Magic Mike

by XdarksparkX

Originally Written: May 17th, 2014

Well I'll be damned. Ladies (and some gentlemen), I apologize. I thought Magic Mike was just a stupid exploitation film. I'm here to admit it, I was wrong.

Magic Mike is worse than an exploitation film, it's an exploitation film that tries so hard not to be one on it's downtime, it ends up bogging itself down with some of the most mind-numbingly boring melodrama I've ever seen written for film. Magic Mike's script is akin to walking into a wall repeatedly to kill time before you eventually leave out the front door, like you were supposed to do hours ago.

I can hear the knee-jerk defense from a very certain section of the audience coming already, "you just don't understand it; it's a 'girl' thing." Well now hold the fuck on there, Gladys. That statement toes the line of sexism. For a film that seemed to be crusaded by the idea of gender equality (in that there are far more movies concerning the exploitation of women than there are of men, though if you ask me that seems to be logic that was the prime example used in the creation of the turn of phrase "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"), it would be dubious at best to assume that I cannot "get" a film simply because I have a penis, just as it would be ridiculous to say that a woman can't "get" a film because she's a woman. If someone of the female persuasion told me they didn't like Fight Club, Jurassic Park or Django Unchained, people would call for my head like I had committed high treason in the Game of Thrones universe if I uttered something even close to the phrase: "you don't understand [these films] because you're a woman". Likely because this is a stupid, close-minded bit of reasoning.

However, to imply that what I watched in dazed confusion for two hours yesterday was something with such nuance and subtext that it can only be seen by having a different set of genitals, or having a higher estrogen level, or by removing my freaking Y chromosome is probably the most blatantly raging bout of 1930s styled gender bias I've seen since the debate about a woman's rights to her own damn body hit the fan during the 2012 United States presidential election.

I hate to break this to some of you swooning fans, but Magic Mike isn't smart or intelligent. There isn't any deep subtext that only you are in tune to. It's a shallow story that orbits around scenes of guys flailing their junk in women's faces. Know that if you attempt to deny this, it will look just as ridiculous as if those attracted to women in your life tried to fabricate some deep, existential subtext of Debbie Does Dallas. As long as we're clear on this fact about the movie, we can move forward.

I will say though, being a straight man obviously does not allow me to understand the clear-cut sex appeal of the movie. The thing that had me confused though was, I don't get why some women chose to act like they've never seen a good looking guy with his shirt off until this movie came out. To play a very controversial card, I don't see many sober straight guys doing that when a chick breaks out her set of twins in a film. The ones I do see doing that are either 12 years old, drunk off their ass, or fucking clownshoes, and who wants to deal with any of those idiots anyway? Maybe the guys I hang out with have all come to terms with being desensitized to it, and maybe part of the whole equality movement is that if guys can openly be horndogs when they see strippers, so can women. (Though why exactly you would want to be the female equivalent to those aforementioned clownshoes I have no idea. Oh well, different strokes for different folks.)

Oh, but wait. One of my best friends, who is female, flipped on the movie while channel surfing and bored to tears. She was ten minutes into tearing the movie to shreds before I even got a comment in. Excuse me, could you open that window over there? I have a theory that might need to be thrown out. Appreciate it.

Clearly she and I are just crazy though, because even Rotten Tomatoes -- as of this writing -- has the film sitting at an 80% fresh "approved" rating. I was close to smashing my head into the nearest wall when I found this out, until I realized this rating might be due to the critics crediting man behind the camera: Steven Soderbergh.

For those of you unaware, Steven Soderbergh has directed many critically acclaimed and commercially successful films such as: Erin Brockovich, Traffic, Contagion, the Ocean's Eleven remake, and what most consider his tour de force: Sex, Lies and Videotape.

I on the other hand don't give two flying shits about who directed it, and will not be granting any points to the movie because of this. Steven Spielberg went and made Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull for fucks sake. There is no precedence for a movie being a guaranteed piece of cinematic mastery and genius simply because a very good director happened to be the driving creative force behind it. Directors are human and they phone things in or make stupid choices from time to time. My all-time favorite director David Fincher admitted to phoning in Alien 3, and one could argue his direction of some of his more recent films like The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was uninspired. Magic Mike reeks of Soderbergh simply shrugging his shoulders half the time and saying "whatever."

Roughly two-thirds of the way through, I found myself feeling sorry for any woman who went to see this as the male exploitation film it was advertised as. The strip club and other "dance" scenes seem like they only take up 30 or 40% of the movie. The rest is filled with snooze-inducing melodrama. I'll admit, I have found myself being a sucker for intriguing melodrama (I fully admit to watching CW's One Tree Hill and 90210 in their entirety for crying out loud), but the melodrama in Magic Mike is so painfully uninteresting and uninspired, a day of long and tedious dental work seems like a more attractive alternative to watching it again. It's like watching everyday people have mundane everyday conversations, which amounts to actively trying to weed out the bullshit filler to find the lines that are actually supposed to be character or plot development. 

The characters all feel like the transformations they go through are so minimalistic. Channing Tatum's title character wants to open his own business, and make something of himself and not be a "40 year old stripper". Admirable. What happens in the end? He quits his stripping job, goes head-on into the uncertainty of unemployment because he finds out that his boss has no loyalty to any of his workers. *gasp* No, really!? I'm sorry, what made you think the guy who wants an empire of strip clubs wasn't running primarily off of greed and willing to throw anyone in front of the train for said greed? Is it because it's Matthew McConaughey? It was because it's Matthew McConaughey, wasn't it. 

"It's totally because it was Matthew McConaughey. 
I mean, dude won an Oscar bro!" 

Nothing of Mike's personal situation changed, he still needs to pay his bills, and he still has a shitty credit score. So...why didn't he just do this in the first place? "Wanting to make something of myself was a good pipe dream, until I found out that I was just a cash machine to my boss. This betrayal of trust! This... defamation of my morals!"  Maybe I missed the point where McConaughey said he'd send bouncers to break Tatum's face if he quit, but I fail to see the tactile tension and consequence of this decision that wasn't present before.

I swear, watching some of the scenes outside of the strip club felt like I was reading someone's journal if it read like:

"Got up late this morning. Stubbed toe trying to get ready. FML.

Rain is stupid. Late for class. Teacher was a bitch as usual. No assignments though.

Went out to eat, good meal. Jenna called, she's cool. I'd hit it.

Hit up this party. Stole some beer. Scored some X. Some chick blew me.

Jeff almost OD'd. Dumbass. How'd I get home?

Couldn't fall asleep. Infomercials are cheesy. Insomnia." 

Now, go ahead and try to say that the dialog is a more realistic representation of life. If I wanted an exact replica of real life, I wouldn't pay ten-dollars to sit in a theater and watch other people live it (or in this case, sit on my ass for two hours staring at a TV). People tend to go to the movies to escape reality, not to be burdened by it's mundane passages. Hell, that's why even reality TV is sensationalized -- true reality TV would be boring as fuck to watch.

