Jul
31
Unnecessary Prequel/Sequel News!
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People say there’s no such thing as an original idea. I think that’s hokum. Why, just last night I came up with an idea for a reality show called “Deucing with the D-Listers,” a program about half-celebrities taking a shit. Tell me that someone else has had the very same idea. I highly doubt that!
At any rate, Hollywood is reticent to try anything new. The community is so insular and sanctimonious, which seems odd. The decision makers act like they’re indispensable, like no one else could possibly do what they do when what they do seems like a no-brainer. Take sequels and prequels. If a movie is successful, they’ll greenlight a sequel. Once the sequels are played out and the actors are too expensive and/or too old, they’ll greenlight a prequel. Man alive, I couldn’t possibly do their job!
That being said, two franchises that have played themselves out — the “Alien” quadrilogy and the “Pirates of the Caribbean” trilogy — are getting a prequel and a sequel respectively, according to Chud. Now I’m quite a fan of the first two “Alien” movies and more than a little forgiving of the latter two “Pirates” movies. Nonetheless, these two franchises are done. Unless they did something wholly original like blended the two movies — “Dead Man’s Chestburster?” — I can’t possibly think of a route either series can go that won’t seem pointless and stupid.
-Brad Lohan
Jul
30
Summer is winding down, but that doesn’t mean we’ve entered that funk that comes around the time school starts when there isn’t bugger all at the multiplex worth seeing. Nope, there are four (4) movies opening this weekend that I’m planning on seeing. And that doesn’t count the double-bill of “The Terminator” and “T2″ at the Aero nor the midnight showing of “The Big Lebowski” that’s playing at the Fairfax. It’s feast or famine. Last weekend, I went to the movies once and saw the atrocious “Deadgirl,” a film that is no doubt playing on an endless loop in the 9th circle of hell. This weekend’s going to have a dizzying array of filmed entertainments. I’m bound to enjoy at least three quarters of them.
So, what am I planning on seeing? Here’s what’s on my must-see list:
Not Quite Hollywood
An Australian documentary about “Ozploitation” flicks. The trailer for this film is crazy and NSFW. I had no idea what “Ozploitation” was until a few weeks ago, but it seems like something that’s definitely up my alley.
The Cove
A documentary that’s not dolphin safe. This film looks like it’s part-doco/part-spy flick as activists infiltrate the Japanese dolphin fishing industry.
Thirst
A Korean vampire movie from the director of “Old Boy.” ‘Nuff said.
Funny People
Judd Apatow’s third film. I think the trailer gives away too much of the film, and Apatow’s movies are always too flabby. But I keep hearing there’s some great standup comedy in this flick.
I’ll be subsisting on popcorn and Diet Coke while soaking up a wicked lot of flicks. It’ll be glorious.
-Brad Lohan
Jul
29
Demons Out of “Iron Man 2?”
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While I was not invited to the “Iron Man 2″ set visit, I was able to read Devin’s Set Visit Preview over at Chud. Major plot details for the film are being kept under wraps, but the filmmakers are fairly outspoken about how they’ve chosen not to adapt the “Demon in a Bottle” storyline. It seems like a logical progression for the franchise, seeing as how the first “Iron Man” often shows Tony Stark with a drink in his hand. There was also a rumor a couple months back that “Iron Man 2″ would have a scene of a hungover Stark puking his guts out while in full armor.
But, I have the utmost faith in Jon Favreau as a filmmaker, and based on what I’ve read about the footage screened at Comic Con last weekend, I think “IM2″ will deliver. If they jettison Stark’s alcoholism from the franchise, I’m sure it’s because they came up with something better. The great thing about adapting a comic book character that’s been around for 40 years is the wealth of material they can pull from. Besides, the film series shouldn’t be afraid of being its own animal and go off in any number of directions.
At any rate, with Justin Hammer, Whiplash, Black Widow, War Machine, Nick Fury and Howard Stark being added to the mix, “Iron Man 2″ is going to be a monster of a film. I don’t want to get over-excited about it since it’s still 10 months away. Yet I’m as cautiously optimistic about this one as can be. And I haven’t even seen a frame of footage.
