One thing I noticed about HOOK: it’s not called PAN. The title HOOK implies a new perspective on the PETER PAN tale, like we’re gonna see it from the pirate’s perspective, or even like it’s gonna be a Captain Hook biopic. Maybe we would learn about his struggles growing up, how he wrote his first hits, rose to the top of the charts, substance abuse, falling in love, the thing with the crocodile, etc.

Instead HOOK is just a sequel to PETER PAN where years later an asshole corporate lawyer guy (Robin Williams) finds out he forgot he was Peter Pan and has to go to Never Neverland to save his kids from Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman). It’s all about a balanced approach to “growing up,” not losing the joy and imagination of a kid but also being a responsible father and husband because he’s a fucking adult.

These messages are a little relatable and alot hackneyed because of these type of studio family movies that could star Williams or Jim Carrey or Tim Allen or Adam Sandler. And they’re themes that specifically have to do with Pan’s character, not Hook’s. There’s no new insight into Hook, his only semi-new trait is that he wants to have fun having a “war” with Pan more than he actually wants to kill him or avenge him for cutting off his hand. So he’s disappointed that Pan can’t fight anymore and he allows him time to re-train. And it doesn’t seem like it’s focusing much on him or his legend, other than a short part after the kids have been kidnapped when they find a long scrape across the walls, like he came in and Freddy Kruegered the place.

I mean that’s fine, it doesn’t have to be about Hook, but I bring that up because I think it shows what part of what went wrong: it must’ve been developed to death. Spielberg didn’t originally set out to make a movie about Peter Pan as a grown up, he just wanted to make some kind of Peter Pan movie. First it was a straight adaptation. Some reports claim he considered a musical version with Michael Jackson (obviously I wish that happened), but Spielberg told Entertainment Weekly that when he explained the plot of HOOK to him “Michael understood at that point it wasn’t the same Peter Pan he wanted to make.” (i.e. a good one).

For a while Spielberg wasn’t gonna direct and the script was rewritten by other people, then he came back to it. I don’t think anybody ever had a clear idea how or why to tell this story, but they went through with it anyway. I mean, they’d been loading the gun for a long time, might as well close their eyes, take a couple spins and then pull the trigger. What could go wrong?

HOOK isn’t the worst idea, it’s just not a strong or focused one, and doesn’t seem to be carefully thought out. Grownup Peter Pan isn’t a relatable screwup like Bill Murray or maybe Nic Cage would’ve played. He’s not likable at all. He neglects his family in the most obvious cliches possible: taking a business call during his daughter’s play (even more of a dick move in 1991 because of the effort required to haul around the giant phone), missing his son’s baseball game (also harder in 1991 because there was no app for missing the game). Most shitty movies just choose one of those two old saws, this one requires both. At least they could’ve changed it to a different sport! A tennis match or something. A solar car race. And then of course the family goes on a vacation and he’s all aggravated because of the big corporate acquisition conference call. Man, there’s alot of movies about the big corporate acquisition conference call the guy is trying to get. I guess that was a big part of people’s lives in the ’80s and ’90s. It was in the movies because we all can relate, buying out companies and all that.

There are other details to show how much grown-up Peter Pan has lost the magic of imagination and child wonder delight or what have you: when he first confronts Hook about the abduction of his children he threatens to sue him. Then when he won’t budget he acts like he’s going for the big guns and he pulls out his check book. These are both really funny ideas, like they’d be funny if Chris Elliot did them in CABIN BOY, but in this movie I’m not sure it’s suppose to be jokes, or if they are they’re not delivered in a funny way. There’s also a protective-parent side to his not being any fun anymore: he worries about his kids getting hurt, doesn’t like them playing near windows. Also he’s afraid of flying on planes, even though he used to fly using the power of imagination, pixie dust and tights.

But there’s one part where he’s at work where he’s having fun, to show he still has a little bit of Peter Pan in him. It’s an incredibly lame type of fun, but him and another guy have a quick draw contest using their early ’90s cell phones. He seems way too proud of himself and his co-workers seem even more way too impressed by him, but they’re obviously having fun. So be sure to forget this at the end of the movie when he apparently quits his job and they act like it was totally evil. I don’t know, maybe he’ll still keep in touch with all those people, and maybe they’ll loan him money so he can continue the international travel with his family.

These early lawyer scenes are scored with jazz that, fittingly, has a little bit of a cheesy modern fusion white-people-listen-to-it-in-the-dentist’s-office type of feel to it. I mean not too bad, it’s a little bit Peanuts but cut with a little bit of Kenny G. They probly should’ve gone full-on smooth jazz to really capture Peter’s sensibilities.

I don’t think he’s as relatable as they mean him to be, and when he turns back into a Pan it’s not a whole lot more appealing. It’s full grown Robin Williams with a bunch of kids dancing around giggling, howling and having food fights. The John Williams music is convinced this is the greatest and most magical thing I’ve ever seen, but I have my doubts.

Within the story Pan is not only likable, he’s irresistable to women. His wife obviously adores whatever she sees behind his asshole exterior. Grandma Wendy (Maggie Smith – shown briefly as Gwyneth Paltrow in flashbacks)) clearly maintains a childhood crush on him, and almost kisses him at one point. As soon as he gets to Neverland he falls in the ocean and three lusty mermaids make out with him. Later, Tinkerbell actually turns herself human-sized to profess her love for him. I don’t get it, man.

Hoffman is almost unrecognizable as Hook, and I want to say he’s good in the role, but alot of it is these scenes where he’s just doing some shtick with Smee (Bob Hoskins). For example he holds a gun to his head and says he won’t let Smee stop him from committing suicide, repeating it over and over again until Smee finally takes the hint and stops him from committing suicide. You can tell it seemed real funny to them when they filmed it, but it doesn’t translate for me. The only part that made me laugh is the part after a pirate is shot for trying to steal second and Hook mutters something about baseball being a violent sport.

If I had to choose a best scene maybe that would be it? Hook stages a baseball game for Pan’s son (Charlie Korsmo from DICK TRACY, by the way), just so he can attend it. Take that, dad who missed the baseball game! The irony is that Pan goes to the game to try to steal Hook’s sword and he ends up stopping to watch the game and be proud of his son. The son doesn’t even know he’s there, so it’s not a show, it’s for himself. But I don’t know, even the best parts are better ideas than executions.

The power vacuum left by Peter’s absence did not lead to a military coup or anything, he just got replaced by a dude named Rufio as the leader of the Lost Boys. Rufio is played by Dante Basco who was MJW’s manager in the great BLOOD AND BONE and was the main character in a goofy movie ride called FUNK BLAST that they used to have at the Experience Music Project in Seattle. That’s what I know him from. I’m not sure how Rufio came to power – he doesn’t seem to have Pan’s sense of fun or humor, he’s just an asshole who’s good at doing flips. It is possible that his status is based purely on his hairdo, which is kind of like a rockabilly pompadour but with three red mohawks bursting out of it. Pan should’ve had to outdo that hairdo in order to regain the throne. He could have a Big Daddy Kane on one half, down-to-his-ass pink crimped on the other, plus a couple braids with Stevie Wonder beads and “#55 BRIAN BOSWORTH” shaved into the back. Then it would be clear why the Lost Boys made him their leader. We’d all get it.

I guess it’s widely agreed that Julia Roberts (who was only 24 at the time, but a huge star because PRETTY WOMAN came out the year before)  is terrible in this. She plays Tinkerbell, the fairy who can talk in this version and I’m pretty sure wants to do Peter. (Don’t worry, since she uses that magic to turn human sized she has it worked out anatomically if necessary.) Roberts was nominated for a Razzie for worst supporting actress, but lost to Sean Young in A KISS BEFORE DYING. Anyway I didn’t think she was so awful, in fact I thought she was kind of good at times, but there is a surprising disconnect between her and the other actors. Most movies do a better job of making it seem like the live actor is really looking at and talking to the special effect.

It’s kinda funny seeing these movies that were just a few years before the digital revolution. They would look so incredibly different if they made them now. I like when they actually build big sets and stuff, instead of creating it all in a computer. But this doesn’t hold up as a good looking movie, for the most part. The one thing that really looks nice on the blu-ray is the occasional matte paintings showing the island from a distance. Those look real pretty.

I think part of my problem with this movie in comparison to other Spielberg is that it’s not grounded in a recognizable reality. E.T. is this fantastical fairy tale about a pet alien, but the kid actors and their dialogue are so naturalistic (”I don’t like his feet!”) and there’s a texture to the house and the town. It feels like a real place. In HOOK everything is fuckin fake. There’s the big Universal Studios Stunt Show style set for Never Neverland, where everybody wears crazy clothes and does flips and a fat kid named Thud Butt (seriously) folds himself into a ball to roll over bad guys. But the “real world” part at the beginning isn’t any more true to life. It’s made completely out of cliches, there’s no authenticity at all. Fake people flying off to a wooden set to ride skateboards and splatter paint on each other.

That probly doesn’t matter as much if you’re a kid, and I know there are people who grew up with this and still love it. Maybe not as much as THE GOONIES, but similar. I could be wrong but it seems to me like you really had to be imprinted to it at an early age, like those baby geese to Anna Paquin in that one movie. Otherwise you’re not gonna want to follow it around. You’re not gonna want to migrate with it.