The best word I can think of to describe Soderbergh's direction in Magic Mike is lazy. For so many scenes, it feels like this was his cadence: set up the scene, leave the camera on tripod, call action, take Director of Photography and Camera Crew with me to get doughnuts and coffee from craft services, have Assistant Director call cut when the actors finish their lines if I'm not back in time. There is such a glaring absence of medium or close up shots when two people are talking, it made me realize that MTV's The Real World has better and more creative conversation coverage than this movie. I get that it's a stylistic choice, but the problem inherent with said choice is that it takes away from the intimacy with the characters. By feeling so distanced, it becomes hard to "get to know a character". Take the mid shots and close ups David O Russell used in Silver Linings Playbook for instance. The intimacy that both Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence's characters share is evident from the close ups, and we as the audience begin to feel closer to them because the framing makes us actually closer. How can I get into a story when it feels like the director wants me to stay far away from the forced "plot point" scenes that take up damn near 70% of his movie!? The only reasoning I can think to do this is to make us feel like awkward voyeurs, a feeling one should probably have when at a strip club or similar establishment. You get half a pass here Soderbergh... but just half.

There is also a glaring lack of ambient noise or music during these "wide shot dialog scenes". All I can hear is this deafening silence when someone stops talking. Again, I think this would work if it was coupled with intimate medium shots or closeups on the characters, showing that they are wholly and completely focused on each other to the point where they can't even hear the world around them. There's a scene at a carnival or amusement park with Channing Tatum and his forced love interest played by Cody Horn. They walk through the park, talking amongst themselves. (Dear GOD! Soderbergh used a dolly to have the camera move with them! Be still my heart!) In this scene, there is a jarring lack of ambiance: no crowd noise, no music and sound effects from the games booths, nothing. They sit at a picnic table by a go-kart track, and not even the faint noise from the karts is audible at all. Obviously it shouldn't be as loud as it probably would be in real life, as it would drown out the dialog, but the karts go by damn near muted, and it makes the entire scene uncomfortable. Is that what I'm supposed to feel? Am I supposed to feel uncomfortable while watching this clumsy, forced romantic subplot unfold? Because that's what's happening, Steven.

The ending is probably the worst culprit of just phoned in effort, and contains the biggest "ahh fuck it" move pulled in the movie. After Tatum meets Alex Pettyfer's character, he runs into his sister, the aforementioned Cody Horn. Her entire one-note throughout the movie is "protect my brother Mike", but when the ending rolls around, both she and Tatum basically say "fuck that kid", figuring he's beyond help and let him go to probably die in a ditch down in Miami somewhere from a lethal combo of hookers and blow. Lovely! 

"Well, I got you into this, but I guess you're just too far gone for me to even feel semi-responsible for your downward spiral. Oh, your sister says 'fuck off' too. Welp, see ya at the morgue when they ask me to identify your body!"

And after such a weak buildup of Tatum wanting to do more with his life, and Horn's brother falling into "the fast life" of a male stripper and taking up Tatum's mantle, everything basically culminates to the fact that despite Tatum wanting to be treated as more than just a guy who's only worth his six-pack, that's essentially all he's treated as in the ending. Horn smirks when he says "what can we do for seven hours" before jumping across the table to make out with him. So, the difference from the beginning is that he won't be making money, and he now has no job, and has a credit score in the toilet... but he's... happy? Because... of... stuff? And will do... something with his life? Maybe? I honestly don't have a fucking clue. The movie ends on such an abrupt point that everyone comes out looking like lost dumbasses. Is that what this was supposed to be? A relation piece for dumbasses to not feel so dumb, because poorly written characters in an exploitation movie are also... dumb?

Overall, there is a general hollow feeling to everything in Magic Mike. Nothing feels concrete in it's presence. Maybe that was the intention, but if it is, is the movie trying to say that Tatum's character is so broken from his ordeal at the strip club that he now even views romantic pursuits as hollow endeavors?

After all that, I'm sure there are people who don't get why I do this, why I tear down movies the way I do on here. I've heard some of my friends say they don't believe I actually like movies, because I tear down so many. Well, lend me your ear and I shall tell you the method to my madness courtesy of Morgan Freeman.

"Because every time I show up and explain something, I earn a freckle."
-South Park's Morgan Freeman

Making movies at the level of nation-wide theatrical release is a very rare privilege. Those able to make these movies are granted a gift every time a studio or production group picks up a script and green-lights a project. They are given an almost demigod level of power, to reach out to people from all different backgrounds, cultures and faiths. And for the time of 90 minutes to 3 hours (more if they split one movie into two parts like they've been doing recently), they are able to tell a story that can make every one of those people forget about those meaningless differences and unify a group of creatures who seem to constantly find themselves focused on the idiosyncratic rather than the harmonious.

Movies can bring us together. They can empower us, enlighten us, and open us up to empathy with people or groups we had previously written off. When I see a movie that seemingly throws this gift away by being lazy in it's message or story, it feels like I'm watching as this gift is squandered. This gift is something I want to be given one day. I will likely be struggling for a very, very long time to obtain said gift and get my stories told. But in everything I write -- no matter how silly or crazy it may be -- it always maintains the core that people will be able to see a reflection of themselves, or someone they know. I want them to be able to connect with the journey, or with the characters involved. To offer a differing perspective that allows them to laugh at the pains of unimportant everyday struggle, or to realize something they hadn't before. And for those who were like me, I want a very special group of people to realize that someone else feels the way they do, and that if this movie says nothing else, it says that they aren't alone is this fucked up world.

Now, I'm not saying every movie has to be a deep work of art, and I'm not saying Magic Mike doesn't have it's place in the world. There's a sequel coming out, and whether the script is inspired or not, I'm sure it will make just as much bank as the first one. One of my favorite filmmakers, Writer / Director Kevin Smith, once described the concept of critics to the art of filmmaking perfectly: "Who is anyone else to tell you that your art is wrong, man? That you failed to express yourself through your art?" He has a very good point, and it's made me re-evaluate how I critically assess movies. However, his comment doesn't deter the reasoning for this site. For this movie, and for almost all of the movies that have articles on here really, I'm pointing out things that didn't allow me (or any other contributing writer) to connect with what is being presented from a storyteller's perspective, not an artistic one. If I can't connect to the characters, it's hard to see their plight as anything other than trivial. When Alex Pettyfer's character overdoses halfway through Magic Mike, I don't feel any sort of tragedy because I lack a true connection with his character. That's what a directors job is when a film introduces a narrative. It's exactly why I rip the Transformers sequels to shreds (God help me, even more are on the way...). No one in the audience -- short of the 5-year-old with the big barrel of Coca-Cola in his lap who's never seen one of these movies in his life -- actually buys it when they kill off Optimus Prime for the fifteenth time, because some convoluted deus ex machina bullshit has allowed him to come back fourteen times prior. So instead of saying "oh shit, they killed him", I'm saying "yeah yeah, when is he coming back?" When there's a lack of feeling any true stakes in a movie, it can make it almost impossible to reasonably care for characters (and the stakes don't have to be death). In the end, I just want people to understand one thing: just because a movie is made to entertain, doesn't mean it has to insult your basic intelligence as a human being while doing so.

