"Leon's such a man!"
I finally got Resident Evil 4 this weekend--for the PS2, no less--and I'm really loving it. I played it for a few hours before lunch and my friend and I spent most of that time going, "He just kicked a dude's head in! AWESOME." I started the Resident Evil series off with 2, which is where Leon debuted, so it's nice to see him again, all grown up and still making bad jokes. ♥
And, I saw DRAGON WARS!!! over the weekend with my roomies and friends.
DRAGON WARS!!!
...was really awful. XD
Who's surprised by that? Actually, I am surprised by how simply terrible it was. I knew it wouldn't be cinematic gold but I expected something a little more stupidly enjoyable--like the Evil Dead films or Terminator 2. I wish I had the super power to go back in time, find scriptwriters, and edit the hell out of their work.
The story is about a Korean myth where every 500 years a girl is born who holds within her the power to turn a giant serpent thing (called an imoogi, or something like that) into a bonefide dragon(!!) who then protects the world. However, while most of the giant snakes are a-okay dudes, one, named Buraki, is totally evil and wants this power so he can become a dragon and smash shit up. Or, smash shit up more than he already can.
So Buraki and his legions of Evil Dudes, which includes all sorts of reptilian monsters like Bulcos (essentially more western looking dragons), Dawdlers (large, slow moving guys with um magical turrets on their backs?), I-swear-to-God-Dinosaurs and dudes in black armor all rampage across ancient Korea looking for this girl. Lucky for aforementioned girl, she has a guy who is meant to protect her until she can give her life energy to the good snake! Hurray, the world will be safe!
...Except he falls in love and doesn't want to give her up, so instead they run away together, get chased by Buraki, and fall off a cliff to their deaths.
Fast forward 500 years to the present day, where Buraki is starting to renew his search for the girl and her protector, and their reincarnated forms are just meeting and getting a sense that shit's goin' down.
Now, all of that doesn't sound that bad to me; admittedly, I have low quality control, but as a story it has potential. Handled well, the movie could be both badass AND moving --or, at the very least, really badass! But it's not handled well at all. As soon as Ethan and Sarah meet they start taking walks on the beach and staring into each others' eyes, which is both boring and downright confusing. I get that it's supposed to be an Epic Love Story on some level, but we never spend enough time with Ethan and Sarah to really care about them or how they're doing emotionally. They're entirely flat characters who do nothing but complain about their Epic Destinies and get chased.
Also, their antagonists are idiots too. Several times Buraki totally HAD them and instead of going, "I will eat you and then become a dragon and then gloat a lot over your dead bodies! :D" he sort of roars at them. A lot. For a minute or two. And then police will come and shoot at him, and he will go, "Onoz, bullets which seem to do no damage at all are being fired at me! I will turn all of my attention towards this mild inconvenience instead of finishing the task I've been trying to do for 500 years! Surely in the three minutes I spend roaring at the police--as opposed to actually killing them, because that would be rude--my prey won't make any attempt to escape!"
And when the movie isn't focusing on the stupid adventures of Ethan, Sarah, and Buraki, it's focusing on the military vs. Buraki's evil forces. There's a lot of scenes of the FBI wondering what's happening and trying to figure out where Buraki is (srsly guys, you lost a giant snake? He's goddamn huge! And the SOB makes no attempt to hide ever; when he wants to go somewhere he just plows down the street knocking over cars and trucks willynilly) and where Sarah is. In addition to being just plain odd--they deduce that Sarah is the cause of all these dragons awfully fast, based on little to no evidence?--these scenes are really dull, and drag on and on. Eventually there's supposed to be some payoff, where the military goes head-to-head with Buraki's army and stuff explodes and dragons attack helicopters and etc etc, but even that manages to be really dull. I found myself wishing they'd just go back to Buraki and his endless RAAAHRing.
At the end of the movie Jack and Sarah are knocked out, and brought to a desert with swirly black clouds and a giant ominous castle and Buraki altars. It is located... somewhere. They never really bother explaining that point, so my friends just assumed they walked through a portal somewhere and ended up in the Mortal Kombat world. There's a showdown between Buraki and the unnamed good imoogi, dudes turn into dragons, star-crossed lovers get screwed over, and Ethan gets left in the middle of this secret desert. Seriously, they just leave him. I think we're supposed to feel sorry for his loss, but really I just felt sorry that he had to hoof it back to LA. That's gotta suck.
This is the most slimmed-down version of events I can give you, too. There's all sorts of crap in there with a 500+ year old magic Korean guy, and this magic pendant, and so on that is sort of just confusing instead of cool.
The movie wasn't all bad: I liked that it used Korean myths and at the end there was a Korean dragon, which I've never seen in CG before. That was pretty nifty. It just wasn't enough to make up for how boring a movie about giant snakes terrorizing LA turned out to be.