-Brad Lohan
Jul
28
“Maniac Cop 2″ Review
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I still own a VCR. It’s almost 20 years old, but it works for the most part. It does eat tapes like a bastard. Unfortunately, not every movie has been “digitally remastered” for the DVD format. There are still tons of films that are only available on VHS. If I were to get rid of my VCR, I’d have no way of viewing such wonderful films as “The Incredible Melting Man.” And so, I thought I’d start a regular column about movies that aren’t on DVD, forgotten gems doomed to exist only on antiquated videotape with bad audio and a panned-and-scanned image. This week’s entry will be the 1990 William Lustig classic, “Maniac Cop 2.”
The “Maniac Cop” trilogy came and went in the late-’80s/early-’90s as the slasher genre was winding down. What’s noteworthy about movies one and two in the series is that they star a very young, very skinny Bruce Campbell as rookie cop Jack Forrest. I haven’t gotten around to seeing part three yet. And since the first film is available on DVD, I’m going to limit my review to the second installment — “The Empire Strikes Back” of the “Maniac Cop” trilogy.
“Maniac Cop 2″ begins with a flashback to the climax of the first film. Undead ex-cop Matt Cordell, played by the mega-chinned actor Robert Z’Dar, has a ship’s mast plunged into his chest before he drives a police van off a pier in what appears to be a rather dangerous looking stunt. Of course, Cordell’s body is never recovered, and he resumes his killing spree, going after the victims of violent crime rather than the criminals themselves. Cordell’s a silent killer in the vein of Jason Voorhees. He wears a police uniform, and his face has been disfigured from his brief stint in prison, where he was believed to have been killed by the very criminals he put away. I have no idea why Cordell’s victims are innocent people and not the corrupt bureaucrats who had him sent up in the first place. The film was written by the highly overrated genre scribe Larry Cohen, who never quite grasped the concept of causality.
But slashers typically have weird motives anyway. I’m willing to go along with it.
Surviving a slasher film is a bit of a Pyrrhic victory. Anyone who makes it through a horror flick will almost assuredly die within the first fifteen minutes of the follow-up. Jack Forrest is no exception, meeting his bitter end at the point of Cordell’s dagger, a dagger he keeps sheathed in his nightstick. “Maniac Cop 2″ is one of the few films that contains a Bruce Campbell comeuppance; “Congo” is another. At any rate, with Forrest dead, it falls on grizzled Det. Sean McKinney (Robert Davi) to track down Cordell with the help of police head-shrinker Susan Reilly (Claudia Christian).
Cordell meanwhile teams up with a serial killer who targets exotic dancers, thereby satisfying the cop movie cliche that all good detective work requires a visit to a strip club. From there, Cordell starts building an army of psychopaths to break back into Sing-Sing and have his revenge. The climax contains one of the longest full-body burns I’ve seen since “Swamp Thing.” But this is definitely that ass-kickingest full-body burn by far. And the “Maniac Cop Rap” over the closing credits is easily the best musical composition 1990 had to offer.
I love the concept behind “Maniac Cop.” It’s “Dirty Harry” meets “Friday the 13th.” I’m astonished no one’s attempted a remake. I don’t think movie two quite lives up to its full potential, but it’s still fun to watch. VHS has a weird sort of quality — or lack thereof — that enhances the experience, like seeing a bad print of a b-movie in a grindhouse theater. The crummy picture and the garbled sound give it a je ne se qua that’d be lost if it had been cleaned up for DVD.
-Brad Lohan
Jul
24
“The Incredible Melting Man” Review
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Sometimes I’ll stumble upon a rare, OOP title at CineFile — a flick that isn’t on Netflix or even available on DVD — and have a much better time with it than I should. Last night, I found “The Incredible Melting Man,” a gooey 1977 creature feature about an astronaut who returns to Earth with problem skin. Now I’ve often maintained that there’s really no such thing as a movie that’s “so bad, it’s good.” However, TIMM can only be described as such. It’s astonishingly awful, but nonetheless a cinematic revelation. The sheer level of ineptitude on display (Rick Baker’s effects work notwithstanding) somehow works in the film’s favor. It’s in fact better because it’s incompetent. Were someone to remake this, they’d doubtless screw it up by introducing talent and technical proficiency where none belongs.
In the film Alex Rebar stars as astronaut Steve West/The Incredible Melting Man. During a mission to Saturn, West looks directly at stock footage of the sun, gets a bloody nose, then somehow wakes up in a hospital bed with his face wrapped in gauze. Worse, the other two astronauts that accompanied him on his trip are dead, and he’s melting for whatever reason.