Some of you will read that last line and say "but these movies you review/rant about don't insult my intelligence". If you like any of the movies I happen to throw into my line of fire, good, don't change that on my opinion. The point of this site isn't to tell you what to like and what not to like. My belief is people can like any movie they choose. Sometimes I would like for more of us critics to be able to see and judge certain movies for what they are (judging a film based on it's worth as an amazing classic or if it's "Oscar worthy" as opposed to assessing if it accomplished what it was trying to do within it's narrative is ridiculous). A movie should be an engrossing ride, and that even with it's problems, if you can walk away and say you were swept away for it's runtime, really that's all that matters. There are those who will say what I wrote at the beginning of this paragraph, and are also seemingly unaware of what a lot of producers and studio heads truly think of us -- as nothing but blind sheep willing to be led to anything with pretty pictures that can be warped to vaguely resemble cognitive sustenance. And well, as long as they're out there, I guess it just means that there will always be a reason for me to continue to try and "spark the dark".

Theme Park Thoughts: Harry Potter & The Forbidden Journey

For a while now I've been trying to get some of my more vocal friends to contribute to the site, mainly due to my terrible back log of content that can never find its way from the "in progress" queue to the desired finished state as fast as I would like. A recent discussion with one of my best friends, Blizz, was sparked by a frequent topic of ours -- theme parks. In particular, the rants and narrative analysis I wanted to do on some of their attractions as part of the Theme Park Thoughts series. Luckily, Blizz's affinity for completed works far outweighs my own, and he has graciously allowed me to share his phenomenal narrative-based rant on a ride we both consider to be one of the best attractions of all-time: Harry Potter & The Forbidden Journey. Enjoy.

+          +          +

by Blizz

Originally written: June 3rd, 2012

Let me be clear, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey is one of the best rides I’ve ever been on. It also follows one of the most moronic plotlines ever conceived.

You could ask me why I’m freely choosing to pick on a ride that I actually think is one of the best attractions in the world, when I could just as easily take pot shots at some defenseless idiot of a ride, like Curse of DarKastle at Busch Gardens Williamsburg.  And I still might.  But it’s the fact that Forbidden Journey is so well-known and so beloved that makes its complete and utter disregard for the story it’s telling all the more inexplicable.

This review is my last-ditch attempt to understand why J.K. Rowling was such a stickler for details with every aspect of the Wizarding World…except when it came to its marquee attraction.  Maybe she was stuck in a daydream (presumably one vividly depicting all the fun people wouldn’t have on Pottermore), or maybe she figured whatever team was working on this could…I don’t know…do it themselves?

Whatever it was, something went wrong.

But enough intro, let’s get to the ride.

Prior to riding, we get a tour of many parts of the castle – we start first in the dungeons, then move into the greenhouse, and finally reach Dumbledore’s office, where the headmaster at last introduces us to our roles in this little adventure.  We’re muggles, apparently – the first ever to tour the castle.

And here, from the very first premise of the ride itself, my bullshit meters start going crazy.

If you think about what we’re being told here for even the slightest amount of time, your mind will explode with so many questions that this plot (already) deserves to be scrapped.  We’re talking the-Wizarding-World-has-experienced-society-shattering-changes-and-someone-better-tell-me-what-the-hell-they-are-before-my-brain-hemmorages type problems.

Doesn’t anyone remember the International Statue of Wizarding Secrecy?  You know, the law exists to ensure that the Wizarding World is safely hidden from the muggle world.  I know I sound like a huge fanboy here, citing wizard-law, but really, this is isn’t a technicality.  It’s more like the fundamental basis of the Harry Potter universe.  The wizarding world is a secret.  Period.

There are big penalties for even the slightest infraction of this law – in a lot of cases, people’s wands are confiscated, which is kind of like removing your ability to be a contributing member of society.

So just what the fuck has happened that we’re suddenly giving everyday muggles tours of wizarding schools?  Was there great societal upheaval?  Has the Ministry of Magic completely collapsed now that anarchy reigns?  Does that mean Cornelius Fudge is rotting in Azkaban?  Are there riots in major muggle cities now that 7 billion people now know that there’s a sizable population that can do everything from erase their memories to turn them into tea kettles on a whim?  Is no one going to let me know if the resulting wide-spread mania is resulting in calls for World War III?

So, since it’s physically fucking impossible to even begin to sort out this alternate universe that Universal’s created, I’m going to have to go with the cleanest solution I can conjure up.  There’s no societal upheaval, there are no huge changes to the way the Wizarding World operates in the books and movies.  And that means...Dumbledore is a lunatic.

And I really think that’s a bold choice on the part of both Universal and J.K. Rowling.  You’d expect that they’d take the easy route and just have a completely sane Dumbledore give us a simple plotline.  Instead we get all this interesting subtext!  And let’s face it, no other ride sports a preshow where you’re literally unsure of whether or not the authority figure is too nuts to make it to the safety instructions before he blows his brains out in front of everyone.  You’ve got to hand it to the guy, this is the biggest screw-you to the man ever conceived.  You know, if the man was everyone you know and love.

Well I guess there WERE a few times where he KIND OF screwed everyone over...

And considering the conga line you’re walking in, it looks like Dumbledore’s not just making an exception to the rule.  He’s got the Ford fucking assembly line going here, mass producing treason. What an asshole.

Finally, feeling crushed and dumbfounded, we’re allowed to make our way into the next preshow, where Harry, Ron, and Hermione sneak in to tell us that we’re headed straight for a boring lecture telling us all about Wizarding history which, after the complete catastrophe that was the last preshow, I’d actually be pretty damn interested in.  But the trio assure me I’ll have a more fun if I follow them and go get burned alive, smashed, and eaten – I mean…go watch a game of Quidditch.

I haven’t even the slightest idea why Harry wants to be a part of Dumbledore’s batshit plan to watch the world burn, and I certainly can’t figure out why he’d risk the likely inhuman punishment that surely follows from derailing the first ever tour of Hogwarts just so guests can watch him play sports.  Does that make Harry strangely a narcissistic jackass?  I mean…possibly.  Still, considering there were no universe-shattering revelations in this scene, I leave feeling like I got off scot free.

So we wander aimlessly around random rooms in the castle, because son-of-a-bitch Harry told us to meet him in the Room of Requirement (you know, that hidden magical room that only a few people know about?), but neglected to give us any directions to get there.  Thanks, Harry.  As I’m forced to remember all too often, I’m a muggle, meaning that my experience in navigating foreign castles with shifting staircases is pretty close to nil.

As a result, we go completely out of our way and  stumble through the Gryffindor Common Room before finally doubling back to find the Room of Req.  There we find some magic benches that Hermione has enchanted to fly.  She smiles and says a spell I don’t recognize, and then the theme music whisks us off into the ride.

Suddenly we’re at the top of the astronomy tower.  As if to confirm that this isn’t going to be the shortest ride ever, Ron conveniently points out the obvious:  “Hermione did it!  They’re flying!”

We head out towards the Quidditch pitch until Hagrid stops us by the bridge, holding up some large broken shackles.  “Haven’t seen the dragon, have yeh?”

