Sunday, December 20, 2009

PLEASE, DON'T.

Go fuck yourself, Hollywood. We don't need this. Not like this. Please, not like this.

I mean, another Ghostbusters movie would be just fine, if it was awesome. None of these ideas are awesome. Bill Murray would be back as a ghost? "...a sort of Slimer character?" The baby from the second one's a ghostbuster now?

Bill Murray as a ghost is a terrible fucking idea. Actually, reviving old franchises in general is a terrible fucking idea, because it has never gone well. Die Hard 4 was fucking bad. Indiana Jones 4 was really fucking bad. Ghostbusters 3 will probably be pretty bad. I don't know how I could possibly trust this. This video pretty much sums up how disastrous Indiana Jones 4 was in comparison to the other movies:




I think the inherent problem with bringing back old movie franchises that were so awesome back when they came out is that they were genuine back then. They meant something. The audience would root for the hero to overcome his obstacles, get the girl, and save the day. For some reason, people just aren't capable of that anymore - everything has to have a wink to the camera, like Indy 4 addressing his age every five minutes. It's the same as a friend you really like trying to tell a long story, but he keeps being self-deprecating and apologizing for telling it in a shitty way - and, hey fuckhead, if you didn't spend so long apologizing about how you're telling the story, you wouldn't need to apologize about how you're telling the story. You'd just be telling the fucking story. Stop kicking your own ass.

Don't get me wrong, the film had way more problems than that (I'll recommend a damn fine explanation of its shittiness that my buddy Dan Luke wrote), but that was a pretty big issue that I've noticed in other career revivals, too. Half of the new Rocky movie was devoted to convincing us it'd be possible for a man his age to fight the young cocky new champion. I don't want to see a Bill Murray ghost as your way of sidestepping his fucking age. Old Bill Murray is more than worthy to put the proton pack back on. Think about it, that trailer films itself.

By now my blog's catchphrase is pretty much becoming "stop it," as I scold the film industry like a child, so I'll indulge myself one more time.

Hollywood, stop it. Stop it.

Please?

DEAD CELEBRITIES

Celebrity down!

I'm, of course, referring to the sad recent news of the far-too-soon death of one of my personal favorite young starlets of our day...


Yes, Dan O'Bannon, writer of Alien, Total Recall, Heavy Metal, Dark Star, writer and director of Return of the Living Dead (totally worth watching), died Thursday of complications from a 33-year fight against Crohn's Disease. Ain't It Cool News ran a piece on him that mentions the disease possibly being the inspiration for the chestburster alien from Alien. That's fucking awesome.



You'll be missed, Dan.

Oh, wait. Brittany Murphy also died today.

I guess that's sad, too.

OH, GOD. JACKASS 3D CONFIRMED.

Paramount has announced a third Jackass "movie" currently shooting in 3D for a release on October 10th, 2010. Johnny Knoxville's quote (that he clearly spent all night thinking of):

"We're going to take the same 3D technology James Cameron used in 'Avatar' and stick it up Steve O's butt. We're taking stupid to a whole new dimension."

I really didn't think they'd ever let these assholes do this again, but I can't deny a morbid curiosity. Okay, that's an understatement, I'll probably see this thing in theaters. It's disgusting and formless and stupid, and I'd never call it a real movie in any capacity... But there really is something to be said for experiencing the depraved depths these guys will go to in a packed theater. Damn the DVDs to hell unless you've got a big enough crowd - seeing these things in theaters, watching half the crowd walk out and the other half scream and vomit, my god. It's just unparalleled. My capacity for gross, shocking imagery has been strengthened beyond belief thanks to being a part of the internet generation, so I'll be enjoying the show put on by both the movie and its audience.

Is it weird that I can't stop thinking they'll just shoot this like a fucked up version of the Muppet 3D show at disney world? You know, where they do all these gimmicks, like a pie floating over the audience, or a huge trombone or something coming out of the screen. I feel like they're just going to tackle this in that sense, and do sick things with 3D gimmicks. Mark my words, this will be Digital 3D's first scene with people fake-vomiting on the audience.

BRYAN SINGER COMES CRAWLING BACK TO X-MEN WITH HIS TAIL BETWEEN HIS LEGS


A little background music. Just let this play in the background while you read this piece.

Yes, Variety is reporting that director Bryan Singer has signed on to helm X-Men: First Class, a prequel to the X-Men movies, focusing on the first years of that wacky mutant school. Here's a little history - get ready for me to flex my movie-news-nerd muscles:

Singer directed the first X-Men movie, which you could argue was the first good comic book movie. Its success is what started the whole superhero movie boom - it didn't shatter any records, but it turned a pretty good profit, and that's what made Fox put out Spider-Man, and then, yknow, everything else happened. Singer also directed the second X-Men movie, which was totally awesome. Here comes the drama: while prepping what would have probably been an amazing third movie, Warner Brothers (rival of Fox, who owns the X-Men franchise) offered him Superman Returns, and he jumped at the chance, saying he'd still do X-Men 3 afterwards. Fox got pissed and fired him, and then rushed into production on X-Men 3 for the sole purpose of beating Superman Returns to the box office. That's why X-Men 3 sucked so bad (oh, god, did it suck). What made this worse was that Superman Returns also totally sucked (there wasn't even a single fight scene in that 2.5 hour movie), so everybody lost, with the exception of the Fox studio heads when X-Men 3 still banked and Superman Returns tanked. And then we got Wolverine, which was the absolute bottom of the barrel, seriously painful to sit through shitty movie. I never thought I'd stop thinking Wolverine was cool, but here I am.

Hoo. I'm a little out of breath from all that. Anyway, I'm hoping Singer was just good at making X-Men movies, because for some reason Fox has welcomed him back for this new one. I think the story's kind of stupid and I don't really care how the school got started up, I'd rather see the main characters I love in a good movie again, but after Wolverine I'll honestly take anything as long as it doesn't hurt me as much as sitting through that. That movie was astonishingly stupid. Melodramatic, corny, pretty much the antithesis of what made the first two X-Men movies so good. I don't want to see Wolverine cry. He's supposed to be this hardened badass who can't even age or die, so he's just amazing at killing people.


I also don't want to see a million stupid cameos of different characters from the comics just for the sake of having them in there - tell a story, and only include the characters who are important to that story. It's just condescending to throw in Gambit in the third act "for the fans." It's clearly a demand of the studio - the whole fucking narrative of that movie was like a list of studio demands. "Gotta have some action, some fighting, but keep it PG-13, and we gotta have a love story. Gotta bring in the tween crowd and appeal to everybody. Oh, and those nerd-boys in the audience? Fuck 'em, they're easy. Just shoehorn in some of the funnybook characters and they'll be happy as pigs in shit."

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Hopefully, Singer'll avoid that, but I don't know, he might not want to get fired again.