Dr. Ted Nelson (Burr DeBenning) is called in to investigate West’s condition. But before Nelson even arrives at the hospital, West escapes and goes on a killing spree. Now if you’re saying to yourself, “That sounds just like ‘The Quatermass Xperiment!’” then you and I should be BFFs. It is like “Quatermass Xperiment,” which I just so happened to rent from CineFile a couple weeks ago.
I’ve sat through some dizzyingly bad movies before, but none quite as refreshingly rotten as TIMM. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with ADR. It’s a process where actors will re-record their dialogue in post-production for scenes where there was too much noise on set during shooting for the existing audio track to be considered useable. Well, they clearly didn’t do that for TIMM. In fact, there’s a scene where Nelson is having a conversation with another doctor on a moving platform that’s humming like a bastard. There’s no reason for them to be on this platform. More, they have to shout over all the noise the platform’s making. What they’re shouting — pages of exposition — seems pretty important, yet it’s almost completely drowned out by all the din. Of course, they could’ve just done some ADR work and laid in a useable audio track for that scene, but Michael Mann doesn’t bother with ADR. So why would TIMM director William Sachs?
ADR is for weenises!
The internal logic of the film is in a constant state of flux. Nelson’s desperate to find West before he kills a whole bunch of innocent people. But he keeps dropping in on his wife at home, where West is most assuredly not. Still, it’s rather hilarious when Nelson gives his wife hell for not buying crackers at the supermarket while some drippy astronaut is beheading a poor fisherman in the woods. Nelson’s priorities are all over the place.
Despite all the awkward pacing and bizarre character motivations in the film, Rick Baker’s effects work does deserve to be singled out as exceptional. I’d even go so far as to say I was somewhat moved when West finally melts into oblivion at the film’s climax. Baker was able to get more of a performance out of wax and Ultraslime than the Sachs could coax from his actors.
TIMM is a film that I’d absolutely love to see with a midnight audience at the New Beverly. I bet this thing plays like a mother. The first half is admittedly stronger than the second. It does become a little reptitious after awhile. Even so, this is a flick that I’m surprised doesn’t have a serious cult following. It’s entertaining in spite of itself, which I guess is the very definition of a movie that’s “so bad, it’s good.”
-Brad Lohan
Jul
23
So the big news this week is that Sam Raimi is attached to direct a “World of Warcraft” movie. I think he’s a pretty odd choice, considering that A) he’s an incredibly talented filmmaker, B) he’s up to his eyeballs in “Spider-Man 4″ preproduction and C) “WoW” is an effing video game. It’s a MMORPG — a “massively multiplayer online role-playing game” — but it’s still a video game. And if history has taught me anything, it’s that exposure to massive amounts of radiation will give you superpowers AND it’s virtually impossible to make a video game into a movie that’s any damn good.
Now I’m not saying that “WoW” is a shitty video game. I’ve never played it, so I couldn’t say. No, I’m saying that the medium simply does not translate well to the big screen. Video games have become much more sprawling and open-ended than they were a decade or two ago. The experience of playing a video game is mutually exclusive from the experience of watching a film. It’s interactive for one thing. For another thing, if something as simple and straightforward as “Super Mario Bros.” can’t make a successful transition to cinema screens, how is it possible to pull off something like friggin’ “Halo” or “Bioshock?”
Look at some of the sorry video game movies that have come out in recent years: the “Resident Evil” series, “Silent Hill,” “Doom,” “Hitman,” “Max Payne,” and quite literally everything with Uwe Boll’s name attached to it. I believe “Silent Hill” has its defenders, and RE flicks are immensely popular (a fourth is about to go before cameras). But come on. Where comic book movies have become a legitimate geek sub-genre, video game movies haven’t. And they won’t, not if I have my way!
Maybe — and this is a big maybe – video game movies haven’t been good because they never had top talent attached to them. Paul W.S. Anderson isn’t exactly as good a director as Paul Thomas Anderson, and “Mortal Kombat” isn’t exactly as good a film as “There Will Be Blood.” That being said, if a filmmaker with actual chops took on a video game project, I guess there’s a remote possibility the finished product might be better than “Double Dragon.” However, it still begs the question: Why would an A-list director like Raimi want to tackle such material in the first place? It seems like he’d be slumming.
