Retro Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

 (editor's note: After last week's Retro Review for The Dark Knight Rises, the Cap'n realized there was a series of Blogorium posts from 2008 that never made the transition from our old stomping grounds to the new one. As a result, it seemed like a good idea to share some other reviews that had been otherwise "lost" over the past four years).

We've gone a long time without Indiana Jones having a new adventure. In the time between Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, we've had to make do with imitators like National Treasure, Sahara, and The Mummy. All of them were kind of cute, kind of stupid, but they weren't Indiana Jones movies.

What I'm here to tell you may not make you happy, but Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is also not quite and Indiana Jones movie. It's pretty close, but if you had a problem with the seemingly endless exposition of National Treasure, then this movie isn't going to sit well.

That being said, there's a LOT about Kingdom of the Crystal Skull I like. I was 100% on board with the movie for the first half of the film, and then something happened. Things shifted gears and it stopped being an Indiana Jones movie; instead, it felt like someone was trying to make an Indiana Jones movie and got about half of it right.

By now, I'm guessing most of you have or are seeing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. This is good, because I need to talk *SPOILERS* and they're the kind of spoilers that most of you clearly don't know about.

Without further ado, a fucking MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!! IF YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS IN THIS MOVIE AND YOU DON'T WANT ME SPOILING IT FOR YOU, THEN NOW IS THE TIME TO DO SOMETHING ELSE. IF YOU'RE NOT REALLY CONCERNED ABOUT PLOT POINTS, PLEASE CONTINUE.
 
as I was saying, almost everyone at work and in front of the Grande last night did not know the following:

- The movie takes place in 1957
- Indiana Jones is fighting the Russians
- The Crystal Skull belongs to an alien
- Yes, there are aliens in the movie (plural, although one is a corpse)
- There is a UFO at the end of the movie (really)
- Various other random things like Shia LeBouf IS in fact playing Indiana Jones' son, and Marion IS the mother, and John Hurt is NOT Abner Ravenwood.

I don't like being one of those "laundry list" spoilers because it feels kind of like "ha ha! I've seen it and you haven't!" Early on into the preview screenings of Episode III people were posting bullshit reviews, but as soon as the actual reviews came flooding in, bloggers and internet critics all used the same phrase as "proof" that they actually saw Revenge of the Sith. It was that retarded "code" whatever that Palpatine uses to kill the Jedi. It was stupid then and things like that are stupid now.

BUT, when the nine of us that saw KOTCS last night were trying to explain how we felt about the movie, it was clear just how little everyone knew. I was "shush"'ed for saying the alien and the UFO at the end were stupid, because nobody knew what the movie was actually about. Hell, we didn't actually know, and I think I knew more about the film than anyone else did going in.

So for those of you that didn't leave, yes, the crystal skull belongs to an alien that makes up one of the thirteen aliens in El Dorado. Yes, the city of gold was created by aliens. This is actually not the stupid part, to be honest. This stuff was different, but far from too weird for Indiana Jones. I know a few people that didn't like the replacement of religious artifacts with sci-fi elements, but Indy does even say in the film "it depends on who your God is."

Just remember we're talking about the same series of films where the Wrath of God causes people to melt, and where Shankara stones can burn the hand of a Kali Priest. It's really not that outlandish.

In fact, as I said, the first part of the film is 100% on the level Indiana Jones adventure. Everything from the opening in Area 51 (that's where the Ark went, if you were wondering) to Jones surviving a nuclear test in a refrigirator and being blacklisted as a communist and having a pretty awesome motorcycle chase with Mutt (Shia) is just fine. I was totally into the movie.

Then they go to Peru, and there's this shift. First things seem okay, but Jones slowly becomes less and less involved in things. On several occasions he stands next to someone looking at a map or something carved into a wall and says "this means this, which can translate to this word, which can also mean this." then another character will say "just like the blah de blah" and Jones says "Good!"

As the film goes on, this happens more and more, until the heroes are wholly removed from the action. Not like "tied up while the Ark is opened", but like "stand there while the mystery solves itself and then repeat something they said ten minutes ago".

The second half of the film suffers from a more recent story problem that Steven Spielberg's been having: explain basic concepts over and over again so that even the dumbest person in the audience says "I KNOW ALREADY!". It plagued A.I., Minority Report, The Terminal, and War of the Worlds, and it's so bad in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull that I became detached, especially in the second half.

It wasn't the monkeys or the giant ants of the waterfall you could not possibly survive; no, these are all things I expect from an Indiana Jones film. Even the bad cgi couldn't derail me (whoever invented digital motion blur needs to go ahead and try again), because it was inevitable. The jungle chase was still okay with the fakery because just enough of it was still real. The constant referincing of other Indiana Jones movies and the terrible Marcus Brody "blowjob" joke didn't even bother me. The problem was all the damned explanations!

Everything that happens after Indy and Mutt leave the U.S. is like National Treasure. If they aren't directly involved in an action sequence, we have to listen to people talking about what this clue means or what that riddle means, and then they SAY WHAT THE ANSWER IS INSTEAD OF JUST DOING IT! Do you know when Indy says "The Shield is the second marker" in Last Crusade? Right after they open the Knight's coffin, not while they're in the library or in Elsa's suite. While they're doing what they need to be doing, and then they continue doing things.

National Treasure is so fucking long because every single time Nicholas Cage finds a clue, they spend another ten minutes talking about the clue. It gets so bad that John Voight even makes fun of the repetitiveness of the story in the movie! What makes Indiana Jones all the worse for this is that there are some genuinely great scenes in between all this unnecessary exposition.

When Indy sees Marion again, I can't even describe how awesome it is. That big grin on her face and the really goofy reaction he gives makes it seem like old times again. Even the bickering, most of which feels like Last Crusade, is honestly pretty amusing. I chuckled anyway. Apparently Raiders screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan had a hand in writing that scene, which may be why it works so well.

The scene in the quicksand with the snake shouldn't work, but Harrison Ford sells it so well that it does. When Indy and Marion and Mutt are in the truck, it feels like Indiana Jones again, and so does the ensuing chase. But all of this is punctuated with unnecessary "what this means" talk.

The alien at the end wouldn't be so fucking stupid if it had anything to do with what Indy and company were doing, but it isn't. They just leave and then hang around while Ray Winstone slowly dies like the henchmen early in The Mummy, and then they kind of mosey out of the flooding temple. Not run, mosey.

Meanwhile, Cate Blanchett is hanging out with the crystals statues that then bond together into this alien that sort of stands there while everything is sucked into "another dimension" (according to the suddenly lucid John Hurt), and then she kind of catches fire and then dissolves in a PG version of what happens to the vampires in Blade. Then the spaceship flies off into the "space between spaces", because apparently Spielberg, Lucas, and screenwriter David Koepp couldn't commit to them actually being from outer space.

I know I'm recapping, but it's leading to the point at which I totally lost hope that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull would ever be a real Indiana Jones movie: the last explanation. Harrison Ford seems to get stuck with most of the "howlers" of bad lines in this movie, but nothing takes the cake like "the Mayan word for gold is actually treasure, so they weren't talking about gold. What it really meant was that the treasure was knowledge."

At this point, David starting laughing so hard that many of us also cracked up. It was too much, even for an Indiana Jones movie. People who tell you that all the movies are this stupid might want to watch them again. As someone who studied the "worst" film in the series*, The Temple of Doom, I can tell you that the "fortune and glory" talk at the end is nowhere near as bad as what Jones says on that mountain. Not even close.

It probably sounds like I'm bagging on the movie, which makes me feel bad. I honestly enjoyed the movie. I certainly didn't hate it or think of it as a terrible film, just a silly one. It IS a silly movie, one that has some amazing parts and some really stop dead in your tracks awful parts. It sounds terrible to say I don't regret seeing it, because that makes it sound like Star Wars prequel talk, and this is wayyyy better than Episodes 1, 2, or 3. It just could've been better than it is, and that's kind of why I'm bummed.

So should you see it, now that I've told you most of what happens (I haven't actually. I left out some really cool moments in Peru and other incidental things in the beginning)?

Yeah, I think you'd enjoy it. Understand that this is not Raiders of the Lost Ark, and nothing ever will be again. Know that Harrison Ford brought his a-game and it shows in long stretches. Shia LeBouf? He's actually pretty good as Mutt, and he gets a couple of nice moments in the film. Cate Blanchett is pretty crazy in the movie, and when she has something to do, it's cool. She's awesome in the beginning of the film. Marion has a handful of great scenes. The action is still great, and Spielberg still knows how to film it in a way today's action directors can't.

