Snakes on a Mother F*$@ing Plane, Baby!!

Okay, so this entry is way, way overdue. But in my defense I spent most of last week out of town at my grandmother’s funeral, and this week's just been crazy, so my schedule has seriously been thrown off of late. Since my last entry I think I’ve seen SEVEN movies, so I’ve definitely got a lot of catching up to do. So without further ado, let me jump right into it.

So after all the hype, I just couldn’t resist. Yep, I had to do it – I just had to go see Snakes on a Plane! And you know what, it actually wasn’t half bad. Now admittedly, it is very much a B-movie, and if you’re expecting more than that, you’re going to be disappointed (more to the point, if you’re expecting more than that, you seriously need to get your head examined). Which is not to say that it’s necessarily a dumb, cheesy movie. On the contrary, the director obviously made an effort to make the movie scary and intense, and if you’re afraid of snakes this movie is NOT for you. Hell, I actually like snakes and parts of this movie creeped me out (however, I actually recognized a number of the snakes in the film, and knew just how deadly venomous they really were, so seeing them crawl around people’s feet certainly made my skin crawl just BECAUSE I knew how deadly they were). Of course, there were a few over-the-top scenes that made me shake my head (like the scene where the guy’s taking a leak and the snake comes out of the toilet and bites the end of penis – he then starts thrashing around trying to pull the snake off. Needless to say I wouldn’t exactly call it a scary scene), but sadly you have to expect at least a little of that sort of thing in this kind of movie.

Overall, the movie actually made me think of 70s cinema, as it is a solid combination of killer animal horror movie and airplane disaster movie (both of which are movie sub-genres that haven’t really been popular since the 70s, when you could find all manner of movies in both categories). Many of the common clichés of both types of movies are present (although I don’t want to say more than that, as I don’t want to give away any plot points of the movie). As I’m a fan of both genres of film (especially disaster movies – not necessarily airplane disaster movies specifically, mind you, but I’ve always really enjoyed a good disaster picture), putting them together in a way that worked made for a movie right up my alley. Yes, the idea of releasing deadly snakes on an airplane as a way to kill someone is incredibly hokey and hard-to-believe, I know, but if you look at some of the old 70s animal horror films, it’s far, far from the dumbest idea anyone’s ever come up with. And to be honest, the filmmakers actually did a surprising job of giving you a halfway believable explanation for the whole thing.

There is one thing that I was pretty disappointed with. As I’m sure anyone who’s heard anything about the movie knows, there was a bunch of Internet hype about this movie from the minute the title was announced. The bloggers and Internet movie geeks had enough of an impact on the studio that they even got them to add additional language and nudity in order to make the movie R-rated (although to be honest, I think even without that the movie was violent enough they’d have been pushing the limits of PG-13 regardless). One of the reasons for this change was to get Samuel L. Jackson to show a little more attitude, and to introduce the one-liner that became famous before the movie was ever released – “I’m sick of these mother-f*$^@ing snakes on this mother-f*$^@ing plane!” Now I have to admit this is a great Samuel L. Jackson line, and I can see it becoming a classic because it so has his attitude and his personality in it. But here’s where my disappointment comes in. In the scene in which he utters the line, it feels completely forced and out of place. It was so sadly obvious that this line was inserted after the fact that it almost ruins it. After you watch him say it, you almost wish they’d left it out.

It goes without saying that this movie’s not going to win any awards (okay, I’m sure it’s likely to win something at the MTV Movie Awards, but does anyone REALLY count those?), but if you keep in mind what you’re getting into when you go see it, it’s a pretty enjoyable movie. Sadly it didn’t do the numbers at the box office that the studios were hoping for, but I hate it say it – the only people actually surprised by this are the studios. Let’s face it, all the Internet buzz in the world isn’t going to give you a $30-$40 million opening weekend. It just isn’t. The sad truth of the matter is that people chatting online about movies make up a very small percentage of the movie-going public, and if they’re the only ones that go see a movie, it’s not going to have a very big opening (and sad to day, Snakes on a Plane probably didn’t have all that many people interested in seeing it outside of the movie bloggers who rushed to see it opening weekend. Hell, I certainly didn’t rush out to see it right away).