All that being said, “Spider-Man 4″ is two years out. Directors also have a tendency to sign on to eleventeen films that are currently development without really intending to make all of them. Chances are, at least one will get the greenlight, and that’s what the director moves forward with. Raimi signing on to “WoW” doesn’t necessarily mean that Raimi will direct “WoW” or that “WoW” will even get made. But it’s just damn peculiar that Raimi would pick that project as a potential follow-up to “Spider-Man 4.” I’d much rather see him tackle “Evil Dead 4″ or pretty much anything that hasn’t been lampooned on “South Park.”
-Brad Lohan
Jul
22
Sometimes, less is more. I was not outraged by the exclusion of anything from the theatrical version of “Watchmen” — like the heavy-handed “Tales From the Black Freighter” story — but I was nonetheless curious about what had been cut out of the film. So yesterday I picked up the Director’s Cut of the film on DVD. Clocking in at a little over 3 hours, the DC has more than twenty minutes of additional footage. If that’s not enough for you, an “Ultimate Edition” of the film, which will intercut the animated short “Tales From the Black Freighter” with the DC and pad out the runtime by another twenty minutes, is due this Christmas. I don’t know about you, but I’ve watched more than enough “Watchmen” already.
I prefer the theatrical cut of “Watchmen” over the director’s cut. The theatrical version is a bit too long to begin with, since director Zack Snyder was way too married to the source material. The more I think about it, the more I wish Paul Greengrass had done the film and set it in the modern day. But to his credit, Snyder does a remarkable job recreating the graphic novel. There is, however, sort of an undercurrent of pointlessness in being extremely faithful to the original work. Alan Moore, who co-created the graphic novel with Dave Gibbons, has vowed never to watch the movie. And the fanbase will never accept any screen translation, so why even bother pandering to that audience? The few changes Snyder did make, notably the exlusion of the Squid, were met with an uproar on the messageboard bully pulpit. I never found the conclusion of the book or the film (either version) to be as satisfying as everything that leads up to it. Still, the one instance where I would’ve expected Snyder to defer to the graphic novel, he parted ways from it and bungled the climax of the film version.
Anyway, what’s different about the two versions? Well, for the most part, the director’s cut doesn’t include too many new scenes. It mostly just extends a few of the existing ones. It’s fairly easy to see why these scenes were trimmed. Too often I got the feeling that the longer bits were cut for good reason, and the movie now feels flabby and uneven. I can’t imagine what the dumbass scene in the beginning where two cops stumble upon Rorschach in the Comedian’s apartment adds to the film. Instead, it just stops the movie dead during its opening minutes when things should be moving at a much faster clip.
There’s some business about Laurie Jupiter and the G-Men keeping tabs on her, making sure she’s remaining faithful to Dr. Manhattan. This is also extraneous and stupid. Laurie’s relationship with Manhattan doesn’t work for two reasons: one, Malin Ackerman is not a terribly good actress, and two, Manhattan’s lost almost all of his humanity by this point, giving us little reason to care if Laurie dumps him. I like the idea of seeing a relationship between two superheroes, but the execution is weak in both versions of the film, where Laurie and Manhattan seem like they should’ve parted ways years ago.
Perhaps the one scene in the director’s cut that I did like is the infamous bit with Hollis Mason (the original Nite-Owl) fighting off a gang of Knot-Tops in his apartment before being bludgeoned to death by a Nite-Owl trophy. During the fight, where the aging Mason gets in a few good punches, he imagines himself battling his old foes. I’d have enjoyed seeing a Minutemen film, watching the original costumed heroes in action during the ’40s. Here, we get a few glimpses of what that’d have been like. I think this scene works pretty well. It’s not terribly lengthy, but it does feel like it’d be the first thing to go when they’d start making trims.
In all, I feel that the theatrical cut is the definitive film version of “Watchmen.” The DC is worth watching if you’re curious what wound up on the cutting room floor, but once you’ve seen it, I doubt you’ll feel like sitting through it again. It simply reincorporates scenes that don’t work or scenes that are unnecessary — stuff that’s usually cut out for good reason.
-Brad Lohan
Jul
20
The Films of Michael Bay
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“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” will more than likely be the highest grossing film of the summer if not 2009. Balls. While I don’t believe that a film’s gross necessarily reflects its level of quality, it does speak to the amount of people who were lured into the theater. I’m certain that most of ROTF’s audience is not as devoted as, say, Harry Potter’s. Nonetheless, Michael Bay’s monstrosity put more asses in seats than “Half-Blood Prince” during its first five days in theaters, and it will likely gross more than $400 million domestically.