Whatever you do, don't go in expecting the movie to suck. There are plenty of goofy, silly, and stupid things that happen that could easily pull you out. Take them in stride, and remember the dinner scene in Temple of Doom. Remember the seagulls in Last Crusade, or "no ticket!". Let it happen to you, and maybe you'll be all right.

If you want to see it, call me. If I'm not working, I'd be willing to watch it again. Like I said, the first hour is awesome!

* while it's really neither here nor there, Last Crusade is actually my least favorite. I've come to appreciate Temple of Doom for what it is.

Blogorium Review: Star Wars Episode One - The Phantom Menace in 3-D

 How would I know? I didn't see it. I was too busy picking up my copy of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part One to be bothered with garbage like Star Wars. Like, duh!

 Oh, you wanted more than that? You don't believe me, you say? "Of course you'd say that, it sounds just like the kind of excuse you'd make up, Cap'n" you say? Well, you're right. It does sound just like the kind of excuse I'd make up, even though you all know I'm a Twi-Hard and have been for as long as that term existed, and probably even before that just because it was cooler then before Summit made all those movies and Twilight got all commercial and crap. Back in the good old days when you could ask somebody about Twilight and they'd be all "what?" and you'd feel cool. Yeah, that's the ticket.

 "Besides," you say, "we all know you didn't go see Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace LAST night, dummy! You saw it on Thursday at the midnight showing because we totally drove by The [insert name of nearby theatre showing The Phantom Menace in 3-D] and saw you in line with your fancy lightsaber you bought when you were working at that toy store but told everyone it was 'too expensive' so don't even front, homeskillet."

 As though I'd be the only thirty something waiting in line to see The Phantom Menace in theatres again and relive my early twenties as an obnoxious fanboy. As though I couldn't have just stayed home and watched Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace on Blu-Ray while wearing 3-D glasses and being all "great graphics" like Freddy Krueger said in the Nightmare on Elm Street movie where Freddy dies (in 3-D) even though in that scene he was actually referring to a video game he was playing with his "power glove" which also begat the line "NOW I'M PLAYING WITH POWER" like the real Nintendo Power Glove that Nintendo wouldn't let the makers of Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare use so they made the joke anyway. I could have done that. But you know you're right: I didn't.

 Actually though, that's a really good idea. I don't know why I didn't think of that while I was watching Hostel Part III. I'm going to try that right now -

 ***TEN MINUTES LATER***

 You know what? Never mind - that was a horrible idea. Now my head hurts and I think my eyes are bleeding and I'm only halfway convinced that's because of the glasses. I guess I could review the Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part One Special Edition Two Disc Blu-Ray / DVD / Digital Copy that I got that came with a replica of Bella and Edward's wedding invitation and the special replica(s) of Bella's engagement and wedding rings I bought on Target dot com for $24.99 (what a steal - am I right or what Twi-Hards???) or the guy they hired at Target who looked JUST LIKE Taylor Lautner but who would only sign copies of Abduction... wait... maybe it was Taylor Lautner. Huh.

 Anyway, I could totally do that, or I could review Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace in 3-D (short review: It Sucked... in 3-D!!!) which, you're right, I totally saw on Thursday and put up a review of Hostel Part III at roughly the same time to trick all of you. I mean, duh, it's STAR WARS. I was into Star Wars before I was born - that's how far back I go with that. I had totally memorized the Journal of the Whills before most of you were like "R2-D what now?" and yeah, Greedo TOTALLY shot first. What is wrong with you people? Do you really think that HAN SOLO is a COLD BLOODED KILLER? Come on, people. Why would a cold blooded killer go to all the effort to get Chewbacca back to Kashyyyk for Life Day? I mean, Life Day is just a made up Wookie Holiday anyway. It totally didn't exist before 1978.

 Sorry - where was I? Oh right, I was going to tell you about how you should not see Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace in 3-D and get your own awesome Pod Racer 3-D goggle glasses things. I mean what else are you going to do this weekend? See Journey 2: The Mysterious Island? One of those boring Oscar nominated movies? Yawnsville! Yeah, I bet seeing Hugo is really going to enrich your life or some crap like that. Well does Hugo have its own Jar Jar? I don't think so! Game, set, match: you lose, Scorsese. Lucas for the win. Now if you'll forgive me, there's a special interview with Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart about the wedding of the century I need to be partaking in. What the hell kind of Blogorium Review could I give you on Monday if I hadn't seen that?

Retro Review Repost (By Popular Demand): Star Wars Episode One - The Phantom Menace

 While everybody is not talking about Red Tails or the impending re-release of one of the most hated sequels of all time (along with Batman and Robin, Blues Brothers 2000, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), it occurred to me that like many movies I hold near and dear I've never given them the fourth - or first, if you're REALLY a stickler - Star Wars film a proper write-up. This still won't really be a proper write-up for The Phantom Menace, but I do want to continue the thread I began in the triple feature review of Rush Hour 2, The Siege, and Star Trek: Insurrection. In that I laid out the pattern of an obsessive Star Wars fan (one who'd gone batty at seeing the Special Editions but was old enough to have seen at least one film the first time around) and this is the payoff. This was what it all boiled down to: no more teasers, trailers, leaked audio from ADR sessions or pictures or crazy rumors / script reviews*; it was time for the real thing, at midnight.

  May 18th, 1999 came too soon - I didn't have tickets for the midnight showing because I'd just returned from school an hour-and-a-half away and hadn't been able to procure any. Even working for a local theatre proved futile in getting to see The Phantom Menace on opening day. I was convinced it would be sold out by the day before (and I say the 18th because most of this takes place before midnight, May 19th, 1999) and was scrambling to find anybody who had an extra ticked. A friend of my brother's had one at the appropriately named Imperial Cinemas (now it's the Galaxy), and I got there around... 9:30?

 Young, delusional, and buying into the hype, I was convinced that the massive line would already be happening in short order, so two-and-a-half hours early seemed like a good idea**. I was probably the seventh or eighth person in line, which gives you some idea of the level of fandom for The Phantom Menace and the futility of my fears. By the time 11:45 rolled around (when they opened the doors), there was a line wrapped around the front and side of the building, although it was nothing compared to the one I was in for Revenge of the Sith, where we were in a parking lot for the grocery store next to the theatre two hours before the film started.

 We all piled in, got our popcorn and drinks, had a seat (third row) and waited for new Star Wars. Holy shit, can you believe it? NEW Star Wars! The sensory overload, the crowd's adrenaline, and the glow of lightsabers sustained two hours of wooden, stilted line delivery, personality-less characters, dumb jokes, and soulless fight scenes. We were too overwhelmed by the event to care that the movie didn't live up to its tremendous hype, let alone to the minimum expectations of a competently made film. For days, I would continue to delude myself into thinking that The Phantom Menace was a film that needed to be, one that I was better for having seen.

 The fundamental flaw of Episode One isn't any of the litany of illogical plot developments or the "kiddie" tone (for that, I direct you to the notorious Mr. Plinkett reviews of the prequels, which are hilarious, brutal, and often illuminating). The problem is one inherent in any prequel: you already know where the story is going. New characters introduced are going to be killed off or shoved to the margins in order for the characters the audience already knows ARE in the original films to step forward. So unless you really want to know HOW Obi-Wan Kenobi came to train Anakin Skywalker or WHY Yoda decided to go into exile on Dagobah, there's not a lot for you in these films. But we were willfully ignorant of this, and I did ruin at least one person's experience by casually mentioning that Qui-Gon Jinn was going to die before the movie ended.

 I watched The Phantom Menace in its entirety four times that summer: the midnight screening, twice with friends, and once with my Dad, who was unimpressed. I kept trying to convince myself that it wasn't the disappointment that everyone said it was (and that I knew deep down was true) by sneaking off during breaks at the movie theatre I worked at to watch the Obi-Wan / Darth Maul lightsaber fight. I'd time breaks so I could walk in just in time to see it. All this time, this interest, invested for naught? It couldn't be. Twenty year old Cap'n Howdy couldn't believe that. It can't be true; it's impossible.

 But search my feelings I did, and I knew it was true. You could hear it drop like the proverbial turd when The Phantom Menace dropped on VHS. Already Lucas had made changes - extending the Pod Race and including a longer sequence where our heroes fly through Coruscant. Why? Because he felt they "improved" the experience. The really just made the film longer, and without the big screen and crowd enthusiasm, The Phantom Menace was as bad as I knew it was. I just couldn't pretend otherwise.

