Movie Monday and CGIs
A weekend of The Dark Knight, The X Files: I Want To Believe and Live Free or Die Hard. All of them action movies which deal heavily in CGI with The X Files being the mildest dealer with the weirdest plot (and that’s saying a lot.)
First to get Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight out of the way. I know it’s been touted as the second coming and his death has been hyperboled (I think I made up a word here) to death. His performance is a tour-de-force for about the first three times he appears on screen then it quickly becomes derivative and an obstacle to the plot (there was a plot?) It took me a while to place his voice but it’s dead on for Peter Lorre and his performance as the mad MD in Arsenic and Old Lace. The tongue thrusting was so reminiscent of Barney Crouch Jr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. All in all, a performance which might have been considered just good if Ledger had not died before the picture was released. Because of his death, I think the entire PR campaign used the buzz it created to sell the movie. Can’t be sure but there are scenes with the Joker which seem totally extraneous. Like the filmmakers decided after Ledger's death to increase his role. On extraneous scene: the Joker escapes jail and is seen hanging out the back of a police car and “catching the breeze” as it moves along. First of all, just who is driving the police car? And second, how does this obvious pick-up from the cutting room floor advance the plot? It’s really only: Oh, look, more Heath Ledger.
But my point is not to join the IMDB comments which checked “Hated It” regarding The Dark Knight. My point is to try and figure out why filmmakers are so attached to bigger and bigger CGIs and why filmgoers continue pay money for bigger and bigger CGIs and less and less coherence.
I saw it happen with Peter Jackson in The Return of the King. The CGI of more and more Gollum began to slow down the story; the battles became longer and longer and I agree with one comment: How did the bad guys ever feed those Oliphants? Let alone clean up after them.
In The Dark Knight we are asked to believe that the Joker wired an entire hospital with explosives without detection; that Batman “wired” every cell phone in the city to transmit pictures to his special 100 mini-screen room where Morgan Freeman is able monitor all the screens to track the entire city (now that’s a feat of human endurance.) And don’t forget that the Joker loads a building and two ferries with hundreds of barrels of explosive liquids without detection. And while I’m at it: how did the Joker and his gang get into Bruce Wayne’s exclusive party. Talk about loosey-goosey security for a roster of bigwigs.
But here in the U.S., we believe all capitalism, all day so the ½ billion dollar gross of The Dark Knight trumps any opinion I may have.
Moving quickly to Live Free or Die Hard with Bruce Willis we enter the la-la land of complete unreality. Though a real plus is Willis’ bald head, which may be the only reality in the entire movie. This movie is like telling thirty-somethings to believe in Santa and they agree. It is so outrageous hokey. Even titanium-made robots couldn't survive the bodily punishments Willis gets. Perhaps as an homage to women, Willis’ longest battle is with a female villain who gives much better than she gets until Willis uses Michigan’s finest product – the car- to take her out. And that extended death scene seems endless. But not pretending morality or meanings and only asking us to accept the sheer absurdity of another movie about John McClane's travails for much less than two hours, it’s a much better movie than The Dark Knight. OK, I can’t believe I said that.
And now, moving finally to The X Files: I Want to Believe. Well, I want to believe that I missed nothing by never watching The X Files TV series. Just what was its premise: there are things beyond our comprehension out there? Things like god, and prophecy, and..... well, it beats me. The movie however seems to say that there is something to prophecy; some people have the knack.
This movie has the fewest CGIs but an awful lot of body parts. Just what was with all those heads? When you finally got to the final big scene with the bad guys performing really gross surgery I was reminded of the “fearless leader’s” head from C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength. It’s been a long time since I read this Lewis so I could be remembering incorrectly though two things I do know: Lewis has the nicest, talking magical and poweful bear and Lewis, even with the talking bear, made more sense than The X Files; and was more enjoyable.
However, it wasn’t CGIs which drove me screaming into the night with The X Files but rather their Martian POV regarding U.S. health care. For it had to be an interpretation from another planet because no literate human could look at the boy’s experimental treatment in a U.S. hospital (and we know it’s the U.S. since an FBI agent goes missing in WV), treatment that the head of the hospital opposes, and not say: What were the screen writers smoking to dream up the possibility that there is an insurance company in the U.S. which would cover the cost of this risky experimental surgery. Work with me guys; make some thing in your script plausible.
I know I haven't answered part of my original question: Why are these movies so popular? Even I can't believe there are that many 16 - 24 year old males to make up audiences for these block buster movies. (OK, sorry if that was sexist. I'm only parroting what I hear.) Like The X Files says, I may have to accept that some things are unfathomable.
But if you arrive at Blockbusters and only the three above movies are available go with Live Free or Die Hard which winks at us, urges us to enjoy their short venture into super human heroics and unbelievable (and I don’t mean in the shock and awe sense) CGIs. Says to its audience: Sad? Mad? Glad? Watch us and we’ll take you on a visual roll coaster. We’ll keep your eyes in REM to almost the final credits. We are different. We’re make believe and we know it.
