On Vox: Dear God Please Help Me
This week has seen the start of Masochistic Film Season. No, not a run of bondage films (that's next week), but a delve into some of the horrors of modern cinema that I've been lucky enough to skip out on first time. I've focused somewhat on recent films -- the last year or so, and I guess I've reached something of a midpoint. Let's now have a "best bits" of some of the more terrible moments.
Starship Troopers 3
First up was Starship Troopers 3. It was a tricky one -- I loved the first Starship Troopers, and I'll defend it from naysayers until the day I step off this mortal plane. Sadly, that was somewhat tarnished by the sequel, but I had high hopes for the third film when I heard that a) Casper van Dien was back, and b) the whole "Marauder" subtitle would start bringing back some of the elements of the excellent book. Ok, maybe not high hopes, but semi-high at least. It couldn't be any worse than Hero of the Federation, could it? Could it?
It was pretty terrible. I know the films are rather tongue-in-cheek, but Marauder has a gigantic religious theme seeping through the film that made me more uncomfortable than the last vol-au-vent on the buffet table. There's a particularly awful moment in which the Marauder suits making planetfall is likened to the second coming of Christ. The Marauder suits, are, in case you're unfamiliar, twelve-foot tall mechs armed to the teeth with all sorts of ridiculously fun weapons. It was a very strange metaphor.
In comparison to this next point, angelic powered armours are smalltime. Let's name some famous leaders. Napoleon, Churchill, Genghis Khan, to name but a small handful. During times of conflict, how did they rally their troops? With inspirational speeches, that's how. Did they moonlight as pop stars? No, but Marauder's Sky Marshal of the Federation did. It's kinda weird, to say the least, that your commander-in-chief has a number one hit and various merchandise.
Here's a video of his song, overlaid with clips from the film. You'll see the aforementioned horrific Marauder scene somewhere near the end.
Wonderful. Just wonderful. Would you like to know more? No. So we shall move swiftly on to Twilight.
Twilight is one of those films I've become subconsciously aware of due to the saturation bombing of related media on the web. I wanted to avoid it, but curiosity got the better of me. And curiosity killed the cat. Then the cat came back to life as a vampire stalker with bad hair. I could go on forever about Twilight's numerous faults, the bizarre stalker undertones, the plot of the later books, the sparkling, and something and something else and whatever, but there's one thing I just cannot get my head around.
The entire cast -- every single one of them -- look like they've come straight off the production line at the git factory. The second you see any of them, they're instantly unlikeable. They don't even have to talk. Bella, the stupid lead female, is both stupid and feckless, which makes Edward's grooming of her like a paedophile only choosing the children with disabilities. Edward himself has a hairstyle that doesn't match the head that
Moody stares abound doesn't match the body that doesn't match anything, and let's not get into his family. Actually, yes, we shall. Whoever was responsible for hair, wardrobe and makeup in this film needs to be dragged out of civilisation and left to perish in a wasteland somewhere.
Look at them all, stood here in the obligatory moody-yet-vacant poses. They look even worse in the film, like Tim Burton ate all of his characters then crapped them out onto mannequins. The one on the right is a particularly gormless waste of energy who spends the film staring at Vacant Lead Female, because, according to the film, he's hungry, but he doesn't look hungry, no. If I was to describe the expression he has on his face every time he's in shot, it would be like a confused idiot that has just watched a really complex film, but had it muted right up until the last ten minutes.
Even the human school kids are a massive annoyance. How the film is supposed to stir any emotional feelings or attachment to the characters is beyond me, as I don't know any people in real life who are as stupid, ugly, badly-dressed and irritating as this collective of complete and total cocks.
They infuriate me just thinking about them. All the other problems pale in comparison compared to the horrible characters, the actors that play them, and whatever the hell they dress them in. You know, I really hope some of the crew of Twilight go thumbing through LiveJournals and Vox profiles to see the feedback, and I hope they read this. The cast of Twilight are human monstrosities. Ugly, detestable people that have been given some of the worst clothing and makeup in the history of film. I could vomit on a troll's face (well, that happened once at a nightclub) and they'd look better than Edward bloody Cullen.
