KJToo

I didn’t get nearly as many movies watched as I intended to while Kyle and Laura were in the Orange Juice and Metamucil State, but here’s the first batch from the SciFi Schlockfest (with a couple of bonus movies thrown in for good measure):

1. Anaconda 3 (2008). David Hasselhoff can’t need work this badly, can he? I mean, the guy’s got Baywatch money! And don’t get me started on how John Rhys-Davies continues to parlay the success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy into movies like Chupacabra: Dark Seas and…this. Why is it that any time scientists are seeking cures for Alzheimer’s Disease and cancer they inadvertently create monsters of unimaginable horror? In this case, it’s a pair of 60-foot-long snakes with machetes for tails. Now instead of just squeezing and biting, the snakes impale! They also live on a steady diet consisting almost entirely of human heads, which makes their two-hour growth spurt to 100 feet long all the more amazing. In fact, the only thing more amazing than machete-tailed snakes that nearly double in size eating only noggins is Hasselhoff’s mustache. (2/10)
2. Aztec Rex (2007). SciFi.com lied to me. The official page for Aztec Rex (AKA Tyrannosaurus Azteca) says “The Aztecs summoned a Tyrannosaurus Rex to keep Cortés and his army out of Mexico. Now they need the Conquistadors’ help to stop the T-Rex from killing them all.” Except that the T-Rex in question has been roaming the valley for thousands of years and the Aztecs have been feeding it human sacrifices every month. The Conquistadors show up and accidentally annoy the beastie, then all hell breaks loose. The computer-generated T. Rex is terrible, Cortés is from New Jersey (he’s got blue eyes for cryin’ out loud!) and…well, Ayacoatl (Dichen Lachman) isn’t hard to look at, and at least the hero (Rios, played by Mario Sanchez) is actually Hispanic.  But really, Jurassic Park was made fifteen years ago, I would think that even the SciFi Channel could afford CGi dinosaurs that don’t stick out like puffy stickers on a Trapper Keeper. (3/10)
3. Rise: Blood Hunter (2007). Sadie Blake (Lucy Liu) is a reporter who has a run-in with the undead and wakes up a vampire. Instead of dressing in black and listening to The Cure, Sadie decides she’s going to kill every vampire she can find until she finds the one who turned her. This is literally a vampire movie without fangs, as the vampires simply don’t have ‘em; when the blood suckers want to dine, they use fancy little knives to open the nearest artery. Not a bad flick, but Robert Forster is absolutely wasted as a businessman who almost solicits a prostitute in the first two minutes of the movie and then is never seen again. (5/10)
4. The Descent (2005) wasn’t technically on the Schlockfest list, but it was on the DVR. A group of spelunking women encounter carnivorous mutants while exploring an uncharted cave. It’s kind of like Deliverance in the dark without the banjoes. As flashlight horror goes, The Descent was really quite good. (7/10)
5. Croc (2007) is another movie that wasn’t on the list, but I stumbled across it on The SciFi Channel yesterday and, given my well-known love for giant crocodile movies, had to watch. The cast is entirely composed of no-name (and even less talent) actors, with the exception of Michael Madsen as Croc Hawkins, that rarest of beasties: the hunter who’s out for revenge but isn’t so obsessed with the critter that he’s lost his perspective; in other words, he ain’t crazy. All the other tropes are present, though, including the mayor who doesn’t want to shut down the beaches because it’ll hurt the tourist trade. (3/10)
6. A Sound of Thunder (2005), yet another movie that wasn’t on the list, was adapted from a Ray Bradbury tale. I heard an old radio production of the story a couple of months ago and the movie adaptation (starring Ben Kingsley and Edward Burns) piqued my curiosity. The story concerns a group of time travelers who muck things up while hunting dinosaurs in the past, thus thoroughly discombobulating evolution. Most of the movie is filler, introducing new and more dangerous beasties in our heroes’ futuristic “present” (which apparently attended the same “How Things Will Look in the Future (Really)” school as Total Recall) with each “time wave”. Edward Burns must fight and dodge the beasties during his desperate search for who mucked up what in the Cretaceous Period. Interesting, but mostly just cheesy filler. (5/10)

For those keeping track at home, here are the remaining movies on the SciFi Schlockfest list:

• Alien Lockdown
• Beyond/Beneath Loch Ness
• BloodMonkey
• Ghouls
• Heatstroke
• Living Hell
• Odysseus: Voyage to the Underworld

Thankfully, SciFi showed Dragon Wars this past Saturday, and I’ve already rendered my opinion of that gem in an episode of The Secret Lair, so the list hasn’t gotten any longer. A few human heads should rectify that.

