Tag Archives: Movies

Thought of the Week (Late): They Ruined the Movie

star-trek-2-into-darkness-posterI just went to see Star Trek Into Darkness today. I will say that I still don’t particularly understand the title reference unless it’s purely poetic, but it was a good movie. Full of action, laughs and tears, with a near overload of Star Trek references for the geeks (myself included).

There’s a lot about the movie that I won’t talk about because I don’t want to spoil it, but there are some scenes and things that occur that were genuinely shocking to me. And not because of their import in the world of Star Trek (although that, too, is a factor), but because I genuinely didn’t expect it. I had not been prepared beforehand; it had not been in the trailer.

And I loved it.

Take a moment to watch the trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness. It’s riveting, as of course all good trailers are. It introduces our characters: Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty and the gang, and the bad guy – that guy from Sherlock. It sets the tone (dark, obviously) and features back-to-back sequences of explosions and stunts, interspersed with the slow-downs of momentary reflection. Ultimately, here’s what we know: a madman is on the loose and Kirk et al. are off to stop him. Along the way buildings get blown up, people get hurt, there’s a shot with a giant shadow-Enterprise, and a tantalizing shot of a spaceship crashing headlong into the ocean.

I can now safely tell you that you don’t know half of the movie.

Sadly, not all movies are like that these days. As we waited for the feature to begin, we quite naturally sat through some trailers for new, up-and-coming movies. Among them were World War Z, Anchorman: The Legend Continues, The Lone Ranger, Ender’s Game (yeah, did you know they’re making a movie out of that?) and Elysium. Of those, the one I know the least about – and am therefore the most excited to see – is Anchorman.

Compare that to The Lone Ranger.

Now let me tell you about it. A city man returns to his home in the West, where his brother is a sheriff. He’s soon deputized, only to be ambushed by bad guys and witness his brother’s death. Rescued by a very odd native american, he learns to hide his identity to seek revenge for his brother’s murder, only to find the bad guys aren’t quite what they seem. It turns out it wasn’t a random ambush, but the very lawmakers themselves that killed his brother, in a conspiracy to smuggle some kind of valuable ore (coal, maybe?) and make a fortune out of it.

All of that, from the trailer. I didn’t look at IMDb, honest. I’ll ignore that it’s based on a previous premise, because I haven’t seen that either.

The days of the trailer as a medium of art is nigh at an end. Once, movie trailers were like this:

What a masterpiece. Every element of the story is in there, from the characters to the plot and the inevitable deaths to the tone and style set by the dark lighting and high, atonal strings. But it’s structured in a seemingly random sequence so that so one part can be associated with another. It’s not linear. It hints at a story, without actually telling it.

Here’s another fantastic trailer from the past:

What do I know? Nothing, except it’s about aliens and I’m going to crap my pants.

I’m well aware of the dangers of cross-comparison. The Lone Ranger isn’t Alien. It isn’t Psycho. It isn’t even Wild Wild West (actually, it is, but at least …Wild West‘s trailer didn’t give the entire story away). It isn’t a horror movie. It isn’t sci-fi. To be honest, it probably isn’t even a western. From the trailer, it pretty much looks like another excuse for Johnny Depp to do his thing (though I will admit that I find his thing rather enjoyable).

Here’s the thing. Every movie – every story, for that matter – needs to have a ‘reveal’: a moment in the plot where you say, “Wow – I wasn’t expecting that!” I got that with Star Trek Into Darkness. Several times. I got that with Psycho when I first watched it. Hell, I even got it with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. But I very much doubt I’m going to get it with The Lone Ranger. Much like I didn’t get it with the plethora of sequels to Pirates of the Caribbean. Nor did I with Captain America: The First Avenger. Or with (I hate to admit it ’cause I really liked the movie) Juno. And a score of others.

It’s in the nature of storytelling: you don’t give it all away, or no one will come to watch the damn thing in the first place! Actually they probably will, but that’s just even worse.

Sigh. Here’s to movies I don’t know everything about before I go to see it.

Oh, and don’t even get me started on movies that are based on absolutely anything but original ideas. Can you believe they made a movie out of rock ’em sock ’em robots?