This brings me to a related topic I’ve been wanting to discuss for awhile (I may have mentioned it in a past entry, I’m not sure. If I did, well, you’ll just have to listen to me rant about it again). And that is selling a movie to a too-narrow audience, then being surprised when it fails to meet expectations. Now sometimes, such as with fan-driven movies like Snakes on a Plane, there’s not much you can do about this but put it out there and hope you can sell it to a broader audience than the core fans. A perfect example of this (and one very close to my heart) is Joss Whedon’s Serenity. Here’s a movie that was completely fan-motivated. After the series was cancelled by those morons over at Fox (a subject I know I’ve covered in the past, so we’ll leave it alone), fans got online and made all kinds of noise about wanting the show back. Well, Fox was impressed enough that when they released the DVD box set, it wasn’t some plain Jane, no frills, here’s your show box set. No, it had all the bells and whistles – behind-the-scenes featurettes, audio commentary, all the un-aired episodes (and the episodes were actually in the correct order, shock of shocks). And the fans responded. The DVD box sets sold like crazy. There was enough success with the DVD sales that Universal bought the movie rights from Fox and greenlit the movie. So now comes our dilemma – if only the people who watched the show and/or bought the DVD set go to see the movie, that’s hardly enough of an audience to make for box office success. But what do you do? Joss made the best movie he could, one that appealed to fans of the show but at the same time was accessible to people who’d never watched an episode. And then he released it and hoped for the best. Sadly, not that many people other than the core fans bothered to go see it (which is why there’s not likely to be a sequel).

Now, as I stated above, with movies like Snakes on a Plane or Serenity, you know that by default you’re going to have a narrow core audience, so you just have to hope for the best. However, there are other movies that have the potential for a much broader audience, and lose it because the filmmakers foolishly are focused only on their small core audience, and it’s these movies that I want to talk about here. The most common category that falls into this trap is the video game movie. I’m sure you’ve all seen them – movie flops such as Double Dragon, Street Fighter, and Super Mario Bros. For every solid, top notch video game movie like Mortal Kombat or Resident Evil, there are a dozen horrible B-movies that give video game movies their bad reputation. And naturally the worse the genre’s reputation gets, the harder it is to get people to take these movies seriously. And by and large I blame this problem on the narrow-minded focus of the creators of the movies.

I see two things that cause this problem. The first is a simple problem with math and economics. A movie studio sees that a video game has just hit $100 million in sales (or however much popular video games tend to make these days – I’ll admit that I don’t really keep track) and they suddenly think, “Hell, that’s a lot of money. If we can get all those game geeks to go see a movie version of that hit game, we’re talking box office gold!” Now I don’t imagine they expect the movie to make $100 million by any means, but they’re still expecting to make huge numbers based on that $100 million. Here’s the problem, though: a brand new, just hit the shelves video game costs $50. So you divide that $100 million by $50 (we’re going to assume for the sake of simplicity that everyone paid full initial price for the game, and not deal with people who bought it down the road once the price had dropped), you’ve got 2 million people who bought the game. Now some of those people probably aren’t going to really like the game, regardless of how popular it is. And quite a few of them are not movie people (why go see a movie of the game when they can just sit at home PLAYING the game), so not all 2 million of them are going to automatically go see the movie. But even if they do, a movie ticket only costs $5-$10 (depending on where you live and whether or not you’re going to a matinee). For the sake of argument, lets use $7 as our median movie ticket price. Even if all 2 million of those game buyers go to see the movie, that’s still only $14 million, which isn’t that bad for a low budget movie (but hardly great), but it's not what you'd call a huge success, and absolutely not what you want to see if you spent any real money making the movie.

So what’s the lesson of all this math? Well, firstly, just because the video game made hundreds of millions of dollars, does NOT mean that a movie version of the game will do the same. Secondly, and more importantly, if you do decide to go ahead and make the movie, you’re GOT to expand your audience beyond that core group of gamers, because they alone will not make your movie successful. And here’s where we run into our second and much bigger problem. And that’s with the directors of these movies. In way too many cases they fall into one of two categories: either they’re way too focused on making the movies specifically for the fans of the game (a mistake, as we’ve already established that there’s not enough of them to make the movie a success), or they’ve decided that since the movie they’re stuck making is ONLY a video game movie, they don’t take it seriously or put any real effort into trying to make a good movie, which is how we get garbage like Street Fighter, which was a complete joke of a movie. It was pretty obvious from beginning to end that the filmmakers didn't take the story they were telling seriously at all. This is why Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie (which I recently picked up and watched on DVD – it so rocks!!) is a great, kick ass movie, whereas the live action version is crap. The creators of the animated version obviously took the story and the characters seriously, and wanted to make a serious movie that was true to the story behind the game. The idiots who made the live action version obviously decided there was no reason to make a serious, dramatic movie that was based on a kung fu video game, and well, the results speak for themselves.