You know what’s kinda weird, this movie has multiple connections to HALLOWEEN. The screen story is credited to Nick Castle, the original Michael Myers. The cinematographer is Dean Cundey, director of photography for HALLOWEEN (and HALLOWEEN II, and HALLOWEEN III). Arthur Malet, who plays the senile ex-Lost Boy Tootles, was the graveyard keeper in HALLOWEEN. Remember that part?

Graveyard Keeper: Yeah, you know every town has something like this happen… I remember over in Russellville, old Charlie Bowles, about fifteen years ago… One night, he finished dinner, and he excused himself from the table. He went out to the garage, and got himself a hacksaw. Then he went back into the house, kissed his wife and his two children goodbye, and then he proceeded to…
Dr. Sam Loomis: Where are we?
Graveyard Keeper: Eh? Oh, it’s, uh, right over here…

(One of the other screenwriters, Malia Scotch Marmo, only has a handful of other credits, and one of them was as a production assistant on SLEEPAWAY CAMP. For whatever that’s worth.)

So, yeah, I blame the thorn cult. That’s probly what went wrong.

Some guy named Victor Webster takes over the lead, but it’s okay, because he has a beard so maybe that hides that he’s not The Rock. He’s a mercenary and he hides his past as The Scorpion King. Everybody knows about The Scorpion King and they know his real name and nationality but I guess they figure “The Scorpion King of legend was also named Mathayus and was also the last surviving member of the Akkadian race, but he didn’t have a beard so this can’t be the same guy.” Anyway what this means (if I understand the chronology correctly) is that this takes place some time after the events of THE SCORPION KING. The happy ending from that movie has turned to shit and now he has to earn redemption. Real sweet, but meaningless since we know in 5000 years he’s not only cursed to come back as a mindless scorpion monster, but also as one of the shittiest CGI effects ever used in a major big budget motion picture.

The adventure begins promisingly with a cool camera angle and Mathayus strung up by bad guys telling him how screwed he is, but the potential of the scene is squandered when he just listens to the speech and then starts beating them up. No trick or one-liner involved to ease the transition. It’s missing that part 1 energy.

He’s working for King Horus, who is played by Ron Perlman, and that raises an obvious question: how the fuck did it take until part 3 for Ron Perlman to get into one of these? Horus is at war with his brother Talus, who is played by famed Arnold Vosloo lookalike Billy Zane (TITANIC, SNIPER RELOADED). Seriously, I was excited that Zane was in this because

1) when he’s in a groove he can be fuckin great, and

2) the titular mummy who spawned the Scorpion King character in THE MUMMY RETURNS was played by an actor known for looking exactly like Billy Zane. Vosloo even said in an interview with Charlie Rose that people come up to him and ask if he’s “the guy from TITANIC.” Too bad Zane has hair in this one, that was kind of a missed opportunity to create franchise confusion. They must’ve thought it was enough to have the characters constantly talking about a mysterious bad guy called “Cobra” even though that was the name of the mysterious bad guy in Stephen Sommers’ GI JOE movie.

Mathayus is teamed with a fat hairy guy named Olaf (Bostin Christopher, who played the title character in a movie I never watched called OTIS), who he fights and then befriends in the same way he did Michael Clarke Duncan’s character in the first movie. Horus sends them on a mission, something to do with the Book of the Dead and King Ramusan, played by Temuera “Jango Fett” Morrison (who previously worked with Reine in THE MARINE 2).

I like the convoluted way the plot bounces poor Mathayus and Olaf around: they complete their quest to help Ramusan, but he’s out of gold, so he rewards them with his daughter’s hand in marriage. But she’s been kidnapped by Talus, so they have to go on another quest to rescue her if they’re gonna claim their reward. But just as they get to Talus’s camp to rescue her she’s re-kidnapped by ninjas, so Talus sees them and hires them for a quest to rescue her from the ninjas. And they don’t even want her anyway but in a painting she was wearing a valuable necklace so they’re hoping they can steal that. A quest within a quest within a quest – it’s a lot of fuckin trouble for a piece of jewelry. Gotta appreciate how easy you have it, rappers.

In the tradition of part 2 there are alot of dull stretches in their quest. I appreciate that they try to mix things up – it was shot in Thailand, so they have lots of battle elephants and some martial arts. They use different cultural influences for the various tribes and kingdoms so there seems to be some Egyptian stuff, some Greek, some Thai. There’s some catapults. A chariot chase. Some explosions. A tiny bit of old school wire work for ninjas to scurry up some trees.

Just when it seems like nothing new is gonna happen things take a positive turn for the Mortal Kombat as Talus summons three demonic warriors: backyard fighting legend Kimbo Slice with glowing eyes and painted up like an old movie cannibal, cool-looking WWE guy and lunchbox collector Dave Bautista in skeleton-themed armor with severe stomach burns, some sexy witch lady with a white wig. So this sets up some decent fights between the various good guys and bad guys, there is some magic, etc. The fight with Kimbo is the best one so they probly shouldn’t have done that one first. I forgot to mention there is a sexy ninja girl who fights the witch lady so that they can do the move we all know from trailers where a sword swings toward a Jovovich, Beckinsale or Q type and she leans backwards in slow motion to go just under the blade. I call it the Sword Limbo.

There’s alot of terrible dialogue to induce groans or laughs. Not the audaciously melodramatic wording of the original, but stuff like “What in the name of the demon serpent is going on?” or “Mathayus! Where in Odin’s cod-piece have you been?” Talus laughs about somebody being “no more human than the palace monkeys that wipe my bum,” but it’s never explained if he literally has pet monkeys that are trained to wipe his ass for him. If so I think this is a new detail about life in the Mummyverse, I don’t think it came up in any of the other ones. In my review of part 2 I speculated about a spin-off series for the minotaur character, so here obviously I gotta suggest PALACE MONKEY: CONQUEST OF THE ASS-WIPERS in which the Chosen Monkey fulfills the prophecy to free his people from bathroom servitude. Of course he dreams of someday becoming something other than a royal butt cleaner, and everybody mocks him for it, but he proves that it’s possible. He could be like a towel holder or something.

As long as we’re off on a tangent I wanna bring up this beard thing again. Is this gonna turn into a cultural thing now, like in the ’80s everybody in movies had the mullets to try to fit with the times, now they’re gonna start giving them these straggly fuckin fake southern rocker beards all the twentysomething dudes have? We got a Scorpion King with a beard, we got a Michael Myers with a beard, I’m pretty sure I saw set photos of the new Superman with a beard… is Mickey Mouse gonna have one now? Skinny jeans and a fake hobo beard? Maybe in Spielberg’s Lincoln movie he’ll give Abe a double-sized beard to make him relevant to today.

What I’m getting at is 1) this Scorpion King’s long braided hair and beard look leaves alot to be desired and 2) just fuckin shave every once in a while, you won’t regret it

Old Beardo’s not terrible – his first couple lines got me worried, but he grew on me. (like a beard.) But of course most people don’t have the kind of charm The Rock does, and this guy doesn’t come close. His sidekick Olaf doesn’t help either, he’s merely passable in what is obviously supposed to be a really funny role. You can tell mainly because he burps alot. They try to capture the type of humor the first one has, but most of it doesn’t work that great. There are a few parts that got me, like when the bad guy makes an evil joke and Olaf doesn’t know that he shouldn’t laugh at it because he’s a good guy. Also a weird part where Ramusan proudly shows off a portrait of his daughter, but it’s a shitty painting that makes her look ugly and cross-eyed. Oh yeah, and the slo-mo shot of a ninja flying out of the water and kicking Olaf while he’s taking a piss.

Perlman’s role is generic low grade Perlman, and Zane’s isn’t that great either, but he does do one speech in some kind of redneck accent and I did enjoy his final showdown with Mathayus, where his various attempts at sorcery are so pathetic that His Scorpion-ness just shakes his head sadly.

Kimbo Slice and Dave Bautista both look cool, but should be in it more. In fact it occurred to me – why isn’t Bautista playing the Scorpion King? Is it not allowed for it to be another WWE guy? I feel like he would be more worthy of it. But if not that’s cool, just give him more lines.

Like part 2 this one is watchable and at times fun, but not as good as I was hoping for. We’ll see if they can do better in the sequel to the sequel to the prequel to the prequel to the sequel to the re-imagining.

She’s got some books and beakers and shit but this is an island made up mostly of volcanic rocks. There’s not much of a night life or anything, it’s gotta be kinda lonely. Her daughter’s never even seen a human man before, what’re they gonna talk about? Rocks? Trees? Beakers?

Of course it’s worse for poor Caliban, ’cause he’s a slave. The bitch makes him carry logs across the island all day, I’m not even sure why. What’s she gonna do with all those? Build something to do, I guess. He has some words written upside down on his lower torso, I learned from the making-of deal that they’re Victorian curse words that he carved into himself. So he must not be too happy, is my guess. It’s the Shakespearean version of drawing anarchy symbols and pentagrams all over your notebook.

