Movies are Stupid Round Eight: Legend The Super Mega Ultra Director's Cut for Real this time, we swear.

I honestly don't know where to start. There are films that beg to be made that go unmade. There are films are should never have been made that get six sequels and a remake twenty years on. Occasionally there are films that beg to be made, get made and then everyone realizes what a bad idea it was to begin with. Legend, at least the super mega cut recently released on DVD, is such a film.

As I understand it, and I clearly understand very little, the early 1980's were a hotbed of fantasy film making. After John Milus (director of Red Dawn) helmed Conan the Barbarian to box office success every sword and sandal property that could be had for cheap was optioned by Hollywood underdogs like Canon films, Roger Corman and the like. Where Conan the Barbarian was based on a much beloved character with 50 years of history behind him, the copycat films were based on hastily written scripts churned out by Dungeons and Dragons fanboys hoping to get their big break. Within a very few years the video store was full of classics like Deathstalker, Ator, Blademaster, Yor: Hunter from the future (who was from the distant past) and so on. Terrible films all and because they were terrible the American viewing public shunned them en masse. They also shunned them after masse but before Sunday night football which is as it should be.

This put many an un-kissed basement dweller in a tough position. For once they were seeing reasonable facsimiles of their favorite stories, but the stories were badly told and laughably constructed. What could have been a golden age of fantasy story telling on the big screen was turning into an exasperating exercise in VHS fastforwarding to get to the best parts of movies starring that guy that was in the remake of Tarzan with Bo Derek. But soft, a champion was rising to give us a new story with a real budget and known actors. Ridley Scott, director of Alien, Bladerunner and, one day, G.I. Jane was making a film called Legend. It had swords. It had sandals. It had Mia Sara. What more could one ask for? For what more could one ask?

Here's the problem with Legend: It doesn't make a whole lot of sense even for a fantasy film. The plot, regardless of which version you watch, is basically this: There is a mean guy/goat named Darkness who lives in a big scary tree with goblins and fat guys and living furniture. He's really evil and he'd like to be evil full time, but that pesky sun keeps him from getting out and about to spread ruin and strife as is his wont. You see, the sun is his destroyer. We know this because he keeps telling everyone who will listen. This is like Superman telling every villain that his weakness is kryptonite (or Richard Lester - BA-ZING!).

So, Darkness has a plan to get rid of the sun. He's going to kill himself the only two unicorns in the world. This act, apparently, will keep the sun from rising and allow him to walk the Earth unfettered. No fettering for him, not after his plan is enacted. To this end he hires a goblin named Blix to go kill him some unicorns and bring back the horns as proof. I guess the complete lack of sunlight would not be proof enough, gotta have those horns.

Off Blix goes to slay the magical beasts and he takes two half-wits with him because that is just what you do with the lord of evil asks you to fundamentally change the course of the entire world for him. When it comes to important tasks Idiots = Success. But where to find a unicorn? The fabled beasts don't like goblins. If only there was someone pure of heart and intact of hymen who could approach these majestic critters and hold them still long enough to allow the goblins to slaughter them. If only...

Enter Mia Sara. Mia plays Lilly, a princess. We know she's a princess because she sneaks into the home of a local couple and steals their food. If that wasn't enough to communicate her pedigree the peasant wife keeps calling her Princess Lilly, so there. When she's not stealing eats from poor people she's running around the woods with Tom Cruise who is dressed like a homeless Robin Hood. He can talk to the animals and climb trees and swim. This qualifies him as a forest boy and Lilly loves her some forest boy.

In order to impress his lady fair, Forest boy take her to see the unicorns who are so special and so sacred that they are never to be touched. This being the case, it is only reasonable that Forest boy should take his under-aged girlfriend with boundary issues to see them. And what is the first thing she does? Touches the unicorn. It's a good thing too because Blix has been following her. I don't know why he follows her. He's got no reason to follow her, but he was so he's ready when it's time for the unicorn killing. With a quick shot of poisoned dart the beast goes down (which was also the headline for Rosie O'donnell's wedding)

Anyway, the mutant horse is dead, the mate is captured and taken to Darkness even though he totally told them to kill both the unicorns. Lilly is captured as well and it is up to Forest boy, a couple of dwarves and a half-naked 12 year old to save the day. The long and short of it is that they infiltrate the giant tree by walking up to it, finding a entrance, and going inside. They meet up with one of the half-wits from Blix's party who tried to cross Darkness and was presumably destroyed but it turns out not to be so. Then they do the only thing they can do, they split up. Forest boy and 12-year-old nudist find Lilly just as she is being seduced by Darkness into being all evil and wearing a black dress (the harlot) and they hatch a plan. Darkness keeps telling folks about the sun being his arch-nemesis so they decide to use plates as mirrors to reflect sunlight throughout the tree, direct it down all the corridors with perfect precision and blast Darkness with a big old laser beam of sunny goodness. This is exactly what they do and it works exactly as described. Darkness is destroyed and Lilly was just pretending to be evil and is soon back in her white dress again. The band returns to the forest where the unicorns are restored, somehow, and all is right with the world. Except everyone is still stupid.

Obviously this script could have used some work. Questions are raised at every turn and then never answered. Why doesn't Darkness just kill the unicorns himself? Is he trapped in the tree? Clearly the unicorns vex him but just not enough to actually do anything about it himself. Why does Blix need Mia Sara to touch the unicorn before he shoots it. Those horses are on screen for a good five minutes only yards away from the goblins before they interact with anyone. Blix holds his shot for no reason. Also, why does Forest boy take Lilly to see the unicorns if they aren't to be disturbed? What did he expect his 15 year old girlfriend to do when she saw fantasy creatures at play in the forest? I could go on asking questions about practically every scene, but I won't. What would be the point? See, another question.

When the film was released in the US it was cut by about 30 minutes and the original soundtrack by Jerry Goldsmith was replaced by a New Wave soundtrack courtesy of Tangerine Dream. That's a weird choice to make for a fantasy film right up there with Lady Hawk's rock and roll incidental music. However, I submit that the Tangerine Dream score, once you get used to it, is the superior score. In the Director's cut, and European release, the Goldsmith score was intact but it's very blah as soundtracks go. For all the action and strange imagery the Goldsmith tracks just sort of hang in the air doing nothing. They don't give you an auditory description of the scene, they don't punctuate the action or stir feelings in you the way a great soundtrack should. The music isn't poorly written or produced, it just doesn't seem to fit what's on screen.

Not only does the US release of Legend get the better music, it gets a trim job that cuts out most of the long listless shots of nothing. There are pieces and parts missing from the plot because of these cuts, but that doesn't matter as the intact plot doesn't make sense either. The result is a tighter more quickly paced film that doesn't make you feel like you're watching a fantasy version of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

That's the major problem with the Director's cut: it drags. We don't need extra shots of Forest boy and under-age girl sitting around the forest. We don't need another iteration of Darkness telling people about his weakness. We don't need extra shots of empty corridors inside the big evil tree. What would have been nice is some sort of backstory telling us who in the hell these people are. Now, LOTR was way too long. All three movies could have been trimmed down considerably and so could the novels for that matter, but part of that length was taken up explaining where folks were, why they were there and what they hoped to achieve. Legend doesn't do that. We are never told anything about any of the characters besides their names. We know from inference that Gumps, Dwarves and fairies are commonplace because nobody freaks out when they see them. We know that goblins are evil because of the dialog that says "I'm so evil because I'm a goblin!" We also know that unicorns control the rotation of the Earth and the weather. And there are great opportunities to tell a better story, give it some meat, some foundation. When Forest boy goes to get his armor and weapons he is led into a cave under the forest where several suits of bejeweled armor lay untouched. No reason is given for this. He accepts the armor without question and carries on to the evil tree to fetch his woman...well...little girl friend. Oh, and about that tree. Clearly there is a ginormous evil tree full of evil not too far from Lilly's kingdom. It appears to be right down the road from the forest but it is never mentioned or named specifically, so we assume folks just don't mind it very much. Maybe it's invisible unless someone steals your under-aged girlfriend. In the same way that killing a unicorn arrests the Earth's movement in the heavens so too does kidnapping a child bride enable your enemies to see your secret hideout. You'd think that Darkness would think of this eventuality and post some guards, but he doesn't. And how did he become Lord Darkness to begin with? Is it a hereditary title? Was he duly elected by his peer man/goats? Do they maybe take turns? This week Lord Darkness is Tim Curry, next week: the guy that played Riff Raff, the week after: Susan Sarandon. Barry Bostwick could maybe be an evil maintenance guy that never gets things as clean as he could given the time and resources at his disposal. But, such is the nature of evil.

