Seattle’s own Phoenix Jones is not represented. I’m not sure if this was filmed before his time or if he was too mysterious to be caught on camera. They do have a couple guys from Seattle, but one is just a fat guy in a t-shirt that says “Sky Man” on it. Another one carries a bow and arrow – what the fuck are you gonna do with that, shoot an arrow at some drunk guys fighting outside a club? Phoenix Jones got in trouble just using pepper spray. I don’t know about other cities, but I feel that Seattle is not bow-appropriate.

The main subject of SUPER HEROES is a guy in San Diego called Mr. Xtreme. He’s a tubby guy with a helmet, vest and goggles covered in stickers, like the word “evil” crossed out and stuff like that. He kind of has the appearance of a mall security guard and sounds like a rejected COPS narrator as he talks about his mission to stop what he variously calls “thugs,” “bad apples,” “slime buckets,” “sleaze balls,” “villains” or “evildoers.” We see him passing out flyers for “The Xtreme Justice League” (actual slogan: “it’s not the NFL, it’s the XJL”). He talks about “what we’re doing out here today” but when pressed admits that “we” is currently only him. We later see him with a younger sidekick called Vigilante Spider, whose mouthless mask gets a wet spot from his breath or his spit or something. They don’t tell you about that in the comic books.

I will say this about Mr. Xtreme – they follow him to a Brazilian Jiujitsu competition where he’s trying to earn his blue belt. And okay, he does lose, but he does put up a fight against an opponent that looks more intimidating than him. It’s not a completely one-sided fight. So give him that at least. But if he’s scary to criminals it’s because “holy shit, who is this weirdo?” He’s not exactly the Punisher, more like a local weirdo that decides to be a crossing guard or something.

A little bit more credible is The New York Initiative, a group who live together in Brooklyn. They actually moved to New York for the crime fighting possibilities. There’s a masked woman, an angry skateboard punk and an openly gay parkour guy named Zimmer. Inside their scrappy apartment they train in martial arts and have strategy meetings, taking notes and holding clipboards.

Zimmer sort of seems to be their leader, but he’s near the back on the movie poster (second from left) because his costume looks more like a bike messenger than a batman. He says he doesn’t wear a mask because it’s important to him to be out of the closet. He talks about his first patrol on the anniversary of the death of Kitty Genovese in 1964. An animated scene shows how 38 witnesses in an apartment building failed to intervene as she was raped and killed in plain view. This seems to be a touchstone or a rallying cry for the Real Life Super Hero community – Mr. Xtreme has a picture of Genovese on his armor.

But wait a minute, we’re supposed to believe these people had had enough and had to start doing something… because of an incident that happened 15 or 20 years before they were born? And you know, from what I’ve read the legend of the 38 witnesses wasn’t true at all. That was claimed in a New York Times article but a study in 2007 found it to be false. Apparently there were really only about a dozen people who heard any part of the attack, and almost all of them didn’t realize it was an attack. I can believe this because I hear indiscernible yelling and loud noises outside of my apartment pretty much every night, and I only live in Seattle. There was also a guy who yelled out the window at the killer and scared him away, although unfortunately he later came back and attacked her in another location that was out of view.

I mean I’m not denying that there is some callousness and cowardice in the world. You see something going down maybe you just hope somebody else is gonna get involved, not you. But what they’re repeating is basically an urban legend, so it makes their super hero origin stories kinda weak. It’s like if Batman’s parents weren’t ever killed but he trained to fight crime because of a story he read in The Enquirer. Or if Harvey Dent decided to quit law because he heard about that lady who sued McDonalds just because she spilled some hot coffee on herself. He never heard the part about how it was a 79 year old woman and the coffee was served so hot she suffered third degree burns on her groin, was in the hospital for 8 days getting skin grafts and had to be treated for 2 years afterwards. Silly old gal.

Oh shit, I just got to the “In popular culture” part of the Wikipedia entry and it says that the Genovese murder was what inspired Rorschach to fight crime in Watchmen. Okay, so that explains it. Apparently it’s also mentioned in THE BOONDOCK SAINTS.

Zimmer seems very sincere about his desire to make the world a better place, but no matter how sincere they are you can’t deny there is an element of nerd play time in this. I mean they show him leaping across roof tops and doing hand stand pushups and shit, but of course none of that is ever relevant to what he does in the field. What, is he gonna chase a mugger up a fire escape and have to do a flip to catch him? No, when Zimmer actually goes on patrol all he does is dress “flamboyant” and hang out by a pay phone for hours hoping homophobes well do something to him. They don’t, but he does get to use his EMT training when an old (drunk?) dude gets clipped by a passing minivan.

That’s why I gotta respect this guy with the unimaginative name “Super Hero,” because he’s the only guy that admits he just likes to do it because it’s fun. He wears a tight uniform to showoff his giant pecs, and does the interview in front of his Corvette “The Supermobile.”

There’s another team that operates out of a tattoo parlor, those guys definitely seem more above creating elaborate masks than anything else. The leader also has a fake dreadlock wig. It’s weird, he looks way more threatening without all that shit on. I don’t know what he thinks it’s helping.