So, why are movie-goers retarded? I’m including myself here. I’m just as guilty as everyone else who saw “Transformers.” In fact, I realized this morning that I’ve seen every single Michael Bay film in the theater. I even own one on DVD. I’ve read message boards that endlessly praise the dim-witted merits of films like “Armageddon,” a movie that even I at one time was convinced actually did not suck. What’s wrong with us, the people who go to see Michael Bay films, the people who celebrate two-hour music videos masquerading as cinema?
I think a somewhat deeper analysis of his oeuvre is in order. I’d do one if I felt like sitting through all his shitty movies again. Instead, I’ll do a superficial one.
Bad Boys (1995)
Michael Bay’s first feature film starred Martin Lawrence and Will Smith as Miami cops in the sweatiest, most fetishized buddy movie to date. The movie’s a largely forgettable actioner, coasting on the comedic banter of two then-TV stars and making the most out of its limited budget with Bay’s trademark ultra-low-angle shots, which give everything a sense of scope and grandeur; Bay’s DPs must all suffer from dwarfism. I remember one particular image from the film, an establishing shot of a sign that reads, “MIAMI” with a plane flying overhead. It probably took hours upon hours to set up what amounts to a few seconds of film. Does it advance the plot or deepen the characters? No, but it does look cool.
Harmful Factor: Relatively Harmless
The Rock (1996)
This was Bay’s first summer film. “Bad Boys” had come out in April the previous year, again signaling his debut as rather ignonimous for a guy biting Tony Scott’s style. I consider “The Rock” to be Bay’s only legitimate film — a competent and semi-coherent action picture that’s one of the better riffs on the “Die Hard” formula. It’s the lone Bay blockbuster I am unashamed to have in my DVD collection. “The Rock” benefits from being co-produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, although the former half of that team died during the film’s production; I maintain that Bay killed him. At any rate, collaborations between the producing partners and Bay seemed to bring out the best in the budding filmmaker; they’d previously worked together on “Bad Boys.” And because of their pedigree, Simpson and Bruckheimer also attracted top talent like Oscar-winner Nicolas Cage, an actor that singularly makes “The Rock” 1000% more watchable. Unfortunately, Cage has spent the past 13 years losing his credibility as an actor, which began once he started appearing in big-ticket ’splosion filled blockbusters like “The Rock.” But that’s a whole ‘nother blog right there.
Harmful Factor: Side Effects Include “Con Air”
Armageddon (1998)
There was a time in this country when we enjoyed watching major cities being reduced to smoking ruins, particularly Paris. Images of the WTC with a ginormous hole in one of the towers might affect people differently now than they did during the Clinton era. And the line, “Saddam Hussein’s bombing us!” might also sound anachronistic if not wholly implausible. But those aren’t the reasons one should dislike Bay’s third feature, “Armageddon.” No, it’s an unholy piece of shit, with or without scenes of New York city being blasted by meteorites the size of Volkswagens. I do like how in disaster movies only major cities seem to be targeted by falling objects. On a planet that’s almost entirely underwater, it’s strangely always the metropolitan areas that get hit, not the oceans. Nothing ever seems to strike a desert or open country or one of our shrinking polar ice caps. At any rate, Bay proves with “Armageddon” he’s completely incapable of directing actors in emotionally charged scenes. Or perhaps our suspension of disbelief is so used up by having to accept oil drillers being sent into space to destroy an asteroid, we as an audience don’t buy into the strained relationship between Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis) and his daughter, Grace (Liv Tyler). The romance between Grace and AJ (Ben Affleck) is also equally awful. A scene of AJ putting animal crackers in Grace’s panties has to be the most bizarre sexual act I’ve ever seen captured on film. And I’ve seen puppet sex.
Harmful Factor: May Cause Aerosmith to Be Played on the Radio Forever and Ever
Pearl Harbor (2001)
The fun of a disaster movie is watching famous landmarks getting laid to waste in a fictional context. For one thing, there’s no messy cleanup. However, retelling the December 7th, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor as a disaster flick would be kind of like Roland Emmerich making “9/11: The Movie.” But somehow, Michael Bay got his greenlight to direct a WWII drama set against the backdrop of what was then the worst attack on U.S. soil. It wouldn’t be a Michael Bay movie without a tin-eared script and human beings that are unbelievably pretty. If anything, this film introduced me to the luminous Kate Beckinsale. Still, this behemoth tops out at three hours and three minutes, far too long for a movie that looks like a commercial for war.
