District 9: Much ado about nothing

District 9 is currently the hot movie racing up the charts. This is true both in terms of box office dollars and critical praise. I saw it last night with great expectations. In short: It disappointed me. The absolute bottom line is that this is like many Peter Jackson's productions. It is strong on core concept and visual effects, and pretty lame overall. It is hard for me to put my finger on precisely what the problem was, but the movie is basically flat. I watched it, and I really didn't care. I just didn't give a damn.

So why did it fail? Perhaps it is a vain attempt to say something about race relations and international relations when you really don't have anything to say (of importance) about race relations or international relations. Perhaps it is because this movie is too sharply derivative of Alien Nation and Starship Troopers. I think this is probably the most important factor. Neill Blomkamp & Peter Jackson basically ripped an Alien Nation meets Starship Troopers Frankenhooker script, and shot it to the best of their abilities (which are fairly good). There are also elements of Kafka's Metamorphosis, and also the hand-cam movies like Cloverfield and Quarantine.

For those who don't yet know this, I took the basic film appreciation course at UCLA. It was the only fun course I took during my 2.33 years there. I did it for shits and giggles. The two most outstanding units in that text book were titled:
1. The truly rancid sequel
2. The Frankenhooker script

These two chapters attempted to explain at least two-thirds of epic disasters that have occurred in Hollywood history. When I say epic disasters, I mean tragically failed films which lost tens of millions of dollars, terminated promising careers, and sunk studio franchises. Transformers 2 is an example of the truly rancid sequel phenomenon. So was Blade III. The studio ordered up a sequel and scheduled the production budget before anyone had even bothered to think of a plot, write a script, or do a story board. That's how you get a truly rancid sequel.

The Frankenhooker is a bit different. A Frankenhooker script is one where the studio bosses demand the recombination of large components of other previously successful movies. You stitch together large story parts, as doctor Frankenstein did with body parts, and try to bring it to life with a jolt of electricity. A Frankenhooker is a concept that should be sexy, because it is composed of sexy body parts. Unfortunately, the surgical sutures are highly visible. The pieces that have been stitched together have inflamed red scars all over the place, showing signs of rejection and infection. Wanted was the great Frankenhooker of last year. It too was financially & critically successful. Two years ago, Doomsday was the big Frankenhooker. I actually liked that one, although it was neither critically nor financially successful.

Blow-by-blow, play-by-play, minute-to-minute, District-9 botches the game with fatious attempts at ultra-satire. It is very clear that Paul Verhooven is Neill Blomkamp super-hero and idol. He wants to make a snarky ultra-satire of the sort Paul Verhooven would be proud of. OCP in the Robocop movies is replaced with MNU in District 9. Their first job is to run around in District 9 getting the aliens to sign eviction notices. The Prawns have been given names like "Christopher Johnson". The Prawns engage in cross-species prostitution just as the aliens in Alien Nation did {when you see the Prawns, you will realize that this is fatious attempt at humor}. MNU is even more heartless than OCP, with the Big Bossman willing to vivisect his own son-in-law and leave his daughter widdowed in order to discover how humans can manipulate alien weapons. We have some preposterous leaps of faith in this script as well. I am expected to believe that exposure to an alien fuel cell will cause a human being to mutate into into a Prawn. I find this no more believable than the notion that a Prawn might mutate into a human after being exposed to battery acid.

What shocks me is that supposedly intelligent, high-minded art critics are greeting this film as an intelligent work of art!?!?! They hell you say waaahhhh? WTF? Who did what? I am absolutely sure I have no idea of what the hell they are babbling about in their reviews. They must not have seen the same movie I did. At the core, this is an incredibly stupid film, without any point to make. The only point was the Frankenhooker point: To recombine pieces of a previously successful pair of films, and make some money with a new property.