Maybe the most convincing guy is Dark Guardian. He’s a martial arts instructor with the balls to chase a much-larger-than-him drug dealer out of a park. But he only wears a motorcycle jacket, I don’t think anybody knows he’s supposed to be a super hero. Calling himself “The Dark Guardian” is clearly a detriment to his work. He even looks kind of ashamed when he says it to some beat cops, who just laugh at him.

The biggest clown in the movie is Orlando’s Master Legend, a crazy long-haired ex-hippie or rock no roller type in armor and helmet. He hits on “pretty ladies,” can’t stop pulling beers out of his “Justice Van” and stops in a bar for more alcohol and more hitting on girls. He likes to dramatically kick doors open, and on the DVD extras he punches a bunch of holes through a door while acting out some kind of cartoonish hostage rescue. It’s not clear if he was trying to pass it off as a real incident or not.

But even that nutball does serve a purpose, because he goes around giving protein bars to homeless people. This seems to be what all the “RLSH”s have figured out is a good use of their time, especially Portland’s Zeta Man and his wife/sidkick Apocalypse Meow, who spend alot of money putting together “Zeta Packs” of toiletries, socks and other useful items for the homeless. It seems to me like it’s more of a justification for their weird hobby of dress-up than it is an actual mission in life (Jesus didn’t need to dress up to do shit like that) but it doesn’t matter because the ultimate result is positive and it’s more than most of us are doing.

In one scene, Mr. Xtreme and some friends pass out food and water, supposedly while Comic-Con is going on not far away. “Are you guys from Comic-con?” a homeless woman asks. “No ma’am, we’re the real deal.”

I like this type of documentary. I have to admit it’s a freak show type appeal, I am mystified by these people and want to see them be crazy. But the filmatists are obviously sympathetic and trying to show where they’re coming from, and I do feel like I understand them more as people now even if it’s still their wackiness that I find interesting about them.

There are some sad and uncomfortable moments. In one scene Xtreme Man’s parents are helping him move out of his apartment. He tells the cameras that it’s to avoid retaliation from drug dealers and because living in his van is a better crime fighting strategy. In an easier-to-laugh-at moment Vigilante Spider talks about the life of a super hero, saying goodbye to your girlfriend before going out on patrol, etc. Asked if he really has a girlfriend, he says he meant it “metaphorically.” But that’s a rare moment where it seems like you’re supposed to be laughing at them for being nerds. Mostly it tries to give them a dignity that they sure aren’t giving themselves.

This is a well put together documentary, nicely shot, without narration. It does have shots that turn into comic book panels, a cliche I was just complaining about in my BUNRAKU review, but here the drawings are better so it works pretty well. The opening uses animation to illustrate a story that Mr. Xtreme tells about stopping a guy attacking a woman in an alley. He claims the guy got 34 years. Especially later in the movie after you’ve learned more about Mr. Xtreme it seems like the story can’t possibly be true, but he doesn’t make up any other blatant tall tales. I kinda wish they pressed him more on that story, or tried to find documentation of the alleged criminal case, but I guess that might tip this into too-uncomfortable, sweaty James Frey territory.

I feel like it gets a little repetitious in the middle section, but not too bad, and it’s a good pretty-short length for the subject. I like that it doesn’t really tell you what to think about all this. Obviously the people try to explain where they’re coming from (and you hear from a polite but not-on-board-with-this police officer too), but I felt like the filmatists left it at an appropriate question mark. Like The Riddler, from the comic books.

I was joking about this being the new DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION, but I think the comparison almost works. In a world where the punk rock of old has been popularized, commodified and turned into a Broadway musical; where you don’t even have to not know how to play instruments, because many kids can create and distribute professional sounding music using their parents’ computers; where athletes and movie stars can wear mohawks, candy-colored hair, facial piercings and tattoos without anybody blinking an eye; where the director of HATED: GG ALLIN AND THE MURDER JUNKIES’s most recent movie grossed $581,464,305 worldwide according to Box Office Mojo – none of that punk rock shit is gonna shock anybody ever. But dressing up like a cartoon and trying to put your body in front of criminals is  kind of shocking. It’s crazy in both a he’s gonna get himself killed and a that lady is wearing a Star Trek uniform to jury duty on the Whitewater trial type of way, a combination of self delusion, selflessness, extreme nerdiness and probly in some cases mental imbalance. But in all cases they either don’t care about or don’t understand what the larger society thinks about them. And that’s how they’re like the punk rockers. They live with people staring or laughing at them and it doesn’t stop them from doing it, because their way of life is more important them than other people’s opinions of them. They find self-worth in the attention they get, or family in the people they meet who do the same things as them.

So why did this never happen much before? Comic book super heroes and masked vigilantes have existed in drawing form for, what, about 80 years? And I’m sure some people have tried to “patrol” before, but why did it take this long before it was widespread enough to do a documentary like this? Did it take postmodernism? Did there have to be a generation growing up on the movies based on the comic books commenting on the older comic books those comic book makers grew up on? Or was it just the internet? Was it just that people who did this knew they could show their costumes on the internet, and when they did it inspired other people and there were enough people doing it that it became a thing you can do instead of just a common fantasy?