 I tend to think of that experience as the point at which I became more cynical about the hype surrounding films - I'd been burned, and so had many other geeks my age. Sure, we went to see Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith (sometimes at midnight), but more out of a grudging sense of completion, a "let's get this over with." The excitement turned to caution, then dread, then relief. The scratch had been itched, and I was no longer outraged by Lucas' incessant tinkering with his films on DVD (and now Blu-Ray); this was the man who brought us the Prequels, his undiluted vision of the Star Wars universe, and they were not good. They were barely watchable, and I don't own them any more. It grouses me a bit knowing that if I want to see the bounty of extra material Lucasfilm has been ferreting away for decades that I'll have to own them again. I tried watching the end of Revenge of the Sith on TV yesterday and howled with laughter at how bad the writing was.

 At this point, I don't really feel like it's worth piling on to George Lucas for his rotten prequels, but they are the reason that I have to temper expectations for movies I really like. Last year's Attack the Block review is a great example - I really enjoyed the movie, but don't want the film to get bogged down by people who think it's going to fix their car or something. Somehow we got on this kick that any movie that's better than "pretty good" has to be elevated to transcendent levels, and a lot of that has to do with the built-in cynicism that came for geeks in a post-The Phantom Menace world. Half of the geeks automatically assume something is going to suck because "they" will "mess it up," so the other half pushes too hard to counter that attitude and movies suddenly have to be the second coming to be worth seeing. I remember going to see just about everything pre-Godzilla and The Phantom Menace with a blissful ignorance of whether it would be good or not - The Big Hit? Lost in Space? Suicide Kings? The Faculty? We were there. Hate it, love it, going was fun. I think that The Phantom Menace took some of that away, or at least changed the way I looked forward to movies.

 And now it's been converted to 3-D gimmickry, because instead of being the "future" of movie-going as James "Yes, I'm converting Titanic to 3-D!" Cameron keeps claiming it is, we're going to continue to see movies that weren't conceived, composed, or shot for the third dimension getting an extra price-hike. Why? Because running it into the ground in the 1950s and 1980s wasn't enough; it's time for one more go-round of "everything old is new again" as long as there's a penny to be made in the meantime. And because we haven't seen the sequel-remake-3D-IMAX-"experience" yet. Once that happens, and heads explode, we can wait for The Phantom Menace to be beamed into our dreams. Jar Jar while you sleep! Until then, take your kids to see the movie that ruined Star Wars for your budding geek twenties.


* Like this one, for example. I can't find the one on Ain't It Cool that goes over-the-top about a SPOILER that can't be revealed - and I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out what people coming into this movie could have been "spoiled" by. On the other hand, I don't think Jeffrey Wells feels too bad about his column now, or even six months after the release of The Phantom Menace.
** True story: on a whim, two friends drove by Mission Valley and Park Place 16 to look at the lines for The Phantom Menace only to find empty parking lots.

Four Reasons I am not Seeing The Phantom Menace in 3-D

 To put this to rest once and for all, because people really seem to think that I am or would be considering going to see Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace in 3-D... soon. That should be number one, in fact:

 1. I Don't Even Care Enough to Know When It Opens - According to the button on my desk, it's February 10th. Next weekend. I did not know that, despite what feels like a constant barrage of advertisements trying to trick anyone into seeing The Phantom Menace again.

 2. Wait, Why is There a Button on Your Desk? - Hey, I decide what merits a "reason" here, not you. The button, which is heart shaped an professes the love that one droid has for another (in this particular case, C-3P0 for R2-D2), is on my desk because when we went to see The Muppets, one of my friends found the fact that Lucasfilm was tacitly admitting what we've all known for years. In fact, they put it on a button and then put the $3 it cost towards charity. This is the pin. But since any opportunity to sell Star Wars merchandise, even for a good cause like children, is also an opportunity to plug something nobody cares about, there's a paper insert mentioning The Phantom Menace in 3-D. It happens to open next weekend.

 3. So You Just Mentioned AGAIN for No Good Reason When It Opens - Hey, who runs this Blogorium? Me or you? Look, four times is enough for Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace; that's the number of times I PAID to see it in theatres in the summer of 1999. That does not count the numerous instances of watching parts of it while on break, watching parts of it on VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray, on television, or the time spent to find, download, and watch The Phantom Edit, which it turns out really wasn't that much better. A polished turd is still a turd.

 4. It Sure Sounds Like You've Seen The Phantom Menace a lot Already - Yes, it does. I have, and every single time it's a gigantic waste of my time. But I kept going back, thinking "hey, maybe this time it won't slap me around and then bore the living shit out of me before I turn it off in disgust," because I've watched the Mr. Plinkett dissections so many times that you can't even use The Phantom Menace to prove the points he makes. That's how stilted and lifeless that movie is. It's more entertaining watching someone else point out the idiot lapses in logic in The Phantom Menace than seeing them happen firsthand.

 I don't watch The Clone Wars, I don't care about Red Tails, and The People vs. George Lucas felt like a lot of spent energy over something nobody seems to care about any more. Everybody knows The Phantom Menace sucks, even little kids. Your kids don't want to see The Phantom Menace any more than you want to take them to it because it's "Star Wars" and in another three years you can see A New Hope, the movie you'd actually like to see converted to 3-D for no good reason. In the meantime, you have to sit through the shitty prequels again and marvel at how flat, boring CGI backgrounds look even more phony in the third dimension. You can pretend that a Pod Racer flying at you makes up for the... well, anything. It doesn't, and you know it doesn't.

 Oh well, I guess it beats going to see Titanic in 3-D, which is also happening soon, I think. I never saw that one in the first place, so at least people might believe me when I say I'm not going to see that one. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to put on my "robot love" button and NOT watch the Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace that's in the Blu-Ray boxed set behind me. Because that is something that is not going to happen. Right now.

Retro Review: A List of "Sword and Sorcery" films I've Seen (or Think I've Seen)

 So while I was working on the Your Highness review, I made a concerted effort to think of every movie that falls into the "sword and sorcery" category that David Gordon Green's movie is paying homage / gentling mocking. If you saw the review, I narrowed it down to Conan the Barbarian (have seen) and Krull (have not seen). I also mentioned The Barbarian and the Princess because, if I remember correctly, the VHS has a four-breasted woman on the cover. It turns out that such a movie does not exist, because it's actually called The Warrior and the Sorceress. Again, I'm not really an expert on this subgenre.

 While thinking carefully about it, I realized I could name a few other movies that I've seen part of, all of, or think I might have seen when I was younger. Here is a list with any thoughts that possibly come to mind with them.

  Masters of the Universe - A He-Man movie has to count in some capacity. I've never seen Masters of the Universe, but it was playing in the background during a birthday party / sleepover I went to. That and A Nightmare on Elm Street, I think.

 Circle of Iron - Hey! I actually reviewed this movie - it's a kung-fu, sword and sorcery, parable sort of thing, but there's lot of loincloths and warriors and stupid crap with David Carradine as a leopard dude.

 Deathsport - So I watched the first thirty minutes of this Roger Corman produced ripoff of Roger Corman's Death Race 2000. Instead of cars, there are motorcycles, but first peasants ride around on horses and avoid mutants, and David Carradine is rocking a loincloth / cape combination but also shoots some kind of weird laser gun. Technically it's more "post-apocalyptic" but it reminded me of some of the dumber "sword and sorcery" shit.

 Willow - I saw Willow when I was young, and even then it seemed like a pretty weak knock-off of Star Wars, but with witches and Warwick Davis and Val Kilmer. I seem to remember the whole two headed dragon growing out of some sort of sac grossed me out and I haven't watched it since.

 Cave Dwellers - I saw it on MST3k.

 The Scorpion King - from the director of A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: The Dream Warriors and the pro-wrestler-turned-crappy-cgi-effect formerly known as The Rock. This isn't even a guilty pleasure - I openly enjoy this silly movie that's part Conan the Barbarian, part Conan the Destroyer.

 The Beastmaster - I'm not positive I ever saw all of Don Coscarelli's The Beastmaster. I'm not even really sure I've seen some of this movie, or at all. Maybe I just know what it is.

  Dragonslayer - Like Willow, I saw Dragonslayer and it creeped me out in parts. Specifically the parts with Peter MacNicol.

 Ladyhawke (?) - Forgive me, because I don't remember many swords. I guess there probably were, but mostly I remember Matthew Broderick from War Games and I remember not knowing who Rutger Hauer and Michelle Pfeiffer were.

 The Lord of the Rings - These movies don't count, do they? I kept finding it on lists, along with Highlander and Excalibur, which I guess kinda technically count. Your Highness does borrow a few helicopter shots of our heroes on their journey, one of which reminded me of a similar shot used in the trailer for The Hobbit.

