Tag Archives: Star Wars

Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets – ‘Space Is MAGIC’ – Trailer

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Luc Besson is nothing if not ambitious and Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets is his most ambitious feature yet, but I am concerned.

The movie, based on a French comic book written by Pierre Christin and illustrated by Jean-Claude Mézières, is likely unfamiliar to most Americans, which is likely why the director spends quite a bit of time in the trailer telling the viewer what it is they’re going to see, and what it’s  based on.

If I were promoting the movie in the United States I’d  bypass the origins of the characters–which domestic audiences are likely unaware –and instead concentrate on two things:

  • Spectacle

Valerian appears to be visually spectacular, as if Besson took the visual esthetic of The Fifth Element and combined it with Star Wars and Avatar.  Movies are all about diversion and this is an aspect that–in promotional materials–needs to be played up (it goes without saying that he movie itself will hopefully have a story that matches the visuals) even more than it is in this trailer.

Promise a visual experience like no other.  And sure, it’s likely not to be the case –I have seen few, if any, movies to actually live up to such hype–but it doesn’t stop movies from saying it, so Valerian might as well do the same.

  • Competition

Valerian cost somewhere between $170-200 million dollars to produce and while I expect it will perform strongest in Europe (where familiarity with the source material is likely greater) I wouldn’t discount it doing well in most international markets.

How well it does domestically depends upon when it is released, and perhaps more importantly, what it is released against.   It it performs (domestically) like Universal’s The Mummy, which had Wonder Woman to content with, then it had better do as well as that movie did internationally (despite not starring an actor with the international pull of a Tom Cruise) or there might be troubles for EuropaCorp (Besson’s production company, though the movie is released domestically via STX.).

Though if Valerian has a month or so alone (and there’s no Spider-Man: Homecoming waiting in ambush) competing with smaller releases it’s likely to do just fine.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi – Teaser Trailer

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Screenshot 2017-04-14 12.35.54.pngRian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi was released a few hours ago, and looks… like a Star Wars movie.

Which is stating the obvious, though it also reveals a problem.  The last Star Wars movie, Rogue One, was what you get when you take Star Wars and remove the wonder, heart and engaging characters that made that made the series so well-loved by so many (even George Lucas’ much maligned–and deservedly so–prequel trilogy).

And sure, Rogue One made a gazillion dollars but it could easily be a case of diminishing returns, like in the case of Sony’s Spider-Man franchise.

Though to be fair it appears that The Last Jedi looks like it’s at least attempting to bring some of the aforementioned wonder and mystery central to prior entries, and that’s a good thing.

Will it work?  I have no idea, but it’s worth trying.

 

Rogue One Review Capsule

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I’m in the process of editing my review of ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS Story so check back for the full version!

Though I have to say that I really did not like this movie.  Say what you will about the prequels, at least they felt like Star Wars movies.

Rogue One?  Maybe the last 35-40 minutes felt like a Star Wars movie though the bulk of it felt like the worse kind of war movie, namely the type where you don’t give a damn about anyone. 

Such a lack of character development you can get away with in a three or four minute short, though when you’re talking about a movie that runs almost two hours and a half it’s near inexcusable.  

I honestly can’t tell if it’s the writing or the direction that’s at fault, but dealing with any sort of human emotion isn’t exactly director Gareth Edwards‘ strong suit (something’s that’s fairly obvious if you have seen either Monsters or Godzilla, though to be fair Rogue One makes Monsters feel almost pornographic in its displays of human emotion and relationships). 

Clearly people are seeing the movie, but I get the feeling that if there weren’t the connection to Star Wars, most wouldn’t give a damn. 

Postmortem: The Fury

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Screenshot 2016-02-13 23.25.49

I am mystified why Brian DePalma’s The Fury (based on the novel by John Farris) hasn’t been remade because not only would the movie benefit from a more timely interpretation (in these days of government programs we often don’t completely understand, but fear a reboot could potentially find a very receptive audience) and a more modern esthetic.

Which isn’t to imply that it’s a bad movie, only that it appears, especially visually, dated.

What I imagine is a welcome thing is that–unlike in many reboots–younger actors would actually fit the story.  In fact, based on the dialogue, I get the feeling that Andrew Stevens (Robin Sandza) and Amy Irving (Gillian Belllaver) were older than the characters in Farris’ novel and screenplay).

The movie revolves around the agents of an undisclosed government agency–in the vein of the CIA or NSA–that seeks out telepaths to use as weapons.

Loyalty apparently isn’t particularly strong among this group because Peter Sandza (Kirk Douglas) is betrayed by his best friend, Ben Childress (played by Ben Cassavettes)–which is oddly close to ‘childless,’ apropos considering what he does in the movie when he learns that his best friend’s son, Robin, has telekinetic abilities.