Or was it the related phenomenon of The Nerdening of America (and the world)? The Harry Knowleses took back the word “geek,” younger kids grew up with it as something you want to be, super heroes became more mainstream entertainment as they took over as the primary source of big summer movies, “geeks” started to run parts of the media and Hollywood, other parts of the media and Hollywood started thinking they had to cater to “geeks,” big movie stars started thinking it was important to appear at the comic books convention… did it take that world existing for people to start “fighting crime” wearing crazy masks and shit? What would’ve happened if Death Wish ripoffs were as big as Spider-man?

I don’t really know what it is that caused this, but it’s an interesting phenomenon. I can’t wait until one of these nutballs catches a serious criminal. Hopefully that happens before one of them catches a bullet.

Thanks everybody

Believe me, I’m a man who knows how to suspend the ol’ disbelief. I suspend that shit all the time. I’m about this close to banning it for life. But Jeff Bridges getting shrunk and playing games with tiny neon people who live in a city inside a computer chip is just not compatible with my brain, in my opinion.

And besides, if video games are gonna come to life then why don’t you put Pac-Man in there? I’d like to hear what Pac-Man has to say for himself.

Although a moderate success in its time, TRON has not generally received the same attention and replay as many of the other movies released in 1982, including but not limited to BLADE RUNNER, CONAN THE BARBARIAN, E.T. IS THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL, FIRST BLOOD, POLTERGEIST, PORKY’S and THE THING (in my household I could also throw in 48 HOURS, BASKET CASE, THE BEASTMASTER, CLASS OF 1984, DEATH WISH II, FRIDAY THE 13TH PART III, RICHARD PRYOR LIVE ON THE SUNSET STRIP and of course WHITE DOG).

So I never gave the thing much thought, but a couple years ago, when they showed some test-movie called “TR2N” at San Diego’s Comics Con and started talking about a sequel, my internetting colleagues all flipped their wigs and popped boners like somebody’d sent them a Special 4-disc Collector’s Edition Blu-Ray of Scott Pilgrim and Kick-Ass running a train on Prince Leia In Slave Outfit. Until then I honestly had no idea there were people who still had a thing for TRON. I know on the internet you can find people who are into just about any freaky shit anybody ever came up with, but jesus – TRON? Well, at least it’s a unique movie. I get that more than if it was KRULL.

The fans are out there in the hundreds or even one thousands, and this new latecomer sequel TRON: LEGACY has the specific tastes and obsessions of those individuals dead in its laser sights. It’s designed as an ultimate fantasy fulfillment for computer and sci-fi nerds born in the ’70s. Not only is it a sequel that reminds them of their childhood and playing video games and shit, but the hero Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund, DEATH SENTENCE) is portrayed as a kid who grows up playing TRON video games and playing with TRON action figures. The first time he gets attacked he doesn’t get scared, he gets excited that “I have a three inch version of you on my shelf!”

His dad Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) is the other main character, and he’s an arcade owner/game designer turned godlike superbeing inside a computer. Also in this computer world there are only 5 girls, but all of them are super hot and put their hands all over Sam.

So those are pretty good reasons to want to be Sam. He’s also rich, doesn’t have to work, and might be part ninja. Have you noticed how many movie heroes now days are super-rich, tax-cut-ready orphan sons of privilege who fucked around and neglected their business empires most of their lives, but then suddenly had an epiphany and fought bad guys? I guess with Batman the fucking around is just an act, but that description covers Iron Man, Green Hornet and now Sam Flynn.

Then again, this kid might’ve been travelling around the world training like Batman did. He’s expert in high speed motorcycle chase, security system hacking, camera evasion, stealth, balance, car-roof-riding and skyscraper base jumping. He can do all these things in real life, so he’ll do them well inside a computer (the reverse of the ol’ “I learned it from Playstation!” joke; see xXx, SNAKES ON A PLANE, et al).

Like the original TRON, part 2 has some intrigue going on within this computer company called Encom. Sam is majority shareholder but instead of attending meetings he breaks in, steals their new operating system and posts it online for free, to show that he has his dad’s cyberhippie anti-capitalist philosophy. I’m okay with this corniness, but could do without the bad guy executives going POLICE ACADEMY broad when they panic and don’t know what to do and start frantically pushing buttons.

Soon Sam finds his dad’s secret laboratory. He tries to get into his files and accidentally lasers himself into Trontropolis, where dad mysteriously disappeared to in 1989. I figured that was what happened in part 1, but according to my research he was not in the computer at the end of part 1. But nobody has to know because the DVD is out of print.

Everybody I know hates that Pixar movie CARS, they can’t get past this “world where there are no humans, but cars are alive” premise. Why does a car go through a metal detector? What are they searching him for? Well, yeah, that’s the joke. It’s supposed to be absurd. But the world of TRON is presented as science fiction – not real, but plausible within its own reality, right? I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be.

I guess you gotta look at it more like Alice in Wonderland than like a sci-fi story. Alice in Wonderland is “what if the Queen of Hearts was a real person, and the other cards in the deck were alive too and they were her soldiers?” And TRON is “what if you were inside a computer, and the programs in the computer were people, and the people who use computers would be their idea of God?” You gotta see it as a fairy tale or a dream, not something that, like, makes sense at all, or has logic to it. That’s the only way to play along, but I don’t got it in me I guess.

