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Banjo's Replies
That's hilarious. I'd love to think something like that would destroy a comic writer's career, showing such massive disrespect for paying customers (imagine if, say, McDonalds put a note in with each Big Mac telling the diner they paid for garbage food!), but Mark Millar is a massive "edgelord" regardless, so it's really no surprise he'd write trash like that.
Having not read the original comic I'm really not interested after the awful film AND finding out Millar wrote it. Both Kingsmen and Kick-Ass were fantastic films of mediocre-to-terrible comics, IMO. Millar is someone who's a decent "ideas man" but a rubbish writer, I feel.
Watch the episode "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Hercules" from the cheesy 90's show Hercules The Legendary Journeys.
Seriously. The only thing I've ever liked written by Kurtzman and Orci.
In the meta comedy episode, writer Kurtzman is played by Ted Raimi, sleeps in the office in kid's pyjamas, only got his job via nepotism and is a terrible hack with awful ideas. Frighteningly self aware writing.
From what I've read, Bay wasn't really bothered by Fox's "Hitler" barb, it was Spielberg (considering the remark a grave and politically incorrect insult) who insisted on firing her for the comment. Bay and Fox later reconciled and seem happy to work together. Spielberg likely not so much, but he was only a producer.
Amusingly, Bay is on record saying that he wished he could be like Jim Cameron (The Rock commentary) and Ed Harris replied "why would you want to be like him? He's kind of an asshole", and despite considerable (far more than Bay, IMO) talent, Cameron is indeed known for being a dictator and hardass on set... so maybe Fox complimented Bay more than she knew with her "Hitler" comment? :)
"Such heroic nonsense" pretty much sums up The Last Knight and most of Bay's movies, funnily enough.
Epic music, overlong runtimes, overblown action with slow-mo and longwinded heroic speeches. Heroic nonsense, indeed.
I too hated the way characters would be introduced then just disappear or get killed offscreen because the writers either tired of them or the actors couldn't come back. Vic was a huge shame but understandable as the health issue was unexpected, but the others just annoy me. A certain longtime major character is so ignobly killed off (offscreen, even!) in season 2 that I was enraged!
However, the show is definitely worth taking the bad for the good.
Like Terry Nation's Blakes 7 (and the best of Doctor Who), Survivors is a product of its tome and place, when continuity was hardly considered, budgets were shoestring and the BBC either didn't care or actively hated their own program.
Also, all those shows are cult favourites justifiably for their best episodes, when the writing puts most modern shows to shame, and the acting is superb. While there will be rubbish episodes, laughable "effects" and slipshod continuity, there are also extremely powerful and effective stories. Modern viewers have expectations these old shows won't meet (pacing alone may put some younger viewers off!), but there can be no doubt that when these shows are at their best, they are incredible and deserving of their reputations.
For the record, Donny is confirmed dead after the fire (along with two female main cast and Vic). Pete puzzled me, as there was another minor character who joined but never appeared again with a different name, but later I learned that indeed the character could have been the boy who they met with his father in a previous episode... in the book, they joined the group rather than just passing them by as in the series.
As a huge fan of both shows, this post made me smile!
Terry Nation was famous for recycling ideas (and indeed, actual scripts!) but while hit and miss as a writer, he was a fantastic "ideas man". Survivors and B7 take fairly standard concepts and make them fresh and thought-provoking. In both cases, however, I would say it was a different writer (Chris Boucher for B7 and arguably Jack Ronder for Survivors) who had more of a hand in making the shows what they were than Terry himself.
As for B7, I always felt Greg was a possible ancestor of Avon, or a parallel dimension version of him at least. :) Cynical, loner, borderline sociopath techs/engineers for whom killing becomes more and more justified, yet capable of being reluctant heroes when needed.
Yup, missed it in the cinema and avoided any reviews, info or spoilers. Tough to do these days, but possible, as I've done it a few times. Heck, I got through all the seasons of Game of Thrones without spoilers and there were book readers who actively *tried* to ruin the show for people at certain times!
I think Covenant just annoyed me as I was really, really sick of David by the end of Prometheus! Also, the few things I liked about Promethus were "ruined" as actively as Covenant does the original films, so even as a sequel to that (a film I still say shouldn't have been an Alien movie!) it failed.
Someone once said of the Star Wars prequel trilogy compared to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: Indy 4 is just a bad Indy movie, so it really doesn't matter, but the prequels damage the Star Wars universe hence why they are seen as unforgivable.