 Jason and the Argonauts / The 7th Voyage of Sinbad / Clash of the Titans - The Ray Harryhausen triptych of movies I guess are unmistakably "sword and sorcery" or at least "sword and Greek mythology" films. I saw all of these as a kid (funny how I didn't see many of these films after age nine...) and the robot bird Simon in Your Highness is most definitely a nod to that stupid robotic owl in Clash of the Titans. I forgot its name and don't know that I need to know it. I'll pretend its name is Archimedes, which I'm pretty sure is the name of the owl in The Sword and the Stone.

 The Black Cauldron - Speaking of Walt Disney, I never even considered this movie to qualify, but more than one list mentioned both The Sword and the Stone and The Black Cauldron. I saved The Black Cauldron for last because at least I have a story about this movie.

 I saw The Black Cauldron when it opened in theatres and was apparently the one kid in the world that didn't think it was the nadir of Disney animation (see: Waking Sleeping Beauty). In fact, I couldn't wait to rent the VHS tape when it came out... which was funny, because it DIDN'T come out on videocassette. Not until I was in high school, as a matter of fact. Like Song of the South, The Black Cauldron simply vanished from the lips of anyone involved with The Walt Disney Corporation for the rest of the 1980s. It took the better part of a decade before anyone could watch it again. I still don't really get the "sword and sorcery" categorization, mostly because I always connect that subgenre with the desert, but I guess it does fit in.

 Do you like how I mentioned two different Nightmare on Elm Street movies even though they are in no way topically related to these films?

 So I guess there were more movies than I led you to believe yesterday, although I've seen maybe three of them in the last ten years in their entirety. Several of them I only saw once, when I was pretty young, and they didn't make much of an impression. That might explain why Your Highness was slightly perplexing to the Cap'n.

One More 2011 Post for Kicks: My Favorite Fancy Schmancy Discs of Last Year

 When I started the Blogorium over on another social media site several years ago, I eventually became an early adopter of Blu-Ray. At the time, I worked at a used book store that sold video games and systems and I was able to purchase an 80gb PS3, partially for the games but mostly for the shiny new discs that beat HD-DVD in the "successor to DVD" format war. I wanted to upgrade TVs from the old standby 17" (?) set I had (and its twin, a loaner from a friend who moved) and eventually did pick up that HDTV monstrosity (it's in storage now for various reasons).

 At the time, I was gently mocked by friends for taking such an interest in a "niche" market for home entertainment, to the point that I jokingly referred to all Blu-Ray and HDTV posts as being "fancy schmancy." Now that most of the world seems to be catching up (because Blu-Ray discs are often cheaper than their DVD counterparts and you don't have to get rid of your DVDs with a BD player), I haven't used the term in a while.

 People seem to be moving more and more into the "all digital" direction, to the point that a younger co-worker derisively said to me "Blu-Ray is for noobs!" I laughed out loud, because that doesn't make any sense, especially coming from someone who never knew an analog world. I'm not articulating this well, but I think anybody who has been following the development of home media for the last... let's just say thirty years is far from being a "noob" on the subject. Maybe I'm the opposite - the fuddy duddy who still likes to have a tangible copy of something, an actual library of film, music, and books. I have plenty of digital copies and songs on iTunes (no e-reader to speak of), but there's something to be said for having friends over and giving them time to look through your shelves in the down time.

 We've also established that I'm a "supplement junkie," and you don't get those kinds of extras with a digital copy. I get most people could care less about commentary tracks or making of documentaries or retrospectives, but it's not a coincidence that I buy Criterion discs that have lots of contextualizing extras about the films. To me, that's as interesting as the film itself - watch the second disc of The Battle of Algiers (if it's the DVD, the second and third discs) and then watch the film again. The all digital, just the movie world of cloud technology isn't totally for me just yet. It has its purpose, but it doesn't replace a shelf full of quality releases.

 Speaking of quality releases, I think that was the point of this whole post... I must have gotten lost back there somewhere. Oh well, let's skip to the chase. The following are some of the most interesting discs I picked up in 2011. Not all of them were released in 2011 (I'm guessing with the imports anyway) but it's my list so you'll live. When possible, I'm going to put up links where you can buy them, because several are titles you probably didn't know you could buy and are already available.

 For starters, let's look at this:

 A Nightmare on Elm Street Collection - In the US, we got the first Nightmare on Elm Street on Blu-Ray released in time for the shitty remake in 2010. Last October, we got a double feature of 2 and 3 on one disc... and that's it. Not the worst deal, necessarily - two of the best entries in the series and... well, Freddy's Revenge. Still, it's not like we can replace our boxed set yet, right?

 Not true, gang - Amazon.co.uk had an October 2011 release of the entire series on Blu-Ray. The five disc set replicates the individual release of the first film and then doubles up 2/3, 4/5, and 6/7, with a bonus disc of new extras, including episodes of Freddy's Nightmares, the anthology-ish series that you can only see if you're patient enough to watch Chiller for a week.

 (Oh, Freddy vs. Jason fanatics are admittedly SOL, but that's not really a Nightmare film anyway. Wait... are there Freddy vs. Jason fanatics?)

 Additionally, each of the BD discs has all of the interview clips from the seventh disc of the Nightmare on Elm Street DVD set, but without having to navigate the "labyrinth" to find them. Even though we're dealing with two films per disc, I have to say that all of the sequels look very good in high definition. This set will probably come out in the US (let's hope by next October) but if you've got a Freddy fix, the whole thing is available now. Most importantly, it's REGION FREE, meaning that all of the movies are going to play on any BD player you have here in the states.

  Payback - also region free and available on Amazon's UK site, the release of Payback overseas improves the existing BD release here by including both versions of the film (the US release only has the director's cut) plus all of the extras from both original discs. Whether you like one version or the other, it's got something for all Payback fans, so you can watch it whenever you like, however you like. Let's hope Point Blank makes the leap to high definition in 2012...

 Taxi Driver - Everything included from all the various versions of the DVD, plus the Criterion laserdisc commentary with Scorsese, at a very reasonable price. What's not to like?

 Citizen Kane (Ultimate SomethingorOther Edition) - Best Buy has a two-disc version with Kane and The Battle for Citizen Kane, which is nice, but the super fancy schmancy edition (for a few dollars more) also includes RKO 281 and The Magnificent Ambersons. If you want to quibble, only Citizen Kane is a BD disc, but it's a nice set that encompasses all things Kane with the added bonus of the only version of The Magnificent Ambersons we're ever going to get included as a bonus. The film looks fantastic, by the way.

 Battle Royale - I know Anchor Bay is releasing BR next week on Blu-Ray, but Arrow Films beat them to the punch in the UK with a region free set of the theatrical cut, the director's cut, and an additional disc of extras for what amounted to $35 at the end of 2010. As I didn't get it until 2011, I'm counting it - it also doesn't include Battle Royale II, which is a very nice thing for Arrow to do. That would only sully the experience. I opted for the super fancy, now out-of-print Limited Edition, which came with some other fun stuff, but you can still get the three disc version for a reasonable price.

 The Lord of the Rings Extended Editions  - Is it maybe a pain to switch out the discs? I guess. Are the "appendices" just DVDs? Well, yes. Will I take this over the "theatrical" Blu-Ray set? Any day. The movies look better, all of the extras are intact, and the extra documentaries from the "Limited Editions" are included for good measure. It's an impressive package, all things considered.

 The Twilight Zone - I finally have all five seasons on Blu-Ray, and it's more than worth your while to pick the sets up. Yes, you can watch the episodes on Netflix, and they look pretty spiffy. The sets are packed to the gills with everything a TZ fanatic like the Cap'n could possibly want to see, hear, or know. I didn't think a series would catapult past Battlestar Galactica's complete set, but The Twilight Zone on Blu-Ray did it in spades.

 Blue Velvet - on Blu-Ray, with an hour of long thought lost footage, restored and fancy schmancy-ed by David Lynch.

 I couldn't narrow down the Criterion selections, so here's just a sampling of what they kicked our collective asses with this year: Kiss Me Deadly, Three Colors, The Great Dictator, The Killing / Killer's Kiss, Island of Lost Souls, The Music Room, 12 Angry Men, Cul-De-Sac, Blow Out, Carlos, The Phantom Carriage, and Sweet Smell of Success. That's not counting the HD upgrades to Beauty and the Beast, Orpheus, The Naked Kiss, Shock Corridor, Rushmore, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Dazed and Confused, The Double Life of Veronique, Army of Shadows, Le Cercle Rouge, The Battle of Algiers, Robinson Crusoe on Mars, Solaris, Diabolique, Smiles of a Summer Night, or Fanny and Alexander. To name a few.