Of course, some video games just weren’t meant to be made into movies. I’m sorry, but while the various incarnations of the Mario Bros games have all been a lot of fun to play (and very popular as well), there’s just not enough story there to make a movie out of. I don’t care how popular the games are; whoever thought it was a good concept for a movie was kidding themselves. A children’s Saturday morning cartoon, maybe, but it’s just not major motion picture material. But there are a number of video games out there (yes, even your simple fighting games) that do have the back story to make a great movie, even if the back story isn’t really a big part of the actual game. And luckily as games become more involved and have a more complex story, it becomes much easier to develop a decent movie script based on them, so hopefully we'll start to see better video game movies in the future. But that doesn’t change the fact that as a filmmaker you have to take the material seriously and look at it as more than just a “video game” movie, and you have to be able to look past your core game geek audience and find a way to develop the movie with a broader appeal.

If you look at the movies that were very successful films that were based on video games, the big thing they have in common is that the filmmakers were able to find a genre within the story beyond just “based on a video game” and use that to target a broader audience for the movie. Mortal Kombat was a great fantasy martial arts movie, and Resident Evil is a wonderful example of the zombie horror genre. And because they fit these broader genres, and were marketed accordingly, they were able to draw people who were fans of this type of movie, whether they’d ever played the video games or not (I, for example, have never played any of the Resident Evil games, and am generally not much of a fan of that sort of game, but I generally enjoy zombie movies, and I loved Resident Evil as a zombie movie, and not as a movie version of a video game). This is what the filmmakers need to keep in mind when they make these movies.

There’s one more video game movie that I’d like to rant about a bit before I end this discussion, and that’s the mediocre Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and it’s abysmal sequel. Yes, I realize these movies were actually both pretty successful and I know a number of people who really enjoyed them. But I was highly disappointed in both movies for the very reasons I’ve been discussing above – the writer/director was so obviously aiming strictly for the adolescent male fans of the video game that he completely lost sight of the movie's broader potential as an action/adventure movie. Hence Angelina Jolie’s big, bouncing fake boobs. I’m sorry, while I enjoy women’s breasts just as much as the next heterosexual male, the scene at the end of Tomb Raider where we see Lara Croft running through the ice cave, her big boobs bouncing wildly up and down as she goes was just stupid and inane and sad. The worst of it, from my perspective, is that this is a movie with a lot of potential, and Angelina Jolie was the PERFECT actress for the role. Not only did she have the looks for the part, but she had the accent down pat, and so brought absolutely the right attitude for this character.

This movie character should have been the female equivalent of Indiana Jones, and the movie should have been what National Treasure was. But it wasn’t. Not even close. And all because the director was too focused on sticking to the video game, and those elements of the game that stood out in the minds of the gamers (namely the character’s over-developed bust). I never really played the games, but I’m a serious comic book geek, and there was a comic book series based on the game that I loved that ran for quite a while that was everything that movie should have been, but wasn’t. The comic took the character seriously, it got away from the game’s Junior High schoolboy fantasy elements and presented a kick ass heroine who was smart and daring and beautiful and was involved in numerous exciting adventures. I think if the movies would have taken this route, if the filmmakers would have focused on a broader audience, and had not been so concerned about keeping the teenage game geeks happy, that they could have easily had a 3 or 4 movie (or more) franchise of great movies, as opposed to the two mediocre films that they cranked out. But hey, that’s just my opinion; what do I know?

So there ends my long, meandering rant for the day. In summation, here’s what we learned today. One, video game movies can be wonderful, enjoyable movies to watch, if only the filmmakers take the source material seriously and try to develop a movie that goes beyond the game and the gamers when looking for its audience. And two, Hollywood needs to do a better job of finding an audience outside of core fans when developing a movie adaptation (whether it be an adaptation of a video game, a comic book, a book, a TV show, whatever). And that's my two cents for today.

Wow, that ran longer than I’d expected it to. I was going to add a quick review of the comedy I saw the weekend before I saw Snakes on a Plane (which I actually watched on a Wednesday, when I took a mental health day during the middle of the week). But since this entry has run on, and since the weekend AFTER I watched Snakes on the Plane I saw another comedy, I figure I'll do them both together in my next entry (which will also give me an excuse to do an entry about comedies in general and my feelings on them, so look forward to potentially another long, rambling entry). So, until then, this is Evil Ryan, signing off.

Just a Quickie

So just a quick entry for this weekend. Went to see the Japanese horror movie remake Pulse, which features a screenplay by Wes Craven and TV stars Kristen Bell (from Veronica Mars) and Ian Somerhalder (formally of Lost). While not as creepy/scary as the best films of the Japanese horror remake genre (such as The Ring or The Grudge), it was still a pretty enjoyable movie. It was lit such that even during the daytime scenes everything was grey and subdued and almost washed out, which gave it a look and feel that perfectly set the tone of the movie. The undead beings (or whatever they were; the movie doesn’t really say for sure) are very creepy and there are a few scenes that make you jump a bit.