So…I guess Hagrid’s breaking the law again, and got another dragon, this time a full grown one, which he’s been keeping in secret on school premises.  I find this a little hard to believe, since he couldn’t keep a baby secret for more than 5 minutes after it hatched.  At least this blind spot is consistent with Hagrid’s character, but I’m also sure I heard one of the paintings say “Did you hear?  Hagrid’s lost the dragon again,” on my way through the queue line.  So, does everyone know about clearly illegal animal freely roaming the grounds?  Did all the third years pool their money together to buy a Hungarian Horntail as a class pet?  For reference, this thing is thirty feet tall and wants to murder everything in sight.

 Just to be sure, everyone's ok with this murder-machine living right next door, right?

We’re chased around by this fire-breathing ball of death until we fall face first into the Forbidden Forest.  Flashes of lightning tell us that it’s time to be afraid.  I briefly ponder how all these flashes can penetrate the thick layers upon layers of leaves that block out all sunlight (especially when I didn’t see any lightning in the actual sky ten seconds ago). Maybe the forest generates its own internal weather patterns that only exist below the canopy?  But I digress, and the ride reminds me that I have bigger problems by promptly spitting in my face.

For once, that’s actually not me being dramatic – a spider the size of a Toyota Tundra bursts out of the forest and spits in my face.  The other spiders in the forest start following suit, and pretty soon I’m just living out a nightmare I probably have every five nights anyway.

This is leaving me pretty nervous over the status of our heroes.  Harry and Ron are nowhere to be found.  Were they burned off-screen by the dragon while we weren’t looking?  Were they torn apart by these aracontulas while I was blinded by spider-spit?  Surely they wouldn’t leave us for dead…it’s their fault we’re in this mess anyway, so just where the hell are they?

Luckily, Hermione’s here (…huh?) to lead us out of the forest.  Yeah…she’s there…standing right in the middle of this spider-lair making not even the slightest attempt to conceal herself.  That’s ok, though, since the spiders are crawling all around her, ignoring her presence completely.  How did she even know we were here, considering we were all the way across school grounds when we ran into trouble?  More perplexing:  How did she even get here?  She then calmly delivers the biggest understatement she can manage:  “The forest isn’t safe!”

So anyway, we escape the woods, dodge the Whomping Willow, and head to the Quidditch Pitch.  Though, considering our escorts have probably been dismembered over the course of the last two scenes, I’m not really sure why we we’re still going.

We get there and…son of a bitch…

Harry’s perfectly unscathed.  And what’s worse, over the last three or four scenes, it’s immediately apparent that he’s been ignoring our imminent death to play sports.  As if to rub it all in, he turns back to us and says:  “Where’ve you been?”

Where’ve I been!?  Where’ve YOU been, you dick?

No wonder.

Is this the same Harry Potter I read about?  This guy reminds me more of a complete sociopath than anything else.  Seriously, there’s no way that Harry simply didn’t notice we were gone.  There’s no way he didn’t notice that that disappearance coincided EXACTLY with the moment we were attacked by a vicious dragon.  The only explanation is that he intentionally left us behind because we were holding him up on his way to his precious Quidditch match.  Holy Christ, what happened to that “saving people” thing? 

He says, “The snitch, follow me!”  The ride says we should, but I have a suspicion that we’re all only doing this because we want to catch this guy and wring his neck.

We really only have time to hear Draco Malfoy spout some generic trash-talking line about Harry’s mother before the plot, once and for all, collapses completely.

And it happens with one line.

“Dementors!”

Thanks, Ron.

This one word leaves me feeling so insulted on so many levels, that I feel I need to freeze our progression right here, right now.

I’m going to start by noting that the dialogue in this ride has almost completely fallen apart at this point.  There are almost no lines that last more than three words, and we’re inhabiting some sort of weird, Scooby-Doo type universe where all the characters only exist to state the skull-numbingly obvious.

“The Dragon!” --  “Dementors!” -- “They’re flying!” along with about twenty variations of the phrase “Look out!” comprise the entirety of the script.  I know it’s a ride, not a movie, but seriously – it’s not too hard to put actual characters into a ride, instead of a collection of sounding boards.  Here, let’s use an example from my personal favorite dark ride, The Amazing Adventures of Spiderman.

ORIGINAL VERSION

J. Jonah:  My SCOOP! My beautiful SCOOP…!

[Doc Ock misses Spiderman and hits a theater sign with his levitation cannon.]

Spiderman:  Woa!  Doc, your aim’s worse than your haircut!

Ock:  Well it’s good enough for your sitting-duck friends! [Blasts the SCOOP.] Have a nice trip!

[SCOOP rises up into the NYC skyline.]

Spiderman:  Hey, wait for me!  You’re not insured for this!

HP-altered Version

J. Jonah:  It isn’t safe out there!

[Ock misses theater sign]

Spiderman:  Woa!  You missed.

Ock:  I can still catch your friends. [Hits SCOOP.] I got you!

[SCOOP rises]

Spiderman:  You’re flying!

[Spiderman watches SCOOP rise, but neglects to follow.  He takes out his camera to take pictures for Bugle, realizing that it’s both inconvenient to pursue it and that he needs some shots to get his paycheck tomorrow.  Oh, Mary Jane’s calling.  He’ll catch up with the plot later.]

You see what happens when you take a pretty good scene and strip it down to a narration?  And on top of it, add characters acting completely out of character?  It sounds stupid as hell, doesn’t it?

Ok, now let’s get to the bigger issue here.  Dementors.  Their presence and the reaction to it is so insane and baffling that they deserve a few paragraphs of commentary, just to themselves.

First off, everyone knows muggles can’t see dementors right?  Like, that’s the one creature that JKR went out of her way to mention was invisible to non-magic folk.  And this ride already took such pains to call us muggles…I’m just left dumbfounded.

Why the fuck are they here?  They have no reason to be.  There are no dark wizards on the loose.  Even if they were acting rogue, how did they get onto the school grounds?  Did Dumbledore think it was a good idea to let them in on the same day that he let muggles into the school for the first time?  Is he trying to kill us?  This is starting to look increasingly likely, and I’m forced to wonder why the most logical solution for every plothole so far has been that Dumbledore is a cackling maniac.

You really ARE a scumbag...

And why is no one reacting to this?  A horde of SOUL-SUCKING MONSTERS has descended onto the playing field and is KILLING ATHLETES RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE SPECTATORS.  If your response is anything below the level of “HOLY SHIT” then you have some serious issues.  The most we hear is “Dementors!” and maybe an “Oh no!”?

What kind of screwed up alternate Hogwarts did we fall into?  There’s no connection between any of the events that have transpired so far.  Want proof?  Tell me, if this plotline was presented to you ENTIRELY IN REVERSE, would it make any less sense?

No, of course not, because this whole thing is one big montage.  It’s like we’re riding Jimmy Neutron’s Nicktoon Blast or something.

Ok, now that I’ve got this all off my chest…let’s continue.  Somehow we fall into what I believe is the Chamber of Secrets and have to dodge the dementors we shouldn’t be able to see but can anyway.  Harry’s gone missing again.  No surprises there.  Finally, when things finally look their bleakest, Harry’s forced to finally do a good deed and save us all by Expecto Patronum-ing all the dementors.