Harmful Factor: Japan May Win WWII
Bad Boys II (2003)
A movie with a puzzling amount of defenders, “Bad Boys II” is Bay’s valentine to himself. An utterly needless sequel, this is like “Another 48 Hrs.” or “Another Stakeout” or any number of long-in-the-works follow-ups that should’ve just died on the vine; in fact, this movie would’ve instantly been better if they’d called it “Another ‘Bad Boys?!’” The negative criticism for “Pearl Harbor” must’ve convinced Bay that he should no longer make movies for audiences. As such, “Bad Boys II” is Bay’s first movie that seems to be made for Bay and Bay alone. I seem to remember next to nothing about it, meaning that the viewing experience was so traumatic, my mind must’ve blocked it all out.
Harmful Factor: Will Cause an Invasion of Cuba
The Island (2005)
Few filmmakers are ballsy enough to remake a movie that was featured on “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” Bay was even ballsier. He ripped one off instead. “The Island,” from what I’ve read anyway, is a fairly straightforward ripoff of “Clonus,” a 1979 movie about clones who are harvested for their organs. I haven’t seen the original version, but I do remember reading something about a lawsuit being filed against Bay by the makers of “Clonus.” Still, you can’t copyright an idea. You can only copyright the expression of an idea. And no one expresses and idea quite like Michael Bay. Even though Bay seemed to be trying something different — science fiction! — in a delirious stab at gaining respectability or growing as a filmmaker or bullshitting Scarlett Johansson into appearing semi-nude, the movie was his first bomb.
Harmful Factor: May Cause Ewan MacGregor to Stop Being in Sci-Fi Films Altogether
Transformers (2007) & Transformers Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
Since the two movies are interchangable, and I’m getting tired of writing this piece, I’m lumping them together. You can read my incredulous review of ROTF here. It’s also more or less how I feel about the first one. Bay’s filmmaking style hasn’t so much matured as it has mutated. These two film represent the absolute peak of his madness. The runaway success of the latter film will no doubt cause him to push the limits of the medium into an even more incomprehensible direction, rejecting everything we’ve come to know from the language of cinema until it’s reduced to cinematic psychobabble.
Harmful Factor: Do Not Operate Heavy Machinery or It Will Transform into a Racial Stereotype
So there’s my brief recap of Michael Bay’s cinematic efforts to date. It’s an interesting exploration of the downfall of contemporary filmmaking. I think it should be noted that the blockbuster era began in 1975 with “Jaws.” Almost 35 years later came ROTF, a movie directed by Michael Bay and exec produced by “Jaws” director Steven Spielberg. I feel as though some torch has been passed, as though a new dawn is breaking. Everything that’s great about “Jaws” — the attention to the characters and story, the music, the pacing — is completely absent from ROTF. Filmmaking has changed radically in the past three and a half decades. It’s been Bay-ified. And now I have that goddamn Faith Hill song from “Pearl Harbor” stuck in my head.
-Brad Lohan
Jul
17
Adapting Something for the Big Screen
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With a new Harry Potter movie in theaters, the backlash begins afresh. Hardcore Potter-philes are livid over the filmmakers having changed this or excluded that. I haven’t read book 6, so I’m not sure what’s different, nor do I care. Thing is, a movie adaptation is — are you sitting down? — not supposed to be a direct translation of a work that already exists in another medium. People seem to have a hard time reconciling that. When hasn’t someone grumbled that “the book was better” than the movie? It’s such a trite analysis of a film. And it rings false. If books were sooo much better than movies, theaters would be largely empty this time of year and folks would be lining up outside local libraries and big box bookstores. More, no one watches a movie and says, “They should make that into a NOVEL!”
Books and movies are apples and oranges. Even if the film is based on a book, it’s a different ball of wax. The limitations of the cinematic medium are different than the limits of one’s imagination. A film must tell a story visually, economically. You see the story play out through the performances, the direction, the cinematography, the editing. You hear the score. The confluence of all these elements — not to mention art direction, costume design and whatever a best boy does — is a movie. It’s cinema. It’s a different breed of storytelling altogether.