This is so my type of horror movie. I’ll take creepy and suspenseful and atmospheric over violent and gory and over-the-top any day of the week. And while Pulse isn’t the best example of this genre, it does a good enough job to be worth the $5 I spent to see it. Now I suppose I’ll have to track down the original and see how it compares (of course, there are numerous other Japanese horror movies I need to see first, so it’s going to be down the list a ways).

And since my Pulse review was so short, let me fill this entry out a bit with a quick write-up on another movie I watched this weekend (this one recorded off of one of my satellite movie channels). This one was also a mystery/suspense movie, but was more of a thriller than a horror film. The name of the film is The Machinist (listed on imdb as El Maquinista), and it stars Christian Bale weighing in at a frightening 120 pounds (he looks like a concentration camp survivor, he’s so skinny – check out some of the pics on the imdb page for the movie). He plays a lathe operator who hasn’t been able to sleep in a year, which is a big part of the reason for his continuing weight loss. It is also beginning to cause him to hallucinate, and he quickly becomes lost as reality and hallucination blur, until it becomes obvious that much of what he’s experiencing isn’t actually real.

The movie starts out with Christian Bale pulling a body wrapped in a rug out of the trunk of his car. He appears to be at a pier or something like that, and he throws the body over a guard rail onto a cement slab that angles down to the water. Of course the body hits with a thud and doesn’t roll down into the water. And at the same time someone with a flashlight is walking towards him. But before he has a chance to roll the body into the water, and before the mystery person reaches him, we jump back in time (as tends to happen in these sorts of movies). The rest of the movie unfolds in such a way that we almost forget we’re trying to find out about the body he’s going to dump in the water; we’re instead trying to figure out what’s real and what’s not, and just what the hell is going on with this guy.

As the movie plays out and the audience starts to get a grasp on what’s reality and what is hallucination, it’s fairly easy to figure out who we’re going to find wrapped in the rug, as well as some of the movie’s other mysteries, but there are still a couple of surprises at the end, and the movie has a very satisfying and well thought out conclusion (at least, in my not so humble opinion). All in all, this was a very enjoyable and engaging suspense/mystery, and I highly recommend it.

Miami Vice

Okay, so I meant to have this done days ago, but things have been crazy this week. We had our annual meeting at work so there was a lot of prep for that, and of course my boss was out of state for training all week so I was on my own (as a side note, since the meeting ran all day Friday and all day Saturday (including all evening for a formal dinner), I’m probably not going to get to a movie this weekend, so no review next week). But, I promised a Miami Vice review (and I did get to the theater to see it last weekend), so here we go.

Sadly, I was fairly disappointed when I walked out of the theater on this one, and after thinking it over and discussing it with one of my co-workers the following Monday (who caught the show right after the one I did), I was actually even more disappointed (which is partly why I had a hard time getting motivated to make time to write this review). This one really did not live up to the hype (of course, I'm sure that there are numerous fans of the film out there that will tell me I'm full of it, but hey, I never claimed this was anyone's opinion other than my own). Of course, considering that I heard rumors that they re-edited it at the last minute because test audiences didn’t respond favorably to it, I shouldn’t have been too surprised. I mean, let’s be honest, if you’re trying to make changes/corrections in the last hour because it didn’t come together right, it’s probably already too late.

So what didn’t I like about this movie? Well, I think the biggest problem with it was the story, and to a lesser extent, the direction (which is really too bad, as I’m a big fan of most of Michael Mann’s previous films). The movie just felt way too disjointed, and just never really came together for me. I tried to get into the story, and just couldn’t. For one thing, they just jump right into things, which is fine up to a point, since I think you can assume most of the audience are at least familiar with (if not fans of) the original show, so it’s not like you need to introduce the characters or establish backgrounds or anything. But it would still have been nice to be eased into the storyline a little bit as opposed to being dropped right into it. It would also have been nice if the movie had actually taken place in Miami (since it’s in the title, after all). Instead, large parts of it take place in Central America and Cuba.

One of the reasons I heard for why they re-edited the movie was that test audiences didn’t feel it captured the spirit of the original show, and I have to say that the final product didn’t, either. For one thing, the music just wasn’t there, which I think is a big deal considering just how much an integral part of the TV show the music always was. Also, the movie is much darker and grittier and just lacked a lot of what made the original show so much fun to watch. On the plus side, they did include the majority of the secondary characters from the show – Trudy, Gina, Switek, Zito, and Castillo are all there, which I thought was cool. Of course, as my co-worker pointed out, there was one important character missing, and that was Sonny’s alligator Elvis. How can you have a Miami Vice movie without Elvis in it???