“Follow me!” he says.  Then, suddenly, the tunnel starts caving in, for what reason I don’t know.  In any case, this is the script’s last chance to make an impression on me and it does a marvelous job, as Harry shouts out such memorable lines as “It’s caving in!” and “Watch out!” And who could forget the part when he said “We have to get out, quick!”  Pure gold, all of it.

So after escaping Wild Arctic’s finale, we immediately fly to the great hall, where Harry’s being held up by the entire Gryffindor team, snitch-in-hand.  “Thanks everybody!  You were brilliant!”

I mean, I guess I was pretty—Hey wait.  Wait.  When did you catch that snitch Harry,  huh?  I don’t think you caught it in the game – it was interrupted by dementors.  The only time you could’ve gotten it was…oh no.  You piece of crap.

The only explanation is that Harry went back to get it while we were in the Chamber running from dementors.  Seriously?  He abandoned us AGAIN for sports?  What kind of a person does that?  Oh my GOD this is insane.

This is the ONLY argument for not killing him right now, on the spot.

Dumbledore says I’m welcome back “anytime,” but it’s Harry’s betrayal I’m still reeling from when my feet touch the ground again.  Wow.

So what’s the end result?  Well, contrary to everything you’ve read, this is, as I stated from the beginning, actually one of the best rides in the world.  It’s succeeds with flying colors in every area EXCEPT the plot, so I should to acknowledge it’s better than just about every other dark ride on the planet (ahem, except Spidey).  But I mean…come on.  How hard is it really to think up a plot that isn’t so completely at odds with common sense, when you have the author on board?

Oh well.  I guess there’s nothing more I can do.  Nothing, I suppose, besides frantically re-reading the entire Potter series, starting with the assumption that Harry really is in love with his own celebrity, while Dumbledore spends the majority of his time plotting unique and grisly ends for each of the supporting characters.  I expect interesting results.

Film School: Psycho (1998) vs. Psycho (1960)

by XdarksparkX

Originally written for COM311 - "The Early History Of Film": 

November 20, 2011

Usually when a director makes the specific choice to sign on to remake a film that already exists,  it’s often because he or she has a message that can be retold in a similar package.  The current climate of the Hollywood machine grants them much better odds of getting said message out through a remake rather than an entirely original film.  According to Hollywood, originality doesn’t sell like a film that explicitly channels the title and specific plot of a previously established story.

That being said, I still cannot fathom why I have to preface the term “Psycho” with “The Original” in a grumbling, almost venomous tone when referencing it within the context of cinematic history.  In this world, perfection is a simple illusion of the human mind when it is attributed to a medium that does not have a set number of feats attainable.  For instance, you can be “perfect” in Guitar Hero, because there are a finite and specific number of notes per song.  However it is metaphysically impossible to find honest, definition-bound perfection within the context of a property that exists with infinite possibilities, such as in film, music or life.  With that said, Hitchcock’s 1960 classic Psycho grazed the most attainable tips of perfection when it came to putting Robert Bloch’s novel onto a visual medium.  The way that Hitchcock presented the story worked in every single way.  One could argue that you cannot truly “improve” upon it because everything was done with not only a deep, thoughtful, and calculated precision, but because the artistic flares that one would consider things to “fix” are what make the experience so memorable.

So then why in the Hell of H.P. Lovecraft did a remake find its way into theaters in the winter chill of December, 1998?  Sure, if Universal was just that adamant about remaking Psycho, then who could blame Gus Van Sant for jumping at the chance?  That’s not my gripe -- my gripe is the fact that he was afforded the opportunity to take a revered classic that was being remade for the pure profit potential and not screw it up, only to be blatantly afraid of screwing it up and ironically screw it up by doing nothing with it and taking the dense way out.  Van Sant got away with simply looking at Hitchcock’s masterpiece, saying “this is how he did it, so that’s how we’ll do it” and calling it a day.  The saying that you can’t improve upon perfection (or in this case, near-perfection I suppose) still holds true, however how much of an oblivious moron do you have to be to willing put yourself up for comparison against near-perfection by attempting to do a shot-for-shot mimeograph of the original?  You might as well bring a knife to a gun fight and become surprised when you find a bullet lodged in your face.

It seems like Van Sant didn’t even try to think about the small idiosyncrasies as to why Hitchcock did what he did.  For example, a lot of Hitchcock’s Hollywood films were in Technicolor, so many of them that one could say Hitch was enamored with the process. So why is it then that he chose to do Psycho in black-and-white?  Personally, I feel it’s because of the ironic nature of having a film with limited spectral range that aligns with the common perceptions of Good and Evil, while the characters within the film are so morally ambiguous.  Marion isn’t exactly a bad person, but she isn’t a saint either.  We come to find out that Norman is just flat out insane, so while convenient as it may be to label him ‘evil’, that’s not exactly accurate.  The black-and-white coloring choice shows us just what we need to see, while at the same time commentating on the fact that what we’re seeing is simply the contrasts in between light and dark; everything that lies within is simply the tinted white and the deepest gray.

The killer in the wig about this to me is that both films were based on the novel.  So rather than isolate himself from the Hitchcock film, read the novel, and come up with his own interpretations of the events (updated to a late-90s setting), Van Sant chose to create a blatant reflection of the original film.  Make your film stand on its own, Gus.  Experiment with other camera angles, tinker with different lighting setups for certain scenes.  Get freaking creative, for crying out loud.  Borrow bits and pieces that you just felt Hitchcock did so masterfully that they deserve to be rehashed, but not the entire 105 minutes of the freaking film.

This is without even getting into the characters.  The fact that casting director Howard Feuer actually got a legitimate check for presenting Vince Vaughn’s headshot to Van Sant absolutely boggles my mind.  Now, I’m not one of those people who feels that  actors should be locked away in their genre of preference and have the key violently thrown away, however Vaughn had to have been near the top of the list for “Worst Potential Selections To Play Norman Bates”, and someone simply mislabeled the lists and handed Gus the wrong one.  I refuse to believe that his casting was intentional lest it was the last resort when all other potentials declined.  With Anthony Perkins, he brought an amazingly believable innocence to Norman.  He felt like someone who was isolated, but not someone who was completely bat-shit insane.  To this day, when I watch the original I still have to remind myself that he is the guy who acts as if his dead mother is still alive in order to fulfill the most warped and deranged sense of a moral compass.  The second Vince Vaughn steps on screen, an air of unease follows in his wake and permeates the audience.  His stiff, awkward delivery doesn’t help calm the fact that the “warning” lights in our brains are going off like Robot from Lost In Space just sensed that the Velociraptors have escaped from their containment area in Jurassic Park, and is proceeding to cycle his infamous “Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!” sound bite as the perimeter fence alarms blare all over Isla Nublar.  His awkward, forced chuckles lack any sort of intended adolescent introversion and instead violently scream “guy with a dark secret and something horrible to hide”.