Digression being the better part of...something, I find myself at the summation. Neither the Director's cut or the US cut of the film are particularly good. But, the Director's cut is too long, has an uninteresting musical score and adds nothing to the story despite 30 extra minutes to work with. I had always heard from fans of Legend that a Director's cut would be a Holy Grail of moviedom. More story, more FX, better music; but it was not to be. What those fans fail to realize is that Legend is a cult classic in this country because of the goofy score, because of the shorter runtime. Sit through the director's cut just once and you'll understand. Just as Robert Wise cut extraneous footage from Star Trek: The Motion Picture and improved the final product, Ridley Scott has infused his already nonsensical story with more nonsense and removed the parts that made it bearable. Ergo, to wit, therefor, Legend: the Director's cut is stupid.

Movies are Stupid Round Seven: Wolver-what?

"X-Men Origins: Wolverine" makes my head hurt in new and strange ways. I'm not talking about the liberties that the writers took with established comic book canon, whatever that is. Comic books are notorious the world over for having no real continuity at all. People die, are reborn, die again and then just show up for dinner like nothing ever happened. Worlds are destroyed only to be referenced later when they are needed and major characters can get a new history overnight only to have it pulled back when it is expedient for the publisher. So all that crap is right out for me. Let's explore some of that "canon" for just a moment before I get started on how bad this movie is and let me make something clear about my intentions.

For the record: I don't want this movie to fail. In fact, it is doing gang-buster business everywhere. At a production cost of 150 million dollars it has already passed the 200 million dollar mark worldwide. Its success is assured and I'm gratified because, even though this movie is crappy, I want the brand to survive long enough for some good films to be made in the future. That's what I hope for and nothing that I write here is meant to discourage movie ticket purchases, which is fine since no one ever reads this blog anyway and there is absolutely no chance that anything on this site could impact a major blockbuster film. Still, it's my blog and I can feel self important if I like...and I like.

Okay, Comic book canon regarding the characters in this movie.

Wolverine: Originally Wolverine was just some Canadian agent with some gloves that had sharp bits glued on. There was no indication that he was even a mutant. The claws were never retracted, nor was there any dialogue or panel which revealed that they were anything more than pig-stickers that he slipped on before a fight. He wore a goofy-looking yellow and blue costume (which he still wears, by the way, because that makes total sense) that had little cat whiskers on the mask. Yes, he wears a mask even though his identity is of no consequence. He's not protecting those he loves. He's not scared the government will learn his true alter-ego. He works for the government and they know exactly who he is...up to a point and, frankly, nobody cares who he is because he just showed up for one issue of Hulk. That's Wolverine's intro. No real name, no back story, no significance of any kind.

Sometime later the character is introduced again in X-men, written by Chris Claremont. Suddenly he's a shadowy man without a past named Logan. He's got a healing ability that allows him to...heal. Come to think of it, I have that ability. Just the other day I cut myself shaving and within a few minutes the bleeding had stopped and a few hours after that the wound was virtually gone. A few days later it was as though I had never sliced my face open at all. I guess what I'm getting at is that Logan's power is to do what any other human can do...only somewhat faster.

In addition Wolverine has had metal grafted to his bones and metal claws pop out of either forearm. It is never suggested that this is part of his mutation. No one knows where he got these upgrades and no one really seems interested in finding out, least of all Logan. I'll have to say that if I woke up with unbreakable metal bones and blades popping out of my body I wouldn't give it a second thought. So, Logan is a freak and he doesn't care. Later, his metal bones are given an origin story of their own called Weapon X. This one off series explained that he was experimented on by a person or persons unknown to make him into a killing machine. They are surprised when he starts killing everyone. Mental Note: If I ever design a device or process that has a specific application, I will make sure that I don't just leave it lying around to be used by whomever whenever. I'm careful that way.

Later still Wolverine got retconned into a Canadian from the 1800's with bone claws that he did not have in the Weapon X story. Suddenly his half-brother is Sabertooth, who also has claws of a sort. This unmakes established Marvel comics stories from the 1980's and 1990's that showed Logan in ancient Japan or running with the Indian tribes pre-colonization. But, as we have established, I don't really care about that.

Sabertooth: Sabertooth first shows up in the pages of the Amazing Spider-man as a part-time bank robber/full-time dork. He is literally just a big guy in a lion costume who robs people and gets his butt kicked by Spider-man. That's it. No mutation, no powers, no interesting history.

After a fashion he shows up as a mutant with healing powers who menaces Wolverine now and again. Later there seems to be a father/son relationship there. Then there's not. Then there is again. Then they get a house in the village together and open a tea shop. Then they break up vowing to see other people but still be friends because, after all, life is about relationships and connections that can last forever. That last part is made up...I think.

General Stryker: This guy doesn't exist in the comic world. There is a collection of X-Men stories called God Loves Man Kills that feature a Reverend Stryker who hates mutants, but otherwise this guy is a total movie construct created for the plot of X-men 2. There is no back story to alter because he never existed before Bryan Singer's brilliant sequel.

All of the above is to show that I both know my comic book history and that I do not care. That's an important element of comic book movie viewing. The average comic has about 40 years of history behind it. There have been so many contradictory stories and wackadoo plot lines that no modern screenwriter could be expected to take them all into account nor would we want them to. At one point Batman was turned into a half-man half-fish creature. I don't want to see that. Superman once had a "Power Suit" and was made of electricity for some reason. That movie would suck.

It is the job of a screen writer to take the best parts of a character from another medium and place them into a new configuration that makes sense for the big screen. Honor the work that has come before, certainly, but don't feel constrained by it. Most of it really does suck. Now then, to the movie review.

Wolverine is a stupid movie because it simply refuses to make sense or follow a logical progression of events. Going into such a movie one is asked to accept certain truths in order for the story to be told at all. If you've given your 8 bucks for a movie called Wolverine it can only be because you already understand that he is a mutant that can heal, has metal claws and wild hair that is never explained. That is a given. As a fan of comics and a movie goer, I don't ask much of such a film, only that it have some kind of story that I can understand. I want them to show me the character of my choice in a new tale that unfolds in an entertaining way. As weird as the concept is for the Wolverine movie, the same basic rules of storytelling apply. If things happen for no reason: that is bad. If characters say things out of context and never explain them: that is bad. If the plot involves completely unlikely scenarios that are never commented on by the characters: that, too, is bad. To-wit, therefore, Wolverine is bad.

We start with a young James Logan (James Howlett for you comic book nerds) who is sick in bed. It is the 1800's in Canada, James' father is killed by the groundskeeper which causes James to fly into a rage despite his sickly condition. He sprouts bone claws from each hand and promptly runs the groundskeeper through. His mother is horrified, the groundskeeper is eviscerated, and James' friend Victor (Dog, for those of you who read Origin by Joe Quesada, Paul Jenkins, and Bill Jemas) seems indifferent. Turns out that the groundskeeper was James' real father and that Victor is his half-brother. Both Victor and James run off into the night swearing to stick together as brothers should. And stick together they do through the entire opening credit sequence. They fight in the revolutionary war, the American Civil War, World War 1, World War 2, Korea, and end up in Vietnam where they are executed by firing squad...only it doesn't take.

This brings us to our first storytelling hiccup. Two men are taken before a firing squad. They are shot many times and do not die. The result? The two men are put in the brig. Apparently the U.S. Government doesn't know what to do with two unkillable soldiers in the middle of a war that is going badly. So, General Stryker shows up and offers them work as secret agents with special privileges. Given their situation, they accept the offer and immediately find themselves on an airplane with several other strange agents who possess various powers. There's a guy who can run really fast and shoot things while flipping through the air. We'll call him John Woo. Then there's a guy in a cowboy hat who we will call Cowboy Hat. Then there's Wade Wilson, played by that guy who was in Van Wilder and is currently in Scarlett Johansson (HEY-O!), who is some kind of sword master. We can tell this because he has a sword.

Their first mission is to go to an African nation and attack an office building. There's armed guards and such outside so it must be full of bad guys. I mean, they are Black and they do have guns. If I've learned nothing else from Hollywood it is that Black guys with guns are bad. Now, Cowboy Hat is Black and he has a gun, but he's with a group of White guys and an Asian guy so he must be okay. Anyway, they lay siege to the building fighting their way to the top floor where they ask some guy about a paper weight he has on his desk. Why they couldn't make an appointment, I don't know. But Stryker must know about the paper weight, so everybody has to die right now.
Soon they find themselves torturing villagers in the jungle. James doesn't like this and tries to put a stop to it, but the others are bound and determined to shoot unarmed people. James cares about them so much that he just leaves them all to die. Later he gets a job as a lumberjack. We flash forward seven years and James has a girlfriend, a house on a mountain impossibly far from town and good, honest work cutting down trees. Also, he enjoys buttered scones for tea and pressing wild flowers. Whether or not he wishes he'd been a girlie like his dear Mama is unconfirmed at this time.