 Special kudos also go to Lionsgate for slowly but surely releasing Miramax films in a way that doesn't suck (*coughEchoBridgecough*), including Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Cop Land, Trainspotting, The Others, Mimic (in a Director's Cut!), Heavenly Creatures, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and Amelie. It's too bad Echo Bridge got From Dusk Till Dawn with all the Children of the Corn and Hellraiser sequels, because unless you want to see what happens when FDtD looks like when crammed onto a disc with both of its sequels and the documentary Full Tilt Boogie, you won't be seeing it on Blu-Ray (unless Criterion gets it... knocks on wood*). Oh sure, it's ten bucks, and that's three dollars more than just From Dusk Till Dawn on Blu-Ray (no, seriously), but it looks like crap. Trust me; someone bought it for me and I looked at all four movies on the disc. From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter probably looks the best of the three of them. Technically they're all watchable quality, but it's a missed opportunity to be damned sure when you see that Lionsgate is releasing HD versions with all of the extras from the DVD versions. Echo Bridge? Not so much.


Finally, I must admit that while nobody else seems to care for them, I was quite impressed in having everything together in the Stanley Kubrick Limited Edition Collection and I also bought the nine disc Star Wars Saga. I watched most of the extras and some of the movies. Guess which ones (okay, one) I haven't put in... Hint: It's EPISODE ONE THE PHANTOM MENACE. I won't be buying the 3D Blu-Ray Set, even if I have a 3D TV at that point. I'm also not going to see The Phantom Menace in 3D. You don't need to believe me because I know that's true.

 And I'm out of steam... there were more, but I'll get to them another time.

* This is not as crazy as it sounds - I still have the Miramax DVD set of the Three Colors Trilogy, and Criterion picked up the rights to that...

Five Movies: Alternate Cuts That Helped

 Yeah, I thought I might be talking about Star Wars this evening, too. But I'm not nearly far enough into the Blu-Ray set to do that, so you're just going to have to wait a little bit.In case that wasn't clear, yes I did get the Blu-Ray of the complete series for the extra three discs, which I've been poking through when I have time. I never said I wasn't going to; I just said I'd think about it. Go back and look for yourself. But I digress, let's take a look at Five Movies that benefited from revisionist directors, writers, producers, or actors.

I have, in the past, bagged on THX 1138, Aliens, Terminator 2, Donnie Darko, and The Exorcist for alternate versions (usually called "Director's Cuts") that remove ambiguity or clutter up the film with unnecessary subplots or sequences. This past week the cyclical outrage over changes to Star Wars again brought up the debate about whether the creative force behind a film has the right to alter their movie, or if the movie belongs to the audience.

 In some cases, these alternate versions are effective or even improve upon the film, with or without the participation of the original cast and crew. This was actually a harder list to put together than the "Theatrical Cuts I Prefer" counterpart. I ended up leaving out a lot of alternate versions; The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly has an interesting "extended" cut, as do Apocalypse Now and Touch of Evil. I've decided to leave them off not because I don't like them or, in some cases, prefer the alternate cuts. The "workprint" version of Alien 3 is the only alternate cut we're likely to see since David Fincher has no desire to revisit the film, so I'm leaving that out of the five, although it materially changes the experience of watching the film. Not having seen the theatrical cut of The New World, I don't want to compare the two necessarily, although the differences are by all accounts atmospheric in nature (as I understand it, Blood Simple is a similar situation). I opted to leave out The Lord of the Rings and Leon: The Professional, but freely admit I prefer the Extended Editions.

 To keep to the rules, these are five films that have been changed dramatically by revisiting footage, inserting or deleting material. One or two have subtle changes in visual effects, but all of them are as or more interesting because of the alterations.

 1. Brazil - What is frequently forgotten when looking at the battle over Brazil is that between the two extremes of Gilliam's cut and Universal's "Love Conquers All" cut is that they reached a compromise before the film was released in December of 1985. The theatrical cut of Brazil was twelve minutes shorter than Gilliam's original cut (details covered here, which also mention a fourth version of the film), and it wasn't until the Gilliam approved Criterion release of the film that fans were able to see his complete cut of Brazil. Taken in its full scope, I tend to appreciate the abrupt opening and better sense of absurdity in the world than in the American theatrical release.

 2. Payback - This is a point of contention between friends, because I am partial toward Brian Helgeland's "Director's Cut - Straight Up" Payback, many of them hate it. Payback was a film we were tremendously fond of in 1999, and it's no-nonsense, smart ass attitude was a huge component in seeing it three times in the theatres and many more times on video. I wasn't aware that Helgeland walked away from the film when he couldn't cut the film in a way palatable to Paramount, Warner Brothers, and Icon Productions (Mel Gibson's company). I had no idea that the explosions, the narration, and Kris Kristofferson weren't a part of his original conception of the film. That the ending was much bleaker.

 After Helgeland left, Gibson shot much of the new material himself and that's the Payback audiences saw in theatres. And I really like that Payback. In 2004, Gibson and Warner Brothers reached out to Helgeland to see if he wanted to put together his version of the film - a leaner, darker experience - and he took them up on it. The resulting film is a dialectical Rashomon to the theatrical cut: they tell roughly the same story in a similar way, but the execution is different. Helgeland's cut is more mean-spirited, more direct, and isn't as interested in moments beyond Porter getting his money back. Gibson is more ferocious, and a violent exchange with Deborah Kara Unger shifts their relationship into a more volatile state. Porter is less likable, less identifiable, and his situation ends the way it probably would have, the way he thought it would. I realize that I'm in the minority even liking the director's cut, but I think it's a fascinating contrast to the "audience friendly" version I was first enamored of.

 3. Kingdom of Heaven - Longer is not always better. Ridley Scott's extended cuts of Gladiator and Robin Hood, for example, don't improve anything (in the latter case, they just muddle things more). Kingdom of Heaven, on the other hand, benefits significantly from expanding from two-and-a-half hours to a little over three hours as a Director's Cut. The theatrical cut briskly moved along, undercutting the scope and depth of the Crusades. However, by reincorporating nearly 45 minutes of footage, Scott eases the choppy nature of the film and lets it breathe as a full-fledged epic. (See differences here, and they're significant changes) When I mention Kingdom of Heaven, I make a point to recommend the Director's Cut, because while the running time may shy people off of the film, the shorter cut isn't worth bothering with.

 4. Conquest of the Planet of the Apes - As far as I know, the only way to see the alternate (referred to as Unrated) cut of Conquest is on Blu-Ray, but two changes shift the tone of the film significantly. Only the opening and closing were changed in 1972 (to secure a PG rating), and of the two the ending is more important. The brutal beating of a gorilla in the original opening sets the tone, but Caesar's post-riot speech at the end has been removed entirely. Instead of appealing for mercy, Caesar allows the humans to be beaten to death, and the bloodied apes are shown stacking the bodies of riot police officers. Gone is the implication that apes and humans could or should live side by side, which makes Battle for the Planet of the Apes (which also has an alternate Blu-Ray cut) a little more tenuous. The shift, however, is in keeping with the militant tone of the film.

 5. Blade Runner - I couldn't not put Blade Runner on this list. I really thought about leaving it off, because nearly everyone agrees that there's a stratospheric leap in quality from the Theatrical Cut to the "Final Cut" (named so because Scott was not actively involved in the already exisitng "Director's Cut"). Many of us grew up with the narration laden, expository heavy Theatrical Cut on VHS, and while it is what drew most to the world of Blade Runner, the 1992 "Director's Cut" really sparked a renewed interest in Ridley Scott's follow-up to Alien.

 Personally, I prefer the Final Cut, because it reflects changes Scott wanted to make but couldn't (he was working on Thelma and Louise). The differences between the DC and FC are not always evident, but are minor adjustments (the dove flying away, Zhora's death scene, the shift in one of Batty's demands to Tyrell) designed to make Blade Runner more cohesive. The most significant change is Deckard is no longer dreaming about the unicorn; he is shown to be awake the entire time. The Final Cut retains much of the ambiguity of the Director's Cut but has the polish and attention to detail Scott was unable to provide at the time. If I'm going to watch the film, nine times out of ten it's the Final Cut.

Retro Review: The Star Wars Trilogy (Special Edition)

 I hadn't really planned on revisiting Star Wars again after last week's epic The Phantom Menace / Prequel Trilogy retrospective, but a valid question came up as a result of the review and the general discussion of Lucas' digital tinkering with nearly every iteration of his films since 1997: what did you think about the first major changes when the films were released for A New Hope's 20th Anniversary?