Anne Heche I don’t have as much of a problem with, mainly because Marion Crane is arguably what Hitch would call a “MacGuffin” -- a plot device that exists for the sole purpose of moving the story where it needs to go -- so that the story can reach it’s true central character: Norman Bates.  However, in the sparse time she was on-screen there was one time where a display of cringe-worthy “acting” came into play.  During the scenes where Marion is driving away from Phoenix, I was always under the guise that the conversations we heard weren’t just those that were actually happening, but ones that she herself was playing out in her head.  However, while these conversations go on, Heche gives us little more than a wide-eyed “deer in the headlights” look as the conversations further incriminating her play in her head.  There’s no nervousness, or tension that we see from her expressions, she simply stares off into the camera like she’s about to have an eye exam.  I don’t recall Janet Leigh doing much with this either, but you could at least feel the apprehension from the character knowing that what she’s doing wasn’t right.

I think the principle problem with Marion’s character is that we don’t care about her, and Van Sant did nothing in an attempt to change this.  Even if in the original she was a very bland and simple MacGuffin, at least with the remake attempt to veil this and make her an interesting MacGuffin.  It’s only after she dies that we sit back and realize that we didn’t care about her at all; the horror we feel is that of pure shock that we supposedly just witnessed an overprotective mother commit murder because her son simply talked to this woman.  We never knew Marion’s true motivations for laundering the money, or where she’s even going with said money.  No exposition, nothing.  So why not take your remake and attempt to get the audience to connect at least a little with Marion, Gus?  Why not attempt to get us to the point that when she’s murdered, we at least feel something as opposed to nothing?

Now, whether or not the blame for these performances -- primarily Vince Vaughn’s -- and their lack of actual emotional depth falls on the actors or Van Sant is questionable.  If those of us who haven’t committed ourselves after viewing them remember correctly, the Star Wars prequel films were able to claim Natalie Portman as Padme, the primary female protagonist and eventual mother of Luke and Leia.  The same Natalie Portman that came off awkward and stiff in those films is the same one who was absolutely mesmerizing and won an Oscar for her performance as the lead in Black Swan.  Given the fact that -- through his track record -- we already know Lucas couldn’t properly direct actors even if his precious morning coffee and comfy chair in front of the monitors were in jeopardy, we can safely blame that bit of performance farce on him.  However, who do we blame this particular farce on?  Honestly, I want to blame both.   In Vaughn’s case, he clearly had very little in the way of an actual grasp on the character and his basic psychology, and therefore turned in a completely non-committal performance.  He toes the line of everything we already know of Norman and what we will come to know of him, and it ends up feeling completely… wrong.  Perkins committed to exactly what was required to know about Norman at that point in the film, which in turn made the final twist all the more shocking.  He was awkward due to years lacking actual human connection, and was strongly protective of his mother as she was the only thing he ever had;  it was much easier to accept that Vaughn turned out to be Norma that it was to accept that it was Perkins, because Vaughn let off a constant vibe of someone that hid a dark secret.  Van Sant on the other hand gets the blame only because within every other facet of the movie he was so desperate to mimic Hitchcock that he forgot to add creativity, and this could’ve very well been one of those moments where he simply pointed to the original performances as reference material and called it a day.

I think that the glaring difference between the films is simply a lack of vision, creative spark, or motivation to make a decent film when it comes to the Van Sant version.  There was a glaring lack of focus that resonates throughout the entire film.  They changed the year the film takes place to 1998, and while they change the monetary values to reflect this, everything else in the film has the distinct impression that it was pulled right from the worn pages of a 1950s Sears catalog.  There’s a mention of a Vinyl Records store, why?  Vinyl was all but dead by 1998 -- Hell, freaking cassette tapes were clinging to life support at that point.  Why not say that Marion’s sister worked at The Wall or something?  I don’t know if that’s the right answer to the problem, but just something that resonated closer with the 1998 music scene than freaking vinyl records.  Marion’s boss says something along the lines of “A cash transaction of this size -- highly unusual”.  Who spoke that way in 1998?  It’s amazing to me that the filmmakers claim that they had an actual focus on “updating” the film in the DVD commentary and yet completely missed so many glaring references to a different period.  I’m not going to even go into the astonishment I have for the fact that for all the things the 1998 version blatantly copied from the original, they specifically chose not to use the original Psycho house that is currently located on the Universal Studios Hollywood backlot.  Oh, was that just a bit too much blatant plagiarism for you, Gus? You ripped off everything else, including a majority of your shots, you might as well have taken the house down in the Titanic with you!  Ugh, where the hell did I put the Advil?

In the films, Norman Bates says “We just keep lighting the lights and following formalities”, and in an almost philosophical irony, that is exactly what the remake came out to be -- nothing more than a pathetic, expensive, blasé exercise in filmmaking in which the director had no deep creative spark or passion for what he was putting forth onto the celluloid.  The 1998 Psycho should be the textbook example of everything you shouldn’t do when it comes to the art of filmmaking.  Have a vision that you can call your own.  Have infectious passion for what you’re doing.  Embrace outrageous creative ideas. Take chances and make mistakes in the wake of that creativity.  Just f’n give a damn.

Who Greenlit This Shit? Edition II - "Final Destination 5"

by XdarksparkX
Originally Written: August 7th, 2011

Normally I don’t completely rip into a movie and call it a complete waste of time before it’s released unless drastic measures call for it. However, I’ve been having these thoughts about the Final Destination series as a whole for a few years now, and after watching the trailer for Final Destination 5 for the third time, I think I’m finally able to construct my thoughts into more than just nonsensical expressions and gestures of rage:

Without seeing a single frame of the final cut, I know for a fact that this film will be complete crap.

The Final Destination series has been on the down and out since the first sequel was released back in 2003. FD2 was okay for a sequel, but the filmmakers completely missed the essence of what made the original FD an awesome film. The fact that through logic, Alex was able to figure out a pattern of the order the people who got off the plane could die in, and that when he inevitably failed to save most of them from the grim fates that befell them, there was very little in the way of supernatural instigation—most of the deaths were a freak one-off deal that was sometimes over emphasized (Ms. Lewton’s death) to show that no one, Alex or other, had any actual control over the events. No one ever stated that Alex’s pattern was definite fact, it was merely his own cockamamie theory that just happened to come true at every turn—it only became accepted because it continually turned out to be right.

With the subsequent sequels, something changed. Gone was the creative drive that powered the first film, instead it became a part of the infamous Hollywood cash cow. Everything taken in the first suddenly became the considered “rules” for the series, making it terribly trite and predictable. Just look at the grandiose opening “accidents”, which became a staple of the series. In the original, Alex had a dream about a horrible accident taking place where the plane he was on took off and suddenly exploded. Not only does this work because he falls asleep when he gets on the plane (an arguable point of how he fell asleep that quickly, but still it’s a much more valid setup that what succeeded it), but they had previously established that he has a terrible fear of flying. This is why the “premonition” made perfect sense in FD1—it could’ve been real, it could’ve been his overactive phobia tainting his imagination, but the second that plane bursts into flames after Alex and friends get kicked off the plane, it becomes invaluable knowledge to the survivors that cannot be argued.