So, James and girlfriend live in sin on a mountain happily until General Stryker shows up to warn James about Victor. Seems Victor has gone crazy...er and is on the hunt for former group members. Imagine if David Lee Roth was hunting down former members of that band he was in during the 80's. Not Van Halen, but the other one that had that song that was on that album. You know, he wore goofy tribal face paint in the video. Anyway, it's like that, but with mutants.

No reason is ever given for this hunt, which only seems to effect two of the former team members, but James doesn't seem too worried about things. And why would he be? It's only his psychotic brother who has grown into a murder factory with the same powers James has. What's to fear? Certainly not his own bloody murder or that of his woman at the hands of Victor. Let that be a warning, ladies. If your man is unconcerned about the serial killer at work in your town...you are doomed. Don't take a shower, don't go for a jog alone, don't even go into the basement. You're done like dinner.

Victor kills James' girlfriend. Surprise, surprise. In his rage, James goes after Victor who is helpfully waiting in a bar for him. They fight, Victor stomps James and leaves him for...mildly injured. That's another problem with the film. They keep showing Wolverine in peril that is by no means peril. The guy can literally heal any wound, so what could be scary about a gun shot or a good old fashioned ass-whoopin'?

Now James wants revenge...even more...so he seeks out Stryker who offers to put him into the Weapon X program that will make him indestructible and give him metal claws instead of gooney old bone claws. He accepts, is taken to a secret lab and made into a killing machine. All of that is fine, I guess, but the set isn't anything like the one they showed in three other X-men movies nor is it located in the same underground base. This one is at the top of a mountain and seems quite small. The other was a sprawling compound underneath a giant dam at Alkali lake. The whole second half of X-men 2 takes place there. Suddenly that's all out the window.

Long story already too long, Wolverine escapes the lab, leaps to freedom down a huge water fall and stumbles naked onto a farm where he befriends an old couple, destroys their bathroom and hides out in the barn. Then there is some more fighting with government agents who want Weapon X back, a helicopter explodes and then later Wolverine is in Las Vegas or Reno or something. He jumps around a lot. Cowboy Hat and another team member from the old days, we'll call him Fat Guy, run a boxing school. Wolverine shows up and demands to know where Victor is. You see, he can't find Victor, who wants to be found, but he can track down obscure people from his past just fine.

Fat Guy turns him on to a mutant from New Orleans who escaped from Victor previously, oh and Victor and Stryker were working together to entire time in an attempt to make James mad so that he would undergo the Weapon X process thereby becoming a walking abattoir who could then go forth and kill Victor. It's the perfect plan, really.

So it's off to New Orleans where this mutant named Gambit has adopted the philosophy of "Hide in Plain Sight" because Wolverine just walks into the first bar he comes to and there the guy is playing cards. Clearly Victor and Stryker don't want him back because all they would have to do is go pick him up at their leisure. Why they never look for him in the exact place they caught him the first time is anybody's guess.

Wolverine questions Gambit about the secret location where mutants are being held. Oh yeah, did I mention that mutants from all over the world are being held hostage...because they are. And it's up to our man/animal Wolverine to stop it. Victor appears and Wolverine and he fight it out, but just before Wolverine can serve up the Coup De Gras, Gambit leaps into the fray long enough for Victor to vanish in a puff of plot contrivance. Then Gambit runs up a fire escape but not before Wolverine can start chopping it apart with this claws. I guess Gambit is a slow runner because it takes Wolverine a while to get that thing chopped up.

After all that, Gambit agrees to fly Wolverine to "The Island" to save the mutants. Not only is Gambit a certified pilot, but he has his own plane standing by. What luck! And they fly across the country in a little Cesna until they arrive at...Three Mile Island. Dun Dun DUN! Soylent Green is People!

Wolverine enters the base to confront Stryker and Sabertooth only to find that his girlfriend was never dead. Apparently those heightened senses that make him such a good tracker can't tell a dead person from a living one. Anywho, she's in a on the plot that we explored before. Seems Stryker has her sister and the only way to get her free from this mutant prison was to go and live with Wolverine for seven years and make him fall in love with her only to later pretend to die. That's some plan. Stryker is obviously the most patient man in the known universe. He knew all those years ago that he would want to use Wolverine for the Weapon X project and that the only way he could get Wolverine to agree to it would be to break his little mutant heart and have his older brother beat him up. But wait, there's more. Turns out that he didn't even really care about the Weapon X project, he just wanted Wolverine's DNA so that he could make Weapon XI. Dun Dun DUN again!

Now you and I both know that you can get DNA from a coffee cup or a hair brush. There is no need to dunk a man in a mineral bath and fill him with metal in order to replicate his cells. DNA is everywhere. For some reason, unknown to the audience and unknown to the screenwriter, Stryker felt the need to make things far more complicated. And there may be good reason for that. Maybe in comic book world DNA works differently than I think it does. In fact, I'll say that it must because Stryker is later seen injecting tissue from Cyclops into Weapon XI's eyes in an effort to give him laser vision and it works. The final act of the film involves Wolverine fighting Weapon XI, who has been given the powers of all the other mutants via osmosis, on top of one of the cooling towers at Three Mile Island. Turns out that the partial meltdown that happened in 1979 was actually the result of mutant combat and not a faulty steam valve. Not only that, but the combat destroyed the entire cooling tower and wasted a large portion of the power plant itself. You and I don't remember that happening because the mutants must have used their psycho powers on us.

"Wolverine" ends with a defeated Weapon XI plunging into the cooling tower as it crumbles and Stryker resigning to shoot Wolverine in the head with a special Adamantium bullet. You see, if you have a very hard armor it can only be penetrated by something of equal density. For example if you shot a steel bullet at steel plate it would easily puncture it. That's how matter works. Need to break through a wooden door? Why, just grab yourself a little piece of wood and smash that door down. Yes sir, when you thought this movie couldn't make less sense, it finds a way. It is persistent in its quest to suck, like a Terminator or a virus.

Stryker shoots our hero in the head, thus destroying his memories or something. Gambit flies away. The trapped mutants are saved by Professor X at the last minute and Wolverine wanders off to find out who he is.

You see, it is a terrible movie...a stupid movie. It establishes rules and then doesn't play by them. Like a toddler it wants its own way even if that way is unreasonable or foolish. Characters appear, do something and then are gone again without explanation. The schemes of our villain don't make sense to anyone not confined to a state mental institution. The resolution isn't even a resolution because everyone just sort of wanders off. Characters that were established as not knowing each other in previous films spend time together in this one. Sabertooth, a seven foot tall monster with wild hair and a mouth full of sharp teeth in the first film, is around 6 foot 2 with a buzz cut in this one. While I feel you can change things between media, comics to film, you can't change established scenarios and characters in the same film series. Imagine if the Godfather Part 2 had all new actors with different personalities but the same character names as the first film. All the action happens in Chicago and nobody seems to notice. Later Don Vito Corleone shows up after having died, but nobody freaks out. That's how Wolverine is. It violates comic book canon...so what? The problem is it violates itself and not in a sexy way like the internet ladies do, but in a way that costs you eight dollars and two hours of your time.

Movies Are Stupid Round Six: Hulk gets Smashed

Often, I will start my blog with a statement of faith. I have faith that the director had a vision that was somehow compromised. I have faith that the writer of the film in question wanted to tell a great story, but something went horribly wrong. I have faith that the actors really were doing their very best, but it just fell short somehow. Let's take all that as rote, shall we. I only review movies that I like. What follows is my examination of a film I like so much that I bought it on HD-DVD even after that format was dead just because there was no Blu-Ray version yet. Did I mention that own an HD-DVD player? That gives you an idea of my prowess at predicting the future. Your lucky numbers are 6-10-3-7 and 44.

Hulk: Golly. What a train wreck this thing is. I'm sort of at a loss as to where I should start. The beginning is usually a good place, I'll go there. So, the year is 199_ and Hulk is in production at Universal. The director has a bold vision for the project, Stan Winston studios is producing prosthetics for the shoot, the screen writer is well known and respected, things are looking good. However, the script is, by all accounts, a mess. The director is tired of the studio questioning his ballooning budget and comic book films are largely looked down upon. The Batman franchise is riding high on the success of Batman Forever, so the purse strings of Hollywood have been loosened somewhat. But every studio exec has his limit and Hulk was becoming a budgetary freak show. Soon the money would dry up, the director would leave and the movie would not be made.