As you may already know, books tell stories entirely with the written word. Language is the only tool in the author’s belt, but fortunately, avid readers tend to have pretty good imaginations. I love reading. I read all the time. In fact, I wish I had time to read even more. Books have all sorts of advantages over films in that their budgets are limitless, and they’re not restricted to three-act structures or being directed by Brett Ratner.
I remember reading a book by screenwriting guru Syd Field. It has not been made into a film. However, it does discuss writing an adaptation. Field says that screenwriters should put the five best scenes from a book into their adaptated screenplays. I guess when adapting a work of popular fiction, the filmmakers should remain somewhat faithful to the source material. Audiences want to see Ewan MacGregor parachute out of a helicopter as an anti-matter bomb goes off in “Angels & Demons” regardless of how dumbass it sounds. It’s in the book, and by Joe, it should be in the movie. But is an adaptation only satisfying if it hews closely to what’s on the page?
Modern fiction generally reads like 400-page screenplay treatments. Authors want to be the next Stephen King (pre-accident) or John Grisham or Tom Clancy. They don’t want to be that guy who wrote “Confederacy of Dunces” or the other guy who wrote “Life of Pi” or Michael Crichton because he’s dead. Ultimately, they want Hollywood to come knocking and their work to be adapted for the silver screen. So their books are fairly cinematic and not very internal. There’s nothing wrong with that, really. I just sort of wish they’d start blending the genres to spice things up. I want to see a techno-legal thriller. I’m curently reading Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s “The Strain,” a post-9/11 vampire novel. Funnily enough, Del Toro originally tried to make “The Strain” into a film.
So with books that read more like novelizations rather than novels, am I totally off my rocker in suggesting that adaptations should be their own animal? Well, I’m not trying to say that movies should radically depart from the source material. But audiences shouldn’t be expecting what they pictured in their read while reading the book to the novel to be exactly what’s projected onto the screen. I think that adaptations should maintain the spirit of the novel, without being so slavish to the work that it becomes a boring retread. If you can’t do something interesting with the work when translating it to the screen, why are you adapting it in the first place?
-Brad Lohan
Jul
16
Theatrical Cuts vs. Director’s Cuts
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Blogging about the “Watchmen: Director’s Cut” the other day got me thinking about this topic. Which version of a film is better, the theatrical cut or the director’s cut? Well, it depends on the movie, really. Sometimes, a movie is gutted by a studio. Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil” is as good an example as any. The theatrical cut of that film is unwatchable, absolutely unwatchable. The director’s cut — depending on which version you see — restores about 45 minutes to an hour of footage and Gilliam’s original vision. The theatrical version of “Brazil” bombed, so despite the studio’s weak efforts to make the film more audience friendly, audiences stayed away. But the director’s cut has found an audience thanks to home video.
Most director’s don’t have the clout in Hollywood to demand final cut. In other words, the theatrical cut and the director’s cut will be one and the same. I think the studio’s logic behind ordering cuts is goofy and that a filmmaker’s vision should remain intact, regardless of what some dipshit focus group says. That’s just me. Fact is, studio interference is a given, and cuts are going to be mandated.
Fortunately, there’s home video, where multiple versions of a film can be made available for audiences to decide which version they prefer. Studios get this. It’s why they sometimes release a “director’s cut” of a movie that isn’t really the director’s cut. Take the 2003 director’s cut of “Alien.” Ridley Scott himself prefers the theatrical version of the film over the so-called director’s cut. However, slapping the words “director’s cut” onto a film gives it a certain je ne sais quoi. And that’s why there are “director’s cuts” of the first three “Lethal Weapon” movies that weren’t approved by Richard Donner. Those are simply extended cuts, like the needless “X-Men 1.5″ and “Spider-Man 2.5″ double-dips I’ve seen available. Deleted scenes are reinstated, but not because the director necessarily wanted them put back in.
All that being said, the following films are available in at least two different versions. Some I think have stronger director’s cuts, others stronger theatrical cuts. Let’s begin with the obvious.
Blade Runner
The DVD set I have of this film contains five (5) different cuts — the original 1982 theatrical version, the international version, the workprint, the 1992 director’s cut and the 2007 “final cut.” I’ve watched all of them, save for the workprint that I turned off at the halfway point. Now, let’s ignore the international version. I didn’t notice many differences between that one and the 1992 director’s cut. Ridley Scott oversaw the final cut, which I believe is his true director’s cut. So we can ignore the 1992 director’s cut as well. This really comes down to comparing the 1982 theatrical version to the final cut.