As far as the acting goes, nobody did a great job. Jamie Foxx just never came across as Tubbs in my mind, and his performance was fairly flat throughout. And while I do have to say that Colin Farrell really reminded me of a young Don Johnson and I think he was perfect for the role, he still didn’t really give a standout performance. I don’t know if the script just didn’t give them much to work with, or if they just weren’t into their characters or what the deal was, but nobody really shined.

So all in all I have to say that this movie was a disappointment. If you’re a fan of Miami Vice the TV show, my suggestion to you would be to pick up the box sets on DVD, and save this movie for a cheap rental night.

Wednesday at the Movies!!

Hello again, boys and girls. So as one of my dear readers has pointed out, it has been a couple of weeks since I have been to the theater. Well, here’s the deal. Two weekends ago, there just wasn’t anything new out that caught my eye, so I went and saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest for the second time (yes, it’s just that good). And last weekend I was out of town visiting with the parental units, so I didn’t manage to make it to the theater. But never let it be said that I don’t take very seriously the comments of my readers! And so, for you, dear readers, I took a day off from work yesterday and headed to the movies (okay, so I mainly did it for me, but it sure sounded good)!!

I was considering doing a triple feature (and actually had the showtimes all planned out – it’s amazing how many matinees you can cram into one afternoon if you schedule properly), but after the second movie decided I had enough things I wanted to do around the house that I’d call it good at two. So what did I go and see, you may wonder? Well, certainly not my usual movie fare, that’s for sure. I saw The Devil Wears Prada and My Super Ex-Girlfriend. My quick ratings of the two? I’d have to say 4 stars for the former, and sadly only 2 stars for the latter. So how about we start with the lesser of the two movies.

My Super Ex-Girlfriend is an interesting concept, but I just don’t know that the superhero genre and the romantic comedy genre were ever meant to come together in one movie, so it’s probably safe to say that this movie was more or less doomed from the outset. It has all the standards of a romantic comedy – the romantically klutzy guy, the best friend who offers nothing but bad advice, the female friend/co-worker who the main character is falling for even though she’s seeing someone else (and of course you can see her interest in him despite her supermodel boyfriend from early on in the movie). Then throw in a couple of crimes stopped by the super heroine, a genius evil villain, and the obligatory “how she got her powers” scene, and you’ve got all of the basic elements of a super hero movie. But sadly, they just don’t go well together.

Maybe it was just not the best script, I don’t know. The movie does bring up an interesting problem for our hero, though; how do you break up with a psycho girlfriend who has super powers? When said girlfriend is capable of throwing a live shark into your apartment, the answer to that question is very, very carefully. But sadly despite the interesting idea, the story just never really comes together. Uma Thurman, while a phenomenal actress, is way over the top here (although at a guess I’d say that’s mostly the blame of the script, and not the actress). Her character is just way, way too crazy jealous and possessive. And none of the rest of the characters are really developed enough to make them interesting. And sadly you can very quickly see exactly where this movie is going. All in all it has its cute moments, and is mildly entertaining at times, but at the end of the day it was something of a disappointment (and I didn’t really have high hopes going into it). So if you’re a big fan of Uma’s it’s probably worth checking out (although she is certainly not at her best in this movie); otherwise I’d say don’t waste your time or your money.

Now our next film, The Devil Wears Prada, is one that’s been out for a while now that I kept telling myself might be interesting to see (the trailer looked really interesting, and I especially loved the fact that it didn’t show much beyond the first 15 minutes of the movie, so that the rest of the film is left as a mystery to the viewers – I wish more trailers were that well put together). But there was always something else that would catch my eye, and since it is blatantly a chick film, I kept putting off seeing it. But when I decided to make yesterday a movie day, I said, “What the hell, let’s go see it.” And I’m really glad that I did. This was a really well done movie. The story is both interesting and believable, and while there is a romantic element to the story, it doesn’t overpower the more dramatic aspects of the story, which is that of a young woman getting caught up in a job and discovering her life suddenly going in a very different direction from where she’d planned it to go. Along the way she does a little growing up, and learns about herself and what she really values in life.

While the story is good, what really sells this movie is the acting. Everyone involved does a fantastic job. Meryl Streep is so much fun to watch as the psycho, pain-in-the-ass, super-demanding boss. She jumps into the role with both feet, just chewing up the scenery in every scene. You just have to have the deepest sympathy for anyone stuck working for her. Also brilliant is Stanley Tucci, who pretty much steals every scene he’s in. But that didn’t surprise me – he’s one of those character actors who always gives a great performance. Emily Blunt is also really good as Meryl Streep’s main assistant. And then there’s the star – Anne Hathaway. What can I say about Anne? She’s beautiful and talented and just does a wonderful job. She’s graduated from her Disney young-girl oriented movies to more mature roles, and done it well. I really enjoyed her performance here, and look forward to seeing her in future films.