 Let's keep this shorter than last week: the funny thing is that I really didn't mind it in 1997. Chalk part of that up to age (18) and to enthusiasm to see Star Wars on the big screen. I responded strongly to the trailer:

 I was part of that "entire generation" that grew up watching A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi on VHS. I still have all of those tapes (one of which has From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga as a bonus), and watching pan-and-scanned Star Wars was how I knew them. Yes, I saw Return of the Jedi in the theatre, but I was four. I have memories associated with the film, but it's not like I can reflect on it with crystal clarity. I certainly couldn't provide a nuanced discussion of what seeing the film on the wide screen was for a child - I didn't know the difference for a long time.

 The first time I saw the trailer was in front of Mars Attacks (a movie I really should do next week for the Retro Review) and alongside a fellow Star Wars geek, I was frothing at the mouth at the chance. The fact that there were "a few new surprises" were icing on the cake as far as I was concerned - I still had the original trilogy on VHS so it wasn't like they were going away forever, y'know? It was just another way to watch the films.

 But yeah, even a couple of years later the Mos Eisley extension seemed crowded and unnecessary. The Jabba sequence in A New Hope was redundant information after the Greedo scene. Oh, and the whole "Greedo Shoots First" thing. That was a big point of contention, even in 1997. That I do remember, because it fundamentally changes the kind of character Han Solo is before we really get to know him. He's a smuggler, untrustworthy, and not afraid of shooting his way out of a bad spot. Greedo doesn't need to shoot first to justify Solo's cold blooded murder. That's just how Han Solo rolls.

 What else? Oh, the giant sand vagina dentata now had a little phallic monster that popped out? Why? Because they could. Digital Dewbacks, Vader's shuttle, more Wampa, and that silly song and dance replacement in Jabba's Palace that tries to mask criminals reveling in someone being eaten alive. And no more Ewok song. Yeah, can't say I really missed "Yub Nub" that much. Luke screaming when he chooses falling over joining Vader was stupid, but it wasn't really enough to turn me against Star Wars. Again, that was largely The Phantom Menace. It's weird that the revisionism and digital trickery didn't feel indicative of what was to come, but those were more innocent times... 

 There's an interesting side note to Return of the Jedi that may point to an early example of George Lucas tinkering: from the theatrical version to the VHS release, Lucas cut a brief sequence in the Rancor pit where Luke jumps up and hangs from the bottom of the "trap" Jabba and company watch the mayhem through. His hands are smashed by Jabba's minions and Luke falls, hitting the Rancor on the way down. The linked photo above has been floating around the internet for years and many believe it was in the theatrical release but had been cut by the time of home video release. It's not a memory I can say is genuine or manufactured, but it seems like that moment is familiar from 28 years ago.

 So there you go - I'm not giving the Special Editions a pass, per se, but a younger Cap'n was less heavy with the scrutiny back then. Remember, that's when I used to like Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet. Take that for what it's worth...

Retro Review: Star Wars Episode One - The Phantom Menace

 While talking about Star Wars last week, it occurred to me that like many movies I hold near and dear I've never given them a proper write-up. This still won't really be a proper write-up for The Phantom Menace, but I do want to continue the thread I began in the triple feature review of Rush Hour 2, The Siege, and Star Trek: Insurrection. In that I laid out the pattern of an obsessive Star Wars fan (one who'd gone batty at seeing the Special Editions but was old enough to have seen at least one film the first time around) and this is the payoff. This was what it all boiled down to: no more teasers, trailers, leaked audio from ADR sessions or pictures or crazy rumors / script reviews*; it was time for the real thing, at midnight.

  May 18th, 1999 came too soon - I didn't have tickets for the midnight showing because I'd just returned from school an hour-and-a-half away and hadn't been able to procure any. Even working for a local theatre proved futile in getting to see The Phantom Menace on opening day. I was convinced it would be sold out by the day before (and I say the 18th because most of this takes place before midnight, May 19th, 1999) and was scrambling to find anybody who had an extra ticked. A friend of my brother's had one at the appropriately named Imperial Cinemas (now it's the Galaxy), and I got there around... 9:30?

 Young, delusional, and buying into the hype, I was convinced that the massive line would already be happening in short order, so two-and-a-half hours early seemed like a good idea**. I was probably the seventh or eighth person in line, which gives you some idea of the level of fandom for The Phantom Menace and the futility of my fears. By the time 11:45 rolled around (when they opened the doors), there was a line wrapped around the front and side of the building, although it was nothing compared to the one I was in for Revenge of the Sith, where we were in a parking lot for the grocery store next to the theatre two hours before the film started.

 We all piled in, got our popcorn and drinks, had a seat (third row) and waited for new Star Wars. Holy shit, can you believe it? NEW Star Wars! The sensory overload, the crowd's adrenaline, and the glow of lightsabers sustained two hours of wooden, stilted line delivery, personality-less characters, dumb jokes, and soulless fight scenes. We were too overwhelmed by the event to care that the movie didn't live up to its tremendous hype, let alone to the minimum expectations of a competently made film. For days, I would continue to delude myself into thinking that The Phantom Menace was a film that needed to be, one that I was better for having seen.

 The fundamental flaw of Episode One isn't any of the litany of illogical plot developments or the "kiddie" tone (for that, I direct you to the notorious Mr. Plinkett reviews of the prequels, which are hilarious, brutal, and often illuminating). The problem is one inherent in any prequel: you already know where the story is going. New characters introduced are going to be killed off or shoved to the margins in order for the characters the audience already knows ARE in the original films to step forward. So unless you really want to know HOW Obi-Wan Kenobi came to train Anakin Skywalker or WHY Yoda decided to go into exile on Dagobah, there's not a lot for you in these films. But we were willfully ignorant of this, and I did ruin at least one person's experience by casually mentioning that Qui-Gon Jinn was going to die before the movie ended.

 I watched The Phantom Menace in its entirety four times that summer: the midnight screening, twice with friends, and once with my Dad, who was unimpressed. I kept trying to convince myself that it wasn't the disappointment that everyone said it was (and that I knew deep down was true) by sneaking off during breaks at the movie theatre I worked at to watch the Obi-Wan / Darth Maul lightsaber fight. I'd time breaks so I could walk in just in time to see it. All this time, this interest, invested for naught? It couldn't be. Twenty year old Cap'n Howdy couldn't believe that. It can't be true; it's impossible.

 But search my feelings I did, and I knew it was true. You could hear it drop like the proverbial turd when The Phantom Menace dropped on VHS. Already Lucas had made changes - extending the Pod Race and including a longer sequence where our heroes fly through Coruscant. Why? Because he felt they "improved" the experience. The really just made the film longer, and without the big screen and crowd enthusiasm, The Phantom Menace was as bad as I knew it was. I just couldn't pretend otherwise.

 I tend to think of that experience as the point at which I became more cynical about the hype surrounding films - I'd been burned, and so had many other geeks my age. Sure, we went to see Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith (sometimes at midnight), but more out of a grudging sense of completion, a "let's get this over with." The excitement turned to caution, then dread, then relief. The scratch had been itched, and I was no longer outraged by Lucas' incessant tinkering with his films on DVD (and now Blu-Ray); this was the man who brought us the Prequels, his undiluted vision of the Star Wars universe, and they were not good. They were barely watchable, and I don't own them any more. It grouses me a bit knowing that if I want to see the bounty of extra material Lucasfilm has been ferreting away for decades that I'll have to own them again. I tried watching the end of Revenge of the Sith on TV yesterday and howled with laughter at how bad the writing was.

 At this point, I don't really feel like it's worth piling on to George Lucas for his rotten prequels, but they are the reason that I have to temper expectations for movies I really like. Yesterday's Attack the Block review is a great example - I really enjoyed the movie, but don't want the film to get bogged down by people who think it's going to fix their car or something. Somehow we got on this kick that any movie that's better than "pretty good" has to be elevated to transcendent levels, and a lot of that has to do with the built-in cynicism that came for geeks in a post-The Phantom Menace world. Half of the geeks automatically assume something is going to suck because "they" will "mess it up," so the other half pushes too hard to counter that attitude and movies suddenly have to be the second coming to be worth seeing. I remember going to see just about everything pre-Godzilla and The Phantom Menace with a blissful ignorance of whether it would be good or not - The Big Hit? Lost in Space? Suicide Kings? The Faculty? We were there. Hate it, love it, going was fun. I think that The Phantom Menace took some of that away, or at least changed the way I looked forward to movies.


