The Dark Side

It was last year when I found myself squealing like a schoolgirl because someone told me that Disney had bought out Lucasfilm, and they were preparing to make an Episode VII. Being the Star Wars expert that I am, people immediately asked me “Do you think it will be good?”, “Aren’t you worried that Disney will screw it up?” My answer to the first is a resounding yes, and my answer to the latter is a resounding no. Let me explain:

Disney is not a stupid company, they revel in making money. They have figured out that putting out a superior product ends up bringing them more money. Take a look at their acquisition of Pixar, look at their latest release, Frozen. The better the film, the more money it will draw in and the more they can make off of merchandising. Secondly, to those people who say that Disney will screw it up because it is an action film, not some “feel-good, family friendly movie”. Let’s take a look at some of the Marvel movies that Disney has put out; I’m pretty sure that they hit it out of the park with The Avengers. Furthermore, Disney hired J.J. Abrams to direct. The same man who helped take a fledgling Star Trek series, and give it some credibility again. Yes, he may have overused the lens flare, but he has since apologized for that. The man has proven that he can give the audience a good show while at the same time make a good film.

Another reason I know that this film will be good is that both J.J. Abrams and Laurence Kasdan worked on the second treatment of the script. Let me repeat, Laurence Kasdan worked on the script. For those of you who do not know, George Lucas did not write the script for Episode V or Episode VI; Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back is widely regarded as the best film in the Star Wars universe. That script was written of course by Laurence Kasdan. Episode VII is in good hands.

When Episodes I, II, and III were being made, George Lucas had complete creative control. That was a terrible idea. Imagine yourself going through life without that little voice in your head to tell you no. That’s what happened with these three episodes. You had a kid in a green screen candy shop, and no parent to tell him no. So what did we get? We got movies that were so green screened that the humanity in the films was lost. Once again, we now have a director that can be held accountable, and one who will not rely simply on green screens to tell a story.

The final reason that this movie will be good comes from one simple fact: Harrison Ford agreed to do it. I can already hear some of the backlash from that statement. “But Harrison Ford agreed to do the fourth Indiana Jones movie”. Well, George Lucas screwed that up as well. Whose ideas do you think “Nuking the Fridge” and Aliens were? Years ago Harrison Ford stated that Han Solo was a character that he had no interest in playing again. It is my belief that much of that statement came from the fact that he did not like working under George Lucas, because George Lucas has long had a reputation of not understanding the acting process. The fact that Harrison Ford said yes to this film means that he saw or was told something that made him believe that Han Solo’s character was a viable one to return to.

The bottom line is this: there is new life that is being breathed into this franchise. There are good writers, good actors, and good people behind this film. I will admit, it will be a bit different- after all, this will be the first Star Wars film in 37 years that George Lucas is not the driving force behind. But this is a good thing, as change can often be. I will be one of the many waiting in long lines at midnight to once again return to a galaxy far, far away.

To make an incredible movie takes brave producers, a great visionary director, incredible performances by the actors, and a dedicated crew. By contrast however, to make a truly terrible movie one has to have the “perfect storm” of mishaps: a terrible producer, a director who is completely out of his element, terrible acting, and a crew that simply doesn’t care. When these evils are put together, we are treated to a truly terrifying movie experience, the cinematic equivalent of nails scratching on a chalkboard. Unfortunately, we as the viewing public have been subjected to far too many of these mishaps over the last thirty years. For your viewing pleasure, I have listed some of the worst offenders.

Ghost Rider (1&2)

Who can forget these steaming piles of crap? The fact that someone greenlit a sequel simply tells me that someone besides Johnny Blaze’s character sold their soul to the devil. First, let’s start with the first movie. How is it possible for a movie made in the 2000’s to have CGI that looks worse than The Last Starfighter? (Look it up if you haven’t seen it.) Problem #1, it stars Nic Cage who has not made a decent movie in 15 years (excluding Kick Ass and National Treasure). Outside of Jim Carrey, he may be the worst and weirdest overactor, and in these two films, he is most definitely at his Nic Cagiest: the wild eyes, the scratchy voice, and of course yelled lines when they could simply be spoken.