The Saturday SciFi movies are really starting to pile up on my DVR, and I’ve been looking for an opportunity to sit down for a little schlock-fest. That opportunity has arisen: Laura and Kyle have gone to Florida for a week with my mother-in-law, sister-in-law and her family. I had originally planned to go, too, but the timing isn’t ideal from a work perspective, so I opted to stay home. This leaves me in a very quiet house with two cats, an Xbox, a PC with yet another dying hard drive, and a DVR chock full of movies from “The Most Dangerous Night of Television”.

Here’s just a sampling of the movies I’ll be enjoying over the next seven days:

• Alien Lockdown. Two words: Martin Kove. Yeah, the dude from Hard Time on Planet Earth.1 Yeah, I’m the only one who remembers that show. So what? Oh, and it was directed by Tim Cox, the fellow who brought us Mammoth.2
• Anaconda 3: The Offspring starring David Hasselhoff and John Rhys-Davies. That’s right, snakes hasslin’ the Hoff.
• Aztec Rex. Dinosaurs and conquistadors in Mesoamerica!
• BloodMonkey. Yes! Pan Sanguia! I really have no idea what this is about, but the title is made of awesome.
• Beyond/Beneath Loch Ness. The DVR says “Beneath”, but SciFi.com says “Beyond“. Which will it be?
• Ghouls. Something about teenagers, probably getting eaten. By ghouls, I guess.
• Living Hell. “The military created it. An accident set it free. Now one man must lead us to survival or extinction.” I hope that one man is Vincent Ventresca. It’s not? Crap, we’re screwed.
• Odysseus: Voyage to the Underworld starring Arnold Vosloo, because they got Jet Li for the second Mummy sequel.
• Rise: Blood Hunter. Lucy Liu! Michael Chiklis! Robert Forster! Why is this the first time I’m hearing of this movie?

That’s just a sampling. I know there are a couple more, but I can’t think of them off the top of my head.

1. And also a little film called The Karate Kid. [back]
2. Well, brought me Mammoth, because I know I’m the only one who watched that. [back]

[EDIT: The Great Superhero Movie Project now has its own page. You may leave movie suggestions and/or comments here or there.]

I’ve gotten some interesting feedback (both in the comments here and on Twitter) regarding my Top Ten Superhero Movies Since the Dawn of Time lists. Some folks agree with me, some don’t, but the question I hear most often usually begins with words along these lines: “Hey, you forgot about…”

And I did. The first time around, I definitely snubbed Mystery Men; after the second iteration The Kingfish wondered where (or if) Hancock placed on the list, David Mead asked about Darkman and Rachel “Nycteris” Ross brought up Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

I Have a Plan

I’m not one to leave a stone unturned—whether that stone was bitten by radioactive bats, sent to Earth by a race of alien vampires or just found some sexy tights and decided to start kicking people in the face—so I’ve come up with a plan to turn all the stones in one fell swoop.

Okay, two fell swoops.

The First Swoop: My Job - Two Lists

First, I’m going to make two lists: every superhero movie I’ve ever seen and superhero movies I know about but haven’t seen.

The Second Swoop: Your Job - The Third List

Second, I want you to submit movies that I’ve overlooked. Yes, you. If you’re reading this and you’re aware of a superhero movie that is not on either of my lists, I want you to comment here and tell me about it. I’ll add all of these to my third list: superhero movies I didn’t know (or forgot) existed.

The Third Swoop: My Job - Watch, Rate, Review

Oh, wait, there’s a third fell swoop: I’m going to watch every one of the movies on all three lists. If I haven’t seen the movie in the past two years, I’m going to watch or re-watch it and then I’m going to write a review (unless I’ve already written one, in which case I may tweak an existing review).

Sound like fun? Sound like a lot of work? It might be, but let me set up some guidelines here so we don’t get all crazy-go-nuts with the lists. Pay attention.

What is a Superhero Movie?