So can we laugh at this movie? Is it funny? Nope. Unlike Paul Verhooven's movies, my audience only laughed once during District 9. This was during the preposterous photo of Wikus fucking a Prawn. That was outrageous enough to make the audience understand that this was a clear-cut attempt at humor. They obliged the film makers by laughing. I thought it looked foolish as hell. Nobody would ever do such a thing. Any corp that broadcast this picture to discredit a guy, would itself become the subject of ridicule. Do you really expect us to believe this?

Ultimately, this is not a wretched-bad film, but it isn't a good one either. It is just a mediocre weird film. Put this in the same category with Peter Jackson's King Kong and with the recently departed Watchmen. It's just one of those mis-begotten concepts that almost panned out, but couldn't escape weak ideas & writing.

So the reviews for the final cut of Wolverine are starting to roll in

And it sure as fuck isn't pretty.  If you are a studio manager, you are going to have to be upset about reviews like this one.  They are calling it a fiasco.

For those of you stuck under a rock, obsessed with the NFL draft, the Jay Cutler drama, the NCAA Basketball Tournament, or the bad economy, there was another major story in March 2009. It turns out that world media piracy scored it's biggest kill ever.  They jacked an advanced working copy of the new Super Hero blockbuster X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  Of course, this XVID went straight to Bit Torrent, and from there to millions of kids around the world.

The work was unfinished at the time this cut was made.  None of the photo-realistic 3d visual effects (you can expect to see soon) are in the bootleg cut.  Super simple 3d previz graphics are in place.  DOS video game air planes fly across polygon grid sky, etc.  This is hysterical to the typical viewer.  You can also see the wires & cables attached to every character as he or she leaps across the warehouse, office, road, canyon, etc.  Wire removal is one of the most basic and important elements of action film effects these days.

As you may have gathered already, I did see a copy of this film.  Didn't manage to get all the way through it.  Time was pressing.  I needed to get home, and I was board.  The interest wore off rather quickly.  After the novelty of seeing a bad copy one month early wore thin, there was not much reason to watch it.  I refrained from reviewing the bootleg here, as I didn't finish it, and it is quite unfinished.

I wrote to some friends and told them the product was bad.  I did caution them that this work was unfinished, but with such hammy segues between critical plot-points, I couldn't see how this work might be fixed up.  A friend of mine inside the industry cautioned me not to draw any conclusion just yet.  He informed me that there are emergency editors in the world who are paid millions of dollars to fix-up would-be blockbusters teetering on the brink.  With some tweaking, the final cut can be dramatically improved.  He reminded me that the first cut of Star Wars is now a legendary fiasco among film students.  Everything was patched up by D-Day.

I respect this guy, so I heard him out, but I had a hard time believing that such an effort might fix this film.  With such fundamental mistakes in writing and direction, there is only so much magic an emergency editor can weave.

Anyway, the reviews of Wolverine look pretty nasty right now.  A preview was granted to a limited number of friendly critics.  According to Rottentomatoes.com, the number of critics there was just 17.  Right now the count is 9-8.  9 say it is good.  8 say it is bad.  Reading the 9 positive reviews will raise a lot of eyebrows.  When the review is positive, it is not very good.  When it is negative, it is pretty bad.  Based on a reading of these reviews, it would seem that there are some pissed off fanboys, and some lukewarm fanboys.

What will happen when the non-fanboys begin to review this movie?  Right now Wolverine is pulling 53% on the T-Meter, and the strength score.  I would expect that to fall right through the floor as hostile reviewers like Rex Reed begin to check in.  Expect this movie's T-Meter to finish in the 30s.

I have to say, I am most highly displeased.  I am a big fan of comic books.  This is the second bust in a row.  Worse still, this is a movie that should not have been a bust.  It could have and should have been every bit as good as Iron Man or the Incredible Hulk.  Wolverine is not like the Watchmen.  We are not talking about a vastly overrated piece of shit story here.  We're talking about one of the most favored characters in Marvel history.  They also have one of the most favored stars in Hollywood for this one.  What I see here is a missed opportunity for a terrific blockbuster.  Another one goes down the drain.