One last point: if someone got me an orange pickup, I wouldn't be thankful. What the hell is wrong with that girl?
...and some fight to stop this rubbish Last night I watched the recent Street Fighter disaster. A film so boring that it took me three attempts to concentrate and watch it. For starters, I don't like Kristen Kreuk. She's boring, and she wouldn't even make it onto a list of one hundred people I'd like to do the horizontal naked tango with. Any scene with her in was instantly forgettable, so the verdict was really riding on the rest of the cast.
Chris Klein was, in the end, the star of the show, playing the bastard combination of Sawyer, Neo, Horatio Caine and Charlie Nash. Sadly, I can't mock him too much, as you can tell he knew it was bad. It was everyone else that was terrible, making it seem as if they were taking everything very seriously. The prime offender was Bison. Now, I always played as Bison in the games, and Raul Julia's rendition was the only good thing about the 1994 disaster (disaster for us. For him it was a Tuesday), but the new Bison was the most nonthreatening villain I've ever seen. Transformed from criminal dictator into real-estate idiot, the only thing menacing about this Bison was his ability to moonlight as a gynaecologist and do cheap voodoo childbirths. This quote is taken from Wikipedia's synopsis:
"We are then told of Bison's origins. He is the son of Irish missionaries. He grew up an orphan having to steal fish from people in Thailand. In order to lose his conscience, he forced his daughter out of the womb of his wife prematurely. This transferred his conscience into her, thus Bison no longer had/has a conscience."
That sums it up really. I don't even have to go into Vega's wonderful quote. I'm just going to leave it now and move on.
This makes Dracula 2000 look good And today I saw Lost Boys: The Tribe. I loved the original. It was wonderful -- funny, interesting, exciting, and a great cast and script. This? Not so much. In fact, I'd argue that this is the worst one so far.
Where to start? Let's go with the "tribe" -- the group of vampires who mirror what Kiefer Sutherland's group did in the first film. Now, in the first film, the vampires were pretty memorable, somewhat menacing and threatening. These guys are like a combination of 4chan users, Patrick Swayze in Point Break and a stereotypical American fraternity. Loud, obnoxious bell-ends, the lot of them. This is reflected in the soundtrack, and a party scene mimicking the concert thing in the original, except minus the oiled-up saxophone-playing Tim Capello and plus a load of cliché rap crap instead.
The film's particularly graphic at times, opening with a bloody mutilation of another vampire (complete with one of the bro-pires drop-kicking his head into the ocean), moving onto a "practical joke" in which one of the vampires slashes the torso open of his friend, whose organs presume to drop all over the woman he was hitting on, right through to the hilariously over-the-top vampire deaths. No two go out the same, according to Corey Feldman, but they all go out funny.
Speaking of Corey Feldman, it's evident that he was supposed to be part of the humour in the film, but since it lacks none of the charm of the original, and at times steps into "serious" territory, all attempts at humour just feel awkward. I swear when the bint from The OC proclaims "I can't be a vampire, I'm a vegetarian", even the cast has an awkward silence afterwards. Feldman's character, who is trying to hard to be back in 1987, is essentially wasted in a film that only gets good once the credits start rolling. Seriously. There's a moment that players of Metal Gear Solid 4 will find familiar.
Angus Sutherland's head vamp lacks all of the charisma of his older half-brother's character, and the lead male is played by the same person who played a Stifler in one of the horrendous American Pie spin-offs, so he's instantly rubbish to begin with. Like Twilight, all the characters are repulsive and the writing stinks. Even if you are into gore and boobs (and I am), you'd hate this film.
I cannot stress how bad this film is. I enjoy B movies, and I enjoy crap horror. I even enjoy movies like Mannequin and They Live!, but this is so all over the place it's hard to fit it into any genre, which makes it difficult to determine whether or not it's serious or not. What's worse is that a sequel has already been given the go ahead.
So that's the crap so far. The rest of the lineup includes Dragonball Evolution, Ace Ventura Junior and Uwe Boll's Alone In The Dark. Suggestions for other calamities are more than welcome, providing I haven't killed myself or numerous others before I read any comments.
Originally posted on seigerweiss.vox.com