• The “movie” part of the definition is easy: All movies, whether they were theatrical releases, straight to DVD or even made for television; if it’s a movie, it gets on the list. Note that movies made as pilots for or as direct spinoffs of a television series don’t count, so The Incredible Hulk starring Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno is not eligible,1 but Captain America II: Death Too Soon starring Reb Brown and Christopher Lee is.
• The tricky bit of the definition is “superhero”, as I’ve already been asked whether Transformers is a superhero movie (it’s not) and if Hellboy should count (it does). I can’t exactly pin the energon cube on why Transformers doesn’t qualify; it just doesn’t. Comic book movie, yes; superhero movie, no.2 I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’ll decide whether a movie qualifies as superheroic or not. If you’re not sure, nominate it and if I reject it I’ll do my best to tell you why.
• Superheroes do not need to be in or come from comic books to be eligible. The Incredibles is a great example of an original superhero movie that was not a comic book first. Black Scorpion is also an example, though under no circumstances should the word “great” be associated with it.
• Oh, and movie serials aren’t elibigle. They’re just not.
• If in doubt, nominate.

The First List - Superhero Movies I’ve Seen

1. Batman: The Movie (1966)
2. Batman (1989)
3. Batman Returns (1992)
4. Batman Forever (1995)
5. Batman & Robin (1997)
6. Batman Begins (2005)
7. The Dark Knight (2008)
8. Black Scorpion (1995)
9. Captain America (1979)
10. Captain America II: Death Too Soon (1979)
11. Captain America (1990)
12. Catwoman (2004)
13. Daredevil (2003)
14. Darkman (1992)
15. Darkman II: The Return of Durant (1994)
16. Darkman III: Die Darkman Die (1996)
17. Doctor Strange (Animated, 2007)
18. Elektra (2005)
19. Fantastic Four (2005)
20. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)
21. Ghost Rider (2007)
22. Hellboy (2004)
23. Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)
24. Hellboy Animated: Sword of Storms (2006) [Added 19 July 2008]
25. Hellboy Animated: Blood and Iron (2007) [Added 19 July 2008]
26. Hulk (2003)
27. The Incredible Hulk (2008)
28. The Incredibles (Animated, 2004)
29. The Invincible Iron Man (Animated, 2007)
30. Iron Man (2008)
31. Justice League: The New Frontier (2008) [Added 18 July 2008]
32. Lightspeed (2006)
33. Mystery Men (1999)
34. The Phantom (1996)
35. The Punisher (1989)
36. The Punisher (2004)
37. The Shadow (1994)
38. Spider-Man (2002)
39. Spider-Man 2 (2004)
40. Spider-Man 3 (2007)
41. Superman (1978)
42. Superman II (1980)
43. Superman III (1983)
44. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)
45. Superman Returns (2006)
46. Superman: Doomsday (2008) [Added 19 July 2008]
47. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)
48. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (1991)
49. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Turtles in Time (1993)
50. TMNT (2007)
51. Ultimate Avengers (Animated, 2006)
52. Ultimate Avengers 2: Rise of the Panther (Animated, 2006)
53. Unbreakable (2000)
54. X-Men (2000)
55. X2: X-Men United (2003)
56. X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

Okay, that’s a lot of movies, many of which I haven’t watched in well over two years. Some of them, like the 1994 never-released version of The Fantastic Four, will be a bit tricky to track down, but I’ll do my best. For science!

The Second List - Superhero Movies I Haven’t Seen

1. Black Mask (1996)
2. Black Mask 2: City of Masks (2002)
3. Black Scorpion II: Aftershock (1997)
4. Blankman (1994) [Added 19 July 2008]
5. Dr. Strange (1978)
6. Fantastic Four (1994)
7. Hancock (2008)
8. The Meteor Man (1993) [Added 19 July 2008]
9. Silver Hawk (2004)
10. Steel (1997)
11. Underdog (2007)

That’s a short list. Much shorter than I anticipated. It may get even shorter if I decide to disqualify Black Mask and Silver Hawk in order to prevent a deluge of martial arts movies masquerading as superhero movies. A guy has to set limits somewhere, right?

The Third List - The Ones I Don’t Know About

Now it’s your turn: if you know of a superhero movie I missed, please leave a comment and nominate it!

1. This includes The Incredible Hulk Returns, The Trial of The Incredible Hulk and The Death of the Incredible Hulk, movies that were made after the series was cancelled. Don’t worry, these will all be eligible for a future list: The Best Television Superheroes in the History of Televising Superheroics. [back]
2. I’ll do a separate Comic Book Movie list later, so all you 300 fangirls can nominate your favorite computer-enhanced pectoral muscles. [back]

I have now seen all1 of this summer’s slate of superhero movies. I’ll do a more in-depth write up shortly, but for those wondering whether The Dark Knight managed to unseat Iron Man from the number one position on my list of the Top Superhero Movies of Forever and Ever, Amen, the short answer is no.