So, Dave, if you were to put a fine point on it, just what is wrong with this movie?  It is incredibly cliche.  You have a good brother.  You have an evil brother.  The two of them walk through life together, back-to-back until finally one day, the evil brother's evil becomes to terrible, and the good brother parts company with him.  Of course this means war, and the bad brother must have some revenge.  Now the good brother must kill the bad brother.

Folks, Ballywood makes 20 movies like this every single year.  I am not kidding you either.  They litterally make 20 of these movies every single year.  It is an old archetypal story.  This was just too damn similar to other basic stories I have seen.  It wore thin very fast once I identified the anchient pattern of the work.  Everything was utterly predictable.  No surprises here folks.  You knew the end from the begining.  This is why I didn't bother to finish it.

One last thought about Watchmen

Yesterday afternoon Bloomberg TV began running a crawler declaring that Time Warner had the best box office opening weekend of the year. Watchmen earned $56 million at the box office. The Hollywood reported adjusted that figure down to $55.7 Million. That is the figure currently reported by RottenTomatoes.com and IMDB.com.

This is good news and bad news for Warner. Watchmen is #1 at the box office by a long shot. The next closest competitor is Madea Goes to Jail with just $8.8 million. So they ran about 6.5 laps around their closest competition at the box office. However, this figure is substantially lower than the $70+ figure they were quoting originally. You might even say that they were as much as $21 million off the bullseye. These are the North American figures only. I am told you can take the North American figure and multiply by 2 and this is your International + North American box office estimate. This is a good rule of thumb. Real dollars will vary by title. This means Watchmen should have scored $111.4 million at the box office. So where does that put them?

MSN Video Report

According to this video source, Watchmen cost $150 million to make, $20 million to distribute & promote. Ergo they need to go to $170 to make their capital back. They might have $111 million in the bag right now. The box office may drop as much as 85% next week to just $8.35 domestic, $16.7 internationally. Then the money has to be split between Warners and Fox. The blunt point: They are not on pace to make their money back at this rate. DVD sales and Blu-ray will put them over the top, but they won't do it at the theater.

I expect Fox/Warner to be humiliated as they come in #3 below Miss March and Race to Witch Mountain next week. I am told that the Mann and other theater chains are going to start removing screenings this Thursday night. This will give Warner fewer scheduled times for this 2:43 minute magnum opus, and cut revenues accordingly.

After sleeping on it for 48 hours, I can tell you that Watchmen seems like a curious collection of 1960's hippie predilections and obsessions. You have the JFK assassination conspiracy, Vietnam, Nixon, Henry Kissinger, the doomsday clock, atomic war with the Soviets, the Stonewall rebellion, etc. The audience obsessed with these subjects in now much older (like 60+) and unlikely to be receptive to such an adolescent comic-book musing on the topic of "what if history had been different?" Those cats are listening to NPR for their entertainment these days, and NPR is saying little about the Watchmen. I cannot imagine 20 something kids in South America or Asia getting turned on by this movie. There is no handle on this movie that they might grasp. This is the core reason for the financial failure here.

The Watchmen: They are who I thought they were.

Well, I saw the Watchmen yesterday morning at 10:15 AM at the AMC 16 theater in Woodland Hills. What is my first impression? Do you remember the big fit Dennis Green threw after his Phoenix Cardinals lost a 24-7 lead to the (then) undefeated Chicago Bears a couple of years back? He screamed: "They are who we thought they were!" He knew the Bears were not a Juggernaut. He knew they had weaknesses. He knew he could expose them. He did precisely that. Unfortunately, his team let them off the hook. I am not going to let these fuckers off the hook.

This movie is tanking at the Box Office

First of all, let's recognize one thing: This movie is not doing well at the box office. I have a substantial facts to back this claim up.