Covenant damages Alien, Aliens and the whole saga if you accept it as canon. AVPR is just a cheap trashy cash-in with no impact except "apparently they came to earth and nobody remembered". :)
As a positive for Covenant, I will say that it very strongly reminded me in tone and look to some of the better Dark Horse comics, particularly David's scenes and some of the action, and I did really love some of those comics and characters. On the downside, a movie based on those, or adapted from them would have IMO been better; replace David with a character based on Dr Church from Aliens:Labyrinth, for example.
The script of Alien 3 is pretty much what we finally got with the assembly edit. Before that, though, it and the novel were much better than the actual film, IMO.
I actually managed to see Covenant totally "blind"... Not just no spoilers or ideas about the story, but not knowing the critical mauling it seems to have gotten too.
In that sense, I feel I got to give it a fair shot rather than going in like, say, Batman vs Superman knowing "it's terrible" before seeing it.
On the other hand, not knowing almost made it worse as I enjoyed the first half until I realised it was all going down the toilet and was again casting off the Alien franchise in favour of what should be a standalone movie series about David the smug and crazy android and the Engineers retconning everything.
I hated Alien 3 the first time I saw it, but taken without the baggage of the (better) previous films, I now really like it. I bought the script not long after seeing it (pre online days) and it made me wish so much wasn't cut... Was so happy we finally got the workprint officially released, which IMO makes a bad film a good (but not great) one.
While I've come to appreciate Prometheus more since first viewing, I don't expect Covenant to get the same reappraisal!
As an absolutely *huge* Alien franchise fan (from the classic movies to the comics and novels)... I just saw Covenant having been "burned" by Prometheus and skipped it in the cinema...
My personal rankings (worst to best):
Covenant (Just a mess, despite a promising start)
AvP 2 (Pointless and awful)
Prometheus (Should have been a standalone movie, terrible Alien movie but not awful)
AvP (The comics were better, but it could have been worse I guess)
Alien Resurrection (Aka Firefly: Dry Run... fun but shallow)
Alien 3 (Not the best of what we could have got, but pretty darn good in script/uncut form)
Alien (Just awesome; well made, well acted, great design, amazing Alien)
Aliens (I could watch this every day and not tire of it)
To be honest, the top two switch places daily. Aliens is in my top three favourite films of all time, but Alien is probably in my top five, and they are both so good yet different it really depends on my mood.
The rest keep their same ranking forever, for me.
Deathstalker II is awesome! By far the best of that series, IMO (the one that really embraced being a silly, cheesy, funny b-movie, too) and one of the best low-budget sword and sorcery movies full stop, I think.
Surely Airplane (Flying High) and Naked Gun were the progenitors of this kind of comedy, though? Transylvania Twist reminded me more of those than the later X Movie comedies, though they were clearly attempts to follow in the Z-Z-A formulas.
I just stumbled across the movie (as a random download on an obscure movies site, while looking for Jim Wynorski 80's flicks) and I was sad to find there doesn't seem to be an official DVD or Bluray release. Happy just to have a download, but would *gladly* buy this movie (and many like it), especially with a commentary or extras!
Just saw it for the first time, and rather enjoyed it for what it was, actually!
Certainly nowhere NEAR the worst, either in dialog or as a film.
Sure, the climax is deeply weird with the lion-god battle (?!) out of nowhere and some pretty cheesy delivery and action, but it's a pretty fun B-movie/low-budget sword and sorcery movie. In fact, my only major complaints beside the badly edited end battle is the reuse of Battle Beyond the Stars' soundtrack (though I adore the score so much, I forgive that) and the title having nothing to do with the movie whatsoever!
I've been marathoning a ton of cheesy, cheap, low-budget movies lately, and this is actually one of the better made ones so far, IMO.
Watch something like Creepozoids or Amazons or some of the dozens of Italian post apocalypse movies for some truly TERRIBLE dialog and performances. And even though the reused the score, at least this movie didn't stoop to using a ton of stock footage like a movie like Hybrid or Space Rangers or even the otherwise entertaining Star-Slammer!
Sorceress isn't going to win any awards, but it is far from the worst of anything when you've seen a ton of cheap B-movies!
As two other posters said, he killed his mother. It says so in DR2 when he's forced into the gladiator fight on his "title card" graphic.
It actually adds a rather interesting touch that the guy who's mostly shown as a nervous, likeable "nerd" type is in for something so despicable (killing one's own mother is IMO much darker and less empathetic than, say, shooting someone during a robbery). Then again, given how the character is portrayed, it may be that his mother was abusive of him and he finally snapped and killed her in either "self defence" rather than purely cold blood.