What’s particularly interesting about the movie is that in the third act Childress blows up in all its gory glory–three years before David Cronenberg’s groundbreaking Scanners (coincidentally I assume)–which is very similar from a story point of view.

Besides the direction by Brian DePalma, the score’s by John Williams, and if all you’ve heard of his work is from Star Wars, Indiana Jones or Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Fury is worth watching to hear some of his earlier work, which is tonally different from what most are accustomed to hearing from him.

I found it at times reminiscent of Elmer Bernstein’s work composing the music for Saturn 3, though perhaps not as experimental.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens – Trailer

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens – Teaser Trailer 3

I’ve included the teaser trailer for the upcoming third trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens partally because I still think it’s particularly douchy to make the trailer the event, as opposed to the movie.

After all, we’re talking about Star Wars here.  The hype for this movie is unbelievable and J.J. Abrams is a solid-enough director that I expect that he’ll live up to the hype.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens Trailer (Official)

And speaking of the trailer, it’s gorgeous.  That being said, what’s more interesting is that it gives the impression that all the mythology around the Jedi have been lost to time and become just that, mythology.

Which implies that a significant amount of time has passed, but seeing that Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher are in the movie, it couldn’t’ be that much.

Five Ways To Make The Upcoming Masters Of The Universe Reboot Awesome

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With all the talk of a new movie based on Mattel’s Master of the Universe line of toys, it’s almost as if people have forgotten that there has already been an attempt to bring Skeletor and his minions to the big screen.

[youtube-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEBE5Wgmw4I]

And it was actually not that bad–especially considering that it came from Cannon Films, which no longer exists, though they weren’t known for spending a shit-ton on their productions–the movie had some good names, Frank Langella in particular as Skeletor was a coup–and the movie started strongly, before petering out.

Besides, I imagine that Mattel is a bit cheesed-off seeing how many billions Hasbro earned from the movies based on their Transformers line.

1.  Remember What Came Before

I get the feeling that the producers of the upcoming Masters Of The Universe reboot don’t want to watch the first movie made in the late eighties, though they should.

It was George Santayana who wrote “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (which is why Fox needs to return the Fantastic Four to Marvel Studios, but that’s another post)” and the producers of the upcoming Masters Of The Universe reboot need to watch Gary Goddard’s 1987 movie because it’s actually got a lot going for it.

And it also has a lot that should to be avoided this time around, such as…

2. Don’t Design Your Soldiers To Look Like Darth Vader

Skeletor's Soliders

I’m sure it’s tempting, after all Star Wars is one of the most influential sci-fi movies ever made.  That being said, It’s hard to create a property that’s unique and has a feel of its own, without dealing with characters that look a lot like others from (probably) much better movies.

In other words, you can get away with a base that looks distrubiningly like Vader’s head in the Justice League cartoon.

In a live action movie?  Not so much.

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The (Un)necessary Remake Dept – Wing Commander (1999)

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Gerry Anderson, it could be argued, was one of the first producers of science fiction to see what a tremendous role hardware design, such as spaceships, could play.  In virtually all his television series and movies, design has been crucial (more often than not, to the detriment of character development).  In fact, the Eagle from Space: 1999, arguably a space craft as iconic as Star Trek’s Enterprise, lead directly to designs like the Millennium Falcon, from Star Wars (George Lucas was known to have been directly inspired, in a visual sense, by Space: 1999).

In fact, Brian Johnson, who handled special effects on movies like The Empire Strikes Back (among many others) cut his teeth on Anderson productions.

I bring up spaceship design because Chris Roberts‘ 1999 movie Wing Commander is a movie that, on the whole, had designs that appeared more functional than iconic, a fact that wouldn’t endear the movie to tech-heads.  In fact, the design of the spaceships are remarkably similar to those of Paul W.S. Anderson’s Event Horizon, that came two years earlier (I assume that the same FX houses worked on both features).

Despite being, in terms of spaceship design being somewhat uninspired, it had actors like David Sushet (Agatha Christie’s Poirot), Tchéky Kayro, Jurgen Prochnow, David Warner, Freddie Prince, Jr. and Matthew Lillard, which is why its box office failure is so perplexing to me.

In fact, despite the aforementioned failure, the movie is unintentionally prophetic in that it plays like a young adult novel (by no means an insult.  Some of the best books I have ever read, such as John Christopher’s The White Mountains trilogy, were young adult novels) instead of being based on a video game.

That being the case, for a reboot I would commission more iconic spaceship designs, but that’s about it.  The movie does so much right that I can only think that its problem during its original release was one of timing.