1. On Friday night, around 11:00pm, I went to the Magic Johnson 24 Hour Fitness in Sherman Oaks. The Archlight, one of our finest theaters in Los Angeles, is right there beside and on-top of the gym. I heard not a single peep from the upstairs balcony. That is a far cry from the din of conversation I heard for "Sex and the City" and several other big money makers. I decided to check it out. There was no one up there waiting on line for the movie. Nobody lined up for the midnight showing. There were probably some people waiting inside, but this was not a visible crowd.
2. On Saturday morning, our theater was perhaps 30% to 35% full. I didn't make too much of this at the time, as Woodland Hills is not a great place for morning showings. People party pretty hard around here on Friday nights. They don't often get up early for a 10:15 showing of a movie.
3. At around 9:00pm, my Dad called me. He saw the 6:30pm showing of Watchmen in Fresno California at the Edwards 21. This is the finest theater in Fresno, and one of the best in the world. It is an IMax. He said his theater was perhaps 20% full. Make no mistake: This is not because Fresno is bad movie town. Fresno hog-wild for movies. Just about all types of movies routinely outperform national averages in Fresno.
4. Around midnight, I called my buddy Colin. He is becoming senior leadership in one of the large theater chains down here in SoCal. I asked him how the box office for Watchmen was doing? He replied "What's that? Do I hear the sound of toilets flushing? They told us all along that this movie was tracking well and we could expect big crowds. I came out here to $&^%%&* to monitor, and we've sold only 700 tickets for the movie all day long. Worse, we opened it on three screens capable of seating 400 people per showing. The people aren't buying tickets for this turkey."
5. Let's see 3 x 400 x 5 = 6,000. 700/6000 = 11.667% full. Oh shit...! That sucks...
   

We don't yet have official boxoffice results from IMDB.com or RottentTomatoes.com. These will be made public in about 10 hours. I still think Watchmen will be #1, but the money figure will not be anything like the original $70 million I was expecting. This movie will under perform expectations by substantial measures.

The Cult of Alan Moore

There is a cult of Alan Moore out there which hyper-hypes everything he does. He is not what they say he is. He is nothing like what they say he is. He is not a visionary artist. He is not a genius. He is not a great story teller. He is not an insightful psychologist. He is not a great thinker on the subject of power. All of this talk is rubbish, poppycock and blarney. He is a hippy drug user who has experienced a great deal of brain damage due to LSD use. That is all. Only this and nothing more. His work is bizarre for this reason.

I am well aware of the fact that Time Magazine picked Watchmen as one of their Top 50 or Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. This choice is absolute bullshit, and reflects very poorly on Time Magazine, even to the point of discrediting the entire list. The critical staff discredited themselves by making this choice.

God only knows why Cults get started. I have no idea why weak minded fools follow people like Madonna or Brittaney Spears. Likewise, I have no idea why perfect idiots would lineup behind a guy like Alan Moore. Like Madonna and Spears, he has no merit, and yet he is a pop phenomenon. The bastard isn't even good looking... but then again Madonna wasn't either.

Not Snyder's Fault

The Cult of Alan Moore will certainly try to blame this financial failure upon Zach Snyder. Some will say that this is a D- class implementation of A+ material. Let me make it perfectly clear: That argument is absolute and complete bullshit. I am talking about 100% pure bullshit. Snyder did everything possible to make a great movie. This is an A- implementation of C- or D+ material. Snyder is just working with bad, inferior material here, and that is all. While this movie is not a perfect implementation of the material, even if you came up with a perfect implementation, it would still be the same overblown LSD brain-damaged rubbish Alan Moore wrote in the first place. A perfect implementation of Watchmen would still be a poor movie.

Why would I say such a thing? Well, let me just tell you...

Spoiler Alert

There are some noteworthy issues in this implementation, almost all of which trace back to the graphic novel, but I will lay a few of them out for you. I have already declared that I felt the character design, names, and powers were utterly weak and stupid, so I will not repeat that line. Instead I will focus on the main elements of the story.

