despite the drool farming.   New Moon improves on some points, but falls apart on other points.  The story and execution were less cohesive and it was kind of a mess, in general.

I can’t wait for the third installment.  Maybe they’ll go all True Blood on us and introduce about 10 new supernatural creatures for Bella to cut herself over.

I feel obligated to be up front about the fact that I’m an atheist.  I went into this movie, not realizing it’s religious basis (even though the title suggests it), but I don’t think my personal beliefs have any bearing on my opinion of what happened in the movie.  Quite the contrary. Starting from a non-believer’s point of view, I’m not likely to gloass over the things that “lost me” for the sake of putting a “christian movie” (which it wasn’t, really) on a pedestal and making it out to be better than it was.

The next disclaimer I want to make, before I dive right in, is that I enjoyed the movie. A solid 3 out of 5, maybe. It was a visual treat, and I’ve liked the Hughes brothers’ other films to varying degrees (as I did with ‘Eli’) and I think they’re talented filmmakers.

This is where they lost me…

First is casting.  Denzel, good. Oldman, good but a weak role for him. Not as crazy/dynamic/memorable as some, but as always, he did it well.  Mila f’in Kunis?  I like her, in general.  Mostly in comedic roles.  Not my favorite, but not bad either.  The end scene where she goes all Milla Jovovich LOOKED good, but I couldn’t buy it because.. and this is her main failing being cast in this role.. she plays snotty, entitled bitches.  That’s her role.  She could play the fun sexy friend in a summer comedy.  She could play a few other roles, I guess.  But she’s NOT a kid who grew up in a post apocaylptic wasteland, even if she spent her whole life in that town.  And for the love of GOD… she’s NOT a badass and could never grow into that role in whatever shot time passed between Denzel dying and her heading out on her own.   If they think they’re getting a sequel.. a “Book of Solara”… it’ll be lucky if it gets a direct to DVD treatment and does any better than she did in “American Psycho 2” (maybe Bill Shatner can be in Book of Solara!).  Hell, Donnie Darko’s sister in “S. Darko” would have been a small notch better just because she’s not QUITE as snotty and not QUITE as entitled.  Kunis + Sword + iPod = all the sequel you need to see and should ever be made.  Two minutes too much, too wrong.  I do have to say that she’s starting to look like a little Angelina Jolie (see here) but she’s far from raiding any tombs anytime soon.  Grow up some, wear some blood around your neck, adopt a bunch of foreign babies and have sex with Billy Bob Thornton, then you’ll be beat down enough to get that ‘rugged look’ working for you.

Next..  green screens.  We get it.  Some shit’s fake.  No need to go from solid visual decrepitude to obvious CG.  Yes, I know the TransAmerica building is 30 years into the rot of neglect but that looked weak.  The transition between the water and city looked weak.  The light on their hair looked weak.   What’s bad in cases like this is, if it’s glaring on the big screen, it’s going to look like total crap when it finally airs on TV.   I watch old movies and go “wow.. the CG really hasn’t aged well…” but I remember in the movies thinking it looked pretty good.  Same eyes.  Same brain.  Same world view.  All things being equal, I’m guessing the CG at the end of the movie is going to look extra weak when it comes to TV.

Going backwards here…  you found an old iPod (because an iPod Nano never would have survived.. if the world is bombed out, you can only find OLD battery operated tech.  No ZuneHD for Denzel)..  but when the battery runs out, you push a bunch of buttons as if anyone who’s ever used one of these devices ever thought that would somehow get you more juice.  That was a blatant play for the viewers.  Look, he’s got an iPod.  Look, it has power, but it’s run out.  Boo hoo.  How will he ever charge it again?   Since you can’t have newer tech like a solar charger (which can be found a good number of places these days), we’ll just have to trade some beaver pelts for a guy to recharge your battery.

Oh yeah…  fake book = claymore.  Cute. Good idea.  Why was it dropped in the open area, but it makes the whole car explode and shoot straight up as if it was thrown directly under the center of the car?   Maybe I just missed something.   While on topic of that fight.  Do you really stop shooting when the bad guys declare “cease fire” and a guy comes out with an RPG?   The bad guys aren’t shooting at you anymore AND there’s big hurt coming your way.  SHOOT MORE!

But the notes about the fight and iPod are petty quibbles, not really a “where they lost me” moment.

This is what REALLY gets me, and I swear this isn’t coming from my personal beliefs, but it’s the central core (and ‘hook’) of the movie: The world is half destroyed by a war and EVERYONE agrees it was the bible’s fault?  Not religion in general.  Not any other religions.  Christianity.  So EVERYONE destroys EVERY bible in the world?   Ok, I’ll bite.. for the sake of creating a reason for things.  That’s what fiction is about and all.   But that central premise goes well beyond “suspension of disbelief” than any other concept in the movie.   That’s Spiderman suspension of belief right there.   The bible is the #1 most published book in the WORLD, last I heard.  They got rid of ALL of them?   In the panic of the world being destroyed, every hotel was emptied of it’s Gideons?  There weren’t enclaves of fanatics who protected giant storehouses full of bibles?

Ok, so somehow the entire United States (the world?) have gone from roughly 10-15% atheist to 99.999% anti-Christian, maybe religion in general (although not enough to destroy all the other religious texts..unless they did and only mentioned the bible explicitly).   What we get after all that is a showdown between good, honest, faithful preacher and evil, bad, controlling, manipulative, would-be preacher.  And of course a world full of godless heathens (gangs, cannibals, murderers, rapists) who’ve never known the Word of the Lord because it’s been verboten their entire lives.

Then they pull a number from Thomas Cahill’s “How the Irish Saved Civilization” by taking a remote, defendable island and filling it full of the world’s knowledge and turning it into a way to redistribute this knowledge back to the world after the the worst is over.

People bitch about Avatar having a completely unoriginal storyline (see Pocahontas, Ferngully, Dances with Smurfs..err..Wolves, etc.. and if Avatar stole from them, they stole from each other.. or probably an earlier tale, which is more likely) then Book of Eli isn’t far behind.  Lone man wandering the wasteland (Mad Max, Jeremiah, Resident Evil: Extinction), town run by bad guys full of whores at the bar, water rations, etc (all standard devices).  There were enough redeeming qualities to make it interesting (the twist with the book, which I WON’T spoil because it surprised me a little and might still for someone else.. although it’s obvious SOMETHING is up with the book), the fight scenes were pretty badass (taking lessons from Equilibrium’s Christian Bale almost?), but still some WTFWHY moments and things that could have been better if they just tried to keep it simple.