Anyway everybody’s luck changes when Prospera stands on a cliff with her magic staff and makes a storm. The storm causes a shipwreck that brings visitors to the island: a boy for Miranda to fall in love with (Reeve Carney), two drunks (Russell Brand and Alfred Molina) who impress Caliban by feeding him booze, some guys that Ariel messes with to get revenge for Prospera (David Strathairn, Chris Cooper, Alan Cumming, one or two other guys). It’s sort of these three separate stories all connected to Prospera and the shipwreck she caused. Or four if you count Ariel trying to get his freedom as its own story. I guess that would make Helen Mirren the Crypt Keeper in a way, since she’s the host of all this. But she’s prettier and more dignified than the Crypt Keeper in my opinion. Not to be mean but that guy has kind of a lame sense of humor if you ask me.

This is from a play by William Shakespeare and to be honest I’m not that up on my Shakespeare. But I still went and saw TITUS for some reason and I loved that shit. This reunites Shakespeare with TITUS director Julie Taymor, and Taymor brings Cumming from TITUS and Molina from FRIDA and the stars of the remake of ARTHUR which she didn’t direct but maybe is just a huge fan of.

You may notice that the wizard was originally a man named Prospero, they changed it to a woman and this is an outrage, etc. Well I say lighten up pal, it’s not supposed to be Transformers, it’s just Shakespeare. It turns out Taymor wasn’t out looking to change it up (when she did the play on stage it was still a dude) but she happened to run into Mirren while she was casting and Mirren suggested the idea. Then she just tried to make sure it could be adapted without being a gimmick. So she wasn’t trying to say anything by changing it to a woman, but I like how it makes it seem sort of autobiographical. She’s a woman who’s off in her own world, who’s very good at powerful arts, she even scares people, and in my opinion she kinda got screwed over like Prospera did.

I know she’s gonna keep getting made fun of for this Spider-man musical debacle. It seems clear that she had alot of ambitious ideas that they were having trouble pulling off, and since they involved acrobats swinging around on ropes it was dangerous (and people actually were hurt). And she may very well bear responsibility for that, I don’t know the details. But I still think it was bullshit the way they hung her out to dry after some bad reviews. The one thing that the people who hired her forgot is that they were the people who fucking hired her. And since I have an idea what kind of stuff Julie Taymor does I got a good hunch that the Broadway musical producers do also, and knew what they were in for. It was a brilliantly insane idea to do it, and they put millions of dollars and years into it, and then when it was almost done they said “wait a minute, what is this brilliantly insane thing? When we hired a crazy director of highly stylized operas to try to figure out some fucking way to turn Spider-man into a Broadway musical/circus extravaganza and by the way money is no object, we didn’t know it was gonna be weird.”

And the funny part is that most of the reviews I saw actually said that you should see it and it was an amazing spectacle. But that somehow it turned out that Spider-man was kind of silly as a rock musical. Huh. Go figure. Must be Julie Taymor’s fault.

It’s kind of like this hypothetical scenario:

Look, Mr. Jodorowsky. You know how we hired you to direct a movie based on the board game Candyland? Well, we appreciate all your hard work, but we have two problems with what you’ve done here. #1, it seems like one of your movies that you direct. #2, it’s based on the board game Candyland. So we’re gonna have to bring somebody in to try to salvage this thing.

I mean, you either want to see the crazy fuckin Julie Taymor Spider-man musical or you don’t. You don’t want to see a watered down version of that. Pull the trigger or put the gun back in the drawer. Don’t take out a bullet and try to throw it into me.

I figure that whole mess will probly hurt her career. Luckily she still has this possibility of independently financed movies. This one is smaller scale than TITUS (less characters, less locations, no crowds, no gore, no motorcycles) but clearly comes from the same visionary mind. I love how she keeps the original language but makes the plays accessible to numbskulls like me by telling the story through the visuals and the acting. It’s not the same as on stage, they can whisper. They can have a look in their eye that’s only picked up in a close-up. To me they kind of seem more “real” than alot of times when you see Shakespeare performed and yet the visual world is more unreal.

The actors in this are great. I was kind of amazed at how much Russell Brand could seem just like himself but speaking the lines from the play. It sounds so natural. But Hounsou is the guy that steals the show. He’s so physical and weird. He’s kinda like Gollum but without the benefit of computerized monster features, he just has pain-in-the-ass-to-apply fake mud skin. I like that guy but I had no idea he was capable of playing a character like this.

It’s kind of weird that the one black actor has to play the slave. I looked it up and it’s not traditionally a black actor, so that’s not on Shakespeare. But fuck it, it’s the best character. He’s referred to as a “mooncalf” and the son of a witch named Sycorax. He was on the island before Prospera, so he says he owns the place. But because of the makeup I kind of felt like he was born out of the earth. He doesn’t just own the island, he is the island. So quit making him move sticks around.

Kyle Cooper is credited as the effects supervisor. That’s the guy that got famous for doing the SEVEN credits sequence, and he did those “penny arcade” scenes in TITUS. I like the effects here because they’re going for style and not realism. The way Ariel is superimposed flying around is goofy looking but it almost seems like how Taymor would’ve projected him on stage. (actually she used a puppet when she did it on stage which would’ve also been cool in the movie.) There is a little part with a human crow monster that I guess is a harpy, it’s apparently done live with a human head and puppet body and looks absolutely incredible. It’s not a big enough part of the movie to recommend you see it just for that, but it’s one of the best monsters I’ve seen in a long time. The CGI hellhounds on the other hand are pretty crappy looking.

I didn’t get a chance to watch all of the extras before I was done with the rental, but from what I did watch I gotta say that like TITUS the making-of stuff is almost as good as the movie. Taymor knows these plays inside and out from doing them on stage and she has a long rehearsal period where she goes through line-by-line with all of the actors and she’s just so much more involved than a movie director normally is. Her process with Brand is especially interesting because she lets him improvise and paraphrase all his dialogue in modern speak and then go back to the original text once he really understands it. There’s a clip where she asks him to tell her about his character and he goes on a rapid-fire in-character non-stop riff for several minutes. Even if you find him annoying, which is understandable, you can see that his brain lives life a quarter mile at a time and you can understand why she would like him. I bet he shows up in her next movie too (hopefully as spider-man or green giant or whoever).

Somebody who has opinions on this play might have more to say about Taymor’s particular interpretation of it, but just from the perspective of the Shakespeareless this is a good one. Personally I might prefer TITUS because it’s more elaborate and crazy, more Michael-Jackson-video-esque, but this has the same quality of a beautiful and surreal visual experience and great acting that makes the play very accessible. In fact a little more accessible than TITUS because it’s 52 minutes shorter. Also it doesn’t have a bunch of chopped off limbs or cannibalism so that makes it either more or less accessible depending on the person I guess.

It’s a good story well told, great characters well acted, and one of the year’s best harpies.

According to an important new expose by the director of INDEPENDENCE DAY and GHOST CHASERS, “Shakespeare never wrote a single word.” Not even “fart.” I guess judging from the trailer Shakespeare was just some nitwit that the powers that be chose to use as a patsy in some kind of conspiracy that had to be kept so secret not even Nic Cage knew about it in NATIONAL TREASURE. Some other guy wrote those plays, if they were even written at all, which frankly I’m starting to doubt. This review will probly seem silly and naive after ANONYMOUS comes out, but I enjoyed THE TEMPEST. I’m glad I was able to see one last “Shakespeare” movie before Roland Emmerich proved it didn’t exist.

THE TEMPEST is currently available on blu-ray but for some reason the DVD doesn’t come out until December 20th, when it will already be too late.

Before long he’s free and traveling toward “home,” wherever that is. He tells people he came from Hell, and he’s such a scary motherfucker they tend to take that literally. Actually, he doesn’t say a word, but a little boy accompanies him, speaks for him, and names him “One Eye.” “Well, you need a name,” he explains. “And you have one eye.”

The specific cause of the mass of scar tissue in place of his left eyeball is thankfully never shown, so he gets to remain a mysterious wanderer. He’s a fuckin brute but we side with him because we see the hypocrisy of his enemies. They’re every bit as savage as him, but hiding it in “God’s will” and a search for “the Holy Land.” He kind of reminds me of Lone Wolf and Cub the way he embraces being seen as some kind of demon, and lives up to it with his violence, yet consistently shows a stronger sense of honor in his actions than the non-demon-affiliated individuals around him.

The movie is divided into chapters, which I really liked because they’re like little interconnected short stories about this character. One about him being a slave, one about him running into some vikings, one about him on a boat with them, etc. The mood and atmosphere are as thick as anything I’ve seen in a year or two. Beautiful, naturally lit shots of these filthy warriors traveling through fog-shrouded land; long takes with sparse dialogue and a score that’s more simple, eerie tones than what you might call “music.” It gave me a strong feeling of being there, not just in that place but in that time, when you could travel for days on end and never see other people, and if you did it might be a problem.

Mikkelsen is supremely badass, communicating everything with his disfigured face, dispassionately bashing skulls or disemboweling guys. I like how he’s by far the scariest guy in the movie and also the one you identify with. One look at him and people know everything they need to be scared about. They see the tattoos and the scars, they know he’s not a Christian, that he’s been treated badly, that he’s not happy about that. Walking, silent revenge. A heathen that was not interested in living on the fringes of the earth, it’s not his type of neighborhood. Get the fuck out of his way.