The major difference between the theatrical version and the final cut is Harrison Ford’s voiceover. It was decided that “Blade Runner” was too difficult to follow and a VO would lend the film a more noir-ish feel. So Harrison Ford was brought in to narrate certain portions of the movie, talking about how his ex-wife used to refer to him as “raw fish” and so forth. It’s fairly tacked on and useless, like most voiceover. The theatrical cut is also missing the “unicorn scene” that pointlessly suggests the Harrison Ford’s character, Rick Deckard, is a Replicant. It does, however, have a seemingly happier ending, where Deckard and Rachael drive off into the sunset, using footage that was originally shot for the opening of Kubrick’s “The Shining.” On the other hand, the final cut of the film has no voiceover, cleans up the special effects and drops the dopey final scene. I still don’t buy that Deckard is a Replicant, but I’ll agree to disagree with Ridley Scott on that one.
Better version: The Final Cut
Alien 3
Technically, there is no director’s cut of David Fincher’s “Alien 3.” When 20th Century Fox released the Alien Quadrilogy in 2003, they included two cuts of each film. For the third “Alien,” the set has the theatrical version and a workprint version that Fincher delivered to the studio. What’s a workprint, you ask? It’s a work-in-progress. The special effects aren’t completed, the dialogue isn’t sweetened, the score has a temp track. As far as “Alien 3″ goes, the workprint version is as close to the director’s cut as 20th Century Fox has in its vault. Fincher refused to work with the studio on overseeing an authentic director’s cut because the film is the very embodiment of a compromised work.
To their credit, Fox did what they could with the workprint, adding in subtitles for scenes where the dialogue is unclear, and using CGI for effects shots that were never finished before the film was released in 1991. The [un]finished product is vastly different from the theatrical version. “Alien 3″ in any form is not the crowd-pleasing actioner that James Cameron’s “Aliens” is. It’s a rare summer blockbuster that has a downer ending, not to mention a downer beginning and a downer middle. But where the theatrical version feels incomplete and unsatisfying, the workprint restores 30 to 45 minutes of additional footage and brings much more texture and character to the film. The Xenomorph bursts out of an ox rather than a dog, one of the loopier prisoners sets the creature free after the convicts manage to trap it, and most shocking off all, the chest-buster doesn’t explode out of Ripley as she plunges to her fiery death at the climax. It feels like a different film, not a great film, but something approaching greatness.
Better Version: The Workprint
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
I have to include an example of a film that has a better theatrical cut. I obviously couldn’t include James Cameron’s “The Abyss,” though I have some problems with the director’s cut of that film too. No, “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” has an essentially perfect theatrical version. For years after I got the Special Edition on VHS, I found myself exclusively revisiting the director’s cut. Now I’m convinced that the bits Cameron removed for the theatrical version don’t harm the film in any way. The implication of a director’s cut typically is that the theatrical version is lacking. I don’t think this is the case with “T2.”
Perhaps the most interesting segment that was excised from the theatrical version is a dream sequence where the late Kyle Reese pays Sarah Connor a visit while she’s in a mental hospital. The scene feels a little out of left field, and it doesn’t really advance the plot. I’m certain it was first on the list when they started making a list of things to cut. There are other character moments sprinkled throughout, including shots of the T-1000 beginning to malfunction in the steel plant at the climax. That’s something I’d've liked them to leave in. Still, the T-1000 seems more unstoppable without those few glitches he starts having. Dramatically, I can see why they’d want to drop that stuff.
Better Version: Theatrical Cut
The thing about theatrical cuts vs. director’s cuts is that it’s very subjective when it comes to which is the “better” version. I like both cuts of “Aliens.” I can’t remember anything about the director’s cut of “Gladiator,” so I guess prefer the theatrical version. And I’ve never bothered to watch any version but the director’s cut of “Kingdom of Heaven.” It also depends on the film. A movie that’s already great, like “Alien” or “T2,” is tough to improve upon. A flawed film like “Alien 3″ is a stronger candidate for a director’s cut because it gives viewers a completely different approach to the material. And that’s really what it’s all about, seeing the quintessential version of a movie you enjoy.
-Brad Lohan