Orca and Ripoff Flicks

I've acknowledged The Big Picture as one of my favourite web series before, and its best moments often come in October when "MovieBob" does an annual feature called "Schlocktober." For a full month Bob gives us episodes on "obscure and/or bizarre horror and monster movies," basically ensuring that Christmas comes an extra four times a year for horror/monster movie nerds. This year Bob has decided to feature Orca as one of his movie picks, and the results are fantastic. Give the episode a watch below (major spoilers for Orca):

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Schlocktober 2012: Orca

This video brings up a long-time curiosity of mine: movies that were green-lit strictly to feed off the popularity of blockbuster hits. One of my all time favourite films, Ridley Scott's 1979 masterpiece Alien, is perhaps the best example of this phenomenon. Dan O'Bannon's script was approved for production largely by virtue of the fact that Star Wars was an unprecedented hit in 1977, leading movie execs to say "People love space!" and fast track potential contenders for said space-fans' money. But the story of Alien is a serious diamond in the rough type scenario, as more often than not these "ripoff flicks" end up as poor shadows of the films that inspired them. Just watch Moonraker and you'll see what I mean.

As Bob indicates in the video, the release of Jaws had a similar effect to that of Star Wars, and Orca was one of many attempts to steal Steven Spielberg's crown as the king of underwater horror (to date none have succeeded, IMHO). Another illustrious contender was Joe Dante's Piranha, a parody of the many Jaws imitations. It is notable both for being "the best of the Jaws ripoffs" in Spielberg's own estimation (source: Wikipedia), and because James Cameron made his directorial debut with the sequel, Piranha II: The Spawning. Also the hilarious 2010 remake, Piranha 3D, featured a 3D underwater nude ballet sequence that might be most exploitative thing ever filmed.

The ripoff flicks phenomenon has intrigued me for years because when things go right (see: all of the aforementioned examples besides Moonraker) it's the perfect confluence of the financial and artistic motivations behind filmmaking. Granted, things tend to go wrong more often than not (see: Moonraker), but the best examples make all of the worst movies worth it (others might not agree with me). Hell, the superhero film genre is itself an example of this phenomenon, and I'd watch Catwoman a hundred times if that's what it took to get The Dark Knight. I might revisit this subject in more depth in a future post, but for now it's enough to say that ripoff flicks present a more nuanced picture of the business side of filmmaking.

Human Sexuality in Under Four Minutes

Hank from VlogBrothers has put together a fantastic and concise video explaining the surprisingly complex subject of human sexuality. This is my first experience of VlogBrothers but it certainly won't be my last: this kind of clear and engaging discussion of difficult topics is the stuff that Internet legend is made of. It's a quick and worthwhile watch so without further ado I invite you to get to it below:

(Big thanks to Chelsey for the heads up)

Max Rambles and the Films of Summer 2012

Ok, so it's been a while since I've posted anything here. I mean, to be honest this year has generally been pretty quiet, but since April I've only posted five times. That's probably the sparsest period I've had since I started this blog (in 2008!) and I want to take a moment to address it. A lot of that has to do with the fact that I was crazy busy this summer, but a lot of it also has to do with a combination of reader feedback and the movies that came out this summer.

First and foremost, let's be frank about the fact that this is predominantly a movie blog. It started as a space for me to review movies, and although I've definitely branched out the common thread that has kept me writing has always been film criticism. This is clear from the fact that all five of my posts this summer were about movies (two about Prometheus, two about Cabin In the Woods, and one about The Avengers). I started writing here as a way to continue to critically engage with film after I finished my undergrad, and that continues to be the primary motivation for my "rambles."

Over the years I've taken a lot of flack for being overly negative. I've mentioned this before and my defence has always been "I'm critical because I love film and I expect a lot from it." I stand by that statement, but there's also another facet to why I'm critical so much more often than I'm reverent. The fact is that when you watch a lot of media you begin to be more critical with what you're watching because, frankly, if something's not good there are better things you can be doing with your time. There's so much good film and television out there that it's frustrating to waste time with bad stuff. That's not to say that I subsist on a purely high-brow movie diet, far from it! But competent construction and some sort of value are qualities that I do look for and hope to find in everything I watch, from comfort TV to film fest fare.