The slightly longer answer is: not by a long shot.

The Dark Knight is not a bad movie—I gave it a solid 7 out of 10 stars—but it’s note a great movie, either. I’ll be posting a full review in the next couple of days, so let’s get back to the list.

Though Iron Man remains safely (for now; Watchmen is coming and the trailer is absolutely stunning) in the top spot, the summer blockbusters have shaken things up a bit in the middle and lower ranks.

Without going into excruciating detail, here are The Ten Superhero Movies (Summer 2008 Edition):

1. Iron Man
2. Hellboy
3. Batman Begins
4. X2: X-Men United
5. The Dark Knight
6. X-Men
7. Hellboy II: The Golden Army
8. The Incredible Hulk
9. The Incredibles
10. Spider-Man

Something feels a bit off about the middle of this list; I may have to tweak it a bit once I’ve written reviews of The Dark Knight, The Incredible Hulk and Hellboy II: The Golden Army.

1. Oops! Forgot about Hancock, starring The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Sorry, Will! [back]

I’ve been a little Dune-crazy over the past couple of weeks. It all started when I stumbled across the Audio Renaissance production of Dune on CD at the local library. Several weeks of 15-minute (and occasionally longer) chunks of audio later I finished the 18-CD production. I followed that with the 1984 film version directed by David Lynch and starring Kyle MacLa…McLach…Maclach…Jürgen Prochnow. Two hours and seventeen minutes later,1 I started watching the miniseries produced by the SciFi Channel in 2000.

That’s a lot of sand.

In fact, it’s just under twenty-nine hours of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, the weirding way, the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV, CHOAM, Fremen, carryalls, Shai-Hulud, Paul Muad’Dib and above all, the spice melange. If you add the time I spent poring through the Dune Wiki, I’m sure my total time invested in matters relating to the desert planet Arrakis is well over thirty hours.

Oops, almost forgot: I installed Emperor: Battle for Dune on my PC, too. Might as well tack on another two or three hours of playtime (so far) to that total.

So, how do the various iterations of Frank Herbert’s science-fiction masterpiece measure up against one another?

Let’s start with the book: I’ve never finished it. Like Stephen King’s The Stand, the first volume of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series and The Bible,2 Dune is a book that I’ve started multiple times but have never managed to finish. In fact, I’ve got all six of Herbert’s original Dune novels in paperback but I’ve only ever read the first half of the first volume. I consider this an abyssmal failure on my part and it almost certainly reveals a fatal character flaw.

Fortunately, I’m of the opinion that listening to the unabridged audio version of a novel counts as reading it3 and, as far as I can tell, the Audio Renaissance production is unabridged. Double-fortunately, Audio Renaissance has completed audio versions of at least three of Herbert’s original Dune novels and I’m told by very reliable sources4 that the ultimate goal is to produce the entire series in audio format.

The Audio Renaissance production is twenty-two hours long, narrated by Scott Brick and features voice actors in many of the major roles. Unfortunately, the narrative switches back and forth at seemingly random intervals between the full cast and a solo performance by Brick. This was very distracting at first, but I was eventually able to ignore the transitions.

My first exposure to Dune was David Lynch’s 1984 film, though I can’t remember exactly when I first saw it. Lynch, true to form, brings his twisted vision to the story of the desert planet, especially when it comes to the treacherous House Harkonnen. The bloated Baron Vladimir Harkonnen’s crippling disease takes on new dimensions under Lynch’s eye, as do his depraved appetites. Unfortunately, Lynch takes the wind out of Harkonnen’s nephew, Feyd-Rautha (memorably portrayed by a very buff Sting), omitting the na-Baron’s schemes to kill his uncle and seize control of the Great House.

Lynch also introduces “weirding modules”, new technology being used by House Atreides to create a secret army. This threat to the Emperor leads to another variation in Lynch’s story: a conspiracy between the Spacing Guild (who control all interplanetary commerce and travel) and the Emperor himself in which the Guild orders the Emperor to have Paul Atreides killed.