And on the subject of Anne Hathaway, if you want to see how much range she has an actress, check out the indie film Havoc (which I just watched). If she wanted to make a break from her good-girl Disney image, she did it in spades in this movie. Her character in this film is about as anti-Princess Diaries as she could get, short of playing a mass murdering psycho killer. She uses the F-word repeatedly, does drugs, and in the first 10 minutes of the movie shows her breasts (the first time) and goes down on her boyfriend. So needless to say, family-friendly this movie is NOT.

Anne’s character is one of a group of wealthy, spoiled LA teens who rebel against their parents by embracing “gangsta” culture, acting like wannabe black gang bangers, listening to rap music and talking like they’re from the ghetto. So naturally the movie features a fair amount of profanity, unsafe sex, and drug use. A group of them go down to the barrio to go slumming, and end up having an altercation with a drug dealer. But Anne finds herself drawn to the drug dealer and his lifestyle, feeling that it’s more “real” than her own life. And so she returns with several of her girlfriends, where they meet the drug deal again and end up partying with him and his friends. Anne and her best friend continue to come back, getting drawn more and more into the world of the barrio, until they find themselves in way over their heads (I won't go into the details; if you want to know everything that happens you'll have to watch it for yourself).

All in all it wasn’t a bad movie, but it’s not one I’d be likely to watch again (other than for the nudity). It’s obviously meant to be a comment on modern youth culture, but considering I haven’t been a teenager in way too many years (and even when I was a teenager, the culture when & where I grew up was very different from the teen hip-hop culture of today), I couldn’t exactly identify with the characters (mostly I just shook my head at how stupid and pathetic they were). So even though the story didn’t really click with me, I do think it had a pretty well-written story. And Anne Hathaway gives an incredible performance. There are times you almost forget that it’s her, her character is so different from what you’re used to seeing her portray. It really showcases her range as an actress, and shows just how much talent she has. So if you’re a fan of hers (or are just curious to see her in a very different role from what you’ve seen her in before), the movie is certainly worth checking out (of course this doesn’t apply to the majority of her fans, since this is in no way a movie that tween girls should be watching).

Well, that’s about it for this entry. And don’t worry, it won't be another 18 days before I roll out my next one, since Miami Vice starts tomorrow (and there’s no way I’m not watching that one opening weekend). Until then!!

Pirates of the Caribbean!!

So late last Thursday night I jumped into the car and headed to the movie theater, my blood pumping with excitement as I headed out to the midnight sneak preview of the movie I’ve been waiting for all year long – Pirate’s of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. As I mentioned in my previous blog entry, I love going to sneak previews because of the great crowd that you get and the excitement and fun that makes it not just a night at the movies, but truly a memorable event. And Thursday night’s show did not disappoint.

The movie started at 12:01 AM, so I figured I’d get there about a 11:00 or so, so that I’d have plenty of time to get in line for a good seat. Well, obviously an hour early wasn’t quite good enough, because the theater was already packed when I got there. It was a great crowd, though. There were all kinds of people dressed up in pirate costumes, and one group singing “What Would You Do With A Drunken Sailor” out in front of the theater. They even had a girl with a fiddle accompanying them. And shortly before the movie started they came into the theater and sang for several choruses, getting the crowd clapping and singing along with them (I’m guessing they were actually seated in the other screen showing the movie, as they left after several minutes and I did not see them return). Somebody even had a car parked out front with a mast with small black sails on it attached to the roof, with a poster for the movie filling the rear window. It was just incredibly fun and exciting and everyone was cheering and clapping. If you’re ever able to attend a midnight showing like that, I say by all means do it. It is so worth it (especially when you have a boss who’s nice enough to let you come into work a couple hours late the next morning). :-)

As far as the movie itself goes, I absolutely loved it!! It was easily as good as the original, if not better – regardless of what all those naysayers might have to say to the contrary. And sadly I’m not just talking about the critics this time. They were actually fairly evenly split between loving the movie and finding it somewhat disappointing. No, I’m talking about your average moviegoers. I went online and read a fair number of comments from people on a couple of movie sites, and it was a little shocking how many negative comments were being made about the movie. This kind of upset me at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I could see why that was the case (and it has nothing to do with the movie deserving those comments, because it certainly did not). Part of the issue, I think, is that people who are unhappy with something are a lot more likely to be very vocal in their bitching about it than people who are happy with it. So it stands to reason (by my way of thinking, anyways) that the people who didn’t like the movie or were disappointed with the movie are going to rush online to make certain the entire world knows how horribly upset they are with it, whereas people who really liked the movie will probably tell all their friends how great it was, and leave it at that.

