RPG Articles

Watched this last night. It was about 10 minutes of awesome dispersed into 90+ minutes of crap.

The basic plot is that a super virus ran rampant through Scotland some 10 years ago, so Britain walled it in, killing anyone that came near the wall. We also learn that the surrounding waters are mined and patrolled, but you never see any of that.

The breakdown begins almost immediately. We see the initial closing of Scotland, and a bunch of people being killed. Somehow a little girl has an eye shot out. I have no idea what the deal is because it either just happened too fast or just wasn’t very well thought out. That part is ok. But then we’re expected to believe that this soldier, who is part of a group evacuating in a helicopter, will give up his life for this little girl with a bloody hole instead of an eye, without even questioning if she’s infected. I’m afraid that most people would have told her to sod off and find a different plot device. Instead we get a largely boring scene, and the little girl is given a note from her mommy and trundles off to presumably be a ward of the state.

Now we skip 10 years to the story’s present. The girl, Sinclair I guess (oddly “Vagrant Girl” has top billing in IMDb), is now some sort of cop, it’s never really clear what her actual office is. We see her using her newfangled cybernetic eye to spy on criminals and look around corners. The eye isn’t well thought out, and looks sort of silly. Not terrible, but there’s a little “what the hell?” vibe to it. After rolling around on the ground she just slips it back into her seemingly still organic socket, which is just eww. So one of the bad guys has ambushed her partner and puts a shotgun to his head.  She’s advancing towards him, he’s backing away, and, for no apparent reason she just keeps advancing until the dude slips and accidentally destroys the partner’s head. She kills the bad guy and looks queasy. The whole scene was pointless, and served only to make her alone without imparting any empathy at all. Oh, and she recorded everything with her eyeball.

Something that would have been nice with the eyeball thing would have been a few shots that made use of its perspective. It would have also been nice to make it an obvious prosthetic. I mean, sure, it’s like 30 years in the future, so I guess it’s possible, but it doesn’t seem like an economically devastated country would spend that kind of scratch on an orphan, even if she is also a cop/soldier/whatever. I digress, however, but seriously they could have made much better use of the eye as a cinematic device. It doesn’t even really serve as much of a plot device, so overall a straight up eye-patch would have served them better and saved a little budget.

Ok, so partner dies, Bob Hoskins, playing her CO, has some meandering talk with her. Blah blah blah. There’s absolutely no sense of energy or cohesion so far, and that never changes. All of the actors really do a great job too, but the script and direction is so absolutely wooden that they don’t have a prayer. This movie would have been at least an order of magnitude better if nearly all of the dialogue was stripped out and they just let the interactions between these actors convey the tone. This is especially true because almost all of the dialogue is either raw exposition or emotional tone, and the exposition is largely unneeded.

Moving on, another scene. Yes, like so many failed movies this one jumps from scene to scene without ever feeling like there’s a connection. You may as well be jumping through really repetitive alternate Earths. So now we find out that the mystery disease is on the loose again, via some vector that will never be questioned let alone revealed, but, quite conveniently, they’ve also discovered survivors in Scotland, so they think there’s a cure or something to be extracted from there.

Let’s examine what’s wrong and how it could be better. This is far too convenient. This is like some really bottom of the barrel type writing. Also, wouldn’t you have been studying this disease for 10 years anyway? There was bound to be plenty of samples. Before I mention how to make it better, you have to know that the jerkwad in the government, I don’t know his title, makes it clear that they should let the disease kill off the bulk of the lower class before deploying any kind of treatment. With that known the obvious, and quite used but still better than what they went with, path would be to have it so that they already have a cure, that they are the ones that released the disease, and that this whole mission to find one is a smokescreen to make the timetables play out. Instead we get some garbage.

Scotland is a no-fly zone for some reason. I understand monitoring traffic and restricting what can fly around there, but seriously, there’s no reason that I can think of to not allow your own intelligence gathering flights. It’s not like this is an anti-jet virus. Then Sinclair is spun some story about how they can’t just fly her team in because of the no-fly zone, which is just retarded. It could make some sense if you take the story into the timetable scenario, as just a line of unquestionable bullshit, but in the actual context it’s just straight bullshit.

Skip ahead. Our heroes are looking for a lab that was ran by a dude named Kane, someplace in Glasgow. Inevitably they’re attacked by Mad Max extras. Oh, and apparently in the future we lose night vision technology completely, despite it being available at Wal-Mart currently. The team is killed or captured depending on pay grade. There’s a pretty awesome feral girl that really gets into her role, but her character wad is blown way early. Also they cook a poor bastard, oddly in his clothes despite wanting to eat him. The vague indication of hunger being an issue is truly retarded since a few minutes before we see a countryside overrun with cattle.