But, to prove that we never learn, we're going to see Resident Evil: Apocalypse and Aliens vs Predator 2 when they come out. The RE movies have really love-hate relationships with me, and I pretty much hated AvP1--and yet, off I go to see them. :D
Also, on an unrelated note, whenever Eric talks about Moonstone Beach, I totally think about Pokemon.
And, I saw DRAGON WARS!!! over the weekend with my roomies and friends.
DRAGON WARS!!!
...was really awful. XD
Who's surprised by that? Actually, I am surprised by how simply terrible it was. I knew it wouldn't be cinematic gold but I expected something a little more stupidly enjoyable--like the Evil Dead films or Terminator 2. I wish I had the super power to go back in time, find scriptwriters, and edit the hell out of their work.
The story is about a Korean myth where every 500 years a girl is born who holds within her the power to turn a giant serpent thing (called an imoogi, or something like that) into a bonefide dragon(!!) who then protects the world. However, while most of the giant snakes are a-okay dudes, one, named Buraki, is totally evil and wants this power so he can become a dragon and smash shit up. Or, smash shit up more than he already can.
So Buraki and his legions of Evil Dudes, which includes all sorts of reptilian monsters like Bulcos (essentially more western looking dragons), Dawdlers (large, slow moving guys with um magical turrets on their backs?), I-swear-to-God-Dinosaurs and dudes in black armor all rampage across ancient Korea looking for this girl. Lucky for aforementioned girl, she has a guy who is meant to protect her until she can give her life energy to the good snake! Hurray, the world will be safe!
...Except he falls in love and doesn't want to give her up, so instead they run away together, get chased by Buraki, and fall off a cliff to their deaths.
Fast forward 500 years to the present day, where Buraki is starting to renew his search for the girl and her protector, and their reincarnated forms are just meeting and getting a sense that shit's goin' down.
Now, all of that doesn't sound that bad to me; admittedly, I have low quality control, but as a story it has potential. Handled well, the movie could be both badass AND moving --or, at the very least, really badass! But it's not handled well at all. As soon as Ethan and Sarah meet they start taking walks on the beach and staring into each others' eyes, which is both boring and downright confusing. I get that it's supposed to be an Epic Love Story on some level, but we never spend enough time with Ethan and Sarah to really care about them or how they're doing emotionally. They're entirely flat characters who do nothing but complain about their Epic Destinies and get chased.
Also, their antagonists are idiots too. Several times Buraki totally HAD them and instead of going, "I will eat you and then become a dragon and then gloat a lot over your dead bodies! :D" he sort of roars at them. A lot. For a minute or two. And then police will come and shoot at him, and he will go, "Onoz, bullets which seem to do no damage at all are being fired at me! I will turn all of my attention towards this mild inconvenience instead of finishing the task I've been trying to do for 500 years! Surely in the three minutes I spend roaring at the police--as opposed to actually killing them, because that would be rude--my prey won't make any attempt to escape!"
And when the movie isn't focusing on the stupid adventures of Ethan, Sarah, and Buraki, it's focusing on the military vs. Buraki's evil forces. There's a lot of scenes of the FBI wondering what's happening and trying to figure out where Buraki is (srsly guys, you lost a giant snake? He's goddamn huge! And the SOB makes no attempt to hide ever; when he wants to go somewhere he just plows down the street knocking over cars and trucks willynilly) and where Sarah is. In addition to being just plain odd--they deduce that Sarah is the cause of all these dragons awfully fast, based on little to no evidence?--these scenes are really dull, and drag on and on. Eventually there's supposed to be some payoff, where the military goes head-to-head with Buraki's army and stuff explodes and dragons attack helicopters and etc etc, but even that manages to be really dull. I found myself wishing they'd just go back to Buraki and his endless RAAAHRing.
At the end of the movie Jack and Sarah are knocked out, and brought to a desert with swirly black clouds and a giant ominous castle and Buraki altars. It is located... somewhere. They never really bother explaining that point, so my friends just assumed they walked through a portal somewhere and ended up in the Mortal Kombat world. There's a showdown between Buraki and the unnamed good imoogi, dudes turn into dragons, star-crossed lovers get screwed over, and Ethan gets left in the middle of this secret desert. Seriously, they just leave him. I think we're supposed to feel sorry for his loss, but really I just felt sorry that he had to hoof it back to LA. That's gotta suck.
This is the most slimmed-down version of events I can give you, too. There's all sorts of crap in there with a 500+ year old magic Korean guy, and this magic pendant, and so on that is sort of just confusing instead of cool.
The movie wasn't all bad: I liked that it used Korean myths and at the end there was a Korean dragon, which I've never seen in CG before. That was pretty nifty. It just wasn't enough to make up for how boring a movie about giant snakes terrorizing LA turned out to be.
But, to prove that we never learn, we're going to see Resident Evil: Apocalypse and Aliens vs Predator 2 when they come out. The RE movies have really love-hate relationships with me, and I pretty much hated AvP1--and yet, off I go to see them. :D
Also, on an unrelated note, whenever Eric talks about Moonstone Beach, I totally think about Pokemon.