And of course, the sad truth of the matter is, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest is a movie that was pretty much guaranteed to get a fair amount of negative feedback regardless, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it’s not only a sequel, but a sequel to a very popular and successful, much loved movie. And while so many people make a point of saying that the sequel is never as good as the original, so many of them seem to go to the theater expecting it to be better than the original, and then are upset if it isn’t. So there was a lot of pressure on the filmmakers to top the original with the sequel (and a lot of the complaints about the sequel go to the idea that the filmmakers tried TOO hard to make sure it was bigger and bolder and funnier and more exciting than the original, and that in trying too hard, they actually made it less of a film. I don’t know that I agree with that, but you'll have to make that call when you see the film). The other problem that this movie has is that it isn’t just a sequel, it’s the center film of a trilogy. And there’s very much a difference between a movie that happens to spawn two sequels, and a planned movie trilogy. For examples of this, you can look at Empire Strikes Back, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, or The Matrix Reloaded (which, like Dead Man’s Chest, was a case where the second and third movies were filmed simultaneously). You can really see how the story structure and tone of these movies differs from movies like Spider-Man 2 or X2: X-Men United, which are simply sequels that managed to be successful enough to generate third movies in their series.

The problem you run into with movies of this type, and the reason that many people consider them each to be the weakest of the three films in their respective trilogies, is that the middle film (much like the 2nd act of a 3-act play) is all about transition. The first movie sets the stage, introducing the characters and the world they inhabit. This movie draws you into the world, developing the characters and letting you get to know them, getting you excited to learn more about them and discover what happens to them next. And of course the third film is your grand finale. It’s where the events of the previous two films reach their dramatic conclusion. The second film, then, is primarily there to take you from the first movie to the finale, and so you often don’t get a satisfying climax to that film (instead you get left desperately waiting for the final film to come out so you can see how it all ends – both The Two Towers and Dead Man’s Chest did this). And so it’s a lot harder to enjoy the movie just for itself.

Another issue with Dead Man’s Chest is that like Empire Strikes Back, a lot of people complained that it’s a much darker, more somber story than the original film (and it is – it remains to be seen if this darker style carries over into the third film, or if it returns to the more light-hearted nature of Curse of the Black Pearl). Now that’s not to say that it’s a grim, depressing movie. On the contrary, I’d say that there’s actually more humor in this one than in the previous (it’s funny as hell!). But the overall story is a darker, more serious one than we saw in the first movie. But unlike a lot of people, I didn’t find this to be a bad thing at all. I thought it made the movie that much more interesting (but I’m probably biased, as I tend to be much more drawn to darker films; it’s just my nature).

And while I’m on a tangent, I’d like to talk about movie critics, and people who seem to be overly-critical of movies (who I think spend too much time reading movie critics). The problem I see with a number of the comments I’ve read, and several of the more negative reviews I read clips of on imdb is that these people seem to be so focused on trying to find things wrong with the movie, and to find things to be critical of (which, at least in the case of the movie critics they can more or less justify as them doing their job), is that they don’t let themselves just relax and enjoy the movie. If you let yourself get drawn into the movie and absorbed with what’s going on, you’ll either not notice a lot of the nitpicky stuff that people complained about, or you’ll make a brief note of it and not give it much more thought because you’re too busy enjoying the movie! And let’s face it, if you’re determined to find something to be critical about, it’s pretty certain that you will. For example, numerous people complained that the movie was too long, and that the plot was too convoluted and it took too long to get to the main story (and I will admit, it does take a while for the main plotline to really start moving forward). But I’d bet money that if the main characters all met up in the first 10 minutes of the movie and were headed off together on their next adventure right from the word go, these same idiots would be bitching that the story was contrived and that bringing the characters all back together like that wasn’t believable, etc., etc., etc. There’s just no pleasing some people. However you do it, someone's not going to be happy about it.

I have to agree with one reviewer I read, who noted that while it did take a while to get to the main plot of the movie, having the various main characters each on their own little adventures all tied loosely into the titular dead man’s chest, and then finally bringing them all together later in the movie actually was nice because it DID keep the movie away from your standard Hollywood sequel idea of bringing all the characters back together to share in another adventure as they all quest together for a shared goal. To those people who found the story hard to follow or keep up with, or thought it was too convoluted and complex, all I can say is that you have my deepest sympathies, because you’re obviously a dumbass. I loved the story; I loved that it was complex and involved, and took a while to bring all the characters back together. I love that they brought back the two bumbling comic-relief pirates from the first movie instead of simply creating new characters to be the comic relief. I do have to admit that bringing back Commodore Norrington was probably unnecessary and a bit excessive as far as bringing old characters back goes, but at the same time I like his role in the movie (especially how it plays out at the end).