Getting bored. Nutshell- We switch from city punks to the countryside, where it’s ye ren-fair all the time. There’s an _ok_ gladiator style showdown with Sinclair and The Black Knight, Ted or whatever his name was. They escape, the burgeoning love interest for Sinclair dies by multiple arrows, then it’s off to the races as we revisit what should be an interesting military station but is instead hideously dull, from which they get a fancy car and belt off to play Road Warrior. At this point the native girl asks what the car does, despite having seen cars and buses already in the film, in a place where she was, and yet more cars in the Mad Max road chase scene.

Skip further ahead. I’m bored just writing this, so let’s wrap up with just some consistent faults in the film, along with some good stuff.

The writing is terrible. It’s not even cliche, it’s just dull.
The cinematography is pure crap. It skips around stroboscopically and is generally more headache generating than the now omni-present shaky-cam.
Areas that could have been of interest contain nothing or are never gotten back to, while hideously boring crap is revisted over and over.
The car Sinclair ends up going randomly Mad Max in is hardly blemished, despite crashing through an exploding bus. Yeah, you read that right.

Good stuff.
Sets and costumes were generally well done and entertaining.
The actors were wonderful.

There is only one truly good scene in the movie. It’s at the very end. Sinclair takes the head of the Mad Maxian’s leader back to them and it’s pretty obvious that she’s just taken over. The look on her face is this pitch perfect expression of someone about to go nuts with total freedom and power, after having lived in a repressed soceity for so long. I really like that this is where you leave her as well, opening her actual ending up to your imagination, which even if you’re dull will be a dozen times better than what these people would write.

This movie could have been great, but you would have had to fire a whole mess of people and get a really strong editor onboard. It needed gutting and de-bullshitting.

Christ this was a long and dull post.

Oh lord. If you can get someone to strip an hour or two out of this abortion, then watch it for the awesome visuals. Looking further into the title, it seems it was based on a 70’s anime. Now, this will be tough to believe, but the anime storyline actually makes ten-thousand percent more sense. There are spoilers here, so don’t read on if you care.

What the crap man. Here’s what I could figure out about Casshan, the anime- Pollution is killing the plants, so Dr. Azuma builds robots to… somehow… protect and presumably encourage plant life. Their leader decides that eliminating the humans is the only long term solution, and Azuma’s son turns himself into a cyborg so he can take on the robots.

Nice, simple-ish, and with at least the potential for some meaningful moral tension.

The movie, despite receiving nothing but blowjobs from the public, breaks down into almost totally insensible crap.

There’s some war going on… some ethnic purging… so on. Dr. Azuma is researching Neo-Cells… which are like stem cells but apparently grow tentacles, and can be used to create tissues which will adapt to any host, avoiding rejection. So far, so good. His son runs off to the war, to do the patriotic thing. His wife is dying from the Industrial Disease, which is presumably what drives his research, though the connection is a little tenuous, but hey, I can let some vagueness slide for the sake of entertainment. His son dies, though his spirit seems to still be running around.

Some soldiers are bringing his body, for whatever reason, to the same place as Dr. Azuma’s lab. Lightning strikes, burrowing down into the lab, where a pool of Neo-Cell tissues are being kept. The lightning solidifies into a sort of zigzag pillar. Yeah… ok, I can let that slide too. The tissues start pulling themselves together, whole people crawl out, and start being shot down by guards. Eventually several of them make it out, dragging Azuma’s wife along, because she showed concern for one of their wounded.

The son, Tetsuya, is carried into the Neo-Cell vat by his father, and is brought back to life. He’s all superhumanly jacked up now, like the Neo-Sapiens, so another scientist drops him into a pressure cooker which grows armor around him, in order to “prevent him from tearing himself apart”. Whatever dudicus. So far, I’m still forgiving and enjoying this.

The Neo-Sapiens trudge into some high assed, snowy mountain range, where they find a castle filled with robots and robot factories. Now, looking into it, this is related to the original show. That aside, it didn’t make any sense in the context of this story. Not at any single point. Ever. Still, I let it go, but my eye began to wander some, and disbelief was beginning to seep back in.

Eventually bad guys cause Tetsuya to be released from the pressure cooker, and he kicks some robot ass. Like that, I’m ready to forgive, because these scenes are fantastic.