The director is Nicolas Winding Refn, who did the PUSHER movies, and shot Tom Hardy out of a cannon called BRONSON straight into Hollywood. The only one I’d seen before this was BRONSON, and although that had that great performance and some nice Kubrick-inspired moments I wasn’t as in love with it as everybody else. But it was good enough to make me interested in what else he gets up to, and this is a good pay off. Now he’s got that movie DRIVE coming out this week, which I look forward to seeing, and he’s flirting with becoming a Hollywood guy. He was on a list of people they were supposedly considering for DIE HARD 5 (I doubt they had seen his movies if they were serious about that), and he’s been attached to a remake of LOGAN’S RUN for a while. I kinda hope he does something mainstream because he seems like the kind of director whose personality can’t be completely suppressed. You might chain him to a post but you might regret it. We’ll see what happens, I guess.

I’d been warned that it’s not really an action movie and required patience. I so much expected it to not be that type of movie that it ended up being closer to one than I expected. It’s definitely not the modern definition of action, and it surprises me that they played it at Actionfest. It seems like that could’ve caused problems. But it’s not like THE LIMITS OF CONTROL or something that builds up to violence and then skips over it. I don’t think it’s far off from the old westerns or samurai movies. There’s not any drawn out action sequences or motorcycle chases or nothin, but there’s tension and stare downs that occasionally erupt. It’s over quick, like most incidents that involve the drawing of swords or guns. But it’s there.

Of course, then it goes a little end-of-2001 on us. It gets a little more abstract the deeper it gets into Hell. I’m sure there’s meaning to alot of this that I didn’t really get. He starts doing weird things like balancing a bunch of stones on top of each other. There’s some homeless guy who does that along the Seattle waterfront – I wonder if he’s descended from vikings?

I think that structure works pretty good, but I admit I’m literal-minded enough that I probly would’ve liked the movie even better if it ended on a more concrete note. I guess if I have to interpret it I’d say it’s kind of like how I interpret the end of HALLOWEEN: he dies, but now he’s everywhere. More than that, the living spirit of suppressed religions has sacrificed himself to save the kid, his voice. But he’s still there, watching over the kid with his lack of depth perception. He is Valhalla and he is rising just like the apes, like Cobra, like the machines, like Taj, like Hannibal, etc. He can’t watch 3D movies, but he can watch you, so be on your best behavior.

.

.

.

bonus: a dumb post I wrote on an IMDb message board

At the beginning Kull is in a big battle with a bunch of knights. But it turns out to be a test. He’s trying to earn his way into the king’s elite army. He almost passes the test of a blindfolded flaming-sword duel with Thomas Ian Griffith (EXCESSIVE FORCE, Valek in JOHN CARPENTER’S VAMPIRES) but then Griffith finds out Kull’s from Atlantis and says forget it, we don’t work with barbarians. Destroyers maybe, barbarians – no fucking way. And this was the Hyborian age, so it was before they had laws about employment discrimination.
To our modern eyes these people all look like a bunch of primitive oafs, but to them there are big cultural differences between barbarians and, you know, knight dudes or whatever they call their people. And to be honest Kull really fits some of the barbarian stereotypes, for example he doesn’t know how to use a sword because he only uses a huge fuckin battle ax, and also he tends to go shirtless. He’s the only guy in this battle not wearing a shirt, so he stands out. (unless they were doing a shirts and skins type thing for the scrimmage, that is possible)

It just so happens that right after being blatantly racially discriminated against Kull witnesses the army getting called in to deal with the King (Sven-Ole Thorsen). Just a little incident where His Royal Majesty has gone mad and is murdering his own children. You know how it is. Being a barbarian and not having manners Kull just follows them into the castle, sees what a shitty job they’re doing dealing with it and intervenes himself. He ends up dueling the king and winning. The king knows him by name for some reason, that was kind of weird. But the king thinks his heirs are a bunch of dicks so as he’s dying he gives his crown to Kull. An excellent royal fuck you.

For a little bit this is one of those movies like DAVE or KING RALPH where an ordinary guy becomes the leader so they do common sense stuff to help out the regular joes and make the Man do a spit take and then faint. He tries to free the royal slaves, but his advisors say it’s against some ancient law that’s carved on a rock, so he back peddles. Actually he’s kind of like Obama, he wants to fix some shit but he also wants everybody to get along so he tries to placate all the fuckin babies that are really trying to take the throne from him anyway so he doesn’t get as much done as he should.

But he does get some small things done here and there, like he sees the soldiers whipping a priest named Ascalante. He asks why they’re whipping him and it’s because of his religion, so he makes them free him and says that men can worship whoever the fuck they want so fuck you you fucking assholes (paraphrase). He doesn’t get all nitpicky about separation of church and state like trying to get “By Crom” taken off the coins or anything like that. But he’s definitely pro freedom of religion.

Ascalante is played by Litefoot – remember him? I guess he wasn’t in too many movies but he was “THE INDIAN IN THE CUPBOARD” and I guess this and MORTAL KOMBAT: ANNIHILATION must be what I know him from. He’s a Native American actor and they say he was a rapper but I sure never heard of anybody that ever heard his music. But maybe it’s good, I got no evidence otherwise.

Kull has a thing for a fortune teller named Zareta (Karian Lombard) and as the king he could order her to have sex with him, but she kind of gives him some shit about it so he feels bad and he frees her from his royal harem. But she chooses to stay willingly, just like Uncle Remus stayed with that white family in SONG OF THE SOUTH. But probly because she has a Kull-crush. Once you’ve gone barbarian there’s just no comparian. Remember that.

While Kull is distracted by love and progressivism the king’s heirs and others are conspiring against him. Some dude with a melted face digs up a coffin with a shriveled dead witch named Akivasha in it and magically revives her into red-headed Tia Carrere. She shows up at the palace when they’re showing him around to pick a bride and before he can choose Zareta, this Akivasha seems to do some kind of enchantment on him, some kind of ancient magic equivalent to today’s Ax body spray. So he marries the bitch.

Of course this is all a plot, so after consummating their marriage Akivasha poisons Kull and frames Zareta as a king-killer. This is a real good evil scheme except it’s thwarted by that great rhyming bumper sticker slogan I made up two paragraphs ago and asked you to commit to memory. She actually says it straight up, that she had planned to kill him but “after last night” decided to replace his body with a fake and keep the real Kull in her sex dungeon for further use.

Of course Kull the Conquered escapes, teams up with Zareta and Ascalante, and goes on a journey to find a magical thing that men have searched for for centuries that he thinks doesn’t exist that is the only way to extinguish the eternal flame of such-and-such. The worst part of this journey is not that he gets pissed on by a camel and people later smell it on him. After all, Truck Turner smelled like cat piss. No, the worst part is that he has to hang out with Harvey Fierstein. He’s an old connection from Kull’s pirate days I guess, Kull gets a ship from him and then insists that he come along. And watching at home you really, really hope that Harvey will have a scheduling conflict, but unfortunately he goes along. Actually it turns out that he tries to screw Kull over and Kull expected it all along, I’m not really sure why he brought him. Maybe he should’ve just brought his head. Sometimes these barbarians are not barbarian enough for my tastes.

Then there is adventures, etc.

During the final showdown Akivasha morphs into what must be her true form, a spindly animatronic demon with bat wings, claws and big, crooked, slimy monster teeth. She says, “Husband, kiss me,” which is real fuckin lucky because it just so happens that he needs to kiss her in order to freeze her with the magic breath. Talk about dumb fuckin luck – I mean, how would he have sold that if she didn’t coincidentally make a pass at him? “Hey lady, you are an evil ancient witch that brainwashed me, poisoned me, stole my kingdom and just now turned into a hideous monster. You wanna make out?”

I kinda don’t think it was intentional but I really dig the idea that this is an emotionally vulnerable moment for her, that in her monstrous true form she’s really self conscious and needs to be validated by having him kiss her. And that’s why he’s able to do it. If she was in her right mind of course she would know he was up to something if he kissed her, but she’s so emotionally fragile that she just needs it to be true and believes in it because why risk throwing it away if there’s some small chance that it’s real? What if he really sees beauty in her? Could it be? Actually now I’m kinda feeling sorry for her, this was kind of a Carrie-White-prom-queen moment from her perspective.

Not to spoil the ending, but let me tell you exactly what happens in the ending. Kull becomes king again and the first thing he does is abolish slavery. Well, I guess technically the first thing he did must’ve been to get the throne room re-decorated, unless I just hadn’t noticed the giant tiger mural in honor of his old pirating nickname. I mean that’s some straight up Saddam Hussein and/or Scarface type of lifestyle there, but other than that he is a good king in my opinion, so he takes his battle ax and smashes all the old rocks with the fucked up laws carved onto them. It’s a great symbolic fuck you because not only is he getting rid of the outmoded laws but he’s doing it with the weapon that symbolizes the Atlantean-barbarian heritage those assholes all give him shit about. Fuck ‘em. Long live Kull.

The reason I watched this again was because I saw that new CONAN THE BARBARIAN and it wasn’t very good but I figured at least it was probly better than KULL THE CONQUEROR. But I couldn’t remember for sure so I watched it again. But it turns out KULL is way more fun than I remembered.

