My poor Wolfman II

Well folks, we are coming right down to the wire. The Wolfman will be released in less than 48 hours given midnight showings on Thursday night. The truth will be known soon: Was the 16 months of delay and reworking necessary? Was it productive? Did this turn out to be the epic cinematic catastrophe that so many declared was marching towards its inevitable ruination? Did it turn out okay?

The initial word looks decent. 544 members of IMDB have reported in with reviews. The score is massive. It is getting 8.9 stars out of 10. Of course, this is probably cast and crew members reporting in to give the movie a serious push. The score cannot hold at that level. If it does, that will be sufficient to make The Wolfman on of the top 20 movies ever released.

I have better news than this: An early critical review showing was held for pro critics. The first 7 have already checked in with Rottentomatoes.com. By a vote of 4-3, the T-Meter now stands at 57 with a strength score of 5.3. Whether you know it or not, that is a very encouraging sign.

Many good and solid action/horror movies get mixed reviews from professional critics. Many professional critics believe that a movie with action/horror theme cannot be rated as 'good'. In order to be 'good' a movie must contain emotion meltdown themes surrounding drug addiction, mental illness, divorce and homosexuality. This is A content to many critics. Gay coming out movies constitute A content. Those movies have to be talked up as Oscar contenders. Werewolf movies are inherently B content and must be downgraded accordingly. The rumors themselves can be a cause of bias. Critics may have their poisoned pens loaded, and their spectacles sharply cleaned, looking extra-hard for blems.

When you control for art school biases, and rumors of disaster, a score of 57 is not bad at all for a werewolf movie. Remember, I have no interest whatsoever in the A content that Hollywood produces, and I do not apologize for that fact. I haven't got the slightest interest in the world in the emotional meltdowns that Hollywood stars experience because they (a) discover they are gay, (b) get divorced, (c) alienate their children in this process, (d) turn to heroine for comfort afterward. I am not interested in watching them go through the 12 steps to life recovery. I am not interested in watching a psycho therapy session in progress. I am not interested in seeing how they allegedly achieved inner peace. I will not payout my hard-earned money for a ticket to see such rubbish. I am a B movie guy, and I am lovin' every minute of it. Werewolves are great stuff for me.

Ergo sum, the sort of critiques that are being leveled against The Werewolf are only mildly worrisome. The one critic who declared that the movie is poorly paced, he worries me. Pace is everything in an action/horror movie. Furthermore, when a movie goes through as many associate editors as The Wolfman, it usually means that they are dealing with issues of pace and coherency. The rest of the critics don't worry me. The positive things said about this movie do seem to outweigh the negative... once bias is controlled.

I have been hopeful that this movie will turn out well. The previews do look good to me. It is dangerous to believe in previews. These are too often the very best part of the movie cobbled together. You can make anything look great that way. The number of editors, pace issues, and coherency issues do worry me a lot.