So now that we’re back on track discussing the movie, let’s jump into it and really go into what I loved about the movie (and what I didn’t love so much – while I’ll give the movie 10 out of 10 without hesitation, there were indeed a few minor complaints that I can agree can be made about the movie). For starters, the movie is funny as hell. Johnny Depp is once again brilliant as Captain Jack Sparrow, and is funnier than ever in this movie (some people complained he was trying to hard to be funny and it didn’t work as well as it did in the first movie – I say lighten up). He is once again the rogue and knave who’s pretty much out for himself and would sell out his own mother if it would get him out of a jam (and despite this, you can’t help but just love the guy). The mute pirate’s parrot is back once again to provide a few good laughs, and our hapless duo of Pintel and Ragetti (the goofball pirates) are as hapless as ever (although I do have to say they’re not quite as funny as they were in the first film; I was still really happy to see them return, though). Also back from the first movie is Barbossa’s undead monkey for a few humorous little scenes (for those of you who missed it, if you watch Curse of the Black Pearl all the way through to the very end of the credits, there’s an additional scene where the monkey goes back to the cursed chest of Aztec gold and takes one of the gold pieces, causing him to return to being undead).

The performances are all wonderful. Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, and Keira Knightley all do a wonderful job. Naomie Harris is very fun to watch as the voodoo priestess/fortune-teller, and I was really impressed with Stellan Skarsgard as Will Turner’s father Bootstrap Bill (but he’s just a wonderful actor in general, so that wasn’t much of a surprise). And then there’s Davy Jones, played to perfection by Bill Nighy (who played the villainous Viktor in Underworld/Underworld: Evolution, and who was splendid as Slartibartfast in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). He is a very different villain from Captain Barbossa from the first movie, who was a very fun, charismatic sort of swashbuckling pirate villain. Davy Jones is much more the sinister, more darker villain. While not as fun a villain to watch as Barbossa, he still made a great villain, who really fit the darker nature of the story in the second film, and I think Bill Nighy did a great job with him. Also fantastic was the CGI to bring his character to life, with his crab claw and octopus tentacles around his head, he just looked incredibly cool!

This, sadly, brings us to the point where I have to discuss the big thing that disappointed me about the movie, and that was the CGI. For starters, the Kraken, while very well animated, was for some reason a little disappointing. I can’t even put my finger on exactly what about it I didn’t like, but whatever it was, when the movie was over I was just a little disappointed in how it came across (and I will admit they could have cut out a few of the tentacle-filled scenes – but I completely disagree with the people I read online who compared it to the overly long CGI battle scenes in King Kong, because I don’t think it was anywhere close to being as bad).

The biggest disappointment in the CGI department, though, would have to be with the crew of the Flying Dutchmen. In the trailers you see them rising out of the water, with the hammerhead shark character big and bold at the front of the screen, and so you’re expecting all these really cool aquatic animal/humanoid characters – and the shark head guy does indeed look really cool. But other than him and Davy Jones, most of the rest of the crew are just this hodgepodge of barnacles and corals and such, all kind of wedged together into a person. There’s almost no personality to them, and very few of them really stand out (although the scene where the one pirate’s head turns into a hermit crab is pretty damned cool). Which was a shame, because I think there was a lot of potential there for some visually impressive, memorable characters. Instead, most of them very much just blend into the background.

But that would have to be my only major complaint (and hardly a major one at that). The fight scenes are fantastic and just fun to watch (you just have to love swashbuckling movies for great sword fights). There’s wonderful comedy throughout, and many great performances. The story, while yes, being convoluted and drawn out and darker than the first film, was still very engaging and completely drew me into the movie so that the 150 minute runtime didn’t bother me at all. And there’s a fantastic jaw-dropping ending (which, of course, some people managed not to like – go figure) that had me, at least, desperately eager to see the third movie. I give this movie an unquestionable five out of five stars, and I know for a fact I will be seeing it at the theater at least once (if not two or three times) more. I absolutely loved it, I cannot recommend it highly enough!! And if you see it and disagree with me, feel free to post a comment and I’ll be happy to tell you that you’re wrong. ;-P

Oh, one final word for anyone who hasn’t see the movie yet or saw it and liked it enough to go see it again – just like in the first movie, there’s a brief little scene at the very end of the end credits that’s pretty cute and worth hanging around to see.