Reflections on the 47 Ronin trailer

It's no secret now that I've become a rather big fan of Samurai movies.  Films like Yojimbo, Sanjuro, and others like The Hidden Fortress are bread and butter entertainment for me.  And Seven Samurai is among my favorite films of all time.

So when I heard there was a remake of the classic tale of the 47 Ronin in the works my inner Japanese geek's heart went all aflutter.  See, the history of the 47 Ronin is true, having happened in the early part of the 18th century.  The story is held in reverence in that culture, achieving a status similar to the legends of King Arthur in ours.  It is a story not only of battle and courage, but also of honor.  The 47 Ronin in question are Samurai servants of a liege-lord who is dishonored and forced to commit seppuku.  They bide their time, plan a well-thought out attack, and after a long wait strike hard and fast against the man who dishonored their master.  It is the ultimate example of the bushido code at work.  What's more, while the story has been told in Japanese television and film many times, there is no single definitive version nor a single film that is well known to Western audiences.  In other words, this is a great story with a fantastic pedigree that is simply begging to be well made again today.

Needless to say, I got excited about the prospect of 47 Ronin, releasing this Christmas.  I was even cautiously excited still when I learned it would star Keanu Reeves.

Our favorite Japanese actor, Keanu Reeves

Then I saw the trailer, and all hope died.

Remember the key concepts that make the story so legendary: 1) it's true.  and 2) It is about honor and loyalty (bushido).

What I immediately noticed about the trailer is that there is an abundance of people throwing fireballs with their hands, turning into dragons, and evidently floating upside-down while making spiders.  A lot of weird, unreal fantasy nonsense.  They've taken a true story and made it something that seems more at home in middle earth, or in dungeons and dragons.  Color me flabbergasted.

Then of course they've taken out the emphasis on honor and loyalty and made the emphasis action.  I can't be entirely sure based on this trailer, but it even seems the 47 hire or persuade an outsider to join or lead them in their battle.  This entire concept is so anti-bushido that I don't know what to do with it.

What we're left with is a movie that seems to want to be Pirates of the Caribbean, The Matrix, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, The Hobbit, and Mortal Kombat all rolled into one.  It's inexplicable, obviously derivative, cheesy, and hopelessly muddled.  This movie could have been great.  Instead, I've seen two minutes of clips and I'm utterly disappointed.

What was the "creative" thought process that could have led to this point?  Perhaps someone says, "Let's make a film about this true story of honor."  Then someone else says "Yeah!  And let's change everything so it's fake and is about sword fighting dragons!"

It's as insulting as if someone were to make Abraham Lincoln into some supernatural vampire hunter.

Top Gun (1986)

This week I made up for a blind spot in my cinematic history.  I saw Top Gun for the first time.  Yes, I think I'm the only child of the 80's who hadn't seen it yet.  Oh, I knew all about it.  I knew Goose died.  I knew that it was packed with terrible 80's music.  I knew he traveled the highway to the dangerzone.  And I'd seen practically every scene at some time in my life.  But I had never actually seen the whole thing from start to finish.

And now that I have I feel confident in saying this: Top Gun is a fairly bad movie.  The story is forgettable, giving no real reason to care about either the characters or the "Top Gun" competition.  The music is horrible and dates the film rather badly.  The editing is among the worst ever, as the film makers tried to use stock footage of the jets to fit their story, with the result that often an F14 that is supposed to be behind the MIG is for a moment pictured in front of it.  And there are plenty of little editing issues like that.

But the biggest issue by far is the acting.  I swear, when Tom Cruise was acting all broken up that Goose had died I thought I'd have to fast forward.  Either that, or use a spoon to induce vomiting.  Honestly, I have no idea why Cruise made such a big splash about that era in Hollywood -the man had as much talent for acting as a cat has talent for singing (thankfully he has improved at least a bit).

So what we are left with is bluster, posture, and a bit of awkward charm, all set to music we'd prefer to forget ever existed.  Oh, and those actors had NO idea how to play volleyball.

Entertainment: 5/10
Artistic value: 3/10
Technical merit: 4/10

Overall: 4/10

P.S. I wonder how many young men signed up for the navy thinking they'd be in Top Gun, and ended up swabbing the deck for 4 years?

The Expendables 2 (2012)

The premise of The Expendables (and thus also the sequel) is get as big a cast together of the greatest action stars of the last 30 years and have fun.  Plot is non-existent and acting is clearly not a priority.  Everything is secondary to the cast, and having the cast blow things up spectacularly.

The Expendables was fun.  Stupid fun, but fun.  The Expendables 2 on the other hand, is stupid and boring, with little to recommend it.  It ought to be great, but the cast is reduced to bad and tired one-liners that reference their glory days, and the action is simply "hero shots" of our cast as they fire heavy weapons and kill the bad guys.  Explosions are frequent, the body count is huge, but the action is simply dull.  Without a plot to care about, tons of action simply becomes mindless drivel.

The idea of having an action movie not take itself seriously is great.  The execution on this one is terrible.  The word "Expendable" means superfluous, something that can be destroyed without loss.  Nothing could be a better description of this movie.