‘Cause if you allow your brain to operate during the movie it’s gonna start giving you a bunch of error messages. You’re gonna start getting a strong suspicion that none of this shit makes any sense at all. It might’ve been cute in 1982 when we didn’t have computers in our homes and pockets, and they seemed like magic wizardry, but ten or more years has passed since then (check math later) and I think if they were gonna revisit this material they probly should’ve found a way to rework it so it seemed like it made some kind of sense.

In modern versions of this type of story, like THE MATRIX, INCEPTION or even you could argue AVATAR, the physical body stays in one place while remote-controlling a surrogate (a genetically engineered blue cat person, a dream-self, a kung fu dude in a trenchcoat) within the other world (an actual jungle planet, a computer-simulation of the world, a dream). In the TRON movies though it’s not remote control – the fucking people get zapped into the fucking computer. I think.

How are we supposed to take this? Are they still made of cells? Are the streets paved with silicon? Inside “the Grid” Kevin Flynn ages, Sam Flynn bleeds, at the end (SPOILER) at least one of them gets out. It definitely doesn’t seem like their bodies got disintegrated, or that their consciousnesses were reconstituted digitally within a virtual world. It seems like they are literally supposed to be shrunk down into tiny little people who live in a city inside a computer chip. But that can’t seriously be what they mean, can it?

The Flynns are called “users”, everybody else is “programs,” they’re not made of flesh and blood. When programs get killed they explode into 3-dimensional pixel cubes. When they’re injured they have jagged pixel scars. So that means they’re computer graphics, right? Microscopic computer graphics? On a tiny little screen inside a computer chip that some tiny flesh and blood people also live in?

Flynn Sr., by the way, still eats food. He has peas and a nice roasted pig. Does this mean there are plants and animals in Trontropolis? Is there soil? Is there weather? Or do tiny people eat computer graphics? I’d like to think the flesh and blood users eat flesh and blood food. If so that means there are Tron pigs. Somebody lasered a pair of pigs into the computer, mated them, now they raise Tron pigs in little glowy pig leotards, then butcher them with neon hammers.

I guess my main question about the movie is, whuh?

This type of basic shit is never explained, and probly can’t be. But everything else about the world is explained, sometimes visually through exciting action scenes (Sam is forced to have frisbee fights and motorcycle battles like in part 1), sometimes through long explanations (various stories that might be about what happened in part 1 but I think are actually what happened between parts 1 and 2). Obviously he gets reunited with his dad, and there’s a hot young girl involved (is this my new mommy?). Their quest is to get to “the portal” so they can get out of the computer, but also they gotta stop Kevin Flynn’s younger computer doppelganger Clu from getting to the portal because he wants to enter the real world and destroy all the “imperfections,” such as the leaning tower of Pisa, that really crooked street in San Fransisco, people with disabilities, and this websight. Our quest, as viewers, is to not question how pixel people inside a computer chip can take corporeal form, because that makes an already ridiculous story seem twice as bad.

The movie is a little long for the amount of things that happen in it, and there’s not a whole lot of momentum to it. There are good moments, though, and some laughs. Bridges lets alot of The Dude through, like when he refers to some program he created as “biodigital jazz, man!”

I sort of got a kick out of the multiple uses of the old cliche of “guy with helmet covering face takes off helmet to reveal – oh shit – it’s so-and-so!” And I especially like the ol’ “he takes off his helmet, wait a minute– it’s a girl!” because usually you just see the girl from the back and then the hair falls down, in this version they give her an electronically deepened voice even though there’s no reason to hide her gender.

(on second thought, Princess Leia did that trick shortly before donning the aforementioned Slave Outfit. But this girl doesn’t get caught.)

Clu is kind of a cool idea for a villain, and at the end has a an almost touching scene with Bridges (I bet that’s the part Pixar suggested). But since he’s a CGI version of a young Bridges (or iBridges) I was constantly distracted by his dead POLAR EXPRESS eyes. As much as the computer technology has advanced since 1982 we’re still not to the point of being able to simulate Jeff Bridges’ eyes. Maybe Beau Bridges. Maybe Robert Hayes (who took over the role of STARMAN in the Tv series). Maybe even Jeff before he got the Oscar for CRAZY HEART. But for now it doesn’t work.

(It seemed like Zemeckis and Cameron both licked that eye problem in A CHRISTMAS CAROL and AVATAR respectively, but maybe if they had to do regular Jim Carrey or Sam Worthington they might’ve bungled it too. At any rate the TRON people didn’t quite pull it off.)

Also there’s a couple annoying characters that I was hoping to die sooner, especially Michael Sheen’s obnoxious club owner Castor, who thinks he’s Joel Grey or Willy Wonka or somebody, and every time they cut back to him he’s doing a little dance move or spinning his cane again.

But oh shit, do I sense a plot twist coming up? Despite these and many other major flaws, and because of these low expectations, I have to admit that I really enjoyed this movie. Not trying for shock value or contrarian points, just doing my duty and telling the God’s honest truth: this stupid fucking thing was a great movie-going experience.