Enter Spider-man. Spidey opens with the biggest box office weekend take in movie history (at the time). It goes on to gross a gazzillion dollars at multiplexes everywhere and every child and man-child from coast to coast and around the world owns at least one Spidey action figure and everybody wants the video game for PC and Playstation 2. This after the moderate success of X-men sets the stage for comic book fandom's golden age of movies, television shows, video games, and fan fiction porno. Now is the time for the biggest of all Marvel comics heroes to have his day. The Hulk is back and he's ready to smash all comers. At least, that's what we all thought.

Mistake #1: The Director. Ang Lee is awesome. Watch Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and you will believe. Smart, soulful, exciting and grand...these all describe his film making style. He is unafraid to court controversy with films like Brokeback Mountain or Ride with the Devil. He delivers on the action with Crouching Tiger and he makes us all a little wiser with Eat Drink Man Woman and The Ice Storm. His study of the human condition is second to none and his understanding of personal conflict and the need to grow as people is astounding. Ang Lee knows how to tell a story and grow his characters. I think maybe that's the problem. Essentially Hulk is a character who gets angry and smashes things. Pick up a copy of The Incredible Hulk at your local comic shop or at the grocery store and you will be treated to 40 pages or so of a big green guy breaking things and US Army personnel trying to kill him. That's pretty much every comic issue since his debut back in the 1960's. His niche in the comic book world is a small one and his mission is simple. The Hulk must smash and smash he does with great aplomb...also with a steel girder or other large blunt object. In short, the Hulk doesn't need Ang Lee and it is apparent from watching the film that Ang Lee doesn't entirely know what to do with the Hulk. He's got two hours to fill, but you can't have a big angry guy breaking things for two hours. There has to be something else going on especially if you have a world renowned director with an eye for the simple human dramas that drive our daily lives. The result: A barely involving psycho-drama about a young man dealing with the fact that he is adopted and his girlfriend's rejection of him because of her own hang-ups regarding father figures. Also, Bruce Banner's father is a megalomaniac who experimented on his son in utero resulting in some genetic complications that make him susceptible to Hulking out giving the proper Gamma Radiation stimulus. Also, there maybe be some abandonment issues at play for all involved. Sound like a rocking Hulk movie? It shouldn't.

Here's a quick formula for crappy superhero movies. If the appearance the titular hero does not occur in any meaningful way until you are well passed the 30 minute mark, you're movie has missed the point. The only exception to this rule is the original 1978 Superman. That movie rocks right up until the introduction of the villain, but that's a different post altogether.

So, instead of the Jade Giant crushing all who oppose him we have 45 minutes of will they/won't they from Bruce Banner and Betty Ross and the occasional cameo by David Banner who got a job cleaning toilets at a science lab after having been locked away by the military for his crazy science experiments. I don't know who his parole officer was, but he should be fired.

Problem the Second: The Script. Ang Lee did not write this movie even though he was the driving force behind the human foible aspects of the story. No, about 15 different people worked on this script at different times. The end result is a hodge-podge of dramatic scenes, inexplicable motivations, witting dialogue, flashes of brilliance and lots of talking. Lots and lots of talking. We have a need as a species to explore our feelings, I get that. We also have a need as movie viewers to escape from reality sometimes. We pay our eight bucks so that we don't have to explore our feelings. The Hulk is about rage. He's just got the one feeling. Go with that. But, I guess Hollywood pays by the page. A simple script about an angry monster wouldn't be very thick and that's not impressive at all. Think about the embarrassed studio exec who has to carry about the Hulk pamphlet while the guy down the hall hefts his copy of Benjamin Button. How could he show his face at Spago again? The solution is simple, fill the script with lots of nothing. Conversation about exploding frogs? Check. Conversation about corporate takeovers of publicly funded projects at state universities? Check. Conversation about the unfairness of the military industrial complex and the impact of religion on modern society. Check and Check. This script has it all, except for the Hulk. Oh, he shows up eventually, but just for a quick visit.

Allow me a quick comparison, if you will. In 1978's Superman we are treated to the birth, arrival and rearing of Clark Kent. This serves to explain how he came to be not just a Super-human, but a good man. Tension builds and we know that soon the big red S will be revealed and the day will be saved. Once Clark makes it to Metropolis it is only a matter of time before there are those in peril that only he can save and in that moment the camera pushes in on his chest as he tears his shirt open to reveal that symbol known around the world. The audience is silent, waiting for that second when the Man of Steel will be revealed in his totality. He bursts from the revolving doors in full costume and leaps into the sky. He catches the falling helicopter in one hand and Lois Lane in the other, the music swells, the people on screen cheer and the audience does along with them. It's stirring, moving and other -ings. In Hulk we are robbed of that moment. It takes forever to piss off Bruce Banner sufficiently to make him Hulk-out. When that change does occur, it happens in the dark and only lasts about two minutes. The Hulk throws a big gamma-sphere contraption at a car, growls at Nick Nolte and then leaps into the night where he is seen by nobody, because giant screaming monsters are common in the Bay Area. No swelling music, no saving the day, no jive-talking pimp to comment on his attire. He just gets angry and leaves.

Final Gripe: The Actors. You can not tell me that Nick Nolte, Sam Elliot and Juggsy McGee didn't drive this story from its roots into the mishmash of kooky ideas that it became. All of these people fancy themselves "Real Actors" and I guess that means making damn sure that a fun escapist tale becomes bogged down in angst and pathos. I read an interview where Juggsy was praising Ang Lee for not wanting to tell an exciting action story, but instead wanted to plumb the depths of the dark human mind. Dude, you signed on for a movie called HULK. Its protagonist turns green and punches tanks. That's the movie. That should be the entire movie.

Okay, now for the good. Tank Punching 101: This is the heart of the film and the reason I like it so much despite the efforts of all involved to make it suck. When the Hulk is finally on the scene and smashing as is his wont, he rules with a mighty green fist. He crushes tanks, leaps onto helicopters and jet fighters, he crushes cars like Bigfoot and Gravedigger got into a redneckin' contest and he looks awesome. You'll read a lot of snarky reviews talking about how much Hulk looks like Shrek. Really? I think the folks at ILM delivered in a way that hasn't been matched yet. Even the new Hulk in Louis Leterrie's movie doesn't look as good. There is a level of realism present on screen with Hulk that blows me away every time I see it. Sure, there are some shots that aren't as good as they could be, but the majority of what is on screen is amazing. When he busts out of the Military Stronghold and into the bright daylight of the desert, he looks as real as any actor. He moves like a person, he emotes like a person and he even sneezes like a person. Hulk is at his visual best in this film.

Clearly there is enough talent and will here to make the greatest Superhero movie ever filmed. Unfortunately, nobody wanted to actually do that. The director wanted to make a hybrid art film / action adventure, the actors wanted to show their emotional chops and the mass of writers were just trying to cram everything they could into one movie all while meeting the artistic vision of the director and actors. Not to be left out is the studio. The Dark Knight and Iron Man proved to us, this past year, that you can make a big budget action Superhero movie and make it well. Both films were perfect examples of their form. Maybe they succeeded because they had Hulk as a road map for what not to do, but more likely they did so because they had all the pieces and parts that Hulk did in addition to a studio that was involved and excited about the project. It's a fine line, I know. Too much involvement and the director's vision is compromised. Too little and the movie goes off the rails. But a good manager knows the difference and I guess Hulk didn't have one.

I will always have a soft spot for this movie, but it (like all the others) is stupid. The plot makes no sense, the actors are overwrought and there are occasional directorial flourishes that just boggle the mind. A ten second close up of moss growing on a rock does not serve the story. There are also just too many unanswered questions about the storyline. How does Nick Nolte get all that scientific equipment? If you get busted for hacking the DOJ makes sure you can't handle a computer in any form for years, but if you blow up a military base they clearly don't track you when you start building a Dr. Frankenstein lab in your living room. Also, if you get blasted with Gamma Radiation, they let you go home from the hospital after only a day. How does that happen? His HMO must suck. Although, I suppose one could argue that being the Hulk is a preexisting condition. But still, one day? How does the Hulk know where his girlfriend went to stay after his arrest? Why did they think putting a gigantic powerful monster in a confined space would be good idea? It's silly moments like that that destroy the story. In the end, it is a lack of focus that destroyed the movie.

Movies are Stupid Round Five: The Bottom Falls Out of a Galaxy Far Far Away

We are about to enter the realm of great danger. My personal safety is at risk by writing this. The world over there are legions of Star Wars fans that would gladly suit up in their faux Stormtrooper Armor and pretend blast me into smithereens for suggesting that any Star Wars product, be it film, book, comic, game, or action figure is sub-par. One of the most vehement and earnest believers in the Force, my wife, will likely swat me with a plastic lightsaber. (She has two) But I must press on for the good of the viewing public and make my case for why Return of the Jedi is stupid.