Entertainment: 4/10
Artistic value: 2/10
Technical merit: 3/10

Overall: 4/10

Sharknado (2013)

This post is dedicated to Matt.  Thank you for drawing my attention to this "movie," and thus "enriching" my life.

"You know, I have one simple request.  And that is to have sharks with laser beams attached to their heads!"  So said Dr. Evil, and we all laughed, because such a thing was clearly ludicrous and stupid.  It was funny.

Now the entire concept of stupid has a movie.  That movie is Sharknado.

From the people that brought us such stellar and cerebral films as Sharktopus (it's a shark!  It's an octopus!  It's both!) and Dinoshark comes Sharknado, the latest travesty to challenge Plan 9 from Outer Space for the honor of being Worst Movie Ever.

It's a tornado!  It's sharks!  It's a sharknado!

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I did not watch Sharknado.  I did, however, watch a few clips and read a summary.  The clips were pretty much all the action stuff with the titular tornado-composed-of sharks.  From what I saw I'm fairly confident that I don't want to injure my brain by watching the "plot development" or "character development" parts.

This then is what I saw:

• A guy was skeetshooting sharks out of the air with a pistol.  100 pound sharks, knocked out of the air because they were hit by a pistol round.  Not anything about the previous two sentences makes the least bit of sense.
• There was a shark biting through the roof of a car to get at the people inside.  As though a shark's first thought wouldn't be "how can I get back in the water?"  No, of course if a shark was yanked out of the water by a tornado and thrown on a moving car it's immediate reaction would be "I need to get to the chewy center of this Chevy."
• A guy used a chainsaw to slice a shark in half lengthwise instead of being eaten.  Giant shark, hurled at 100 mph at some dude, but because he held a chainsaw it was instantly sliced in half.  Cool?  No.
• Once on land, the sharks were crawling toward people.  I'm not even kidding.  Those same people were seemingly powerless to get away.
• If someone fell down, sharks would land on top of them to eat them.
• Sharks in the tornado could control their movement and fly.
• Sharks exploding when contacting a powerline.
• Sharks roared like lions.  'Cause sharks have lungs to do that.

Somewhere out there a guy wrote this mess.  Then some other guy decided to spend money to make it.  Actors destroyed their career by being in it (not that they had any ability anyway, as this movie ably demonstrates).  And now people everywhere are passing up the opportunity to see good movies to watch this stupidity instead.  That's just sad to me.

And they are making a sequel.  Sharknado 2.  Evidently it gets sharknadoier.  Perhaps it could have ninja sharks or something.  Inevitably there will be the spin offs Earthquack (an earthquake causes the ground to become ducks!) TigerWave (a tsunami carries a ship full of deadly tigers into the heart of the city!  Splash Roar Argh!) and Volecano (it's an eruption of lava!  No, it's an eruption of small rodents that will ruin our lawns!  Oh the humanity!)

Entertainment: no.
Artistic Value: sharknado. (that means none)
Technical merit: they should be ashamed.

Overall: j out of pink.  (meaning: there is no way to give a serious rating to this.  Avoid at all costs.)

P.S. The question of the day: if movies have to compete to be the dumbest just to get people to like them, have we concluded that our culture is bankrupt and decadent?  Is art dead?

Man of Steel (2013)

I've been mulling over Man of Steel for a few weeks since I've seen it.  This one has really gotten a split reaction from the Superman fans out there, and I wanted to take time and consider what my impression really was.

So here it is: I'm a fan of Man of Steel.  It's not because the writing is fantastic -it's not.  It's full of too-obvious metaphors, over-dramatic speeches, and one-note forgettable characters (even most of the main ones).  I mean, Man of Steel begins with what amounts to a reverse virgin birth, and lays on the Messiah complex rather strongly in almost everything that follows.

Nor did I love Man of Steel for the settings.  Smallville is basically "typical small midwest town #4," and Metropolis is simply a collection of nondescript buildings.  But I guess that's ok, since both are pulverized to non-recognition anyway.

There are other things not to love.  There is nothing memorable in the acting, nor remarkable in the way the story is put together and executed.  And since I hate shaky-cam cinematography during non-action scenes I was not impressed with the camera work either.

But let's not forget what the movie does right.  This is a film about Superman, and it shows us a vision of the character not seen before yet still consistent with him.  I loved how we were shown a young Clark just beginning to discover his powers -and that he is terrified by them rather than happy.  I loved how Clark is shaped by the vision and wisdom of two fathers, trying to hold their ideals in tension as he faces a threat to what he holds dear.  I liked that Lois Lane tracked down Superman's secret identity.  I loved the way Superman's flying felt new and fresh and powerful, despite the fact that we've seen flying heroes in many other films now.  On the other hand, the special effects often suffered due to some poor execution (like how he jumped unnaturally on the oil rig) or simply because at times far too much was happening for the audience to understand the action.

Overall I just plain found the movie fun.  It was a fresh take on the mythos, and an enjoyable beginning to what hopefully becomes much more.

Entertainment:  10/10
Artistic Value: 4/10
Technical Merit: 7/10

Overall: 7/10