I blame Daft Punk. Those are the two guys in robot masks, I’m not all that familiar with their music, but they did the score. They created a driving, hypnotic, sometimes completely bombastic score that makes the movie about three times better than it would be without it. They worked with a full orchestra I think, but are mainly using electronical sounds, deep subsonic vibrations, with hints of John Carpenter, Philip Glass and their own style of dance music. Even before it’s in the computer world you hear these how-could-this-really-be-2010 keyboard riffs… it’s good shit. And combined with generally great sound design and the Cinerama in Seattle’s system turned up real loud it almost felt like watching the music performed live. At times I could feel it on my skin and vibrating in my ribcage.

The movie is at its best when it abandons words for nothing but image and abstract sound. The action scenes, which include gladiatorial disc fights, “light cycles” and a couple chases and battles with the bad guy programs, are very exciting and weird. They combine the unique rules I sort of remember from the first one, for example, everywhere you drive with your lightcycle it leaves a solid trail, so you try to trap your opponent into crashing into that trail. That original scene still holds up as exciting, but now, no longer limited in what they can animate, they’re able to expand on it.

Great use of 3-D, too. I assume it was shot 3-D and not post-converted, because it looked really good. And using 2-D for most of the real world and 3-D for inside the computer is a nice WIZARD OF OZy gimmick to make the other place feel like it heightens your senses. This phony reality is built with layer upon layer of great art design, ’80s retro combined with futuristic sleekness, crude video displays and deliberate abstraction. It’s a world of Mac smoothness, glass surfaces, armies of men in identical, shiny armor hidden behind faceless, tinted masks and computer distorted voices, if they even talk at all.

I like it when the movie’s just being weird and asking you to go with it. Like the scene where machines on the walls open up to expel 4 gorgeous women who all walk toward Sam, their high heels perfectly in-synch and creating a beat. They strip him with lasers, give him computer armor, then perfectly walk backwards, back into their pods.

(This might damage my hard-earned reputation as a gentleman, but I have to admit I kept wondering why this kid didn’t make a move on any of these Tron ladies. They’re outnumbered by the men but it’s like EYES WIDE SHUT where they all look impossibly beautiful and glamorous. The one that lives with his dad [a mix of THE MATRIX's Trinity and BLADE RUNNER's Pris] might seem too much like a sister, or like a pet [she refers to herself as "a rescue", like his dog at home]. But I still think he should’ve gone for it. What happens on the Grid stays on the Grid, I bet.)

It’s corny, but when the filmatism is really smokin on this thing it’s like it’s intoxicating. Made me stupid, made me sit there buzzing with a dumb smile on my face. And thinking about it now I kind of want to go see it again – maybe there’s something addictive in there, that’s not fair. Visually, aurally, atmospherically it verges on “a triumph!” (please don’t put that on the ad, thanks.) It’s just some of the script and of course the entire premise of the TRON series that suck. If only they ditched the story and the real world, just threw us into this place to get shoved around and figure out how to escape, we could really have something here. During those scenes where I was able to forget about logic and just be trapped in an electronic nightmare world it felt almost like a legitimately good movie. Maybe even a great one.

I’m not trying to convince anybody this is good, and I’m not making any excuses for it. Movies should be better and make more sense than this. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing special about it to appreciate. It’s kind of comparable to SPEED RACER – I don’t want them to keep making movies like this, but as a one-off it’s a unique enough experience that I’m thankful for it.

I don’t think it’ll hold up much at home, though. If you plan to ever see this in your life, I say spring for the 3-D Imax or the loudest 3-D digital theater you know of and just let it grab you and dunk you into the world of TRON like a dude who knows where the bomb is hidden.

I believe that’s where they introduced the fact that the N’avi fuck by plugging their ponytails together. I didn’t really care about that though, I just liked seeing the movie again because I hadn’t given it much thought since the first time and I forgot how exciting it was gonna be when it gets into the big battle and all the great badass villain moments and everything. It’s no ALIENS but it’s a fun movie and a unique spectacle.

But because I enjoyed it so much that second time I think I need to give it more of a waiting period before I check out the new, longer version. I don’t want to wear out AVATAR. So now I’ll stick to something that is not AVATAR, and THIS AIN’T AVATAR, due to the title, is the only movie I could feel 100% confident was not gonna be AVATAR.

THIS AIN’T AVATAR is Hustler and director Axel Braun’s low budget re-imagining of James Cameron’s inter-species love and war epic, except with the war parts skipped over, and the half hour interludes of blowjobs and reverse cowgirl that must’ve been going on not skipped over. It’s played almost completely straight, very few noticeable jokes, and stays very faithful to a massively simplified version of the original movie.

Chris Johnson plays Jake Skulley with a sometimes-weirdly-accurate rendition of Sam Worthington’s Australian take on an American accent. As in the original Jake is our on-camera narrator and a quadriplegic soldier who has been drawn into what I guess must be called the This Ain’t Avatar Program because of his dead scientist twin brother. I thought he said the planet’s name as Pandora, just like the original, but I have read that supposedly it’s Panwhora. “The Corporation” are there to get viagratanium, a pile of chalky substance that they eat and get addicted to. But Jake says he’s heard stories of “ten foot tall naked babes with tails,” so that’s a good reason to be there too I guess.

