Mugwump's Movie Madness!
Tomorrow will be the big super-mega-blockbuster day, wherein I will review the epic blockbusters "Wolverine" and "Star Trek". Today, however, I will delve in some slightly different fare. Be warned! I dare tremendous and frightening things here. Even I fear to tread lightly in such waters!
Battle For Terra
Do you want to know how to get me to go to a movie? Ok, I'll admit, "explosions", "action", and "ninjas" are three remarkably valid answers. I can't deny that. ("Boobies" is close; however, my self-control is much stronger in that regard.) However, slapping the relatively inoccuous characters "3" and "D' after a movie title always grab my technologically magnetic attention. I might have scoffed at "Manos: The Hand Of Fate", as do most good people, but I'd have been first in line to see "Manos: Now In Digital 3D". That's because I'm an idiot.
Animated movies benefit a bit more from the 3D bump, because it's easier to do whatever technical mumbo-jumbo to computer-generated films, rather than doing a digital overlay of a live-action film and then 3D'ing it, as they did with Beowulf. So I expect a bit more from these features in an animated film. They also tend to have nice simple stories because they know they're targeted for a younger audience. I grin and bear it because, hey, I got suckered in by this newfangled 3D glasses they handed out. Wheee!
The plot: War, Environmentalism, Extinction, Science, Death, Betrayal, and Peace, all in three dimensions!
The pros: Remember what I said about stories being targeted for younger audiences? Oddly enough, this story offers some refreshingly mature topics, like torture and self-sacrifice. The conflict is for the very survival of two opposing species, and only one can survive. Mankind left a devastated Earth behind, and all that remains of humanity is in one enormous terraforming colony ship orbiting the planet Terra. The ship will run out of air in two months, and so it's transform Terra's atmosphere or good-bye humanity. But wait! Terra is a populated planet, and if the atmosphere is reformed, all the Terrians will die. Who will win? Who will lose? Can David Lo-Pan save everyone? Of course not; he hates them all. Brian Cox puts in his turn as, unsurprisingly, a warmongering general motivated to do whatever he can to save humanity. Strangely, he played the same character in X-Men 2. Go figure.
The cons: This movie had the weakest 3D effects ever. Jaws 3D in the 80's did better than this. The tech bar has been raised by several recent films; there's no excuse to be lagging in the 3D department. That aside, the biggest con here is that, because the film hasn't marketed very well, and because it's not Disney/Pixar or Dreamworks, it's not carried in very many theaters. So you have to work to find it. If one puts a heavy scientific eye against the Terrians and their gadgets, you might wonder exactly how it all works... but science is boring. Explosions are awesome! And yet, despite the awesome explosions, the movie still has a happy ending in which everything is resolved peacefully via a deus ex machina that probably could have been done from the start without all the killing... but then I wouldn't have gone to see the film in the first place. I mean, it is called BATTLE for Terra. It would be pretty stupid if there were no battles...
The verdict: Better than you might expect. But don't spend the extra bucks on the 3D showing.
Note: I was hoping more of the little floaty guys would get killed in the end. But that's just me being me. To be fair, they did get the shit bombed out of them in the middle of their Festival of Life. Now that's delicious irony.
Note: For a moment, I felt bad for our heroine. She thought that 3/3 of the people she cared for had died, but in the end it was only 2/3, so it was ok.
Twilight
Welcome to the young adult literary sensation of the hour! With Harry Potter's shenanigans out of the way, other authors have a chance to step up to the plate and grab the attention of the masses. The winner last year was clearly Stephanie Meyer and her series on new and improved vampires and werewolves. And verily, the masses speak out a lot about this series, for better or for worse. "Twihards" defend this series to the death, believing in its message of love and... more love. The Enemy stands opposed, citing poor writing, bland characterization, and tampering with "proper" vampire/werewolf nature. Whatever side you might be on, the movie was bound to happen, and bound to polarize groups even further.
Myself, I'm not a vampire novel fan, or a young adult fiction fan. So books about teenagers falling in love and stuff (even with monsters) just don't do it for me. Also, I think vampires shouldn't sparkle. But I'm all old-school about my vampires. Still, my partner-in-crime HG chastised me, saying that if I haven't read the books or seen the movie, I'm in no position to talk smack. Confronted with such logic (and my own hypocrisy, since I say that ALL THE TIME), I gave in and said, "let's start with the movie".
This review is dedicated to cleolinda and shinga, because they are funny.
The plot: There are teens doing teen things, and vampires doing vampire things. You don't know about the werewolf thing yet; that's for a future movie.