A weekend of The Dark Knight, The X Files: I Want To Believe and Live Free or Die Hard. All of them action movies which deal heavily in CGI with The X Files being the mildest dealer with the weirdest plot (and that’s saying a lot.)
First to get Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight out of the way. I know it’s been touted as the second coming and his death has been hyperboled (I think I made up a word here) to death. His performance is a tour-de-force for about the first three times he appears on screen then it quickly becomes derivative and an obstacle to the plot (there was a plot?) It took me a while to place his voice but it’s dead on for Peter Lorre and his performance as the mad MD in Arsenic and Old Lace. The tongue thrusting was so reminiscent of Barney Crouch Jr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. All in all, a performance which might have been considered just good if Ledger had not died before the picture was released. Because of his death, I think the entire PR campaign used the buzz it created to sell the movie. Can’t be sure but there are scenes with the Joker which seem totally extraneous. Like the filmmakers decided after Ledger's death to increase his role. On extraneous scene: the Joker escapes jail and is seen hanging out the back of a police car and “catching the breeze” as it moves along. First of all, just who is driving the police car? And second, how does this obvious pick-up from the cutting room floor advance the plot? It’s really only: Oh, look, more Heath Ledger.
But my point is not to join the IMDB comments which checked “Hated It” regarding The Dark Knight. My point is to try and figure out why filmmakers are so attached to bigger and bigger CGIs and why filmgoers continue pay money for bigger and bigger CGIs and less and less coherence.
I saw it happen with Peter Jackson in The Return of the King. The CGI of more and more Gollum began to slow down the story; the battles became longer and longer and I agree with one comment: How did the bad guys ever feed those Oliphants? Let alone clean up after them.
In The Dark Knight we are asked to believe that the Joker wired an entire hospital with explosives without detection; that Batman “wired” every cell phone in the city to transmit pictures to his special 100 mini-screen room where Morgan Freeman is able monitor all the screens to track the entire city (now that’s a feat of human endurance.) And don’t forget that the Joker loads a building and two ferries with hundreds of barrels of explosive liquids without detection. And while I’m at it: how did the Joker and his gang get into Bruce Wayne’s exclusive party. Talk about loosey-goosey security for a roster of bigwigs.
But here in the U.S., we believe all capitalism, all day so the ½ billion dollar gross of The Dark Knight trumps any opinion I may have.
Moving quickly to Live Free or Die Hard with Bruce Willis we enter the la-la land of complete unreality. Though a real plus is Willis’ bald head, which may be the only reality in the entire movie. This movie is like telling thirty-somethings to believe in Santa and they agree. It is so outrageous hokey. Even titanium-made robots couldn't survive the bodily punishments Willis gets. Perhaps as an homage to women, Willis’ longest battle is with a female villain who gives much better than she gets until Willis uses Michigan’s finest product – the car- to take her out. And that extended death scene seems endless. But not pretending morality or meanings and only asking us to accept the sheer absurdity of another movie about John McClane's travails for much less than two hours, it’s a much better movie than The Dark Knight. OK, I can’t believe I said that.
And now, moving finally to The X Files: I Want to Believe. Well, I want to believe that I missed nothing by never watching The X Files TV series. Just what was its premise: there are things beyond our comprehension out there? Things like god, and prophecy, and..... well, it beats me. The movie however seems to say that there is something to prophecy; some people have the knack.
This movie has the fewest CGIs but an awful lot of body parts. Just what was with all those heads? When you finally got to the final big scene with the bad guys performing really gross surgery I was reminded of the “fearless leader’s” head from C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength. It’s been a long time since I read this Lewis so I could be remembering incorrectly though two things I do know: Lewis has the nicest, talking magical and poweful bear and Lewis, even with the talking bear, made more sense than The X Files; and was more enjoyable.
However, it wasn’t CGIs which drove me screaming into the night with The X Files but rather their Martian POV regarding U.S. health care. For it had to be an interpretation from another planet because no literate human could look at the boy’s experimental treatment in a U.S. hospital (and we know it’s the U.S. since an FBI agent goes missing in WV), treatment that the head of the hospital opposes, and not say: What were the screen writers smoking to dream up the possibility that there is an insurance company in the U.S. which would cover the cost of this risky experimental surgery. Work with me guys; make some thing in your script plausible.
I know I haven't answered part of my original question: Why are these movies so popular? Even I can't believe there are that many 16 - 24 year old males to make up audiences for these block buster movies. (OK, sorry if that was sexist. I'm only parroting what I hear.) Like The X Files says, I may have to accept that some things are unfathomable.
But if you arrive at Blockbusters and only the three above movies are available go with Live Free or Die Hard which winks at us, urges us to enjoy their short venture into super human heroics and unbelievable (and I don’t mean in the shock and awe sense) CGIs. Says to its audience: Sad? Mad? Glad? Watch us and we’ll take you on a visual roll coaster. We’ll keep your eyes in REM to almost the final credits. We are different. We’re make believe and we know it.
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