With the subsequent films that followed, the filmmakers literally just pick a random point where they can switch to the “premonition state” under the table without the audience knowing. Then, after the overdone gruesome “accident” (which starts to become laughable when you realize that they need to have to visionary die last in the premonition, in order to be able to tell the other survivors the “predetermined order” that they will die in), they do that “super zoom out of the eye” shot back to the aforementioned random point just before the “accident.” No dream, no nothing… these people are literally touched by a random bout of psychic powers for absolutely no reason what-so-ever. It begs the question, if Death is just going to get pissy when it‘s over-elaborate plans are thwarted, why doesn’t it just flip the script and kill the person who HAD the premonition first? Good luck finding out if anything’s amiss now!

You may have noticed that when referring to the opening deaths, I refer to them as ‘accidents’ with intentional quotes around the word. This is because the events that begin the first act in the subsequent sequels aren’t so much believable accidents as much as they are nonsensical apparatuses with as much over-complication as a classic Rube Goldberg device. These aren’t accidents, these are the events that unfold when some vague metaphysical force plays a game of goddamn Mouse Trap. I let FD2 off the hook slightly in this, as the human control of a motor vehicle allows a margin of error in judgment and reaction time to make that accident an actual… well, accident. However, from 3 onward, the opening scenes are so unbelievably convoluted, all while attempting to achieve the simplest means—death.

I don’t even know if I should really get into the logical fallacies of the latter opening sequences; I could easily write a 20 page diatribe about how the Roller Coaster accident in FD3 was complete bullshit that goes against every single law of basic coaster design mechanics, but I won’t. Just for shits and giggles though, here’s a list off the top of my head of logical and mechanical failures from that sequence:

• The Devil’s Flight’s shoulder restraints bounce up and down when released. Any coaster that EVER did this would not pass State Certification for Amusement Ride Operation.
  
• There is no backup restraint for the shoulder harnesses. No seatbelt, no belt that attaches to the harnesses, nothing. When that one valve fails, everything goes to hell. On every modern coaster there is always a failsafe on the restraints, even if that means doubling up the exact same mechanism so that if one fails, the other is the backup. The odds of both of them failing is astronomical. Not to mention, that one valve apparently held the restraints for the ENTIRE train. Nope. The trains are locked usually by car, but sometimes in sections depending on the maker. Either way, one failure like what was shown would not cause the entire train’s restraints to unlock.
  
• We are to believe that a camera, dropped by a foolish rider, wrapped around the track and was the leading cause for wrecking the train’s wheel assembly. HA! Are you kidding? That camera would’ve been absolutely wrecked—the worst thing that would happen is the train would lose momentum and valley (stall) at a low point where it lacks the inertia to climb the hill in front of it. Those wheels are attached to a train that weighs a probable ton without inertia or riders—fully operating, it would chew that camera up with barely the bat of an eyelash.
  
• Speaking of the wheels, there are three wheels on a coaster car’s wheel assemblies: the road wheel (rides on top of the track), guide wheel (rides on the side of the track), and up-stock wheel (rides underneath the track). In the film, these wheels and their specific states fluctuate randomly depending on what the scene called for. For instance, the remains of the coaster train goes into the loop and stalls at the top; flipped upside down. This means that the up-stock wheels are still intact, if they weren’t the train would’ve fallen once it lost enough momentum and crashed into the track below. However, the train instead rolls back and hits a piece of track that had been completely jarred out of place (don’t get me started on how this happened), before the suddenly halted momentum causes the front end of the train to fly completely off the rails and spiral towards the ground.
  
• As more of a side note, the Ride Operators are possibly the most idiotic people to ever walk the face of the Earth. After Wendy flips out they let her and the rest of her section get off, however both her boyfriend (my boy Jesse Moss) and Ryan Merriman’s girlfriend (Carrie) are in the front row and therefore still locked in their seats. (Wait, so they unlock sections of the train at the loading platform, but that one valve controls the entire train’s locking mechanism!? WHAT THE FUCK!?) Then, when Jesse’s character and Carrie are looking the Attendant dead in the eye asking to be let out, they get completely ignored and the guy says to the operator “you’re all clear! Start the ride!” NO. NO, NO, NO! If someone asks to get off, and are legitimately serious and not messing around, YOU HAVE TO LET THEM OUT. All of those Ops should have never been anywhere near an operator’s panel or ride attendant job position.
  

There are MANY more points that I could dissect if I actually took the time to look the scene up and wasn’t going from purely from memory of the big points that stuck out, but the point is made just the same. To sum up, they might as well have had someone get thrown in front of the car, and then attempt to avoid being hit by doing a Scooby-Doo esque “spinning of the wheels” startup before running in front of it within the same vein as a Looney Tunes cartoon. THAT would’ve been within the realm of reality they were working in.

…Does it show that I was a Ride Operator at Six Flags for three years?

Now, I’ve heard fan boys of the series attempt to proclaim “it’s only a movie” when I’ve brought these points up, but to argue that point is to completely whiff on the purpose of the series and it’s brand of horror/suspense. If I as a viewer am fully and completely conscious of the fact that I’m just watching bland characters die in ridiculous ways, then the entire existence of the movie within the guise of being apart of the Horror genre is pointless. I don’t think about how dangerous the objects we use every day without a second thought are, but rather I spend my time laughing at the fact that they expect me to buy into this with any legitimate emotional investment.

And the openings only got worse from there.

FD4’s tries to make us believe that stock car raceways only have rusted chain-link fencing between the track and the spectators, along with serious cracks and fractures in the seating area at a point of primary structural support. FD5 then attempts to make us believe a suspension bridge has COMPLETELY failed and caused the roadway it holds up to crumble like a soggy Oreo cookie. The openings became more about Michael Bay inspired “insipid flashiness” than about logistical and psychological horror.

At least in the FD5 trailer, it seems like they don’t just randomly come across the information of a similarly crazy incident where people survived because someone predicted it minutes beforehand on the internet or something like previous films (who thinks to Google that anyway?) Instead, the cryptic coroner of the series named “Bludworth” (Tony Todd) is at the site of the mass funeral for those who died on the bridge and says to the protagonist and co. that he’s seen this before: the freak accident, the random survivors… and death hunting them down one-by-one. It’s better, but that’s like saying it’s better to get hit by bird poop than step in dog shit.

The worst part is, the Mouse Trap shenanigans that the openings contain don’t just happen in the opening scene in the later films. Oh no, these unbelievably improbable chain reactions actually start to bleed into the subsequent “accidents” that Death uses to correct the wrongs and right the fates of those who avoided his cold embrace in the opening. It gets to the point where they are willing to throw anything—including basic logic and every single one of the laws of physics known to man—out the goddamn window just to get a “cool” death scene. It gets even worse when they start knowing that people expect it to the point where they use chain reactions just to have them result in a near-miss / “close call” moment. Great, yeah that’s it, pander to the absurdity that you so proudly flaunt as a “series staple”. I should punch each and every one of you bastards in the soul.

Since this is supposed to be about 5 (and has turned into a much broader reaching rant), I’m going to try and keep this rant about these within the realm of what I saw in the trailer.