Which brings me to the summer of 2012. This was a summer that I went into with a lot of excitement. I mean, just look at the roster of movies that came out: The Avengers, Prometheus, The Dark Knight Rises, Brave. That list includes a new Pixar film, Ridley Scott's return to science fiction and the Alien-mythos, and Christopher Nolan's (supposedly) final Batman movie, who wouldn't be excited by that line-up? And yet for all the potential, the summer proved to be a bit of a bust. Prometheus was deeply disappointing for a litany of reasons that I've just barely touched upon in my two blog posts on the movie. Brave was one of the reviewed Pixar movies of all time, second only to obvious cash-grab Cars 2. The Dark Knight was so shockingly mediocre that I've had a hard time expressing my feelings about it in writing (although I did make an attempt elsewhere).  The Avengers was the sole bright point in the summer and not only did it come right at the beginning, it was also a mess of a film in its own right. Hell, it was the epitome of a bottom-line minded, studio construction that was coherent in spite of itself, thanks only to the saving grace that is Joss Whedon. That is what we have to look back on as the high watermark for the summer of 2012.

So as you can tell, I don't have a lot of good things to say about the movies that came out this summer. On top of being just ridiculously busy this summer, my general dissatisfaction with the films I saw wasn't exactly inspiring from a writing perspective. Not only was it difficult to imagine picking up a pen (so to speak) to crucify movies that I had been so excited to see, I also wasn't exactly eager to use my spare time to be publicly negative. It's exhausting to be so consistently negative about something you love, and this summer just plain did me in with its general unremarkableness (and that's being a bit generous, IMHO).

The word on the Internet is that the art house scene was full of great stuff this summer, and I fully intended to see what I missed throughout the fall. Hopefully I'll find more gems like Martha Marcy May Marlene, Incendies, or Cabin in the Woods (which admittedly wasn't an art house movie by any stretch but was 100% awesome). Those are just a few examples of the types of movies that started this whole project and keep me going through the long, dreary hours of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,  Young Adult (too awful to warrant a post, trust me), and Prometheus (yes, I did just equate Ridley Scott's latest flick with Transformers, deal with it). I also have high hopes for at least a few movies coming out this fall, namely Looper, The Master, and Django Unchained.

I don't go looking for bad movies, or for flaws in decent ones, I've just seen enough to know that films can and should be better than they often are. Hopefully my ramblings here convey my sentiments on the potential (realized or not) of the films I review, as opposed to a general sense of dissatisfaction about the medium. That would be the complete opposite of my intent with this whole project.

More Grumblings About Prometheus

Red Letter Media has released their own unique take on Prometheus, and it's appropriately just a series of questions that point out the logical flaws in the film. It takes them four minutes. Yep.

Even after all those (extremely valid) questions, there are still yet more logical problems that I wish had been addressed. Like, why did they never mention the whole squid-alien-baby thing again after the sequence except in an off-hand line in which Michael Fassbender mocks Noomi Rapace for still being alive. That really bugged me. A simple "Holy shit! That was a really horrible thing that just happened to me! Maybe the most horrible thing that's ever happened to anyone ever!" would have sufficed. One line of dialogue, that's all I ask...

Topless Robot has posted a fantastic two-part FAQ in which Rob Bricken struggles through the mess of a plot, and then tries to sort through the meaning of it all. It's a great read if you've got some time, I thoroughly recommend it.

Last but not least, I want to share a fictional text message thread between Noomi Rapace and one of the Engineers. It's worth a read in addition to all of the stuff above, if only for what has to be my favourite dig on modern cinema this year: "All will be revealed in James Cameron's PROMETHEUSES"

Reviews I Wish I Had Written: Adam Quigley's Hit Piece on Prometheus

Adam Quigley over at /Film has written a great review of Prometheus. You should avoid it like the plague if you have yet to see the film, but it says just about everything I felt coming out of Ridley Scott's latest... thing... 

I don't completely agree with Adam's read of the "big reveal" at the end of the movie, nor did I feel that the android David was the most interesting character in the film, but that said his overall take on the movie is 1:1 with my sentiments. As such, I'm ripping a few of his larger and more on-point quotes to help give my take on Prometheus. Spoilers and unbridled negativity abound from here on out.

Prometheus may seem like more sophisticated fare, with a promise of greater significance deeply entrenched in the oft-mentioned subject matter (i.e., uncovering the origin of human life), but the movie utterly fails at tying its ideas and its monstrous happenings together. Despite feigning interest in probing life’s most pertinent mysteries, the film has nothing to say. It asks — literally asks, aloud — weighty questions without any interest in exploring the answers. The film expects you to do the heavy lifting, as though it should be rewarded for even daring to ask the questions to begin with. 

...

Oh, what, you have a problem with the lack of meaningful plot resolution? You’ve completely missed the point! It’s about the desire to find answers, not the answers themselves! Why try to satisfy you with answers when life doesn’t have any satisfying answers to give? Check mate, motherfuckers!