The movie also has Grace (Sigourney Weaver’s character, but now played by Nicki Hunter [PUSSY PARTY 19: HOT SUMMER ORGY, THIS AIN'T GLEE XXX]) and gives her the same introduction, sitting up from her Avatar-pod-thing and being given a cigarette before complaining about the new soldier guy. Except the pod is not quite as fancy, in my opinion.

There are a few scenes at the beginning where the porn actors stiffly act out paraphrased versions of scenes from the original, but in a minimalistic laboratory set with a non-moving camera, so it kind of reminds me of some of those home made action movies from the Titan Books Youtube video contests. The only impressive thing seen on any of the sets is a naked chick Na’bi  (see, they changed the name of the alien race slightly, that proves that it ain’t AVATAR) seen briefly floating in a tube.

They have the scar-faced Colonel, couldn’t tell what his name was (Korinth?), but Jake describes him as “one-dimensionally dickish,” a fair enough description of the original character. Before anybody goes out into the Panwhoran jungle the Colonel receives an epic blowjob and more from one of the female soldiers. He just unzips and keeps his uniform and boots on for the entire marathon encounter. She ends up stripped down to her low cut socks, which I’m pretty sure would never be military issue, even in the future. Who was the military advisor on this thing, anyway? Geez.

Warning: if you’re not familiar with the original AVATAR this movie doesn’t really explain the concept of how the earthlings control genetically engineered Na’bi bodies to infiltrate the native culture of the planet. If you don’t want to have to watch AVATAR to be ready for this one maybe wait for the novelization to come out.

So it just jumps into the Ain’t Avatars of Jake, Grace, and the porn version of the AVATAR character of that guy that starred in HATCHET on an indoor set of a tropical rain forest. On one hand it’s pretty impressive that Hustler was able to create or get access to a set like this for pornographical purposes, on the other hand the camera doesn’t move from this little part it’s fixed on. It’s obviously a very small set so it reminded me of a Sid and Marty Kroft show a little bit. Or HATCHET.

But I’m ignoring the real achievement here, and the only reason why this movie is worth noting: this is a porn scene with three characters in full body blue alien makeup. The real AVATAR of course used groundbreaking computerings to create these creatures, this ain’t groundbreaking but they did elaborate latex effects on their faces to give the Na’bi the facial features of the Na’vi.

Obviously the big question here is how are they gonna fuck without smearing blue all over each other? According to a Hustler press release they “used an alcohol-based paint so that it wouldn’t sweat or rub off during the film’s most important scenes.” They go on to brag that they used more than 40 bottles of the makeup and that they cost more than $50 a bottle, so “you can imagine what kind of finances went into airbrushing the actors blue!” Well, I got a calculator so I’m going with more than $2000. I’m not sure how well that backs up the much-repeated claim that this is the most expensive production Hustler has ever done, but it’s a good gimmick to say that. I like it.

Anyway, the paint seems to work. In this first Na’bi sex scene Grace has on her human style clothes (including G-string) which she removes to reveal the blue skin beneath, all done in one shot. Not because it’s trying to be like CHILDREN OF MEN, but because it’s a porno. In the real movie the HATCHET guy was a somewhat neglected character, in this one he gets to bone Grace as soon as Jake wanders off to investigate a sound. “One trigger happy marine on this force is too many. Besides, we don’t really need him here, do we?” (cue making out)

Now, I don’t want to disappoint anybody, and this may be a huge sticking point for some people, but I think the public has a right to know: the dicks are not blue. The dicks are regular flesh colored. I guess they didn’t want to risk ingestion. But otherwise the paint seems to cover everything. Toward the end of the scene it looked to me like some of the blue was smearing off of Grace’s chin, but I’m not positive.

Like I said, I saw that first extended AVATAR, so I know the Na’vi bone via ponytail. So I was thinking at first that the use of genitals in this scene was proof that this indeed AIN’T AVATAR. But as the story progresses it becomes clear that this is all accounted for. These are not Na’bi, they’re humans in Na’bi bodies, so they enjoy blowjobs. Later, when Jake and native-Na’bi Natiri (or whatever her name is, I’m not exactly sure in the original or the porn version) meet she says “This is how we connect” and shows the ponytail thing. But Jake says “This is how the sky people connect” and whips out his johnson. You could assume it’s like BARBARELLA and she’s being taught the old fashioned earth way to make love and enjoying it, but I don’t know man, it seems like she knows what to do without hesitation. She even spits on it, so they must have DVD players and porn in the jungle there somewhere, I don’t care how down with Hometree they are.

(by the way, no sign of a This Ain’t Hometree in this. So if you were hoping for a giant dick called Bonetree you’ll have to wait for part 2.)

There’s not a whole big army of Na’bi, but there’s a couple of them. Jake chases the girl through a sort of half-assed black light jungle area before confronting the tribal leaders. He defends himself by saying “You don’t understand, I was just chasing a piece of tail.” Speaking of which, the tails he mentions in the opening do not seem to exist, and the Na’bi might not actually be ten feet tall either, depending on your interpretation of the human girl who fucks a Na’bi guy and seems proportionately appropriate. I choose to believe that she is also ten feet tall, but you may think otherwise. She’s involved in the most ambitious sex scene, the traditional Na’bi “Feast of Souls” orgy of three couples going at it, 5 out of 6 of them in full body (except for penis) makeup. Actually, the one with the human partner looks like he might have blue junk. It’s hard to tell sometimes because the lighting is pretty dark.