Yeah, it’s cheesy, I can’t dispute that. Director John Nicolella had been around for 10 years but almost entirely doing TV, starting with Miami Vice. (He also did that weird Don Johnson rock musical HEARTBEAT.) Sorbo is kinda likable but kind of bland and not very badass. In order to thrive in syndicated TV he had to have just that right balance: seems like a nice guy, but no threatening awesomeness. Like anybody I’m not against him but not a big fan.

The handful of scenes that suddenly bust out the rockin’ guitars while Kull fights seem like a note from some clueless studio executive, a really misguided and condescending way to appeal to the young people (see poster and trailer). Well, they seem clueless, but of course whoever came up with that “Kull Rocks” idea sensed what the rest of us never could’ve, that those guitars would single-handedly catapult KULL into the hearts of millions of the youths, not only turning KULL into a massive box office hit and defining artistic work of its era, but also giving Sorbo the platform he needed to become the highly revered author and religious leader we all know him as today.

You know what on second thought I guess I’m remembering that wrong, I just looked it up and it only made about $6 million in the U.S. and then was mostly forgotten. It debuted #9 at the box office. EXCESS BAGGAGE came out the same week and that was at #7. That might’ve been the one I was thinking of that the young people loved and it changed the world and everything.

It’s kind of sad, actually – RED SONJA, KULL and the CONAN remake were all miserable box office failures. Not that those movies don’t deserve it, but how is anybody ever gonna make the good version of this type of movie when there’s no incentive to make one at all?

Anyway the CONAN remake is more gritty and badass than KULL, but KULL is an overall more entertaining experience and story in my opinion. Like a practice run for THE SCORPION KING.

.

.

.

.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE? Here is a really detailed rundown of different drafts of the script, and an interview with screenwriter Charles Edward Pogue about how it started as CONAN III, why he thinks they ruined his script and what a dick he thinks Rob Cohen is.

So some ghostly spirit lady appears to her and tells her she’ll give her powers so she can get revenge. The only catch is she has to vow not to be “had” by any man that doesn’t defeat her in battle first. That’s kind of some fucked up magic small print, isn’t it? She got raped so she has to keep getting raped, basically? I’m against it.

Anyway, you quickly forget about the magic powers, it just seems like she’s tall and good at swords. She lives in Conan the Barbarian’s Hyborian age, but you won’t hear many lamentations from this woman. She’s introduced sparring with some Asian swordmaster and kicking his ass. I don’t see why this can’t be training and not magic, but oh well. Meanwhile over in a monastery somewhere a bunch of priestesses in white robes are about to ritualistically destroy a talisman that could be used to conquer the world. But some soldiers throw a dagger at the priestess, come in and steal the talisman. Fuck!

Not surprisingly the evil queen behind this whole plot is the same one that burned down Sonja’s village. Her name is Queen Gedren and she’s played by Sandahl Bergman, who also played Valeria in CONAN THE BARBARIAN (which won her a Golden Globe for “New Star of the Year – Actress”). She apparently was offered the part of Red Sonja but turned it down to play Gedren. Having something like that she could hold over Brigitte Nielsen all the time probly helped her to be evil.

Gedren wears dumb looking leather straps on her face. She tells one of her men to touch the talisman, but when he does he disappears. Warps to another dimension or ceases to exist or who knows. So she tells one of her women to touch it. And she’s like “Uh– b-but, I mean…” She’s like Chris Tucker not wanting to get into that trunk in JACKIE BROWN: she doesn’t want to do it, but she does it. Luckily she doesn’t disappear – it turns out that only women can touch it.

You see? That’s the genius of RED SONJA. She’s apparently in the same world as Conan the Barbarian but she’s on a quest that he could never do, because she can touch the talisman and he can’t. Fuck you, Conan.

The dying priestess zip-lines away just in time to meet Arnold Schwarzenegger on a horse and tell him to go get her sister, which is Red Sonja. So Sonja finds out she’s gotta go on a quest to find this bitch and destroy her talisman.

Unfortunately it’s not all that exciting of a quest, and not much happens. She comes across a town that’s already been destroyed by the queen and her talisman. The only survivors are an obnoxious prince named Tarn (Ernie Reyes, Jr.) and his servant Falkon, who kept reminding me of that guy Horatio Sanz who used to be on Saturday Night Live. If you’re not familiar with Reyes, he was a kid who was an accomplished martial artist, who must’ve been about 12 or 13 when he did this and his first movie, THE LAST DRAGON. As an adult he was one of the fighters in THE RUNDOWN and was the native who attacked them in the cemetery in KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL, but I mainly think of him from this TV show he had in the ’80s called Sidekicks. Gil Gerard was a cop who had to take care of Ernie, he was the heir to some kind of martial arts legacy so people would attack him and he would do tae kwon do or whatever.

In this one he’s an entitled little shit-stain who’s constantly yelling at his servant and calling him an imbecile, or he’s complaining about “ruffians.” He’s a funny little kid and he gets really into the role but it’s also pretty grating. Even after he’s softened up, they’ve helped save the day and Falkon has risked his own life to save him, the fucking kid calls him “clown.” On the positive side, he swings a sword around alot and seems better at it than any of the adults in the movie.

Also they fight a mechanical sea beast.

Nielsen was a young model at the time, she got the part shortly before filming after being spotted on the cover of a magazine. Her performance is stiff, but I kind of like her in it. She doesn’t seem crazy like she does now.

I always knew about this movie and how Schwarzenegger got top billing but wasn’t really the lead. I thought he had a cameo as Conan. He’s actually a pretty big supporting character, he follows her around and keeps showing up to help her, makes fun of the logic of her vow not to sleep with a dude who doesn’t defeat her first, then tries to defeat her so she’ll fuck him, then sticks around for the finale. He’s dressed fancier than Conan but still, this is the same Robert E. Howard world as Conan, right? So I was surprised when he said his name was Kalidor. I even wondered if he was using an alias and would later reveal that he was Conan, but it never happened.

Apparently Red Sonja isn’t exactly a Robert E. Howard Conan character anyway. Howard had a supporting character named Red Sonya, but she was in a non-fantasy story that took place during a time when there were guns. Many years later the name was re-spelled to use for this character in the Conan comic books.

I can’t claim this is a good movie but I don’t regret finally watching it.

Here’s Ernie Reyes:

So I probly shouldn’t say Luc Besson is back. I guess it would be more fair to say that I’m back to Luc Besson. Point is he has this one now, based on a Belgian comic book. It came out April 2010 in Belgium and France and has rolled out everywhere from Argentina to United Arab Emirates since then, just not here so I had to get an import. It’s fine, I’ll watch it again if it comes out dubbed by Nicki Minaj or somebody.

The tone is very light, a family friendly adventure movie, but not too stupid for adults, and with brief sideboob I believe. Besson’s broad humor sometimes turns me off (example: Bruce’s mom on the phone in FIFTH ELEMENT), but here he seems kinda witty, with lots of quick, funny quips. Yes, there is an uptight character who keeps seeing crazy things that make him faint, but that seems appropriate in this live action cartoon type of world where physical features are exaggerated to look like drawings. Lots of elaborate makeup jobs and fake ears. Everyone is big and round or horribly ugly or impossibly gorgeous. It’s maybe kinda what that TIN TIN movie would be like if they did it with cameras and live humans.

At one point I was wondering if the ridiculously gnarled faces and crooked teeth of the Egyptians were a little racist. Then suddenly a villainous French character walked in that made the Egyptians look like Cary Grant by comparison, and I was able to go back to appreciating them in the drawing-come-to-life spirit they were intended.

It was this guy:

and I only now figured out that’s who Mathieu Amalric from MUNICH and QUANTUM OF SOLACE plays.

Adèle Blanc-Sec (Louise Bourgoin) is a famous author. Her editor sends her on trips to exotic locales where she has crazy adventures, then comes home and makes up a bunch of unrelated shit for her books. As the movie begins she’s being sent to Peru, but sneaks off to the Great Pyramids instead.

Adèle is kind of like a cross between Indiana Jones and Mary Poppins. She’s a good lookin lady with fancy dresses and giant hats who refuses to have her world limited by the idiots around her or even by the laws of science. Her twin sister Agathe (Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre) is in a coma from having her brain impaled on a hat pin, so she needs to steal a particular Egyptian mummy that she thinks is a doctor to Ramses II and might be able to help. I mean, she’ll have to figure out how to resurrect him from the dead first, but she’ll cross that bridge when she gets to it.

Unfortunately the one guy that might be able to help her with that, a withered old mystic called Professseur Ménard (Jacky Nercessian), is on death row when she gets back from her trip. Ain’t that how it is? You go out of town for a little bit, you come back and find out the buddy you’re really counting on used his telepathic powers to hatch a pterodactyl egg from the museum and then control the beast remotely and the cops found him harboring a dinosaur and decided he was a maniac.

I love the special effects in this movie. They don’t look as “real” as top-of-the-line Hollywood effects, but that’s part of their charm. They have lots of personality. The pterodactyl and later a group of mummies are animated in a slightly herky-jerky style that reminds me of old stop motion animation. I guess the closest Industrial Light and Magic comparison would be the Martians from MARS ATTACKS!