* Like this one, for example. I can't find the one on Ain't It Cool that goes over-the-top about a SPOILER that can't be revealed - and I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out what people coming into this movie could have been "spoiled" by. On the other hand, I don't think Jeffrey Wells feels too bad about his column now, or even six months after the release of The Phantom Menace.
** True story: on a whim, two friends drove by Mission Valley and Park Place 16 to look at the lines for The Phantom Menace only to find empty parking lots.

A Theory About Star Wars

 ...or really a theory about George Lucas, I suppose. Star Wars is, as usual, the method by which Lucas has chosen to again antagonize geeks everywhere. By now, most of you have heard about the change to Return of the Jedi where Darth Vader screams "Noooooo!" before throwing the Emperor deep into the Death Star, as well as a few other "adjustments" to the Original Trilogy* (and the Prequel Trilogy, but really, who cares about that?). Attentive internet geeks have been pitting George Lucas from 1988 against the George Lucas of today, once again desperately trying to appeal to the director / producer. That, or to once again make the argument that the guy is a money-grubbing hack. Or that other thing - the totally overboard reference to what Lucas is allegedly doing to your "childhood" that I cannot abide by repeating.

 At this point, it gets really old hearing about how angry people are at George Lucas and about documentaries like The People vs. George Lucas, etc. Every time the inevitable re-release of the film comes out, people swear they're being cheated and that "this is the last time you'll get MY money, George!" and then news comes out about changes and then the hyperbole kicks into high gear. Star Wars came out on DVD - but it was the Special Editions. Then Lucas released the Original Versions on DVD, but not anamorphically enhanced and with 2.0 stereo mixes (direct ports from the Laserdiscs) and that was ripping people off so of course they aren't going to buy it. Now the Blu-Rays are coming out and another series of alterations are in place and fans are shocked to discover that a man who has digitally altered every single film he's directed for DVD and Blu-Ray release once again took the opportunity for more tinkering.

 Here's the catch - I think he knows that you're going to complain. He also knows (as I do) that the calls for boycotts are no reflection of actual sales. They haven't been in the past - and I've worked in places that sold those movies and toys and I know for a fact that people continue to buy the versions of Star Wars they claim to loathe - and I strongly believe that other than grousing the internet community, Lucas knows exactly what he's doing. He doesn't even mind ruffling those feathers, because it helps his cause.

 Lucas has, once again, shrewdly concocted a way to keep everyone talking about Star Wars as the Blu-Ray release approaches. It's not enough to sell ad space and to make deals with Best Buy about exclusive this or yadda yadda that; despite what's said about the man, George Lucas knows how to get his audience passionate about Star Wars when it's time to have their wallets out. Whether the passion is positive or negative, I suspect he doesn't care, because here's what's going to happen: outraged fans are going to scream all the way up and down the internet about the classics being "butchered" again, swear that THIS TIME they won't be buying them, and then quietly ordering that nine disc boxed set off of Amazon so that the next time they see their friends, they can authoritatively rant with indignation.

 The changes we DO know about aren't the only changes, which may or may not be true - we know that puppet Yoda from The Phantom Menace is now digital, and that Obi-Wan's "dragon" noise is, *ahem* more suggestive, and that Ewoks blink now - but the earliest promise from Lucasfilm was of more "surprises" in the films. In order to be a properly incensed geek, that means purchasing the set (on the down-low, of course) in order to catalog the changes before someone else gets to it and then poring over every minute detail on chat boards.The people who yell the loudest online are almost always the first people to say to you "can you believe that Lucas did THIS and THIS???" at the first opportunity, usually before the average fan even noticed.

 So is this outrage surprising? No, not really. Is it fun to sit back and listen to? Yeah, it kind of is. If people really stuck to their guns and didn't buy this Blu-Ray set after rating it with one star on Amazon sight unseen, I'd be more impressed with the sturm and drang, but I don't see that happening. I've yet to decide if I'm going to pick it up or wait another year (*ahem*, thirty-fifth anniversary of A New Hope) for some other, cheaper, repackaging once this version is pulled from shelves (20th Century Fox, like Disney, will do that to drive up demand). I'd like to see those extra three discs of footage, and wouldn't mind watching the films in high definition, but it really depends on if I have a hundred dollars to spare in two weeks. I waited on The Lord of the Rings and that worked out well enough. Lucas has my passing attention, and he may well have my money, but I can't give him the outrage; just a passing glance and "Huh, this again?"




 * Actually, it's not even the Original Trilogy at this point. For a detailed examination of how the original films became the Special Editions and then the DVD editions, go here.

Spoiler of the Day: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

  Aliens (oh, I'm sorry Mr. Lucas, "extra-dimensional beings") have been waiting for someone to bring back the last crystal skull to their ship somewhere in the Amazon. When Indiana Jones, et al, return the skull, one of the "aliens" ceases to be a crystal skeleton (or something like that, I really don't remember), and the ship flies off. Our heroes sit down at the top of a mountain near where the ship was and Henry Jones, Jr. explains that the translation of "treasure" could also mean "knowledge," at which point everybody in the audience starts laughing.


 Tomorrow's Spoiler of the Day: Forgotten

Retro Review: The Siege, Star Trek: Insurrection, and Rush Hour

 This is a little bit different take on the Retro Review, less about the specific films listed in the title and more about the reason WHY I sat through two movies I'll never watch again and a movie I haven't seen in nearly a twelve years and vaguely remember. The connective tissue between these three disparate, otherwise wholly unrelated films, has everything to do with George Lucas and May of 1999*.

 Although Star Wars doesn't receive the level of attention at the Blogorium that it might have ten years ago, I was once a fanatic of George Lucas' sci-fi / fantasy series. These days, in the wake of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, The Clone Wars movie and subsequent series (which I have not and do not plan on seeing), and the impending Blu-Ray release / 3-D re-release of the "saga," I just don't feel the need to write about Star Wars that much anymore. I'm not one of those hyperbolic "Lucas raped my childhood" idiots**, and I do sometimes smile or chuckle at a well placed SW reference, but most of the time I just don't think about the movies. Any of them, even if I'm more inclined to watch A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back than the other four.

 That was not always the case; from the announcement of the Star Wars prequels (some time after the 1997 Special Editions) until the release of Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace, I was a rabid fanatic. You can ask anyone I knew in college freshman year, when I undoubtedly drove them nuts with taped trailers from Entertainment Tonight or the latest rumors from TheForce.net.More to the point, I was insufferable when it came to seeing the teaser trailer, and I had a habit of dragging very reasonable friends to movies we wouldn't see otherwise because the teaser was "rumored" to be attached. I was home from school on three occasions, and I think you can figure out what the first two movies were.


I'm sure you've all seen Rush Hour at this point; you've probably seen Rush Hour 2 and not Rush Hour 3 (at least, that's my level of interaction with the series). I heard that The Phantom Menace's teaser ran before the film, and that Rush Hour might be funny. I suppose we enjoyed it, although I'd be pressed to tell you much about Rush Hour. Thinking back, it seems like I remember as much about Rush Hour as I do Shanghai Noon (anybody see that movie?). It's an amiable comedy, notable (at the time) for featuring Tom Wilkinson, who I had seen in The Full Monty the year before. I can't honestly remember if the trailer was attached or not, but it seems like it wasn't.



  Skip two months later to Thanksgiving break of 1998, when a similar situation unfolded for The Siege.
Driving to the theatre, I swore up and down we wouldn't be as "let down" this time, and by "we," I meant "me" because compared to The Siege, Rush Hour was a walk in the park. Other than hating the movie, here are the things I remember about The Siege: Bruce Willis, Denzel Washington, Annette Bening, and Tony Shalhoub were in the film. It had something to do with a terrorist attack or the threat of terrorism or something, and Willis declared marshal law in New York. That's it. I never saw The Siege again, don't recall enjoying it, and have no plans to revisit the film. Considering that we (I) only went to see The Siege to watch that trailer, and the trailer wasn't there, I was doubly disappointed.

 How I eventually saw the teaser trailer or what it was playing in front of is lost to the ages, so I'm just going to assume I saw it online over and over in some horrible quality QuickTime on a loop, obsessing over the minutiae until the next trailer came along. Maybe it's even on a cd-r or a floppy disc somewhere, lost in the shuffle of the following decade.

  Star Trek: Insurrection is more of an appendix to the story, a movie I saw with my Dad for Christmas or possibly even early in 1999 for his birthday. The film itself is a elongated, mostly pointless episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that I'd largely forgotten until watching Mr. Plinkett's review of the film***. It's only really worth noting because I do know that the Episode 1 trailer played before Insurrection, and was arguably the highlight of the afternoon.