Satis Logo with ©

Movie Night: The Mask of Zorro

Year: 1998

Director: Martin Campbell

Production Company: TriStar Pictures

Leads: Antonio Banderas, Anthony Hopkins

The-Mask-of-ZorroThe Mask of Zorro is one of those delightful film that really doesn’t require any effort at all on the part of the audience. It’s the epitome of a blockbuster: tragedy, comedy, famous actors, plenty of action, mandatory explosions, and a plot that is simply silky smooth.

What happens? In a nutshell, Don Rafael Montero is the cruel dictator, forced out of California as it tries to assert its independence. Zorro of course intervenes, and Don Rafael tracks him back to the home of Don Diego de la Vega, puts two and two together, and tries to kill him. Instead, Diego’s wife is killed, he’s captured, and Don Rafael takes his infant daughter as his own.

Fast-forward twenty years, and Don Rafael returns from Spain as the savior of California as it falls under attack from the Mexican army. Old Zorro escapes, finds Alejandro, trains him to be young Zorro, and the stage is set for a plethora of escapades and adventures, culminating in the double battle of Diego against Rafael, and Alejandro against Captain Harrison Love, who killed his brother.

The honest truth is that, like so many blockbusters, the plot really doesn’t matter. What matters are the laughs, the gasps, the awws and the cheers; the sword fighting, the explosions, the love interest and sexual tension that’s never quite relieved. Anyone remember this scene?

There are a million and one things wrong with it (never mind continuity; how exactly does one cut a dress from a person with a few swipes of a sword and not at the very least nick them?), but it just simply doesn’t matter. It’s fun.

And therein lies the genius of the movie. It’s a feel-good film. You come away with the sense that you’ve spent the past two hours of your life well, because you enjoyed yourself. Never mind that you could have been watching something with substance, like…like…well I can’t think of any Westerns with substance, but you get the point. It’s the ultimate switch-off movie, a wild west version of a Die Hard movie (and infinitely better than Wild Wild West, as it happens).

Little Satis, of course, loved every moment of it, bar the smooching, and spent the following two days flying around the house with a cape and a stick, brandishing it at us every chance he got. He enjoyed it; I enjoyed it; time well spent.

What are your favorite thought-free blockbusters?

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Movie Night: Jurassic Park

Year: 1993

Director: Steven Spielberg

Production Company: Universal Pictures

Leads: Sam Neill, Laura Dern

Jurassic ParkI’ll admit to being caught up in the hype of Jurassic Park‘s recent 3D re-release, and it gave me that hankering to see it again you get with a good movie you haven’t seen in a really long time. I didn’t go to see it in the theater, though – no 3D for me, thank you very much. I bought it in HD on iTunes instead.

Oh, what a treat it was to revisit this cinematic masterpiece. And when I say cinema, I really mean visual: I don’t think anyone can claim the plot isn’t as full of holes as the dinosaur DNA it purports to use to generate real-life sauropods. Considering that the film is twenty years old now I can give it some slack; a lot of the discoveries and advances in paleontology have happened in the past decade or so (did anyone know that birds are now taxonomically considered living dinosaurs?).

But whether he can pick a good story or not, Steven Spielberg knows his visuals, and in Jurassic Park he pulled out all the stops. It’s truly telling that only now, after twenty years, does the CGI begin to show through. The effects used at the time were monumentally groundbreaking, and he used such a clever mix of miniatures, animatronics and CGI that it even today is hard to discern the truly fake stuff from the tangible, real-world models.

My biggest concern in approaching it with a nine-year-old, of course, was that Jurassic Park has some pretty intense scenes, and I remember being scared the first time I watched it – how was Little Satis going to react? Remember this scene?

Jurassic Park - 11 - Where's the goat - the goat leg lands on the roof of the jeep

Or this one?

CaptionContest1

Steven Spielberg seems to have a thing for severed limbs.

But surprisingly, he didn’t seem too fazed. There were moments when he asked to snuggle, but at the end of it all, he stood up and said, “That was one of the best movies ever!” I thought he might have nightmares (I know I did), but he slept sound. Kids these days.

I’m glad I bought it, because it’s one of those movies that you end up wanting to watch over and over again (now I want Forrest Gump for some reason). I really didn’t expect the visuals to hold up nearly as well as they do, and even though my eye is better trained to look out for the tricks now, I could still very much sit back and enjoy the film for itself; the technology (ironically) never got in the way of the film. The scene with the breathing triceratops still blows my mind to this day.

Picture 23

★ ★ ★ ★ ★