Despite the fact that Lynch’s Dune makes significant changes to Herbert’s original story, is chock full of clumsy exposition (mostly in the form of multiple voiceovers) and was a critical and commercial failure, the movie is really quite enjoyable, and its distinct visual style is so closely associated with the Dune universe that it was adopted by both Cryo Interactive and Westwood Studios for most of the Dune video games they produced.5

The SciFi Channel miniseries was written and directed by John Harrison and featured a largely unknown cast, with the primary exception being William Hurt as Duke Leto Atreides; Hurt was a big enough star that he got his name before the title: William Hurt in Frank Herbert’s Dune. I thought Hurt came across a little flat in his portrayal of the Duke, but I was pleased with most of the other performances, if not always with how the characters were written. Paul Atreides, for example comes across as a whiny, spoiled rich kid—with a haircut bad enough to rival Luke Skywalker’s disastrous coiff in the first Star Wars film—at the outset of the series, which (with the possible exception of the haircut) is not at all true to the novel.

From the design of the stillsuits and other costumes to the color of the spice itself,6 the SciFi miniseries clearly wanted no visual resemblance to the 1984 movie. Usually, this worked very well, but some of the costumes (in particular the odd dorsal decoration on Feyd-Rautha’s jacket) verged on outlandish. I had a hard time taking the Sardaukar—the Emperor’s elite soldiers—seriously when they were all wearing large, floppy tam o’shanters; they looked like a squadron of goth Darby O’Gills wielding miniguns.

Storywise, I felt that the miniseries stayed fairly true to source material; certainly more so than did Lynch’s version. There were a number of unfortunate omissions, including the Atreides Mentat Thufir Hawat’s fate following the Harkonnen invasion of Arrakis, and the role of the Harkonnen’s twisted Mentat, Piter de Vries, was made all but insignificant,7 but certainly the expanded format allowed for more of the original story to be preserved, especially in the Director’s Cut.

The Lynch version, on the other hand, is more fun to watch. It may not be the best choice to introduce the unitiatiated to Frank Herbert’s universe (Duniverse?), but the sheer, overblown, cheesy spectacle of the thing is enjoyable in and of itself.

Soon, there will be yet another version to add to the already expansive list. Peter Berg, director of The Rundown and the Will Smith reluctant-superhero movie, Hancock, is helming yet another film adaptation of Herbert’s novel. As of this writing, the details about this new version are scarce: only that Berg is directing and the film will likely be released sometime in 2010.

With just about any other novel I would probably say one adaptation is enough, but Dune is a special beast and I’m looking forward to yet another take on the universe. I’m interested to see what the stillsuits and the spice harvesters and the Guild heighliners will look like and whether they’ll finally cast someone who at least looks the right age (fifteen, at the start of the novel, eighteen or nineteen at the end) as Paul Atreides. And then there’s the matter of Chani, the Fremen woman who becomes Paul’s concubine. In 1984, she was played by Sean Young; in 2000 she was played by Czech actress Barbora Kodetová who is at the very least eleven times hotter than Sean Young (no slouch herself in the hotness department). I am interested to see if this elevation of relative hotness can continue. Very interested, indeed.

Bring it, Peter Berg. Show me what you can do. The spice must flow.

1. This is the theatrical running time of Lynch’s version. An “extended version” edited for television adds another 30 minutes, but I decided to stick with the original this time. [back]
2. NIV Study Version [back]
3. That assertion is certainly up for debate, but I already know which way I’ll cast my vote should the issue ever appear on the ballot, and there’s little anyone can say to sway me. [back]
4. The Internet. [back]
5. Cryo Interactive released the RTS Dune in 1992. Westwood Studios released a series of real-time simulation games: Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty—also known as Dune II: Battle for Arrakis—in 1992, Dune 2000 in 1998 and Emperor: Battle for Dune in 2001. Only Cryo Interactive’s 2001 3D action game, Frank Herbert’s Dune borrowed the visual style from another source: The SciFi Channel’s miniseries. [back]
6. The Dune Wiki describes the spice melange as a “reddish-brown powder”, though I’m not sure whether that description originates in the novels or in Lynch’s film. The SciFi Channel miniseries depicts the spice as a green powder. [back]
7. Brad Dourif was both creepy and funny as Piter in Lynch’s version, but he consistently mispronounced “landsraad”. On the other hand, he did recite the Mentat’s mantra, “It is by will alone I put my mind in motion…” which was excluded from the SciFi version, so I forgive him. [back]