Problem #2, terrible, and I mean terrible special effects. While they are not as bad as something like Spawn, at least Spawn could argue that it was made in a time in which CGI had not quite reached the level it is today. This movie had a decent sized budget, and still his skeleton head looked like it had come out of Army of Darkness (a far superior film, by the way). Thirdly, I did not give a damn about the characters; I challenge you to find anyone who really cared about the plight of Johnny Blaze. I find challenge you to find anyone who cares about anything that happened in this film.

Battleship

When I first heard that they were making a Battleship movie based on the popular board game, I immediately thought to myself “This may be the stupidest idea for a movie”. We were quickly told about the cast: Taylor Kitch (because he was wonderful in John Carter) Rihanna (because of all her acting experience obviously), also some actual army verteran who had lost both of his legs (thank you for your service, but do not ever act again.) Then the trailer came, and I was confused; I thought this was a movie that was going to be about naval warfare, why was I watching a trailer for a Transformers film? How the movie could have possibly let me down at this point I do not know, but it did. It made absolutely no sense whatsoever. The Aliens seemed to make incredibly stupid tactical decisions. For example, I understand taking out a military base with your rolling ball thingy, but why did you then proceed to take out a freeway, and little league field? Were those kids that much of a threat to you? What were they going to do, attack you with Big League Chew? The sad fact is that I would not have put it past the writers of this gem. The same people who decided “Hey, every freaking scene Rihanna is in, let’s put a gun in here hands!” Brilliant. Of course I cannot put my true hatred for movies into words… so watch this instead.

Mortal Kombat II

The strange thing about this one is that I really did enjoy Mortal Kombat. It was by no stretch of the imagination a work of art, but it was campy, fun and featured some pretty decent fight scenes. So, when they announced that there was going to be a Mortal Kombat II, people got excited. By this point there was a Mortal Kombat II video game, so there was going to be more characters, more fights, and more action. Wrong. Wrong. Instead the audience was horrified to find that some actors had been replaced, the action was slightly toned down, and some characters were featured, but literally never fought. So, the point of having them in the movie served what purpose? Furthermore, the acting in the first one was passable at best, this one was far, far, far worse. It was a mess of cheesy lines spoken by terrible actors whose performances were so terrible, they were written down in the annals of history as “how not to act.” Here’s an example:

And that was in the first five minutes of the movie. It actually got worse from there.

Super Mario Brothers

Let me start off by saying that when Hollywood adapts video games into movies, it should be a very simple process. Most games have an already pre-established story line that gamers are familiar with and already have accepted. The fictional world has already been built, and all the movie makers have to do is put that world onto the screen. It should be a no-brainer, right? Unfortunately, the brain trust that puts these films on screen ignore all common sense, and decide to put their own spin on things, and that’s why so many “video game movies” have failed miserably. The greatest example of this failure is of course the Super Mario Brothers movie. I mean seriously, did the writers of this movie even play the game? They had a very, very simple job. Take two plumbers, place them in this far away world, filled with breakable blocks, mushroom shaped goombas, turtle koopa troopas, and an evil dragon/turtle creature named Bowser, and have them rescue a princess in distress by the name of Daisy. You had your basic melodrama right there. But no, the “brilliant” writers of the film decided to set the film in this strange dystopic world, and instead of having characters that
resembled the characters in the game, we were treated to these:

Seriously? Seriously? What the hell is this supposed to be? So, the small headed, Chris Bosh lookin’, freak of nature is supposed to be a Goomba? First of all, a Goomba should resemble a mushroom in some way. Secondly, what was the director’s plan, to scare the living bejeezus out of every child that went to see this movie? This monstrosity honestly gave me nightmares. And then there’s Bowser… Why in the name of everything holy would Bowser be a human? The Goombas weren’t human, we have already established that, but there is Bowser in all of his human glory. What must have been going through Dennis Hopper’s mind as he showed up to work every day? How can he possibly live with himself? Also, John Leguizamo and Bob Hoskins are both great actors. How could they justify this movie to themselves. Either way, this movie had a part in ruining my childhood, and destroying my faith in humanity.