The pros: The key here is that this is a love story. If you replaced the vampires with, say, aliens, or Atlanteans, or Russians, it's all the same. You have the classic "girl meets boy, girl and boy have various difficulties that hinder their union, and finally girl and boy fall in love" storyline, and it is played pretty much to the hilt. This is not a bad thing; the story's worked well for centuries, and just like Romeo and Juliet each had their allies, so too do Edward and Bella. Certainly, their "groups" are a bunch of stereotypes (the bitchy girl! the quiet shy girl! the tough guy! the token black guy! the token asian guy! the spunky chick! the evil remorseless killer guy!), but when your story is cliche, might as well maximize the cliche factor while you're at it. I have heard that the movie is better than the book because it cuts out a lot of boring scenes; that sounds good to me too. Finally, the sheer cheeziness of "Vampire Baseball" for some reason made more sense to me than the rest of this movie.
The cons: While I did have the balls to compare this movie to "Romeo and Juliet" a second ago, do not be fooled; Vampire Shakespeare this is not. This movie is still just a teen romance movie, and those things bore me silly. This movie teaches us that if you're a girl, you should target the nearest good-looking wealthy boy and make him yours within sixty days, because that's what is important. Also, Edward is perhaps the least subtle and secretive vampire ever. For a "species" that's trying to hide, he does a poor job of NOT TALKING ABOUT IT. Oh, and for a "species" that "sparkles" in the sunlight, I was expecting something more... sparkly. I've seen strippers with more glitter on their chest than Edward showed in the sunlight. HG agreed that if Edward had sparkled like Emma Frost in "Wolverine", it would have been much cooler. Finally, Evil Vampire James, you're trying too hard to be Sabretooth, and I'm afraid Liev Schreiber just kicked your punk ass hard. A+ for effort, though.
The verdict: Not a movie I would watch again. Did not make me terribly interested in the series. But fair is fair; I saw it.
Note: Ok, Alice the Spunky Cute Vampiress is definitely spunky and cute. She can stay.
Disclaimer: "And so the lion fell in love with the lamb." OH MAN SO CORNY. SO VERY CORNY.
Disclaimer: "This is the skin of a killer!" BWAHAHAHA Edward you pussy. You killed, what, a deer? Maybe?
Disclaimer: This is... well, you know.
EC: "Hi, I'm Edward, and I'm just hanging out in the bedroom of this girl I know, staring at her young unclad form and thinking wholesome vampire thoughts."
IS: "Great, I'm Bella, can I mount your hot vampire body now?"
Audience: "OMG WHY DOES THIS SCENE EXIST?"
Disclaimer: Really, what the hell is wrong with Jasper? He spends the entire movie looking like he wants to puke. Probably because of that ridiculous hairdo he's sporting.
Battle For Terra
Do you want to know how to get me to go to a movie? Ok, I'll admit, "explosions", "action", and "ninjas" are three remarkably valid answers. I can't deny that. ("Boobies" is close; however, my self-control is much stronger in that regard.) However, slapping the relatively inoccuous characters "3" and "D' after a movie title always grab my technologically magnetic attention. I might have scoffed at "Manos: The Hand Of Fate", as do most good people, but I'd have been first in line to see "Manos: Now In Digital 3D". That's because I'm an idiot.
Animated movies benefit a bit more from the 3D bump, because it's easier to do whatever technical mumbo-jumbo to computer-generated films, rather than doing a digital overlay of a live-action film and then 3D'ing it, as they did with Beowulf. So I expect a bit more from these features in an animated film. They also tend to have nice simple stories because they know they're targeted for a younger audience. I grin and bear it because, hey, I got suckered in by this newfangled 3D glasses they handed out. Wheee!
The plot: War, Environmentalism, Extinction, Science, Death, Betrayal, and Peace, all in three dimensions!
The pros: Remember what I said about stories being targeted for younger audiences? Oddly enough, this story offers some refreshingly mature topics, like torture and self-sacrifice. The conflict is for the very survival of two opposing species, and only one can survive. Mankind left a devastated Earth behind, and all that remains of humanity is in one enormous terraforming colony ship orbiting the planet Terra. The ship will run out of air in two months, and so it's transform Terra's atmosphere or good-bye humanity. But wait! Terra is a populated planet, and if the atmosphere is reformed, all the Terrians will die. Who will win? Who will lose? Can David Lo-Pan save everyone? Of course not; he hates them all. Brian Cox puts in his turn as, unsurprisingly, a warmongering general motivated to do whatever he can to save humanity. Strangely, he played the same character in X-Men 2. Go figure.
The cons: This movie had the weakest 3D effects ever. Jaws 3D in the 80's did better than this. The tech bar has been raised by several recent films; there's no excuse to be lagging in the 3D department. That aside, the biggest con here is that, because the film hasn't marketed very well, and because it's not Disney/Pixar or Dreamworks, it's not carried in very many theaters. So you have to work to find it. If one puts a heavy scientific eye against the Terrians and their gadgets, you might wonder exactly how it all works... but science is boring. Explosions are awesome! And yet, despite the awesome explosions, the movie still has a happy ending in which everything is resolved peacefully via a deus ex machina that probably could have been done from the start without all the killing... but then I wouldn't have gone to see the film in the first place. I mean, it is called BATTLE for Terra. It would be pretty stupid if there were no battles...
