A post relating to Summer Sequels

It happens every summer. The summer movie lists come out and everybody starts to complain that it's the same films (movies I suppose) over and over. It goes like this:

Action films (they will be full of color and general connections to the current state of political affairs).

Children's films from the "lame" production companies (usually Dreamworks and whoever put out Hoodwinked and Gnomeo and Juliet).

Sequels (self-explanatory unless you're an idiot).

I'm addressing specifically sequels since this summer, movies have covered all three. Cars 2, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Final Destination 5, Conan the Barbarian 3d, Spy Kids: All the Time in the World (seriously, this is happening).

Yeah that's Jessica Alba, the kiss of death with any film but that's another post.

Every summer, everybody complains. But the complaints are never as loud as when they're lodged against sequels. And the complaints are understandable. "It's the same plot as before", "They're not even trying,", "they're just repackaging the same movie for idiots". Yeah, that's all pretty annoying but it's all bullshit because every movie is a repackage. In a way, the studios are being more honest with us when they spit out a sequel.

Instead of giving us "new" movies that are repackages, the studio is saying "Look, let's be honest. We know you don't want the same thing you had before but we also know you'll bitch like an in-house soccer team promised pizza after a game but getting a ride home instead if we try to throw a provocative, emotionally-charged film at you. But then when we do give you brilliance, you won't come and bitch all summer that you just want to enjoy yourself."

Foreign? Fuck you I've got a sunburn!

I'm as cynical as the next liberal post-ad in a shitty job. I love film and I do feel a strange fury when a friend mentions how hilarious Hangover 2 is. But I'm also not stupid.

Every person on the planet who has watched more than one movie has had the Moment. The Moment when you're watching a movie and you're moved. That doesn't mean you saw Saving Private Ryan or Naked, it just means a movie touched you in a way that nothing else has. To be honest, for me it was Royal Tenenbaums. Cliche in two ways. On one side, cliche because I'm one of those people who loves "artistic films" but can't get into "indie" public domain movies like Garden State and then on the other, a cliche because I love the public domain of "artistic films". But with all that knowledge that film, since I was fifteen, has chosen for me any other film I've seen. The only reason I haven't watched every film derivative of Royal Tenenbaums exclusively is because I started living with a film-maker who made me watch the gamut. That Moment I'm speaking of can be a stupid, fart-filled comedy or a tear jerker of a drama but it guides every selection past the Moment.

We live in a society and, as a society, we live as a group and as a group there are films that maintain huge box office gross and box gross maintains what happens to the film after it premiers. This is why we're up to number three in the Transformer series and still at one for Happy Go Lucky.

Let me break this down a little further. We all like bright colors. We all get excited by explosions. We all cry when a nice person or dog dies. We all swoon when two people who are set up as not belonging together get together. We love references to our own life in wide or tight scope. You cut all of these into a film and skirt over a human being's "bullshit sensor" and you have a winner. It doesn't need to convince you, the movie just needs to give you any decent reason to love it. Just like politics.

So let's just say, for simplicity sake, the majorities Moment is Avatar. Bright colors, the character you've fallen in love with dies, it's kind of connected to the real world. We went fucking nuts, didn't we? Most money for a film evar! This same formula, that took a bunch of giant blue people and put them in a context that vaguely related to the real world, is applied to every movie.

I give you Super 8.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpzUCA5i6zY

(BTW, the company can go fuck itself for not allowing me to embed and not allowing any images on google. If that link doesn't work just search for the fucking trailer. Asses.)

Directed by J.J. Abrams and produced by Stephen Spielberg. Who else is seeing this and not thinking "E.T.! I loved that movie when I was a kid!" or even Close Encounters. The Super 8 trailers are vague for a reason the same reason E.T. trailers are vague. And we as a populace remember and we go to see it for a little of that Moment. How about Apollo 18? A film built on the urban legend that the Apollo 18 mission did happen... and they found something. BUM BUM BUUUUUM. A little of that old feeling with a little new mixed in.

So what's my point? To put it simply, again, is EVERY film that comes out in summer, whether sequel or not, is a rehash of old films and at least sequels are the most honest of the bunch. They already got you with the first one and now they want you for the next. And the next. And the next. And the next. And the next.

Don't fake, people. You loved the first Transformer and you threw your money at the second. You were fine with taking your kids to every Spy Kids movie "for the adult humor". And, please, you like gore but not so much to make you question your own levels of squeamishness so off you go to Final Destination 5.