The mummies are great because they’re not based on the usual wrapped-in-bandages type of look, they actually look like mummified human remains come back to life. And they’re animated with very human personalities. In one of the movie’s best scenes Adèle sits and has tea with an animated mummy and tells him the traumatic story of her sister’s accident and why she blames herself for it. And he sits and listens very supportively and comforts her. And he’s a mummy. That asshole from the MUMMY movies could learn a thing or two about manners from this guy.

Another way that Adele is like Mary Poppins is that she pretends to not know her effect on men. There’s a dude so in love with her he delivers poems to her every day, and she just kind of brushes him off but casually tells him that she reads all her mail in the bath tub. I mean maybe that’s an act of charity, a generous donation of masturbation imagery, but it seems more cruel to me.

On the other hand, feigned obliviousness is one of her best qualities. The bowler hat wearing, mustache sporting authority figures all around her are constantly tripping over themselves failing to stop her from doing what she wants to do, and she doesn’t waste time noticing or complaining. One exception is in Egypt when the Egyptians won’t let her into the tomb. She just tells them to come get her when it’s no longer a boy’s club, and waits maybe a minute while they find out how badly they need her expertise.

There’s definitely some AMELIE in here too. If you hate whimsy, there could be a problem. But people who think AMELIE is too cute are comparing it to real life and relationships, so this is kinda different. Even if you’ve had experience with real pterodactyls and this doesn’t match up I’m sure you can enjoy the mummy part as an escapist fantasy, and vice versa.

It’s a fun movie. I’m not sure why it’s been banned in the U.S. The people have a right to know the truth.

nerd note: Her guide or assistant in Egypt is named Aziz – I kept waiting for her to say “Aziz, light!” But I guess there’s not much reward for in-jokes about the Luke Perry part at the beginning of THE FIFTH ELEMENT. (Also I looked it up and this takes place about 2 years before that scene did, so age-wise it can’t be intended as the same character.)

okay I would like to apologize for this trivia. Move along

Some day I’ll read some of his stories and still not watch that movie but for now my connection to Conan is that it’s an all-time classic Arnold Schwarzenegger/John Milius movie and a not-as-good sequel. I knew this new one had no chance of competing with that and wasn’t really a remake other than of the logo. So I just hoped for something better than KULL THE CONQUEROR.
I thought Kull was supposed to be Conan’s pops or something, but I guess that’s Corin. Ron Perlman plays Corin as a rugged viking type, or possibly as an autobiographical character for director Marcus Nispel (various unconscionable remakes, PATHFINDER). We see Corin in a nice prologue about Conan’s birth in battle: his pregnant mother has been fatally wounded, and being Conan’s mom she’s a tough lady, so she says fuck it, cut me open so I can see this fuckin thing I’ve been carting around all these months. So Corin gives her a c-section by sword. My favorite touch in this scene is that instead of giving her a stick or something to bite down on he gives her his own hand. That’s how they fuckin do it in Cimmeria, all right? So the movie had my interest. Any movie that starts with Ron Perlman holding up a fucked up lump of baby LION KING style in the middle of a battlefield can’t be written off immediately.

By the way, if you're wondering how it's pronounced, the mom said it like it rhymes with Rodan, but Conan himself says it like it rhymes with bonin'. So if you're ever in a situation where you have to say his name in front of him, I don't know what to tell you. Be careful.

As a Barbarian youth, Conan practices his sword hard and wants to prove himself, but Corin is so skeptical he almost doesn’t let the kid enter the traditional race the young men have where first prize is to be allowed to go to war. When li’l Conan not only (SPOILER) wins the race but returns holding the severed heads of three attackers it’s almost too much, even Corin seems creeped out by it. His son is truly a barbarian among Barbarians.

He’s proven himself, but life is not all strawberries and forging swords. All fantasy movie heroes have to have their villages burned down and their parents killed. That’s just how it works. Doing the honors this time is some wizard guy called Khalar Zym (played by Stephen Lang, Colonel Quaritch from AVATAR, although I didn’t realize that until looking it up just now). He’s been traveling around the world collecting a bunch of bones from a magic mask that was divided up among– well, it’s a long story that Morgan Freeman narrates at the beginning and that somebody else narrates at the beginning of the first LORD OF THE RINGS but with rings instead of bones. Long story short: kill Corin, magic mask, turn into god, etc.

Li’l Conan does what he can to try to save his old man, including chopping some guy’s nose off and making the guy yell “My nose!” like a Gino Felino victim. Zym says “This is your son? I like him!”

Probly shouldn’t have let him live, though, ’cause Conan grows up traveling around Hyboria (I think it’s called), experimenting with banditry, maturing into musclebound Jason Mamoa and searching for the prick who killed his father. And not just to make him apologize, in my opinion. We come across Conan and his buddy Artus (Nonso Anozie) as they’re attacking a caravan and freeing their slaves (a bunch of beautiful topless girls in cages). The slaves are ungrateful like What, you’re gonna leave us out here in the middle of nowhere? so Conan laughs and next thing you know it’s a Barbarian party cruise, Conan and a bunch of naked women taking his boat to all the hot drinking ports. What I’m saying is Conan lives a pretty good life, all things considered. At least between adventures, in the off season or whatever.

I like all that stuff. Once the plot gets going, that part’s more of a blur to me. The action scenes are typical of Nispel – messy and uninvolving, not absolutely horrendous but not good. A couple of times he uses the dreaded blur-o-vision vibrocam, an especially boneheaded choice in a 3D movie.

At least there’s some color in this one. It’s not all grey like PATHFINDER. I wonder why he didn’t use Daniel Pearl, the cinematographer from the original TEXAS CHAIN SAW who did his previous movies? This time he uses Thomas Kloss, whose last feature film was SHOWTIME starring Eddie Murphy. I mean he did fine, better than most of the CONAN rip-offs in the ’80s I guess. But I think if you’re doing one now it would be a good time to do, like, a way better job, instead of just better. I don’t know.

By the way, real imaginative getting Morgan Freeman as the narrator, guys. That’s what I call thinking inside the box with about two or three extra layers of box around the original box to make sure that none of your thinking leaks outside of the box at all because that would be bad. I would’ve got Busta Rhymes.

The heart of the story seems like it should be Conan’s relationship with Tamara (Rachel Nichols from GI JOE and P2), a pure blood princess or something that he rescues because Zym needs her to make that magic mask work (yeah, he’s not a god yet, turns out he’s been working on this project longer than Conan’s been working on revenge). There’s some funny princess-and-the-barbarian interaction at first. They have different ideas of etiquette in their cultures, so she’s surprised, for example, when it’s time to dismount so he says “Get off” and shoves her off his horse. In her culture he’d have to throw a “m’lady” in there. Later he says she’s dressed like a harlot, she tries to score points with modern audiences by saying he only knows prostitutes, implying he comes from a tribe of woman-haters. But he wins that battle by explaining that Cimmerian women dress as warriors. He was calling her a sissy, not a ho.

This could be a good buddy movie type relationship if they kept playing with the contrast between the two, but she kind of lets it go and becomes more of a generic princess in distress. On the positive side she’s not a total whiner, and also they don’t make her do a bunch of sword fights just to make it seem modern.

The other major female character is Zym’s weirdo daughter Marique, a sorceress and PHANTOM MENACE costume enthusiast played by Rose MacGowan. I didn’t really like the way she did the character, but at least she seems like she’s having fun, I guess. She can identify people’s lineage by smelling their blood. Those skills would probly come in handy in the modern world if she was a crime scene investigator or something. Instead she uses it to help her dad do a sacrifice so that the mask can attach to him, and something about raising their mother from the dead or something. I forget what happened with all that. I don’t think they pulled it off.

I do remember that Zym told Conan “I don’t like you anymore” and I questioned how he remembered that line that he said like 25 years ago or how he expected Conan to remember it. Unless he didn’t and it was a private joke between him and the audience. I don’t know. I guess I don’t care.

Mamoa is pretty good and has a pretty cool looking scar over one eye. He’s kind of charming and slightly sinister, the hero who enjoys shedding blood a little too much for you to be comfortable with him. He’s maybe not different enough from Schwarzenegger to avoid comparisons, but he’s a good character. I would’ve liked seeing him in more, better-directed adventures. (yeah yeah yeah, HBO show, I know. Leave me alone, throneys.)

This is kindy of a shitty movie, kind of dull, but okay. I like some of the cast, some of the story, there are plenty of parts I liked and reasons I wanted to like it. He does a good move on the guy whose nose he cut off, he smacks a horse with a giant chain, he fights a squid, etc. But it’s not great storytelling like the original and not some insane new take on it either. I wish they’d hired a better director like maybe Alexandre Aja or somebody to do it. Or even if they had gotten Brett Ratner like they tried to, he might’ve done it a little better. But I guess not that much better, unless he convinced Chris Tucker to be in it as Thulsa Dume. But that probly wouldn’t've happened, so I shouldn’t stress about it, in my opinion.