First some background. I grew up with this movie. I remember seeing it in the cinema when it was released way back in 1983. I remember the run up to the release date being a maddening experience as we, the little children of the 80's, debated furiously about the origins of that half-built Death Star that was on all the posters. Was it the original Death Star still in disrepair after the events of the first movie? Was it a new Death Star? Would Luke save the day? Why was his lightsaber green? Is Darth Vader is father? If so, who's his mother? To say the least, we were all jazzed for this movie. And when it finally came out, it made me feel as though I had achieved something just by living to see the saga told in its entirety...or so we thought. My uncle, who passed recently, had all three of the original movies on VHS back in the day when nobody had VHS. When we would visit, my brother and I would watch and rewatch those movies with Jedi in heaviest rotation. It, in our pre-pubescent opinions, was the best one of the three Star Wars films. It had the Sarlaac pit, speeder bikes, a mighty duel with Darth Vader, the evil Emperor shooting lightning from his fingertips and a massive space battle between the rag-tag forces of the Rebellion and the indomitable Star Destroyers of the Galactic Empire. Plus, and bear in mind we were children, it had Ewoks. When you are nine years old Ewoks are cool. So what happened? Simply put: I grew up, saw better movies, and grew to appreciate plot and character development. I guess that wasn't as simply put as it might have been, but it is the truth.

I hope to break down my dislike of this movie into four sections and, if I can keep my head on straight, I'll hold myself to that formula. You may disagree with my findings, but I feel that the problems with the film are so obvious and silly that most adults would have a hard time sitting through it. The four sections are these: 1) Luke's Plan 2) The plot 3) The production values 4) The Rebel Victory. Let's begin.

Luke's plan makes no sense whatsoever. None. Let us deal with the established information we the audience have regarding Jedi Knights. In this case we are dealing with a young man who didn't know he was a Jedi until some crazy dude in the desert told him he was one and then a little green Muppet fed him some sort of stew on a world that looks like the bayou, had him float some rocks around with his mind, berated him for not fully believing in something he had just learned about and then sent him off to kill a half-robot/half-human that might be his own father. Setting all that aside we have the following abilities: Super speed, super reflexes that border on precognition, ability to see possible futures, ability to see across the entire galaxy, swordsmanship, telekinesis, hand to hand combat training, super endurance, and sewing. Luke can, if prompted, fight like a demon with supernatural powers (which would be completely natural for a demon, one would guess) construct his own weapons without instruction, and create a snappy new ensemble to wear into battle. He's got it all. Add to all that the fact that he is also an ace pilot, cool under pressure and, much like his sister, plucky. This is a guy who is going to deliver a master plan the likes of which even Eisenhower has never seen. Not only that, he's going to back it up with Jedi powers and marital arts acumen. But that doesn't happen.

Here is Luke's Plan (as near as I can tell): Step one, send the droids to Jabba the Hutt's palace and have them play a message that explains how the droids are a swap for Han Solo. Essentially he is asking Jabba to take two decades-old, beat-up, robots in exchange for Jabba's most hated enemy. Why wouldn't that work? Moving on. The whole thing is ruse of course. Inside R2D2 is Luke's lightsaber. There it will stay hidden until Luke springs his trap. Here are the things that must happen for Luke's trap to be sprung. Jabba must keep the droids without searching them for weapons, bombs or bugs. He must then take C3PO as his new interpreter droid and send R2D2 to serve on his sail barge. Next, Leia must fail in her attempt to rescue Han and end up as a slave girl. With all this in place, Luke enters the palace by using the force to open the main doors and subdue the guards. Then he "mind-tricks" the majordomo into bringing him before Jabba even though he is literally a few steps away from the gangster's throne room and doesn't really require an introduction since we just saw his hologram only moments before. (In movie time I'm sure several days have passed, but my assumption is that Jabba does not have the memory of a goldfish) Luke does not gain access to his lightsaber at this time. Instead he tries to shoot Jabba in the face with a stolen pistol, ends up fighting a monster without using the force at all and then is taken captive by a group of people that we have established that he can "mind-trick" at will. Now the plan comes into full swing. Jabba must at this point decide to take everyone for a ride on his Sail Barge across the Dune Sea. Once he has the captives in place on separate vehicles in preparation for their untimely demise in the belly of the Sarlaac, he must ask if they want to beg for their lives at which time Luke gives the signal for R2 to launch his hidden lightsaber into the air. Luke must catch the sword on the fly and then start chopping people up. He must then defeat all of Jabba's henchmen single-handedly while his friends save themselves. Then they can all leave together.

Why didn't he just walk into Jabba's palace, gank all the guards, take Han out of there and never look back? He probably could have avoided bloodshed by mind-tricking everybody into not fighting him. Jabba wasn't susceptible to the mind-trick, but that wouldn't matter as Jabba can't really move and isn't a threat by himself. He could shout commands at a room full of befuddled lackeys until he was green in the face only to see Luke stroll out with Han. Barring that, once he popped out a glowing blade made of pure energy, blocked every blaster bolt that came his way and chopped couple of n'ere-do-wells in two; the rest of the rabble would have left him alone. There is no reason at all for Luke, Han, Leia, Chewy, Lando, C3PO or R2D2 to have done any of this. Add to the mix the fact that Luke and Leia are two highly valued members of the Rebellion which is a several-thousand-man-strong organization with its own commando teams. Why send the key players of your army into a stronghold of evil without backup? Isn't there a group of Rebel Alliance Rangers that could infiltrate the palace of the vile Hutt and escape without notice? If you've got Jedi, Sith and Space Slugs you've got to have Space Ninjas. It just stands to reason.

Overall Plot: According to Gary Kurtz, the producer of the first two films in the series, the plot for the third film was radically different than the product that arrived on screens in 1983. It was his opposition to the story changes suggested by George Lucas that precipitated his departure from Lucasfilm. Instead of a bold new entry into the overall Luke Skywalker saga, Lucas wanted to play it safe. And it is no wonder that fans were a little bit jarred by the return to formula that Jedi represented. A New Hope introduced us to the galaxy far far away and took us into the heart of one of the mightiest battles of an epic war. The Empire Strikes Back continued the story with a different style, showed us new worlds and characters, and broke our hearts at the end. In both films the action is driven, in part, by the threat of Jabba the Hutt and his band of inter-galactic bounty hunters who want Han Solo to either pay up or become payment himself. We never see the gangster himself, at least not in the early versions of the films, but his name casts a shadow over the fates of all of our heroes. The threat is far removed from the on screen action, but his presence is felt in the form of Boba Fett: A Bounty Hunter completely without Ruth. If the first two films are any indication, Jabba the Hutt is as frightening a character as The Emperor or Darth Vader and as cunning. Yeah, that guy doesn't show up.

Instead of a formidable opponent and master tactician whose importance to the story line has been foreshadowed by two movies we are given a fat, immobile slug-thing. Not only is he sort of a let down from a design perspective, this entire plot line is tied up and over with after only 20 minutes of movie. After four hours of storytelling that preceded his appearance Jabba only gets to play into the hands of the most ludicrous plan of a half-trained Jedi and then die. He should have been a match for just about anyone we've met so far. He should have been a puppet master manipulating a rouge's gallery of henchmen and foiling our hero at every turn only to be defeated by some masterstroke that no one could have foreseen. The Jabba of Jedi looks like the master of Play-doh and not much else. His henchmen are stupid. His defenses are non-existent and the one cool guy that hangs out with him, Boba Fett, is killed seconds after engaging a blind man in combat.

No, the Jabba angle is abandoned in short order and instead of myriad new worlds to explore and new enemies to face we are given Tattooine (again), Dagobah (again) and The Death Star (again). Oh, and our enemy is still Darth Vader. We do get to meet the Emperor in the form of a heavily made-up Ian McDarmid and that's pretty cool. But he doesn't really do much besides taunt Luke and deliver some juicy lines. We also get to visit the forest moon of Endor which looks a lot like southern California if it were populated entirely by fuzzy-baby-cutie-bears.

Much of the action follows no particular flow. People do things because the writers want them to, not because it makes sense. For example: Chewbacca, a two hundred year old Wookiee, electrician, machinist and pilot suddenly decides that he needs to eat the rotting corpse of a creature he finds in the forest. This justifies a trap that the writers want the heroes to fall into. One of the those heroes is a Jedi Knight, but that doesn't seem to matter as he and the others are undone by a rope net and some stone spears. Also, when our heroes are flying into the Endor system to execute their not-so-secret infiltration of the moon, they fail to notice the massed Imperial fleet that stands between them and the target. Had they noticed, they might have radioed back to their friends that it was all a trap. That or run the hell away themselves. In addition, Luke seems to have forgotten that he and Vader can sense each other over a considerable distance. He only seems to give it some thought as they fly by the command ship containing his murderous father and the thousands of soldiers he controls. Vader, no smarter than anyone else, allows them to land rather than capture them right there. This allows the rebels to hook up with the Ewoks, destroy the shield that protects the Death Star and sell some extra toys.