• Floor to ceiling windows that are in high rises and multi-story office buildings are NOT shatterproof nor massively thick. This is a common misconception. Having them posses those traits in the name of safety would just be laughable, because there’s zero chance that someone would EVER slip and fall into them. Besides, if a window washer sees something going wrong, they need to be able to make an immediate breach and entry. Window Washers: Saving the day, one window at a time.
• “I see that it’s been quite a while since your consultation for this laser eye treatment…what made you decide to take the leap today?”
  “A lot is going on in my life, I don’t want to miss anything.” *starts violently shivering after sitting in the chair* Jesus, then get fucking CONTACTS! My God, if you’re flipping out like this why are you doing it in the first place!? Oh wait, because then we can’t have an incompetent doctor leave you alone with your eyelids pried open and a high powered laser aimed directly at your retina!
• Death by falling on Acupuncture needles? 1000 Ways To Die already did it.
• A sheet metal screw can come loose from a ceiling bound air-conditioning unit in a gymnasium and fall with the most ridiculous precision onto a balance beam, landing flawlessly on it’s head without reacting to the fact that it’s momentum was suddenly and forcefully halted. Physics: “screwing” Netwon and his supposed laws whenever the hell it feels like it.

And just as a bonus lesson courtesy of FD3, remember children, an engine does not need to be hooked up to your truck for you to be able to actually drive it. It can simply rest under the hood as if it was conveniently placed in a trunk, which allows it to fly completely out from under the hood when a runaway van rear-ends you, sending the engine fan right into the unsuspecting head of the douchebag in the convertible in front of you in the drive thru line at McDonalds. Oh, and the douchebag’s car won’t move either, because as we previously established… physics isn’t an absolute or anything. It takes more plays off than Randy Moss when Death is the QB.

As if all of this wasn’t fail-tastic enough, in the 5th film Bludworth informs the survivors that because they aren’t supposed to be here, the only way to appease death is to kill someone else in their place. Wait, why didn’t you tell the kids in the first one that? What, is this a new development in the way Death operates? Did you read about revisions to the “How To Handle Those Who Escape Plans of A Horrific Fate” section of the Grim Reaper Rulebook in the newest edition of Afterlife Quarterly? What happened to the “only new life can defeat death” crap you spun to AJ Cook and her cohorts in FD2? Jesus man, are you ever consistent? Stop acting like the information you present is an absolute rule when it changes every five seconds! Your “rules” are more sporadic than the presence of physics in these movies!

[Sigh] … You know, for a film series called “Final Destination”—where the main subject of interest in the plot is death—they sure seem to have a hard time actually getting to that very destination and letting this series just fucking die in a ditch already. I wish Hollywood’s obsession with formulaic crap would reach it’s Final Destination. [Cue rimshot; subsequent tomato throwing] Thank you, I’ll be here all week!

Stark Ranting Mad: Beast Legends

by XdarksparkX
Originally Written: September 11, 2010

What happens when you take Deadliest Warrior’s bullshit pseudo-science and mix it with the cryptozoology half of Destination Truth? Apparently a shit storm broadcasted on SyFy by the name of “Beast Legends.”

The only reason I gave this show a try was because Destination Truth moved to a new night and I happened to habitually record two hours due to Ghost Hunters being DT’s old lead in. However, in hindsight I should’ve suspected something was up when I noticed that the promos for Beast Legends were extremely vague when it came to actually describing what the show is about.

So what is the show about, you ask? It was the first question that naturally kept ricocheting in my brain as I watched the opening credits. Apparently an art geek, computer nerd, and three so called “experts” get together, do “research” on animals similar to the legendary beast of the week, and “build” a computer rendering and mini movie with the creature they have “created”. THAT’S IT. Think of it as Build-A-Bear with mythical creatures, because that’s pretty much all they do. They take the “best” or “coolest” features of real-life animals and slap them together to create a pseudo-realistic Frankensteined version of the creature in question.

Now, what’s interesting is that some of these people have legitimate credentials (the black guy, Scott Edwards, is a f’n Professor of Organic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard for crying out loud), which makes me wonder how in the blue hell they couldn’t see that this show is obviously just an overly anal-retentive way to make a damn movie-monster. I mean, lets face it, none of the creatures exist, so why the hell are we arguing about whether or not we can put “protective scales” on the Kraken—IT DOESN’T EXIST. Even if I’m wrong and it does exist somewhere, would the first thing you notice be that a 200-foot long Octopi-Squid hybrid has are scales!? The worst part about this, is that the “experts” are constantly like “let’s keep this grounded in reality.” HEY, DUMBASS! A 200 foot cephalopod isn’t grounded in reality to begin with, that’s why it’s a mythical fucking creature! That’s like saying “Star Wars shouldn’t have explosions in space, there’s no oxygen in our space” even though the films clearly state the story takes place “in a galaxy far, far away”!

As if the show wasn’t facepalm worthy enough, some genius decided that during certain parts of the footage when they’re out gathering their research they should put an animated CGI render of the creature in question off in the background. I’m sorry, is this supposed to suspend our disbelief? Are we supposed to buy that the poorly rendered tentacles off in the distance is actually the “real” Kraken? What they were going for here doesn’t make sense, because the render is so unbelievably bad no one in there right mind would think it’s real. It’s even worse when they have it off in the distance and make a loud splash, only for one of the team members to turn and look off in that direction. Ugghhh, you have got to be shitting me.

Know what, that’s not even the worst part of the show. No, the worst part is that when they find out that the Colossal Squid actually has little pivoting hooks on its tentacles in addition to the Giant Squid’s serrated suckers. Not content with just adding them on, the “concept artist” and Indiana Jones wannabe have to actually make these hooks to the scale they would be on their Kraken. So they head—where else—to a Hollywood prop shop to make these hooks. After time lapsed construction they finish them and decide to test them out. They use a barrel to simulate a ship’s hull, and start bashing the hell out of it. Needless to say, their craftsmanship blows harder than a Sperm Whale, and they barely manage to so much as chip the barrel. They then try to justify their shitty workmanship by saying that the hooks wouldn’t be enough to pierce the ship’s hull, but the Kraken would use them to latch on and let it’s sheer weight bring the boat down. Or guys, maybe you built the spikes to goddamn wide, with too much of a dramatic grade in the curvature, hence why it can barely scratch a goddamn barrel.

In it’s grand finale, these guys—for some unbelievably stupid reason—scout a location for where their Kraken could live. How many times do I have to say this, it’s not real! Why the hell do you need a location if you’re just going to make some 5 minute cinematic? You render the water, you put a boat model in it, Kraken owns said boat, the end. Where does the location have any significance what so ever? It’s like they knew they had to find a way to burn more money. Absolutely ridiculous.

Know what’s funny? I don’t even think the people involved in this show know what its supposed to be. The comic book/concept artist kept pushing for the damn “armor scales”, while we’ve got everyone else saying “stick to reality man!” It’s like the show itself is confused. All they do is build mythical creatures, so is it a conceptual art show? Yet, they actually study real-life animals behaviors and physiology, so is it a science show? Wait, they are technically doing all of this in the name of a creature that doesn’t exist, so is it a cryptozoology show? The CGI mixed in with the reality footage is unbelievably goofy, so is this a behind-the-scene’s look at the new SyFy Original Shitfest’s that are scheduled to come out? You know what, I think the answer to this mystery is one I’m content with leaving unsolved.