Bunch of crap happens on all fronts, and now I’m skipping about 6 hours into the movie. Turns out that the Neo-Sapiens are reformed villagers, killed by the soldiers, Tetsuya included. And everyone indicates that Dr. Azuma’s research never produced his magic cells. So… why the fuck do all these guys have super powers then? Not to mention just getting up from being dead AND dismembered. There’s some vague bullshit symbolism which you _could_ take as divine interference, but fuck that, it’s just lazy and amateur writing. We also get to see some plants, which are hyper important to the anime storyline but are completely unrelated to the movie story.

Finally, the last Neo-Sapien releases the Metal Gear, I mean… a giant construct with missiles, cannons, and a nuclear bomb. Which makes as much sense as anything by this time. Around this point you’ve heard no less than 8 speeches about how war is wrong, and that you shouldn’t hurt people different than you. Not strung out through the film either, but almost back to back.

So, Tetsuya tries to stop the bomb from going off and fails. He lives, somehow, and so does his chick Luna, somehow. His father shows up, to take his dead wife (Industrial Disease got her), but Tetsuya won’t let him resurrect her “because of all the suffering caused by his coming back”. What? All homie did was kill robots and 4 people killing civillians, mostly with robots. Yeah, awesome logic there super-fuckup. Anyway, his dad shoots Luna. She survived a ground zero atomic weapon, but apparently bullets are her weakness. I can’t even remember if Tetsuya kills him, that’s how retarded this shit got. Anyway. Luna gets back up because her Neo-Cells activate. Yeah, re-read that and don’t ask me to explain. The writer couldn’t, so I have no chance. So, they hug, and the souls of the dead on the battlefield rise up and boil them into nothing.

Then there’s a 20 minute montage of people running around being happy.

First, I realize that nobody reads this, but I have to try. So, with that out of the way-

Movie Reviewers- Make sure you can remember things longer than my dog. A sequel shouldn’t have to retell the previous film(s), since that’s an aggravating waste of time for those of us with normal IQs. Also, a movie shouldn’t ever have a flashback to something that we watched happen earlier in the film. While this benefits people who can’t remember if they’re diabetic or not, the rest of us are going to want the film makers to die.

In short, if you aren’t sure that you can follow a movie well enough to tell someone about it, here’s a quick test. Pick up a Mad Magazine. Did you get a genuine laugh? Yeah? Then no, you aren’t able to read and comprehend, thus it is extremely unlikely you can understand any kind of story, and should likely just off yourself.

First off, this was a great action flick, and an above average zombie movie. Lot’s of tension, some scene misdirection to enhance surprises, and whatnot. Madam Jovovich is stunning. And that, apparently, is an issue. Rather than admit a woman has pores, every closeup of her face has this radioactive retouch applied, making it look like she’s been using radioactive mutant seed for moisturizer. Why? I mean.. damn man. Why’d a perfectly good scene have to be ruined like that? Still, well worth watching, it’s just weird and distracting.

I saw some people indicating there’d be a fourth movie, and while you could certainly make one, it’s hardly required.

Just as a side note, if you’re a security guy/enforcer for some mega-corp, and some lady comes strolling through your guys, taking them down like mannequins, take a moment to consider throwing your gun into the far corner, laying down, hands on your head, and begging to be allowed to be tied up in a zombie safe closet. It might still not work, but it’s worth a shit, ’cause that chick is gonna kill your ass.

I was amazed. It didn’t suck. Not only that, but I really enjoyed it. Sure, there was some stuff that I feel could have been done better, and things I wanted to see that weren’t there, but it was relatively small points. Nits. Seriously though, the story was clearcut and solid, the characters were silly but enjoyable, and the animation was the same amazing stuff I saw in The Host.

Totally unexpected though. I mean, Michael Bay has been behind some good stuff, but also complete trash. There were several writers involved, none of whom have a record indicating a sure shot of quality. Yet here we are.

Go see it and save fanboy bitching for someone who’s retarded enough to care about canonical continuity in a series that existed solely to sell toys.

Also, if you’re going to sneak a camcorder into the theater, maybe at least try to hide it, and consider getting gear made after 1993.

Well, I expected it to be bad. Like stupid bad. However, while it was not as enjoyable as the previous films, it was a lot of fun. If you ignore two things-

The main bad guy is a total douche, and is apparently retarded. He’s like a special-ed villain.

Everything shown or mentioned about computers is, largely, the same trash that Hollywood always spits out.

Still, the action sequences were good, the banter ran from better than average to funny, and they employed that little French monkey-man from District B-13.