Digressions, Tangents, and So You Won't Have To's

I believe that there's a new movie for the Cap'n to watch So You Won't Have To, although it isn't the one you just thought of. No, I'm not watching Platinum Dune's Friday the 13th (or, as Cranpire calls it: Shit Coffin). I just can't bring myself to that kind of low, even if it comes into the store and I've brought home every other disc I could find worth a damn. Hell, even if I brought home The Underworld Trilogy* - because, hell, if you've watched the first two you might as well watch the last one - I would not watch Shit Coffin.

The only thing good to come out of the release of that movie on Blu Ray is that Paramount decided to put out Part 2 and Part 3 (yes, in 3-D**) in High Definition. They also released new dvd versions of Parts 4, 5 and 6 but since I know those too will be on Blu Ray before the end of the year it's kind of silly to buy them. The point is we're all going to have fun watching Part 3 in 1080 3-D, even if it looks like a cheap movie shot in the 80s (which it is). Now what was I talking about?

Oh, right. I got off on a little Friday the 13th tangent there, and forgot all about the movie I'm going to watch in your stead. The goal with these is to watch something you wouldn't bother with in the first place but have some scintilla of curiosity about, even if it's just morbid at best. With that in mind, the Cap'n will buckle down and suffer his way through the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still.

See, it's a horrible idea in theory and, as I've read, execution. Yet I think that in some manner this idiotic "re-imagining" of the Klaatu / Gort story needs a better post-mortem than "it sucks." Of course it sucks, but I watched Tim Burton's lifeless retread of Planet of the Apes; I watched Steven Spielberg's mean-spirited War of the Worlds. Hell, I watched I Am Legend and kind of liked it. Not really liked it, maybe not even "liked it the same way I like The Omega Man" liked, but I didn't regret watching it.

What I'm saying here is that there's precedent for the Cap'n to sit through remakes of Classic Science Fiction Films, and you don't get much more "classic" than The Day the Earth Stood Still. I will accept arguments from Tom about 2001 and Cranpire about Planet of the Apes and the one fan out there who hasn't talked himself into hating all of the Star Wars films because of those rotten prequels, but I'll stick to my guns. That's something Robert Wise did very well: he'd take a genre and bend it to his will. The Haunting. The Day the Earth Stood Still. The Sound of Music. The Set-Up. Star Trek: The Boring Picture.

Okay, maybe not the last one; it did have some nice model photograpy, so if he did that then I'll give him points for that. Still, Star Trek: The Motion Picture sure does suck. I guess that's one thing the Star Trek remake has over the "original" first film: lens flares. Robert Wise just didn't anticipate how much people would overlook a lack of coherent plot turns as long as there were lens flares. Poor guy.

Also, I watched the remake of The Haunting, and that sucked too. We all know The Day the Earth Stood Still Because Keanu Reeves Was Too Damned Boring is going to be terrible, but I'll watch it So You Won't Have To.

Except for Cranpire, who already watched it. Sorry I didn't get there sooner, buddy.


* which I may or may not have done. to be fair, I do like the first two Underworld movies, mostly because of how stupid and self important they are. It's not that they're good, but they are silly and sometimes fun.
** I know that I keep qualifying that, but once upon a time no home video release of part 3 was in 3-D and unless you went to the Durham horror movie festival every October you couldn't see it as it was made.