Today I saw my first Rifftrax
It was Cloverfield. They did a great job. The Rifftrax crew, I mean. The movie is utter shit.
I saw it back when it was in theaters, and it somehow managed to be twice as bad the second time around. Before it was the glaring things, like the fact that everyone was pretty much an unsympathetic hipster douchebag. Or that the aforementioned hipster douchebags somehow manage to move like Gordon Freeman through an assortment of explosions, jumps and chasms. Or that the monster looked like a reject from the new Doctor Who. Or that a consumer-level camera somehow managed to survive impact after impact onto solid concrete, run continuously for eight or so hours on a single battery charge, and that the tape inside somehow managed to survive the EMP from the nuke that was dropped on the monster in the god damn first place. Cloverfield also had the dubious honor of breaking the record (previously held by Matrix Revolutions) for the most dialogue spoken by someone impaled on rebar.
Now? It's the little things, like how the monster changes size in seemingly every shot, or how anyone managed to outrun those antlion things in high heels, or that there's a glaringly ridiculous shot of the monster somehow stamping an armored vehicle filled with high explosives completely flat (as in Monty Python flat). Not to mention all the nice little strategic product placements.
You cannot make a giant monster movie and play it serious. You can't. The whole concept is ridiculous and there's no way to make it not ridiculous. The Japanese eventually figured this out, so why didn't the people behind this stinkbomb figure it out?
On top of that, the whole thing is pretty much a ham-fisted 9/11 allegory. J.J Abrams and friends must have literally started a clock, right after the planes hit, that counted down the years, months and days until they could make a movie like this and not get lynched for it.
Next up I guess I should give Cinematic Titanic a try. The preview they have up for their pilot episode is amazing. It feels like MST3K never left the airwaves, or that it's 1992 again and I'm watching Comedy central (and constantly being reminded of this fact by Penn Gilette inbetween commercial breaks).
I saw it back when it was in theaters, and it somehow managed to be twice as bad the second time around. Before it was the glaring things, like the fact that everyone was pretty much an unsympathetic hipster douchebag. Or that the aforementioned hipster douchebags somehow manage to move like Gordon Freeman through an assortment of explosions, jumps and chasms. Or that the monster looked like a reject from the new Doctor Who. Or that a consumer-level camera somehow managed to survive impact after impact onto solid concrete, run continuously for eight or so hours on a single battery charge, and that the tape inside somehow managed to survive the EMP from the nuke that was dropped on the monster in the god damn first place. Cloverfield also had the dubious honor of breaking the record (previously held by Matrix Revolutions) for the most dialogue spoken by someone impaled on rebar.
Now? It's the little things, like how the monster changes size in seemingly every shot, or how anyone managed to outrun those antlion things in high heels, or that there's a glaringly ridiculous shot of the monster somehow stamping an armored vehicle filled with high explosives completely flat (as in Monty Python flat). Not to mention all the nice little strategic product placements.
You cannot make a giant monster movie and play it serious. You can't. The whole concept is ridiculous and there's no way to make it not ridiculous. The Japanese eventually figured this out, so why didn't the people behind this stinkbomb figure it out?
On top of that, the whole thing is pretty much a ham-fisted 9/11 allegory. J.J Abrams and friends must have literally started a clock, right after the planes hit, that counted down the years, months and days until they could make a movie like this and not get lynched for it.
Next up I guess I should give Cinematic Titanic a try. The preview they have up for their pilot episode is amazing. It feels like MST3K never left the airwaves, or that it's 1992 again and I'm watching Comedy central (and constantly being reminded of this fact by Penn Gilette inbetween commercial breaks).