A word on character development: I'm shoehorning this in with plot so that I don't abandon my format choice. Luke is not a very curious individual in this film. He's keen to leave home and have new adventures in the first film. He's ready to learn all he can about being a Jedi in the second film. But this time around, he just doesn't care anymore. Yoda confirms that Vader is his father and Obi Wan seconds that. Super-good. However, beyond the fact that Anakin Skywalker went all evil and became Darth Vader (I picture him stepping into a phone booth ala Clark Kent becoming Superman), that's all the explanation Luke is given. Does Luke ask how Vader came to be encased in a space suit? No. Does he ask how Vader fell to the Dark Side lest he fall himself? No. Does he ask who his mother is? No, he does not. At this point Luke just wants the movie franchise to be over because he is the stand in for George Lucas. By this time it is clear that the series creator wants nothing more to do with his creation and as such nobody asks any embarrassing questions in the same way that no one ever has to pee. "Go kill Vader," says Obi Wan. "Alright," replies Luke. And so it is that he flies into danger. We as an audience raise our hands to ask those pertinent questions ourselves, but we sit in the dark like a sea of over-eager students who will never be called on.

Production Values: Dude, what happened? The original film set a standard for detail that everyone has been aping ever since. The special effects were groundbreaking and still hold up today, for the most part. The second film was the realization of a dream as a larger budget and more refined effects gave us new vistas and vibrant landscapes on alien worlds. Colors popped, eyes bugged out, and we all learned to love a little puppet named Yoda. Enter Return of the Jedi. The special effects are ok, but everything looks kind of washed out. Nothing has any depth. Jabba's palace is shot from about two angles and it populated almost entirely by people in jumpsuits and Halloween masks. It is exactly what Lucas was trying to avoid with the Cantina scene from A New Hope. Jabba looks fake and rubbery and the original Sy Snoodles (lead singer of the band) hardly moves. Instead she just sort of shuffles sullenly in place while her tiny mouth spasms in time to the music. Something else that struck me is how little of the Death Star we see. Vader lands dramatically at the beginning and the Emperor joins him later in the same hanger. Later we see the Emperor's thrown room which looks like part of an old warehouse. This is the seat of ultimate power in the universe but nothing seems very well built. Kind of a flimsy battle station, if you ask me.

The worst part of the visual style of Jedi is the over-use of backdrops. Big paintings that stand in for actual sets or models. Most egregious is a painting of the Millenium Falcon that hangs in the background during what should be a dramatic scene between Han Solo and Lando. Instead of paying attention to their lines I'm watching a 2D replacement for a special effect. Earlier we watch as Luke and crew retrieve the droids from the sands of Tattooine. The painting that represents the sand dunes of the deep desert looks like it was done by a high school art class for the local production of Aladdin.

Space ships fly at odd angles because the matting process looks hurried, action figures ride speeder bikes, and everything takes on a dull gray tone as though everything happens in the late evening. Not only are the effects and lighting questionable, but the hairdresser even recycled Aunt Beru's haircut and gave it to Luke. That's not my observation, mind you. It's been tossed around a lot, but once you notice it you can't help but smirk whenever Mark Hamill is on screen.

I know that many people worked thousands of man hours making this movie and there are bright spots like the final space battle that really show off the effort. But overall this movie is sloppy compared to its predecessors. Watching this one back to back with Empire leaves one with the feeling that Jedi is the older, grainier movie and Empire is the bold new vision.

Finally, how do the Rebels win? The fact that an entire legion of the Emperor's best men are destroyed by the Ewoks boggles the mind. It boggles it, delivers and flying axe kick the mind's delicate face and the punches the mind in the back of its sensitive mind-knee crumpling the mind like a thing that crumples in an analogy. Why are the Stormtroopers so weak and foolish? In the last film they invaded a heavily armed Rebel base and did so easily. Now they can't fight back against the cutie-wootie bears and their super-advanced armor can't defend them against little twig-like arrows. After the legion is defeated by Care Bears, Han has the great idea of using the Imperial comm-system to announce that the Rebels have been defeated. This results in the bunker lowering all defenses so the Rebels can walk in and blow them up. You see, that's what happens when a heavily fortified military position in hostile territory is returned to Status Quo, they open all the doors and windows. I'm sure something similar happens in the Green Zone of Bagdad every day.

Alright, the shield that protects the Death Star from attack (something they should have had two movies ago) is down for the count. The desperate and badly outnumbered Rebels can now begin their assault on the Death Star and win the day. So, what do we have to work with? The Imperials are represented by many many Star Destroyers and thousands of fighters, plus the Death Star is now operational and able to destroy any target in its path. The Rebels, in a sort of "Knife to a Gunfight" move, show up with about four capital ships and a handful of fighters. One of the capital ships is a Medical Frigate. Yes, they brought their Medical ship into battle. Oh, and the Death Star immediately destroys two of their larger ships. Somehow, with the shield down, Lando and his wing men are able to out-fly every fighter in the sky, descend into the Death Star and detonate its main reactor. The Emperor is dead, the Death Star is destroyed and the all rejoice. Kaloo Kalay, oh fraptious day! The only problem is the Imperial Fleet is still right there.

Why are the Rebels not wiped out by the overwhelming forces of the Empire? Where do all the ships go? If I were commanding even one of those Star Destroyers, I'd just hammer what was left of the Rebel fleet (approximately three medium size ships) and then blast the surface of Endor into ash. Then it would be Miller Time. Instead, the ships all vanish in a puff of forgetfulness. The audience is dazzled by the explosion of the Death Star and the Rebels are all so happy to have killed the Emperor that nobody mentions the fleet again. My theory is that when the Death Star exploded the Star Destroyers got spooked like jumpy horses and lit out for the safety of the Galactic Barn. That or maybe everybody in the Empire was just really sleepy. I don't know how they keep time in space, but I'm sure that it was past their bedtime. They all returned home to sack out and fight again at a more reasonable hour.

So, that's it. It's a train wreck on the order of The Phantom Menace. Nothing makes sense, it doesn't look all that great and the characters are morons. As a child I loved this movie dearly. Now I can't sit through it without exclaiming "Oh, come on!" Okay, I'm ready for my nerdy beat-down.

Movies are Stupid Round Four: Computers are Also Stupid

Once upon a time I used to be fairly ignorant about computers. In many areas of computing I would still be considered a novice, but I do have a good grounding in the basics and that has served me well lo these many years. Back when I was less knowledgeable about the inner workings of the silicon mind I was understandably impressed by Hollywood's presentation of computer science. Computers, I thought at the time, can do anything that a hero needs them to unless they are evil computers in which case they can still do anything, but only the things that evil computers want to do...like kill all humanity using an army of vat-grown Arnold Schwarzeneggers.

As I grew in my technological knowledge, or tech-understandery, it seemed that many of the abilities of movie computers were vastly overstated. You can't actually launch nukes against Russia using a TRS-80 and a dial-up modem connecting at 2600 baud. Sure, some kid in the 80's hacked the Pentagon using one, but he didn't even know what he was looking at and he certainly couldn't have killed us all with a key stroke. I'm pretty sure that guy works at Wendy's these days replacing the light bulbs on the drive-thru menu board. Nor can you upload a virus from a Mac Power Book to an entirely unknown Extraterrestrial data system. Systems are not as interconnected as we are led to believe on television and in the movies. A program that adversely effects my workstation won't hurt my server. A virus that might destroy the email system wouldn't harm even on byte of internet pornography that I in no way have backup up on three hard drives...at work. The password is not "Tallywacker".

Technology is a wonderful plot device and I'm not disputing that. Without incomprehensible science stuff we wouldn't have more than a handful of episodes of Star Trek or any episode of CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: New York, NCIS, or Bones, Crossing Jordan, Law and Order SVU, Law and Order Criminal Intent, Law and Order Orignal Recipe or House. None of these fine shows could withstand even one script read-through without the complicated and bewildering array of printed-circuit B.S. that allows a detective\hero\doctor\part-time samurai to solve a mystery in 44 minutes. Sometimes you need to be across the galaxy in less than 12 parsecs (wink) so you can fight a guy in a mobile iron lung using an ancient martial art based on your feelings. In that rarefied situation I'll spot you the faster-than-light travel because the whole thing is absurd anyway. Plus, it lets me use extra hyphens. And I'll grant you ray guns, artificial gravity and everybody wearing their pajamas all the time. The future is a sleepy place and we, the sci-fi viewers, accept this as part of the genre that we love so well. But when it comes to computers, the interactive aspect of sci-fi, I call shenanigans on the whole of Hollywood's offerings.