I’m sure it’s difficult for these women to perform such involved blowjobs while wearing full makeup appliances, so to make it easier they have two non Na’bi sex scenes. The other one besides the Colonel is when Jake gets into trouble and they can’t wake up his real body in the pod. Grace goes into ER mode yelling doctor things like “Get his vitals up, now!” as she undoes his pants and starts emergency blowing and jerking him.

I would never say this if it wasn’t true, but to be honest I fast-forwarded through most of the sex scenes. So if I missed any important dialogue I apologize. Every once in a while I’d stop to check but I would just hear jungle bird noises in the background.

The story continues past what happens in AVATAR, since the entire battle is summarized in narration, and there’s some kind of twist ending that I didn’t get.

(HUGE SPOILERS COMING UP)

(THAT IS NOT A DICK JOKE, THIS IS A SINCERE WARNING THAT I’M ABOUT TO GIVE AWAY THE VERY END OF THIS AIN’T AVATAR)

FIrst there’s a sign that says “Hustler Casino Coming Soon” (a joke about the Na’vi being based on Native Americans, I think) and Jake yells “Noooo! Damn you! Damn you dirty Na’bi!” before an off screen monster roar. Hopefully they won’t have to wait the four years until AVATAR 2 to do their sequel. But I hear Cameron’s is gonna have some underwater scenes, and Hustler might need a few years to figure out how to do the cheaper porno version of that.

Obviously you can’t exactly re-create the most expensive movie of all time on a porn budget, but I like all the little things they do to copy it. For example the end credits are a helicopter shot over rain forests and what not. Not bad. Also, they shot and released it in 3-D. Unfortunately the red and blue 3-D they use on home video still looks like garbage. They tried some gimmicky shots like holding things out to the camera and stuff, but it didn’t look 3-D to me at all and I didn’t want to spend alot of time experimenting since it’s a rental and I don’t know where these glasses have been.

Of course, Hustler takes a note from the Cameron playbook and argues for subtle, not-cool uses of 3-D. Rob Smith, director of operations for Hustler Video boasts, “Characters aren’t seemingly jumping out at you and there’s no need to watch the film in fear that something — or someone — might hit you at any time. That’s not the kind of movie we made. We made a film, where, when you’re watching it in 3-D, everything just seems to come alive. It has dimension, depth, and the sense that you could literally walk in to the frame at any second.” [and get fucked by a blue monster with braids]

There’s a pretty big market for porn parodies these days. A few of the ones that have been done in recent years include STAR TREK, STAR WARS, MAD MEN, THE OFFICE, 30 ROCK, BIG LOVE, TRUE BLOOD, TWILIGHT, THE COSBY SHOW, THE BREAKFAST CLUB, FRIDAY THE 13TH and THE BIG LEBOWSKI (supposedly a really well made one). There’s a very impressive-looking porn version of the Adam West BATMAN tv series, which is funny to me because the porn version beat the actual show to DVD. I’m still waiting for THIS AIN’T THE MACNEIL LEHRER NEWS HOUR or THIS AIN’T DIAGNOSIS MURDER, but most other topics have been covered.

I’m sure the covers are probly funnier than the movies. I miss the parody titles, though. If EDWARD PENISHANDS were made today it would be called THIS AIN’T EDWARD SCISSORHANDS or worse, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS: THE XXX PARODY. Makes you worry about this generation being too lazy, but I guess they put alot of work into dressing up the porn actors as the characters for the covers, so I can’t be too harsh. There is some elbow grease involved, obviously. (not a type of lube, by the way. It means effort. Look it up on your iPad or whatever, young people)

I haven’t actually watched many of these parodies, but I think they’re more interesting and mysterious when they’re like this, marketed as a parody but not coming across like they’re really trying to be funny. This might actually be a smart thing because as I noted in my original AVATAR review there is probly a small segment of society who seriously gets off on the idea of sex with these blue cat people. I was thinking more of the regular-sized-man-fucking-giant-cat-woman angle, which is neglected in this, but if somebody just gets off on the cat people this is gonna be a hell of a Christmas for that person. Congratulations, Avatar fetishists. I’m genuinely happy for you.

In fact, Hustler might not realize it, but this is a part of the Nerdening of America, as this generation of “geeks” and fandom and Saturday morning TV brains takes over, turning everything into franchises and brands and rebrands and references, and as the internet and supercable make entertainment much more specialized. Porn was not just ahead of the game technologically but also conceptually. They’ve always known niche marketing, because it’s hard to make a porno that’s gonna please people across a broad spectrum, like a Pixar movie. Instead they make movies for people who are into Asians or blondes or feet or stepping on bugs or three-ways where one of the girls wears glasses and the other one has two different colors of eyes. That’s easy to do on the cheap but now Hustler is saying shit, let’s throw some money at some of these, do it up right. If Disney will spend a hundred million to please the very small segment of society who believes that the movie TRON is awesome then why shouldn’t Hustler try spending $2,000 on blue paint for the people who want to fuck the aliens from AVATAR?