Is this seriously the point of Prometheus? We’ve waited this long to have our questions about the Alien mythology answered, only to be told that expecting satisfying answers to those questions is actually reflective of the folly of mankind? That’s it? 

How profound. Nevermind that I only sought the answers to those questions to begin with because Ridley Scott chose to make a movie that asks those questions.

This might be the thing that bugged me the most about Prometheus: the movie pretends to ask big philosophical questions about life and creation and faith, etc. ad naseum, but then says literally nothing substantive about anything. Seriously, there's a line right at the end of the movie where David asks Noomi Rapace basically "Why do you want to know the answer to [insert big question here]?" and her response is, verbatim, "I can understand because I'm human but you can't because you're a robot."

For fucking real?!

The movie's big point is that we should be curious about the big questions or else we're just robots, and that's ostensibly bad now? Never mind that this message is thematically and literally incoherent since the entire movie has poised David as the most "human" character of the bunch in terms of his (flirtatiously hinted at) desires to be loved/accepted/not treated like part of the decore. He has one of Prometheus' rare great moment earlier in the film when he confronts a human scientist who's frustrated about not being able to meet and speak with his creator (it makes sense in context). When the man tells David that humanity made androids "Because we could," David retorts by asking "Can you imagine how disappointing it would be for you to hear the same answer from your creators?” It's a moment of sheer brilliance and seems to point towards a thematic structure that interrogates both the reasons for human existence and our vain desires for lofty rationales BUT NOPE. We get nothing of the sort and none of that matters by the movie's end! Instead the big conclusion is that it's bad and inhuman that David doesn't have a higher level dissatisfaction with unanswered questions about existence, which is ironically my major takeaway from Prometheus!

But I digress. My apologies, Prometheus is an all-over-the-place kind of affair and so I'm sure this review must read that way too. Back to Adam:

Stripped from its Alien roots, Prometheus barely has a story to call its own. A lot happens in it, but the events play out with so little thought or urgency that almost nothing seems to happen at all. By the time it hits its third act, the film has completely devolved into generic sci-fi drivel, rushing through each incongrous payoff without bothering to properly root them in any sort of intellectually or emotionally substantiated context. Scene after scene, the film subjects its expert team of stock horror dummies to inactivity and death, completely devaluing the inherent thoughtfulness of the themes at hand, and in doing so removing any trace of intelligent design in a story that’s all about tracing back the roots of intelligent design. But then, maybe that irony is not lost on the writers, who treat the film’s actual gods like dummies, too.

And finally, the don't-call-it-a-money-shot summation:

To call Prometheus inconsequential would be a severe understatement. This movie is a trifling blip of narrative disarray, so lacking in anything resembling an intelligible throughline or purpose that I can’t help but wonder why there was any incentive to tell this story at all. Prometheus isn’t just bad; it actively detracts from the very mythology it’s trying to enhance, reducing the Alien legacy to little more than an accidental byproduct of a mind-numbingly stupid expedition.

Yep. That's pretty much the gist of it. When asked what I thought of the movie, I've summed up my thoughts as "What the fuck did I just watch?" and "I'm frustrated." Because really that's how Prometheus left me: frustrated that a movie with so much going for it (strong cast, strong crew, strong franchise roots, a legitimately interesting premise) does so little and purports to say so much. It's thematically scattered, it's plot is nigh incoherent, it expressly refuses to address its most interesting facets, and worst of all it has a self-righteous attitude about the whole thing. It's very tone poises Prometheus as a critic-proof endeavour along the lines of Tree of Life, though even mentioning the two films in the same breath has me mentally gagging. 

People often ask me why I'm so down on so many movies here on this blog, and I think it's a fair question. I'm critical of movies because I love them, and I expect a lot from them. I don't want everything to be high art, but when I sit down to give a film a few hours of my life I expect more than just a way to pass the time. I expect it to give me something interesting, something thoughtful, something that knows what it wants to do/say and does so competently.

I expected Prometheus to do what every piece of its advertising promised it would: tell me an interesting, intelligent, high-brow sci-fi horror story about the origins of mankind and somehow tie it into the Alien franchise. The movie we got wasn't intelligent or high-brow, and I'd barely call it interesting. The first words that come to mind are "stupefying," "infuriating," "insulting" (although that might be the Alien fanboy in me lashing out), and above all else "frustrating." After all the hype, all the "it shares some DNA with Alien" nonsense, all the spoiler-filled trailers and incredible viral marketing, and all the sublime mystique that fans have enjoyed since 1979, Prometheus is mess of a film that's less than the sum of its parts.

I expected more. Silly me.