AGree with most of the errors, however as a poster above said, as far as the car cam concept (revealing Frank's true identity), I actually assumed that the idea was that audiences could pay to stream a feed directly from a chosen driver's dash cam... i.e. They can watch the race from the viewpoint (bonnet) of that car rather than the edited live footage of the helicopters and other external cameras, NOT that the racer cams were showing the drivers themselves. If not, though, than yes it makes no sense due to Frank being unmasked (which is clearly a conceit to stop the lead actor having their face covered most of the film, but I wish they'd left him burned/scarred to be honest and mostly masked).
I thought exactly the same thing, both due to Psycho's out of the blue speech about "anyone can be Frankenstein" and the way he burned and staggered to the water.
In fact, I genuinely wonder if this was the case in an earlier draft of the script, and they changed it so Psycho just died rather than dove into the pond when someone got the idea of having the villain become the "new" Frankenstein to lake Lucas' place? It seemed unlikely he'd have survived being hit by Lucas' car otherwise, too!
Deathtrack, a very cool old DOS game (works fine with DosBox) came instantly to mind when I watched this film, and it actually reminded me more of that game with all its weaponry than the more well-known Carmageddon which was based on the original Deathrace 2000. Deathtrack was a geat game for its time, with cool music (again, for its time!), fun drivers, and a wide variety of neat weapons, from machineguns to exploding skateboard launchers! It's first person (in-car) with early 3D style car graphics, but is still fun to play and can be found online as abandonware (wish GOG would get it to sell!)
I believe there was a fairly recent "sequel" to Deathtrack that prett much went unnoticed and it appears to be 3rd person and more "arcade" in style. Haven't played it, but the oroginal wih updated graphics would be fantastic, especially with today's online multiplayer boom.
Saw the first two as a teenager and the third and reboot ones as an adult in the last few years, so nostalgia may play a part, but I still think the 1990 movie is a fantastic film, TMNT or otherwise. My first exposure to Turtles was the original comics, so even though I liked the cartoon too, the fact that the 1990 movie was more like the comics than the cartoon really won it points for me back then. In fact, I hated the second film precisely because I felt it was "dumbed down" and more for little kids.
Now as an adult, I can appreciate Secret of the Ooze as a decent kid's film, but I think Out of the Shadows is actually the best live action representation of the 80's/90's cartoon we've had, strangely enough, except for the huge mistake of not letting Amell play Casey more comedically AND tougher (his scene with Splinter and the deleted kiss attempt were his only good moments, I felt); instead, Koteas will always BE Casey Jones to me.
In both reboots, Megan Fox did a decent job as April, but the CGI turtles are hideous designs and I can't see anyone not already a TMNT fan knowing their characters from just that film, or caring. Splinter looks absolutely awful!
TLDR:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) - fantastic film that straddled comic and cartoon well.
TMNT: Out Of The Shadows - live action version of the 80's cartoon.
TMNT II: The Secret Of The Ooze - cringeworthy and silly. Changed too much lore IMO.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) - forgettable, overlong and barely develops the turtles.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III - just terrible on every level, from script to effects.
I figured that (I don't recall the trailer, but assume the shot was Shea pulling the pins and holding out his arms wit the two grenades?), but I agree it's amusing that he blew himself up twice now in similar ways, both arguably avoidably but "heroically". I always kind of wished he'd landed on some woman with a baby in a pram in Agent Carter, just because that would have been fitting for how much of a screwup he always is! The fact his Kong exit played out like something I'd similarly jokingly say ("goes for the big sacrifice but the grenades go off early or the monster doesn't eat him") speaks volumes about Kong's script! :)
Such a shame he was killed off the way he was. How pointless! He should have been allowed to "team up" with Jackson, the two bonding over their desire to kill Kong (Jackson because he didn't want to "lose" again, Goodman for revenge after his past encounter in his youth).
Goodman can still die, in place of the redshirt scientist guy who inexplicably tags along on that suicide mission (and give him Goodman's death instead if need be). Or maybe let him realise his folly and be killed by Jackson, making Kong's dispatching of him even more karmic. Heck, Goodman starts out as an important character with this big backstory relevant to the island and monsters... But none of that is paid off and he is killed like some cannon fodder!
Or, since he starts off as the focal character before being pushed to the background later in favour of the bland "leads", have Goodman survive to continue the franchise as a kind of proper "do-over" for what they tried but ruined with Bryan Cranston's character in Godzilla 2014.