What it boils down to, the consume of the situation, is this: You must play by your own rules and those rules must make some sort of sense to begin with. In my office I have a telephone and a stapler and a workstation. There are programs that I could run on my desktop to eliminate the phone. The phone could use some software that might eliminate the need for certain aspects of the computer. The stapler is irreplaceable. The point is, I can't just take pieces of one and make the other. If I have a broken monitor, two AAA batteries and some hand lotion I cannot make a spreadsheet in Excel out of it. In the past certain learned men were shown to make radios out of coconuts when the need arose, but that was just a television show and a perfect example of crazy Hollywood technology. My physics professor used to say that "Parts is Parts" and while that makes sense at the subatomic level, it won't help you build a transport out of your old blender and a pair of heinouslly smelly tennis shoes. You just can't. So, when our friends on Star Trek crash land on a planet and must find a way to contact their compatriots or make a laser beam or a whole new ship, it makes no sense that they could just take a piece of this and a reactor from that and snap it all together like some sort of glowing space-lego set. But what is worse is the completly inconsistent way that the computers work in the first place. Sometimes they can just ask the computer what the likelyhood of some crazy plan working might be and she sings it right out. Other times she gets confused by simple requests for rare foods or music selections. If she's a super-smart AI with unlimited, or seemingly unlimited, processing power such that she can calculate the odds of surviving a trip through an asteroid field despite the protestations of the pilot, why can't she find Styx II in the ships archives? Count the pop-culture references there. Yeah, I know. Sad.

Picking on Star Trek or Wars or Man is easy. They're all based not on good science but on story telling and adventure. Bully for them. Droids are AI that think and feel and say wacky things during combat. They can fix complex systems on the fly. They always have the needed tool handy tucked away in their little metallic bodies, but they communicate with beeps and whistles or just say "ROGER ROGER" to everything. Really? I guess what put me on this tangent of computational criticism was a conversation my wife and I had about "The Fly". Dig this, in "The Fly" with Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, a scientist is working on teleportation. Now that falls soundly into my "silly technology forgiveness" safety zone. It's crazytalk to begin with so I have no beef with it. However, in order for his teleportation system to work he has had to create a complex computer mind that can break down the human form, interpret that being as data and then put it all back together again in another place. Having done some limited programming myself I can tell you that the logic required to make a computer program that intuitive would be worth much more than the teleportation system. Just having the tools necessary to create the OS needed to run the whole thing would be a veritable goldmine of computer science. But in true Hollywood form this is all cast aside. We've got to get Goldblum in that pod with a fly and scramble his DNA, stat! To that end, the computer is suddenly a special needs computer. It got confused when it saw, GASP!, two different patterns in the chamber. What to do? What to do? My assumption would be that the program would break, like when I try to query a database using the wrong syntax or I ask the system for data that doesn't exist. In the really-real world a computer can only do what it is told. Tell it anything new or unexpected and it just stops doing anything until you tell it different. Such is not the case with "The Fly". Now we have a system that can't make a simple decision, a logical decision, so it forumates a much more complicated plan. When faced with a new situation, one that I can't believe that any programmer in his right mind would not have thought of waaaay in advance, the computer does not choose option A: Shut down. Nor does it choose option B: Just teleport both beings seperately. No, it chooses option C: Meld the two beings together at the molecular level creating a whole new being that will be horrible. Too dumb to know what to do with some extra DNA, smart enough to reprogram itself to do something it had never done before or been told to do by anybody...ever. That's some movie stupidity if ever I saw it. An analog "I'm having trouble cutting down this tree with my chainsaw. Hmmm, I know! I'll create interstellar travel so that I can fly to a planet that doesn't have trees. Problem solved."

In "2001" the computer HAL is fully self aware and has something of a nervous breakdown. I buy that. He's not a thing, he's a he. People get upset and conflicted and unhappy. If I was a big metal ship floating through space having to look after a couple of shedding, stinking, eating, pooping bossy humans for months on end, I might get a little cranky. If a couple of guys, who could not exist without my constant intervention on their behalf, started talking smack about me inside a space-pod...somebody might have to die. Accidents happen, so watch your step during your spacewalk Dr. Poole. It makes sense, plays by its own rules and is exactly what you would expect from Arthur C. Clarke. It also makes sense that nobody in Hollywood got this movie when it came out and it was a commercial flop during its initial release. Now, had the computer made unbelievable leaps of logic, produced completely unfounded results from the flimsiest of hypothesis and talked in a kooky Jamaican patois the film would have been hyped from coast to coast and sold out every seat in every movie house from New York to other parts of New York. There were fewer cinemas in the sixties.

It was Mr. Clarke who once opined that any level of technology, sufficiently advanced, was indistinguishable from magic. Our movie making friends have taken this to mean that computers can be used in place of magic when mages, alchemists and such just don't fit the story. You need a hero to learn something he couldn't possibly know? The internet tells him. Do you have an unknown killer on the loose hacking up prostitutes and cab drivers? Just ask your semi-sentient PC who did it. We accept these absurdities because we largely don't know any better. But I submit that the reverse substitution would not be so easily accepted. Imagine a sword and sorcery movie where the loin-cloth-clad warrior must employ FORTRAN to stop the mad King Humassivious. "You must travel through the Misted Plains of Aronak, beyond the Foothills of Perpetual Sundays until you come to the...I T Department. There you will find Mark, the savvy PERL programmer who instructed me." Sort of loses something, doesn't it?

If we wouldn't stand for sloppy plot contrivances in the former, we shouldn't allow them in the latter. I know that a realistic depiction of programming or research would be tedious and uninteresting to almost everyone. But there must be some middle ground. Maybe a training montage ala Rocky IV. Just shots inter-cut of typing, back-spacing, drinking Mountain Dew, eating Doritos and more typing while a suitable rock anthem blares in the background. Until such time as the movie studios see fit to give us a real computer movie or a movie that at least portrays computing in a sensible way, I'll just have to cringe when I see a computer used supernaturally in a movie. I'll just close my eyes and pretend that it's not happening. That or get over myself and drink my $3.00 cherry coke.

Movies are Stupid Round Three: Mother Nature Hates You

If I learned anything at all about the weather from having watched The Day After Tomorrow it is this: Everything is the Vice President's fault. As near as I can tell the whole Global Warming crisis, which only seems to feel like a crisis in August for some reason, can be tracked back to the hateful and pig-headed actions of the Vice President of the United States. That bastard! While I find it hard to believe that the entire world could be cast into the seventh level of hell because of one crotchety old movie stereotype, I'll have to admit that it is good to know who is responsible for this mess. Now that we know who did it all let us discuss what he did and the consequences of his heinous actions.

The concept of The Day After Tomorrow is a familiar one...we are all doomed. The planet has been altered by our greenhouse gas emissions or "Civilization Farts" in such a way that the North Atlantic current has destabilized due to the saline content of the oceans having been reduced by the melting of the polar ice caps as a result of global warming caused by the aforementioned farts. It seems that while humanity has enjoyed the societal advances of technology over the last hundred years or so we have been, unbeknownst to the common folks, cutting the global cheese. Now the world is all smellified and is ready to take revenge on all of us wee little bald apes with our microwave ovens and Cadillacs and Styx 8-tracks. Mr. Roboto rules!

Basically the science in this movie only sounds like science. Rationality is thrown under the bus to make room for an expedient story and some cool special effects. With that in mind one must ignore everything said by Dennis Quaid's character having to do with climate change. You'd wear out your clicking finger trying to navigate through all the Wikipedia articles that deal with climate change while trying to vet anything that he says. We need disasters now, damn it! Science can sit this one out.

In place of a reasonable explanation for things we are given an arrogant villain onto whom we can focus our ire. He's a slave to those "Corporations" and uses words like "people" and "economy" so we know for certain that he's evil through and through. When confronted with the possibility that a century of industrial progress has crippled the Earth's natural heating processes he scoffs and suggests that we can't just undo all of humanity for the sake of avoiding an ice age that may or may not happen. The smug bastard even refuses to take these facts to his boss. Yes sir, the Vice President is not only to blame for what is to come, but clearly he is the only person in the government with any sway at all and if he refuses to take your findings to the President personally, then you'll just have to take your ball of research and go home...to your lab...of sulking.

Okay, so we've got our psuedo-scientific goobledygook, we've got our villain (oh how my rage burns against him and his button-down world!) now we just need a plausible story full of effects that are special. Well, we don't get one. Instead we get to watch this scientist, who is convinced that the world is coming to an end, send his son off to New York because he's on the debate team and as we all know the debate team finals trump any global emergency. I'm pretty sure that World War II was delayed for just such a reason.