The verdict: Better than you might expect. But don't spend the extra bucks on the 3D showing.
Note: I was hoping more of the little floaty guys would get killed in the end. But that's just me being me. To be fair, they did get the shit bombed out of them in the middle of their Festival of Life. Now that's delicious irony.
Note: For a moment, I felt bad for our heroine. She thought that 3/3 of the people she cared for had died, but in the end it was only 2/3, so it was ok.
Twilight
Welcome to the young adult literary sensation of the hour! With Harry Potter's shenanigans out of the way, other authors have a chance to step up to the plate and grab the attention of the masses. The winner last year was clearly Stephanie Meyer and her series on new and improved vampires and werewolves. And verily, the masses speak out a lot about this series, for better or for worse. "Twihards" defend this series to the death, believing in its message of love and... more love. The Enemy stands opposed, citing poor writing, bland characterization, and tampering with "proper" vampire/werewolf nature. Whatever side you might be on, the movie was bound to happen, and bound to polarize groups even further.
Myself, I'm not a vampire novel fan, or a young adult fiction fan. So books about teenagers falling in love and stuff (even with monsters) just don't do it for me. Also, I think vampires shouldn't sparkle. But I'm all old-school about my vampires. Still, my partner-in-crime HG chastised me, saying that if I haven't read the books or seen the movie, I'm in no position to talk smack. Confronted with such logic (and my own hypocrisy, since I say that ALL THE TIME), I gave in and said, "let's start with the movie".
This review is dedicated to cleolinda and shinga, because they are funny.
The plot: There are teens doing teen things, and vampires doing vampire things. You don't know about the werewolf thing yet; that's for a future movie.
The pros: The key here is that this is a love story. If you replaced the vampires with, say, aliens, or Atlanteans, or Russians, it's all the same. You have the classic "girl meets boy, girl and boy have various difficulties that hinder their union, and finally girl and boy fall in love" storyline, and it is played pretty much to the hilt. This is not a bad thing; the story's worked well for centuries, and just like Romeo and Juliet each had their allies, so too do Edward and Bella. Certainly, their "groups" are a bunch of stereotypes (the bitchy girl! the quiet shy girl! the tough guy! the token black guy! the token asian guy! the spunky chick! the evil remorseless killer guy!), but when your story is cliche, might as well maximize the cliche factor while you're at it. I have heard that the movie is better than the book because it cuts out a lot of boring scenes; that sounds good to me too. Finally, the sheer cheeziness of "Vampire Baseball" for some reason made more sense to me than the rest of this movie.
The cons: While I did have the balls to compare this movie to "Romeo and Juliet" a second ago, do not be fooled; Vampire Shakespeare this is not. This movie is still just a teen romance movie, and those things bore me silly. This movie teaches us that if you're a girl, you should target the nearest good-looking wealthy boy and make him yours within sixty days, because that's what is important. Also, Edward is perhaps the least subtle and secretive vampire ever. For a "species" that's trying to hide, he does a poor job of NOT TALKING ABOUT IT. Oh, and for a "species" that "sparkles" in the sunlight, I was expecting something more... sparkly. I've seen strippers with more glitter on their chest than Edward showed in the sunlight. HG agreed that if Edward had sparkled like Emma Frost in "Wolverine", it would have been much cooler. Finally, Evil Vampire James, you're trying too hard to be Sabretooth, and I'm afraid Liev Schreiber just kicked your punk ass hard. A+ for effort, though.
The verdict: Not a movie I would watch again. Did not make me terribly interested in the series. But fair is fair; I saw it.
Note: Ok, Alice the Spunky Cute Vampiress is definitely spunky and cute. She can stay.
Disclaimer: "And so the lion fell in love with the lamb." OH MAN SO CORNY. SO VERY CORNY.
Disclaimer: "This is the skin of a killer!" BWAHAHAHA Edward you pussy. You killed, what, a deer? Maybe?
Disclaimer: This is... well, you know.
EC: "Hi, I'm Edward, and I'm just hanging out in the bedroom of this girl I know, staring at her young unclad form and thinking wholesome vampire thoughts."
IS: "Great, I'm Bella, can I mount your hot vampire body now?"
Audience: "OMG WHY DOES THIS SCENE EXIST?"
Disclaimer: Really, what the hell is wrong with Jasper? He spends the entire movie looking like he wants to puke. Probably because of that ridiculous hairdo he's sporting.