1. As many have observed, this is a piece of Cold War nuclear hysteria. The notion of immanent atomic war with the Soviets now seems totally laughable, and the subject of ridicule today.
2. The notion that Nixon took over as dictator of the country also seems preposterous
3. The notion that the CIA used the Comedian to hit JFK from the Grassy Nole in Dealey Plaza is so funny it brought a big laugh in my theater.
4. What gives with all the strange ass usage of classic rock tunes? I know there were lyrical references in the book. I remember this well, but Synder decides to turn these into Donnie Darrko style mini-music videos. The effect is bizarre.
   
5. What gives with Dr. Manhattan's cock and balls hanging out all over the joint? Of course, Moore let it all hang loose in the comic book also. Synder could have made a correction here, but he allowed the LSD brain damage to flow through to the final cut of the movie.
   
6. Snyder decides to shoot "a really hot" sex scene between Silk Spectre and Night Owl aboard his nice revolutionary aircraft. I do believe Snyder thought he was pushing the envelope, inserting a red-hot smoker in a super hero movie for the first time. I regret to tell him that the audience was laughing in my showing. My brother and I nearly fell out of our seats laughing at this scene. I got an abdominal cramp I laughed so hard. Make no mistake: This was bad laughter. I am sure Synder did not intend this scene as comedy. Perhaps 14 or 15 year old boys will think it is hot, but frankly, they may not dig it either. They have the internet these days, and there is much hotter material out there.
   
7. And then we come to the ending, a concept so bad that I must deal with it in its own section.

The End

Shakespeare says alls well that ends well. Does this mean alls bad that ends bad? If so Watchmen is pretty fucking bad. So what is driving this endless epic tragedy? Well Veidt has decided to unite the world (thus saving us from atomic war) by giving everybody a common enemy to fight.

In the comic, Veidt cooks up a giant octo-squid monster straight out of Godzilla. This thing attacks New York, and destroys the place. This is supposed to signifythat an alien power is prepared to invade the Earth. The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. unite against this Godzilla-ish foe, and we live in perfect human unity & harmony thereafter.

In movie, Synder decided to change this ending. Smart idea. Moore's end was as excruciatingly stupid an idea as I have ever read anywhere at any time. Corn-cheese-whack in the extreme. So what does Snyder give us? Veidt has cloned Dr. Manhattan's power signatures. He destroys 15 major cities around the world, and makes it look like Dr. Manhattan did it. The world unites against Dr. Manhattan. We all live in perfect human unity & harmony thereafter.

So how does Dr. Manhattan feel about all this. Well... he didn't know about the plan ahead of time, but after the fact he thinks it will work. He doesn't approve or condemn, but he goes along with it. He even kills Rorschach to prevent him from telling the world. I would call that an endorsement of Veidt's plan. He decides to go off to some other galaxies and make some life there. Good idea... LSD burnout.

So what do I think?

So what do I think about it personally? The movie is not as bad as I had thought it would be. Because of Snyder's extreme efforts, it is more watchable than I thought. However, this is still a stupid story full of stupid characters and it has a very stupid ending.

The effect is a bizarre trip through 2:31 minutes (if you don't stay for the credits) which results in a big WTF? The audiance I saw the movie with felt the same way I did. Nobody was enthusiastically praising this film on the way out. Most people were shaking there heads saying "What the fuck was that?"

We should note in passing that Terry Gilliam, of Monty Python fame, was originally contracted to direct this movie years ago. He backed out of the deal, declaring that this graphic novel was unfathomable, unfilmable and a non-movie candidate. I think he was extremely wise. That is why I am a fan of Gilliam.

Will Anybody Watch the Watchmen?

CNN just published an interesting piece called "Will Anyone Watch the Watchmen?". You can read it here.

There are two potential answers to this question:

1. Not if they're smart
2. They will but they know it isn't going to be good. They are just doing it to be part of the social conversation that will rise out of this film.