The son, played by Jake Gyllenhall, looks in no way like a man in his late twenties playing a teenager. Not at all. And that's a good thing because he needs to play an idealistic and naive kid who must weather the storm to come and serve as that sole voice of reason in this crazy mixed-up world with its hills of beans that sometimes amount to things and other times do not. It is his plight, being stuck in New York when the special effects finally happen, that spurs the story on. By the time the world does start coming to an end the movie could use some spurs. I don't know about you, but when I pay to see intercontinental destruction I don't like being made to wait while people explore their feelings.

Anyway, the mid-atlantic water thingy is desalinated and so on which causes massive cooling in the form of super-gigantic ice hurricanes that form over land. Seriously. The result is a tidal wave, for some reason, that floods the eastern seaboard and then a massive cold snap that instantly freezes everything into a sheet of ice. Anyone caught outside will be killed. Jake Gyllenhall knows all this because he called his dad on an underwater telephone and got the 411 on global disaster. Strangely, none of the refugees huddled together in the library believe him. They all set out for warmer climes and maybe a latte from one of the many Starbucks in NYC. Oh, and they all die from the giant ice hurricane that they all literally watched happen before their eyes and yet didn't seem to think was dangerous.

On the note of giant ice hurricanes...the special effects are great in this movie. When NYC freezes over in a matter of seconds it looks real. The tidal wave, the super storms, the running an screaming; all good. But there seems to be a disconnect between the filmmakers and any type of logic. I know that science is out the window with this film, but there are some things you just can't do and all the CGI in the world is not going to help you. The best example of this is when Jake Gyllenhall and friends outrun cold. The temperature is dropping all over the northern hemisphere, but Jake is just too fast for it. Oh, it chases him down a hallway, but he escapes. Also he cures Septicemia with a single injection of Russian penicillin found on board a derelict oil tanker that somehow sailed down the streets of a major American city. And he outsmarts a pack of wolves. Later on he is saved from certain doom by his dad who walked from Washington D.C. to New York during the onset of a new Ice Age. That actually happens.

I own a copy of this movie on Blu-Ray. It looks awesome and overall I enjoy it, but this movie is way dumb. If you are willing to suspend reason and disbelief in the extreme, you too will enjoy this stupid movie. Otherwise you might bleed from your eyes as your brain tries to make sense of it all.

Movies are Stupid: Round Two...Electric Bigelow

You've likely never heard of Kathryn Bigelow. At one time she was married to James Cameron of Terminator fame. Aside from that brief brush with greatness she directed a little known film called Point Break starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze. That was, and has been, the high point of her directing career. She followed up Point Break with a poorly received film called Strange Days. I think I'm one of the seven people who paid to see it in the cinema. It's overly long and takes itself way too seriously, but it doesn't suck. Ralph Fiennes is in it doing a passable American accent and Angela (should have played Storm) Bassett plays his love interest/bad-ass driver. It's a decent yarn about the end of the millennium set in a near-future that looks nothing like the actual future that came to pass. Most near-future movies are that way. Instead of "near-future" they should call them "silly special effects budget expenditure". All of which is beside the point. In 1987 Kathryn Bigelow, you can tell she's serious because she spells her name with a "y", co-wrote and directed a largely unseen film called "Near Dark" and it rocked. However, as with most movies, it was also stupid.

The concept of Near Dark is fairly simple. Boy meets girl, girl bites boy and turns him into a vampire, boy is abducted by girl's vampire family consisting of weird urban shit-kickers and, for some reason, a young boy who is really an old man. Freaky. That would pretty much be the end of it were this an episode of the Twilight Zone, but our hero cannot bring himself to kill anyone in order to eat and this means trouble as the vampire gang has gotten used to the idea of killing and eating humans. Those members who are not on board with this dynamic must leave and by "leave" I mean "get ripped apart by angry vampires". Thus a young country boy from Texas is on the run from a who's who of supporting character actors who frequently appear in James Cameron films.

Sounds great, right? How could this movie, which I so obviously like, be stupid? Allow me to illustrate. Apparently this gang of supernatural killers has been roving around the US since some time in the mid 1800's killing folks left and right without being noticed. That's some trick. I'm sure a whole raft of serial killers would love to know how to pull that one off. A little known fact about law enforcement: They take murder very seriously. Most murder cases are solved and many are solved in short order. These days they just run any DNA they find through a database and start building a profile of their killer within hours of the crime. But even in the archaic 1980's the police were not, contrary to popular belief, incompetent. Generally speaking, if you killed somebody in 1987, the police would track you down and arrest you. Whether alive or undead, everyone was subject to the law. And as such one has to wonder how a group of bloodthirsty killers can leave bodies strewn all over the countryside year after year for over a hundred years and never get caught. One could argue that they use their otherworldly powers to subdue their prey and that they further use their supernatural strength, speed and cunning to hide away their crimes that they might work in secret for all time. One could argue that, but one would be contradicted by the movie at every turn.

Here we have a group of scruffy-looking people riding around in an RV or van or SUV or other large vehicle with the windows blacked out. That alone would raise suspicions among even the most disinterested of observers. Add to that the fact that they stalk their prey by walking up to them, making small talk, and then ripping their faces off. In one scene from the film the band of merry murderers kill all but one patron in a bar and then burn the place to the ground. This is one of the few times when the film makes some kind of sense because the lone survivor calls the police who then promptly hunt down the killers. Unfortunately for both the cops and the viewers the vampires are able to escape by...wait for it...driving away. Indeed, after a harrowing shootout with the state police the vamps make good their escape by getting in their van and driving away. The cops do not give chase or even call in backup via their radios. I guess they just hang around in the desert for a while until they figure out that the bad guys aren't coming back. After that they go to Waffle House for some coffee and pie. The Waffle House bit doesn't happen in the movie, but I imagined it happening and that made me smile.

There is more idiocy to be had as the story unfolds. First a minor gripe among the many other, better fed, gripes: why don't they black out the windows of their vehicle when they steal it? Twice they are shown to be rapidly deploying their half-assed efforts to block the sunlight as dawn approaches. You'd think that after a century of hunting and hiding they would have this all down to a science. However, these are clearly the slacker vampires who never get a book published about them. Without a doubt any group of nocturnal death merchants who periodically forget that the sun will kill them are not long for this world. How they made it all the way to 1987 without bursting into flames is beyond me. In any event, my plan would go like this were I the cranky leader of a bunch of dusty cowboy vampires: Step 1) Steal a car. Step 2) Black out all the windows thoroughly. Step 3) Cautiously hunt my prey and then dispatch them where they will never be found. Step 4) Arrive at predetermined sunlight-free location to sleep. That's it. How hard could that possibly be?

More gripes; A common problem with modern movies is that directors seem to think we are morons. This is especially true when it comes to firearms. In the movie world anyone one not on camera cannot hear the report of a hand gun or a rifle. This movie has shotgun blasts in the middle of the night that arouse no suspicion and a large caliber hand gun is fired in a hotel room with no intervention by the police or other authority figures. You see, if you're not on screen you must be deaf. In addition to the soundless gun play there are buckets of blood after every attack, but everybody stays relatively clean. One scene involves a vamp using his sharpened spurs to cut a man's throat. At the end of the scene the floor, walls and even the ceiling drip with blood, but later that same vamp is plasma-free. Speaking of blood, that brings me to my final gripe.

Modern vampire stories have become morose and dour. Anne Rice made it her goal in life to douche-fy the vampire and make him a sad and lonely creature living on the edge of society wishing he could join his human brethren and no longer be on the outside looking in. Boo Hoo. One thing she got right was the idea that you can't just stop being a vampire because you don't like it anymore. Not so in Near Dark. After our hero escapes the vampires with the help of his family who just happened to be staying at the same hotel, the father gives him a blood transfusion that de-vamperizes him. Seems to me that anybody reporting to an Emergency Room with a strange blood disorder would be treated in a similar manner. A quick trip to any Doc-in-the-Box would be enough to undo the horrible fate that had befallen you. Within the confines of this vampiric paradigm the unearthly kiss of the Nosferatu is not unlike a case of syphilis. Sure, vampirisim would have been a terrible plague upon the world striking terror into the hearts of men and causing mothers to hold their children tightly to them at night for fear of the ancient evil that walked like men. This would have been true right up until the mid-1800's when blood transfusions started to become more common. By the 1900's it was a well tested technique with proven results. If all it takes to cure vampirism is a well-known and widely available medical procedure, then the vampire was defanged as far back as 1825. So, to sum up, one can stop being a vampire by taking in large quantities of human blood. That makes no sense whatsoever and begs the question: Has Kathryn Bigelow ever heard of vampires before?