 This is not a Retro Review for The Phantom Menace (although I might do one of those down the line), so there's no need to get into whether the film lived up to the teaser or not. I just thought you might chuckled at the lengths to which a young and silly Star Wars fan would go to see a trailer. Not the movie, a trailer. Laugh it up, fuzzballs.

* You could also consider The Mummy to fit into this rubric, although its release was much closer to Episode 1. For whatever reason, I gave The Mummy's crappy visual effects a pass because, as I reasoned, "ILM put most of their effort towards Star Wars."
** If you don't understand why using a rape metaphor to describe your reaction to three shitty movies, you are an idiot. Period.
*** Appropriately, the reason I knew Mr. Plinkett existed was because of his now famous Episode 1 review.

Five Movies: Five Theatrical Cuts I prefer over the Director's Cut

Apologies for that mouthful of a title, but sometimes cutting it down can be a little tricky. I'm returning to Five Movies to pick up on an older column reposted a few Tuesdays ago. Since Aliens is clearly a movie I prefer the shorter, theatrical cut, of, I'll simply include the link in this list. The other four films are movies that I think benefited from studio involvement in one way or the other, which sounds a little weird. Allow the Cap'n to make his case.

Normally speaking, I side with the writer / director / creative team when it comes to a film: ultimately, their vision should be on the screen and not some watered down compromise designed to appeal to larger audiences. A film can, under varying circumstances, find its audience without dumbing things down or spelling things out. There are plenty of examples where a "complete" version came out that made a considerable difference in viewers' reactions to the film: Brazil, Kingdom of Heaven, Blade Runner, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, Touch of Evil, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Almost Famous, Once Upon a Time in America, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, The New World, Alien 3, Payback, The Big Red One, Major Dundee, and Leon: The Professional*.

In other instances, there are alternate versions of films where I feel nothing is particularly gained or lost (Apocalypse Now: Redux springs to mind, or the "extended" cut of Alien Resurrection), and then there are the "Unrated" cuts so prevalent today that add anywhere from one to thirty-five minutes of footage back into the narrative (Hot Tub Time Machine and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story respectively), some of which is negligible unless directly compared. Every now and then, a director's cut will be shorter, like the Coen brothers' Blood Simple.

That being said, sometimes that extra studio input comes in handy. Sometimes (at least in five instances listed below), a mandated "studio cut" turns out to benefit the narrative and provides a better viewing experience than the subsequent extended director's cut that follows in DVD or Blu-Ray (and, periodically, in a theatrical re-release). I've said before that this is a subjective system, but for my money, the following films work better under the duress of "studio interference" and compromise, and when the "pure" vision came out, I wasn't as impressed. Feel free to agree or disagree.


THX 1138: The George Lucas Director's Cut - It's tempting to beat up on Lucas' tinkering with the Star Wars trilogy, but the unaltered cuts are at least available (albeit in non-remastered, chucked out DVD versions), whereas his first film, THX 1138 exists on DVD and Blu-Ray only in a 2004 "director's cut" form. The imposition of new special effects, an extended car chase, cgi monsters, and a number of deletions drastically alters the claustrophobic tone of the original THX 1138, substituting instead a noisy, digitally cluttered version of the film that Lucas "always wanted to make." That's fine, but since the original version hasn't (and won't) see the light of day again, we're instead stuck with a film that replaces the ingenuity of budget limitations with a cut that undermines the tone and story of the original cut. (for a very comprehensive list of exactly what's different, check out the side-by-side comparison here.)


Donnie Darko - Sometimes a director strikes gold without realizing it, and then goes back and messes things up by giving the audience more of something they don't need. Donnie Darko is such a case. Like many people in the Cult of Donnie Darko, I was immensely curious when the word came out that writer / director Richard Kelly had another cut of his first film, one that delved deeper into the philosophy of time travel and fleshed out the family dynamic (flashes of which were apparent in the "Deleted Scenes" section of the Donnie Darko DVD), but when his "Extended Director's Remix" arrived on DVD, I was underwhelmed to say the least.

The longer Director's Cut removed all of the ambiguity from the theatrical version of Donnie Darko, replacing implications and conjecture with obvious, awkwardly inserted "passages" from The Philosophy of Time Travel that spelled out exactly what was going on in the story. Suddenly the mystery of the film vanished, replaced by explanations that made any discussion of the film feel stupid and unnecessary. Does it really help to have the film explain what the "manipulated dead" do? That Donnie's medication was a placebo? How "time arrows" work? All of the magic of Donnie Darko evaporated, and it was coupled with a disastrous commentary track where it became clear that Kelly didn't have any idea what it was that worked about the film and why it attracted the rabid fanbase it did.


Aliens - While I'm including the link to the Four Reasons article, might I add that this is generally how I feel about the director's cut versions of Terminator 2: Judgment Day and The Abyss as well. I feel the additions add nothing particularly interesting to the story, and at times unnecessarily pad the films in ways that dull their impact.






The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen - It bears mentioning that this is more of a "Writer's Cut" than a Director's Cut, although William Friedkin ultimately signed off on the theatrical re-release of this longer, less effective version of The Exorcist. What once was a relentlessly creepy, tension building film about demonic possession returned to theatres in 2000 as an unintentionally goofy, padded cut, including one genuinely good effect (the "spider-walk" sequence, which despite looking cool doesn't add anything to the film), an unfortunate subplot near the beginning, and the "Casablanca" ending that writer William Peter Blatty preferred to the original cut.

I had an opportunity to see The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen a few times with audiences (the Cap'n was working as a projectionist when the film opened), and rather than squirm, most audiences howled with laughter during the film. This was due, considerably, to the inclusion of a pre-openly possessed Regan (Linda Blair) being erroneously prescribed Ritalin by her doctor. At the time, Generation Y was having a field day with the ADD / ADHD craze and Ritalin was the prescription drug du jour, meaning that this "old' movie was hitting on their buzzword, rendering the establishing plot immediately comical.

The inclusion of the Pazuzu "flashes" during scenes didn't help anything, as the frozen demon face popping up in shadows elicited chuckles rather than generate suspense or foreboding. The "spider-walk" scene failed to unnerve audiences, and many who had been exposed to the over-the-top gags in Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn, responded by laughing at the clear effect. At this point, nobody in the audience was taking The Exorcist seriously, and in the ensuing year or so, I had a number of arguments about whether the film had ever been "good" or "scary," a direct result of this unneeded "Version You'd Never Seen." That this cut has become the "norm," to the point that it - and not the original cut - will be playing this year in theatres is unfortunate to say the least.


Bad Santa: The Director's Cut - The Cap'n may be alone on this one, but as much as I like Terry Zwigoff's other films (particularly Louie Bluie, Crumb, and Ghost World), the truth is that the Weinstein-mandated recut of Bad Santa works better for me than the subsequently released Director's Cut (not to be mistaken for Badder Santa: Unrated, which came out simultaneously with the theatrical version on DVD). Having seen all three cuts, the "Badder Santa" version is probably my preferred cut.

By saying that, I'm sure that the Cap'n is now the enemy of die-hard Zwigoff supporters (and the director himself) because I settled for - and laughed at - the "watered down, studio version" that replaces his original vision with lowbrow yuks for the cheap seats. Well, here's the truth: the Director's Cut doesn't work. The significantly shorter cut has a less fluid plot structure (the immediate jump from Willie's first robbery to the second gives us no indication of why Marcus really needs him instead of finding a more reliable crook), and I'm going to be honest, the removal of Thornton's narration at the outset replaces any sympathy for the character with a sense of "why should we care about this pathetic drunk?"

Honestly, I understand that Zwigoff was more likely interested in exploring the less appealing side of Willie Stokes and giving the audience a protagonist that was in no way likable (much like his follow-up, Art School Confidential), but what works about the earlier (and in my opinion, more successful) Ghost World is that despite the fact all of his characters exist on the margins of "civilized" society, there's something about Enid and Seymour that's worth sticking around for. Zwigoff's cut of Bad Santa left a bad taste in my mouth, whereas the crass, studio involved theatrical cut at least generated some guilty chuckles.


So there you have it: five movies where the creative forces clashed with the studio and the end result turned out to be more successful. For the Cap'n, anyway. Feel free to disagree in the comments below, or add examples of films you think work better one way or the other.


* It is important to note that in the case of Touch of Evil, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Major Dundee, The Big Red One, and the not mentioned Mr. Arkadin, that the "director's cuts" were made without the participation of the director, who had passed on.