Complain all you want about sequels but in the end, you're just getting what you'd want anyway.

The Moment.

Josh BROLIN! I am READY Men in Black 3! Roll me.

Avatar: Bullshit in Blue

Unless you live on Pandora, you've heard of this "environmental" film called Avatar. And if you do live on Pandora you should be aware that the director of Aliens and Titanic has made a film about your happy peace loving planet turning all of you into a bunch of hot stereotypical minorities ala Pocahontas and Dances with Wolves.

There is a lot wrong with Avatar which every friend of a hip film lover and former film major in the country has heard and doesn't fucking care LET ME ENJOY A MOVIE! It's lazy character development and design. It's set in the future yet the american military seems to have advanced any further than our genocidal past. It focuses on amazing visuals rather than a strong plot as would be expected from James Camerons near constant self back patting about his environmental film.

Look at him... saving the environment and lookin' good while he does all blue and... blue.


We're supposed to be touched by his plea to respect beautiful things before we lose them but the message from environmentalists is rarely just Save the Pretty Tiger. It's usually save the planet. The whole planet. We already want to save flowers and tigers, it's other areas like dirt, amphibians and fucking AIR that's still at the top of the Stop Poisoning This list. But I digress.

I mean look at how pretty that is! It's like if the ocean had sex with the best dog and had mutant ocean cute kitten babies!


Avatar is bullshit BUT it is successful bullshit. And yes that is half brilliant marketing and half incredible visuals and that is sad. BUT this has opened the door. We all know to cram the hippie message of save the world you have to cover it with enough icing to crack a smile on any down-home doin it for the little people politician. If a geeky twenty-something walks up to a fifty-year old stocker at Walmart just getting off the graveyard shift and says "You know, fossil fuels won't last forever and gas is never getting cheaper so why don't you hop out of your Ford diesel and into this Prius" he'll probably wake up on a trash barge heading to garbage island. But if a beautiful sexy woman walks up to the same guy and says "Tigers make me feel sexy but they're endangered and it won't get any better until we find alternative fuel" Lacking logic in the statement or not, the guy will jump into that Prius. For the tigers. Those sexy sexy tigers.

My point is, with everything going on in the average American's life, debt, kids, shitty jobs, hearing that they need to turn their whole life around from some dirt is not going to fly. Unless it looks inviting, beautiful and fucking AWESOME. Ah the trick of marketing. If slugs had the PR team Avatar did, banana slugs would be the it pet of the year. So fuck you Puggle.

Sorry puppy, a slug fits better in my purse next to my eye shadow and tampons.


But aside from the tacked on environmental message the technology used in Avatar are leaps in visual communication. In a year of every movie coming out in 3D, Avatar is the only one that used and created technology that when utilized in more interesting ways could create some interesting pieces of art in the future. The thing about 3D is not every movie is necessarily even when it says it is. There are two ways to create 3D. First way, you shoot the movie second person like we're all familiar with then add some lenses and editing and... look I don't know the specific technology just wikipedia it. The second way is using an actual 3D camera. That's why some 3D films look and feel strange and usually give you headache and others fit your eyeballs in a much more pleasing natural way. Avatar is it's own animal. And while it is depressing the idea that droves of people would still only show up to a film for the "experience" which is equivalent to showing a newborn the pictures in a storybook, we can't expect the first of it's kind to be a sort of 3D Godfather. If we go back in time, the first color picture (shot in color not had color added later) was a A Visit to the Seaside released 1908. Remember that film? Yeah I just looked it up too. Rotoscoping (drawing over live action like in Titan AE, Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly) was invented in 1915 to animate the directors friend in a clown suit for Out of the Inkwell and again to animate, wait for it, Betty Boop.

Here's Betty Boop one of the first famous rotoscoped ladies.


And Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder, two ladies in later rotoscoping.


And for good measure here's Out of the Inkwell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tszUgxP9kog

Both color film and rotoscoping began and continued in small projects without the gain of narrative prowess but were harnessed later to add a visual truth to a strong plot. To put it simply, fun tool created just to be seen used later to create atmosphere.

So Avatar is bullshit and a proud of example of the power of money. But, if it did anything wonderful, it opened two doors. Talking about the environment in a forum that doesn't require a Mate tea and a big chip on the shoulder and a technology advancement that really could advance a media further than it's gone in decades.