As for the fake 3D (done with computer mockups instead of actually shooting at two angles like somebody who was trying to do a good job) it looks more dimensional than GREEN HORNET or HARRY POTTER, so it’s not the worst I’ve seen. But it’s comically unconvincing at times. Yes, it looks like a series of flat planes set up like cardboard cutouts, but also it keeps having distracting protrusions -why is the hilt of Conan’s sword sticking out so far? Why is the ground shifting underneath Conan’s feet? I think there were 4 different scenes where I found myself staring at some character’s nose, because that was the only part they made stick out noticeably. This must be what everybody was complaining about with CLASH OF THE TITANS.

I blew it, too, because I could’ve seen it in 2D but the listings were wrong. Mistakenly convinced it wasn’t playing 2D downtown I quizzed Drew McWeeny about how bad it was. He told me “It looks like View Master 3D as utilized by Nazi War Criminals.” Obviously that should be on the poster and obviously it convinced me to give in and see it that way. He said it was a very aggressive, poking at you type of 3D, which he meant as a criticism but it sounds like the type of 3D I prefer. Unfortunately, I didn’t agree that this was that.

Some directors intentionally use this shitty post-production fake 3D instead of the real deal. Joe Johnston, who shamed our democracy and The Greatest Generation by releasing CAPTAIN AMERICA in fake 3D, explained how he rationalized it to himself after testing out actual 3D:

“The cameras and their necessary hard and software made up one of the most cumbersome and unwieldly packages I’ve ever had the misfortune to work with. I couldn’t move the camera at a high rate of speed, I couldn’t fit it through tight spaces, lens changes took 45 minutes…if the two lenses weren’t perfectly calibrated to the exact same focal plane, the shot was unwatchable…”

Okay, fair enough. It’s hard to do. But maybe instead of weighing “do we do the hard work of using those big cameras, or do we do shitty fake 3D?” you should be weighing “do we do the hard work of using those big cameras, or do we not do it in 3D?”

He continues:

“It’s harder to fast cut an action sequence because your eye needs time to re-establish the depth of each shot…”

So, what, you did the fast cuts that look bad in 3D, but it’s okay because your 3D looks bad anyway? I think that is what he’s arguing because later in the interview he says:

“I find that after 20 minutes, I forget I’m watching 3D anyway.”

So that kills my theory that they’ve been shown some impressive tests but haven’t actually sat through a movie done up like this. No, they have, they just figure it’s supposed to look bad.

I don’t know how long Hollywood is gonna hang on to this, but it’s ridiculous. They fucked up. They shat where they ate. If they’d saved 3D for the movies where the filmatists really believed in it and were willing to expend effort and created something the audience could see in actual 3D then I don’t think there’d be such a backlash against it. Most of the movies released in 3D this summer did better in 2D, so it’s not gonna inflate their box office anymore. Eventually they’re gonna have to abandon it or, like, do a good job.

* * *

So anyway, the big question is if CONAN THE BARBARIAN FAKE 3D 2011 met my standards or not. Was it better than KULL THE CONQUEROR?

Well, the problem is I don’t know, I don’t remember KULL THE CONQUEROR that well. I’m gonna have to watch it again. I can say that this CONAN, while not as good as the original classic, or the silly sequel, or WOLFHOUND from a couple years ago, or BEASTMASTER, is honestly better than most of the sword and sorcery movies from the ’80s that I’ve seen. Most of those are just as muddled but way less exciting. This is probly above average for the genre, in all fairness.

But you know what? We’re civilized. We’re not Barbarians. We can do better than above average. Let’s do an actual good one next time.

Cage and Ron Perlman play the two most badass mass-murdererers of non-Christians in the Crusades. Through a montage we see them having a good time through several different battles, saying things like “you get the 300 on the left, I’ll get the 300 on the right.” Just going around chopping up people and joking about how whoever ends the lowest amount of human lives will have to buy the other one a beer, ha ha ha. I guess I gotta give the filmatists credit for just having them say “you owe me a drink” and not specifying Bud Light or something like that. So at least we know they did their research on that one, Bud Light did not exist yet during the Crusades. Good catch.

Also it’s nice to see Ron Perlman in a movie where he gets a few things to do. He deserves better than this, but alot of times he gets worse.

Anyway they decide they don’t want to fight anymore so they get locked up, just like Muhammad Ali. But while they’re in the joint the Bubonic plague is fucking shit up, including Christopher Lee, who has an Elephant Man type bubble on his head and fucked up teeth (props to the makeup department on that one, it’s really disgusting to look at). The Church decides that the cure for the plague is to send the witch that caused it to some place where some priest guys will do a magic book thing that you do to a plague-causing witch. I don’t know the exact terminology, but I don’t feel bad about it because I think I do understand how viruses work better than these fucking guys. Give me credit for that at least. Forget about the magic book, just wash your hands.

Anyway, Nic and Ron are let out to deliver the witch to the other place, which Nic agrees to on the condition that she gets a fair trial when she gets there. This sets up  some dramatic possibilities because what the fuck chance is there to give her a fair trial, especially when the crime she’s being accused of is some magical bullshit that doesn’t really exist? We’ve already seen in the opening how alleged witches get lynched, and the girl tells Nic about the drowning test. One of the guys in the entourage also points out a conflict of interest: if the church says bringing the witch to this place is gonna cure the plague, are they really gonna turn around and tell the people “oh, we gave her a trial and it turns out she’s not really a witch so we can’t help you on this one”? No, they’re gonna do whatever they can to prevent a panic.

So I’m thinking they’ll say she’s a witch, but Nic’ll know they’re full of it, he’ll have to bust her out to protect her from getting burned at the stake. This man is a soldier, a warrior. He solves problems by killing whoever the church points him at. So when he’s faced with an ethical dilemma that pits him against the church and some of his own men it’ll be interesting to see how–

–oh, never mind. Then she starts acting evil and causing wolves to attack them and shit. So (SPOILER) she just turns into a CGI flying monster at the end and they gotta stab her. Well, I guess they lucked out, that made it an easier problem to solve.

I mentioned in my review of that movie SOLOMON KANE that I have kind of a weird issue with these movies that deal with witch hunts and then have it that there really are evil magic bitches that do wicked spells on people. Because this is a real life shameful thing that the human race is responsible for, they really did execute innocent human beings on the mistaken belief that they had magical super powers. I don’t know how fair it is for me to have a problem with this, I know it’s just fantasy, but to me it’s in poor taste to have a fantasy world where the shitheads who did that were actually correct and doing the right thing.

I mean, you can depict historical atrocities without pointing out that they’re bad. I recently watched the first season of that HBO show ‘Rome,’ because so many people tell me to watch it every time I write or talk about Ray Stevenson. I thought it was excellent, and especially the way they handle the fucked up aspects of the Roman culture. You get to like this guy Verenus and his family and he quits the army because he doesn’t believe in fighting for Caesar. He wants to be home and mend his relationship with his wife and become a legitimate business man. No problem, he invested in some slaves a while back, he pays a guy to keep them in a pen and feed them, he can go pick ‘em up and sell ‘em.

It’s the most horrible thing but the show is smart enough to pretend not to see it with modern eyes, it just shows it as if you’re not gonna be offended by it. And when he brings a little boy slave to the house his daughters treat the kid like he’s a puppy and they want to keep him.

It’s the same way with the religious beliefs and medical practices. These otherwise reasonable people will explain real world events as the result of something the god Jupiter did, or a doctor will very knowledgeably explain what animal you might try sacrificing to which god to help your ailment. The show doesn’t wink at you about it, it just acts like they’re right, and it comes across as almost kinda deep to me, as a parallel with us. We talk a big game like we know what the fuck we’re doing, but years from now probly a few of those things will seem as ridiculous as killing a bird to heal your head injury.

SEASON OF THE WITCH is different because although they do show the Crusades and witch hunts pretty matter-of-factly instead of saying “hey guys, this is bad,” they complicate things by bringing the supernatural into it. The practice of slavery in Rome would be more iffy if they showed that the gods were real and thought it was okay. So that kind of bothered me throughout SEASON OF THE WITCH.

But there’s a twist! In the (SPOILER) end, if I understood correctly, it turns out that lady is not a witch. She’s a demon. And demons want to make crusaders believe in witches so they’ll start killing ladies willie nillie. Stupid crusaders. You fell for the ol’ season of the fake witch trick.

You see, witchfinders? You shouldn’t be doing that shit, you’re just falling into their scaly, clawed hands. You should’ve listened to me.

In conclusion, watch Rome if you have time. SEASON OF THE WITCH not necessary. Not good enough to be good, not bad enough to be funny.

chapter 3

released May 4th, 2001

Okay, now the summer is really starting. Crocodile Dundee, Stallone in a car, those were appetizers. This is the first bonafide Big Ass Summer Movie of ‘01, with the advertising and the toys and what not. It opened huge, and eventually made more than $433 million worldwide. I don’t think I know anybody that likes it, though.

THE MUMMY RETURNS is the second one, the one where the mummy returns for a while, then leaves again. Like the first MUMMY it begins with a narrated prologue that’s better than the movie proper because it doesn’t have Brendan Fraser or a bunch of talking in it. This one tells a little bit about the legend of The Scorpion King (The Rock), a guy who led a bunch of warriors in trying to conquer the world, but they all died of heat stroke so he was bit by a scorpion or whatever, and magic. His part is less than 5 minutes, he speaks one line and it’s not in English, and his narrative purpose is to return as a shitty CGI bug monster at the end. Also to set up a prequel spin-off that’s way more entertaining than the mummy movies, in my opinion.