So, I was an avid comic book reader when I was a kid, as was my younger brother. Between the two of us, we have about 10,000 books in storage. Although he was still actively reading in 1985, I was not. Neither of us read this graphic novel until just recently. Both of us had similar thoughts about this book. They go like this:

1. Vastly, vastly, vastly over-rated
2. Fucking stupid costumes.
3. Fucking stupid character names.
4. Fucking weak super heroes
   
5. The emphasis on personal depth and psychology is highly strained. It is not worth the number points critics assign for this material
6. Totally a product of Cold War fear of Nuclear War.
   
7. Mostly a false prophecy of the Left during the Reagan era.

On New Years Eve, 1985-1986, I attended a big thrash metal bash in San Francisco. Metallica, Megadeth, Metal Church and Exodus were all playing the Civic Auditorium. It was a blast. The concert didn't end until 1 or 2 in the morning. It was 1986 by then. As I walked to the Bart station to ride home to Concord, I spied a funny bumper sticker on a crappy Volkswagon Bug. The sticker said "Reagan '84, Nuclear War '85". I laughed like hell. By that time, the sticker was officially a false prophecy. It was typical of the hysterical San Francisco hippies of the time.

Well folks, The Watchmen is a bumper sticker just like that. It is basically a prophecy of atomic doom, and a bitter polemic written against Ronald Reagan. The objective of the book was to stir up pasificism in hearts of comic book readers like me, who voted for Reagan. It failed. It strikes me as hillarious that they have chosen to make this movie around an out-dated political rant, 21 years post-Reagan and 20 years post Cold War. I have no idea in the world how they can make this cold-war hysteria relevant today.

One wag said "Easy, just substitute Bush II for Reagan and you've got it!" Ehhh... When the movie opens a few weeks Obama will have been president for a couple of months, so you don't got it. I guess the hysterical hippies don't keep track of current events too closely.

Worse, I have never seen such preposterous implementations of already horrid costumes in all my life. The character design in this graphic novel was downright horrid. The movie guys have decided to revel in it. They think it is fun. When I saw the production notebook film, cold shivers ran through my spine. I saw visions of hundreds of millions of dollars, burning in a bond fire, during a time of economic crisis, when major studios can go bankrupt. That wouldn't be good for my town of Los Angeles.

Not since the 1960s Batman staring Adam West have I seen such cheese. That Batman was very successful, albeit a guilty pleasure for most. That one succeed because it was extremely camp. Everybody was hamming it up, and playing it tongue in cheeck. It worked because it was comedy, and the people took it that way. Unfortunately, Watchmen is being made as a serious graphic novel should be. They have delusions of greatness, seriousness, psychological depth, and political importance. This toxic mixture of stupid character design and serious themes just can't work in movie. There are reasons why so many considered this graphic novel un-filmable, and a non-movie candidate.

I want to go on the record clearly here: Watchmen is destined to be one of the biggest motion picture catastrophes in Hollywood history. I am talking about a disasterpiece of cinema. It is going to fail. It will live in infamy. In a certain sense, this movie is already a failure. Warner Bros footed the bill for this film, and wound up in a legal squabble with Fox, who now owns the rights to distribute it. This is a legal train wreck has already spoiled any potential profits that might come from this film.

The best outcome that Mr. Snyder, Fox & Warners can hope for is something like King Kong 2005. That King Kong made a lot of money, as all other King Kongs have, despite the fact that it was long and borring. It was profitable, and it more or less sunk Mr. Peter Jackson's career. Anybody noted that he hasn't been seen or heard from again? I know there are rumors of him producing several films. But he has been inactive for almost 5 years. The movie is not remembered well. Have a look at this as just one example. Rumor has it that Mr. Jackson has been sulking over the poor reception of his pet project.

I hope Zach Snyder does not do the same after Watchmen tanks. He made a truly classic film in 300. I would like to see more from him

If Watchmen turns out well, I will eat my words, but I fear not.