I never watched THE MUMMY RETURNS before this retrospective because I hated the first one so much. I just remember it being a bunch of loud noises and phony excitement with no sense of rhythm or build. This actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but sure doesn’t give me a reason to give part 1 a second chance.

After the prologue we go to 1933, a year in which Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz’s characters are now married and have a spunky son. They’re exploring an ancient tomb together as a family activity I guess. There are snakes in the cave and he’s not afraid of them, which is obviously meant as a huge ‘fuck you’ to Indiana Jones, and to call him a pussy and make him feel bad about himself, etc.

Anyway it turns out some bandits or tomb raiders are also there, the kid shoots a slingshot, he gets a magic Bracelet of Anubis stuck on his arm, the entire place collapses and that type of shit. The bandits are trying to resurrect the Scorpion King so he can wiggle around and lead an army of dogheaded warriorsb which means they have to first resurrect Imhotep, the mummy from part 1, played by Arnold Vosloo (the small screen Darkman and big screen Billy Zane), because of such-and-such, but what they didn’t count on was that Fraser was wearing a wristband in part 1 and when he takes it off it turns out there’s a tattoo underneath that proves he’s a Magi and by the way his wife is the resurrection of Nefertiti and the son is “The Chosen One” and the snake is probly the Chosen Snake but that never comes up.

I forgot that there was a cool guy with a tattooed face that knows all the ancient secrets and sword fighting techniques, he’s part of an ancient order trying to stop the mummy, and then there’s another ancient order trying to help the mummy I believe. Fraser says “Oh no, not these guys again!” which is the same thing I thought when I saw him and the other main characters. To be fair to the movie though they are far less annoying than in part 3. They play it mostly straight, and they’re supposed to be so in love that the audience should shout “Get a room!” in unison. At one point Fraser says, “If anything ever happened to you I would never forgive myself.” (Like what, if she turned into Maria Bello?)

But as long as Fraser’s not trying to do witty banter he isn’t that bad. Then again he’s not at all compelling in the Indiana Jones way he’s obviously supposed to be. It seemed to me like they also slimmed down the “comedy relief” participation of the sleazy brother-in-law character. He has a few lines like defending his innocence by saying “I haven’t done anything… lately!” (Ain’t I a stinker?) but mostly they force him to sit around and look serious while the other characters talk, which is a fair punishment for how annoying he was in part 1.

I kind of like that the kid leaves behind a trail of sandcastles that tell his parents which archaeological sites to go to next. They also fly around in a zeppelin, which I guess you gotta give some points for because very few movies have zeppelins these days, and they are an important form of travel. The pilot of the airship has an eyepatch at first but then takes it off because he doesn’t actually need it. That’s the kind of comedy that you can only make up on set. How magical.

I gotta acknowledge that Mr. Sommers does make some sincere attempts at human and/or mummy emotion, and there are moments and scenes that might be really cool if not surrounded by two hours of ridiculous bullshit and terrible CGI walls of water with spooky faces in them and that type of business. In this one the stand out “hey, this would’ve worked in an actual movie” scene is at the climax when the events contrast the relationships between the married archaeologists and the mummy and his girl. The boys are falling into a pit of scary fire or some stupid bullshit, I don’t remember what it was exactly and I’m sure no one involved with the movie does either. Brendan tries to get Rachel to run away to safety but she doesn’t, she risks her life and saves him. Meanwhile, the Mummy’s girl takes a look at him, then runs like a fuckin coward, or like Michael Caine’s employee in ON DEADLY GROUND who claims she has to go to the bathroom and tries to drive off.

And there’s a shot of Imhotep crying. Not because he’s dying (he’s been through that a couple times) but because he thought she was a keeper. In the context of a good story with good characters that would be a good scene.

THE MUMMY RETURNS tries to be a rousing, light-hearted adventure, but at its heart it’s a mystery, and the mystery is “how the fuck does a movie this big and expensive have special effects this terrible?” For the most part it’s a nice looking movie, a big production with lots of wide shots of digitally enhanced period scenes and ancient Egyptian palaces and what not. The effects going on in the background are fine.

But there are four different major types of digital characters in the movie and they all look preposterous. There’s the titular mummy Imhotep, when first resurrected he’s a hollowed out corpse. This is a case where it would’ve been nice if they had the motion capture because the way they animate this dumb looking guy has no relation to the personality or posture of the guy playing him when it switches to an actor. This is actually the opposite of the Boris Karloff MUMMY – the monster looks so stupid that it’s a huge relief when it becomes just a dude. There’s one scene where he’s still supposed to be rotten but he’s wearing what looks like an iron mask (turns out to be rubber – not sure why they did that) and he’s so much more of a compelling character that way it’s ridiculous.

Another terrible effect is the dog-headed soldiers of the Army of Anubis, who number in the thousands for huge LORD OF THE RINGS type battles. To be fair it’s more just how stupid the dog-headed cartoon warriors look that is the problem, not as much the fact that they look phony. So I guess I give them a pass. Good boy. You get a treat.

I’d heard for years about people hating the “pygmy mummies,” but I didn’t know why. Nobody told me they were little CGI gremlin guys bouncing around and jibber jabbering.

But by far the biggest offender is the “Scorpion King” character. I actually liked the spin-off movie THE SCORPION KING so it’s sad to learn that the Rock’s likable hero Mathayus not only turns into a one-dimensional evil scorpion monster, but that he fucking looks like this:

(I think I stole this screengrab from Chud’s worst CGI in history list)

For once it’s not exaggerating to say that he looks like a video game. In fact, here is The Rock in an actual video game:

This movie was released ten years ago, you’d think they would’ve finished the effects by now.

I found a quote from Todd McCarthy of Variety saying that the movie “bursts with visual goodies,” which would imply that to at least one professional these effects were considered acceptable at the time. But I remember the other movies that existed and I don’t buy it. This is Industrial Light and Magic, they had already done Jar Jar Binks, and regardless of his controversial politics and comedic style you gotta admit Jar Jar looks pretty real. They’d done digital characters in the Jurassic Parks, DRAGON HEART, MEN IN BLACK…  This was 5 years after they did MARS ATTACKS!, which intentionally looked goofy, but better than these fuckin mummies. I don’t get it.

At any rate, this is a good example of the Big Summer Popcorn Movie that only gets away with it because of our thirst for a Big Summer Popcorn Movie when May rolls around and the sun is coming out. It’s all expensive spectacle, no soul, no skill. If spectacle is all you got in your toolbox you oughta be better at staging it than this. Obviously it’s modeled after the Indiana Jones movies, but only in the most base, superficial ways. Clearly it learned nothing from those movies in storytelling or characterization. It’s embarrassing how much the setpieces in this completely hinge on impressing the audience with effects that weren’t even ready to be shown to the public. In a good movie of this type you could laugh or shrug at a dated effect and the scene would still work because of the way it was put together.

To me this goes in the category of expensive, terrible movies like TRANSFORMERS, BATMAN FOREVER and the works of Roland Emmerich. Some are worse than others, sometimes they’re funny to watch, and I’m not saying I’m not interested in seeing them. But to pretend that’s what we’re hoping for in a summer movie is an insult to movies. And movies will have their revenge on you by making you keep watching this type of crap.

* * *

legacy: in the decade since ‘01 there’s been a tie-in movie ride, a cartoon series, a part 3, a SCORPION KING spin-off, a DTV prequel to the spin-off, another one on the way… I don’t think many people love these movies, but I guess they tolerate them enough to keep them alive. I don’t think there are any plans to return to the big screen, though.

Sommers is still doing these type of movies, but maybe slowed down a little. Back then he could probly get most of the projects he wanted off the ground, now he’s gotta fight for it. Fraser is still a leading man, but mostly in children’s movies (JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, FURRY VENGEANCE). Weisz chose not to come back for part 3, but has maintained a balance between smaller movies (ABOUT A BOY,  MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS) and the genre stuff (ERAGON, CONSTANTINE). And THE FOUNTAIN may or may not count as both.

Most notably of course, The Rock has since fulfilled the MUMMY RETURNS prophecy of becoming a big movie star.

datedness: Those effects look fucking terrible, but I’m sure they looked bad at the time too. Other than that it’s a nice looking production and since it’s a period piece it’s not dated. The scenery looks nice on blu ray.

2001-2011 connections: The Rock (now called Dwayne Johnson) has the standout role in the movie of the summer so far, FAST FIVE. It’s another sequel to a movie where he wasn’t in the first one, but this one really takes advantage of the personality and presence he had in his wrestling days, and lets him say words and shit. Business-wise he’s also spending the summer becoming the go-to “guy to add to sequels to crappy movies,” signing on for upcoming sequels to JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (originally starring Fraser) and GI JOE (originally directed by Sommers).

Would they make a movie like this today? Pretty much. Two summers ago Sommers directed GI JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA, which has all different trappings but the same kind of senseless, random pile of chaotic events, and even with effects that you assume were done on a low budget until you read otherwise. I guess that’s his trademark.