I mean it’s pretty cool, I’m not trying to be condescending. It’s not my thing, but I’m glad somebody is getting treated to their impossible dream.

There have already been porn movies based on James Cameron pictures, including THE SPERMINATOR, THE ASS-BYSS, BI-TANIC and of course GHOSTS OF THE ASS-BYSS, his 3-D Imax documentary about exploring the wreckage of the Bi-tanic. Admittedly I made up 50% of those titles, but the other two are real. Unfortunately they were not done by this same director who did THIS AIN’T AVATAR, so there’s no alternate universe James Cameron who does all the same movies but as pornos. But there are a few parallels.

Who is this director Axel Braun, who ain’t James Cameron? While he doesn’t seem to be nearly as talented as Cameron his official websight makes him sound full of himself like people say about Cameron. According to his biography, Braun (the son of old timey porno guy Lasse Braun) “received a priveleged upper-class upbringing, studying the Classics and learning five languages,” is “a proud member of MENSA” (unlike you and I, who are embarrassed members of MENSA), and spent years researching female ejaculation after reading about the G-spot in the Sorbonne in 1982. The movie THE FOUR FEATHERS inspired him to direct at the age of 7, but it wasn’t until 1997 that he fulfilled that dream by directing THE ADVENTURES OF THE G-MAN, which earned him “an incredible notoriety for being able to make all women ejaculate with his hands.” His series SQUIRTING 101 “single-handedly trigger[ed] the Adult Industry’s squirting-frenzy.”

Like Cameron, Braun knows what it’s like to struggle on an ambitious project that seems troubled but that he really believes in. He spent 8 months of 2000 creating G-SPOT CONFIDENTIAL, his bid for an AVN Award. It was shot in L.A., Dallas, Paris, Prague and London, but in Europe the footage was seized by customs and he was charged with obscenity. So he took “a 4-month voluntary hiatus” to race cars. I guess this is his equivalent to Cameron when he won best picture for TITANIC and then spent years just doing 3-D Imax documentaries about underwater exploration.

"November 2002: Axel insures his hands with the Lloyd's of London for $2,000,000 each. It’s a publicity stunt that brings him tons of press, and people start talking more and more about female ejaculation."

Or maybe 2003’s COMPULSION was his TITANIC. I don’t think it’s a parody of the great Leopold and Loeb-based movie, but if it is I’d like to see what they did with Orson Welles’s legendary anti-death penalty court room speech. According to the websight Braun’s COMPULSION was “an incredible undertaking, with a budget of almost $200,000″ and was nominated for 13 AVN Awards, almost tying TITANIC’s number of nominations for Oscars (the mainstream equivalent of the AVN Award).

We’ll have to wait and see if THIS AIN’T AVATAR can match TITANIC’s record, but if not Braun has plenty of other ambitious projects to be proud of or excited for. He produced the Batman one and apparently is working on a version of GREASE which includes five song and dance numbers. I don’t know if AVN voters are as much of suckers for musicals as the Oscar voters, but I bet they’ll be impressed.

I hear a squirting-frenzy rumbling outside so I should probly bring this thing to a close. In conclusion, if you want to masturbate to or fast-forward through hardcore Na’vi type sex scenes (especially if the felatio and the reverse cowgirl are your favorites, since those seem to be what Panwhorans are most into) this movie will be the greatest thing that ever happened to you. Or if you just want to own two pairs of red-and-blue 3-D glasses that say “This Ain’t Avatar XXX” on them then I would recommend a purchase of this for that reason also.

Well, there are a couple weird touches. For some reason Samuel L. Jackson’s villain character, The Octopus, talks about eggs all the time. Seriously, he just keeps bringing them up – “I beat you like an egg,” “I don’t have egg on my face,” etc. etc. It’s worse than Tarantino’s obsession with feet. Also there’s a part where SPY KIDS style home computer effects depict a little tiny head attached to a foot that hops around on a table in front of him and he keeps saying it’s “plain damn weird.” I kind of wish writer/director Frank Miller was in the theater to experience the uncomfortable silence as the scene milked the “joke” over and over again for a couple minutes, clearly convinced it was hilarious.

The story involves a mysterious super hero dude called The Spirit who sort of helps the cops and gets in a fight with Sam Jackson and gets a toilet broken over his head. But the Octopus implies there is a secret that ties their pasts together, and then everybody dresses up like nazis and kills a cat. Also the Spirit’s childhood girlfriend is back in town trying to steal the same treasure that would give the Octopus super powers or I don’t know, who gives a shit. Not me and not you, I guarantee you.

Scarlett Johansen plays a sexy nurse or secretary who works for Jackson and drives him around. I like the girl but she has no idea how to handle this dialogue and comes off like an idiot. Eva Mendes does the same thing but, let’s be honest, that’s what she’s known for. The police commissioner is played by the dad from the Wonder Years. I guess if I had to choose the best performance it would be this dude Gabriel Macht who plays the Spirit. He’s kind of like Casper Van Dien might be after hanging out with George Clooney for a month. He does his best to embody the spirit of, you know, whatever this thing is supposed to be. (that’s not a pun by the way, it’s a coincidence.)

Some of the shots look kind of cool as individual stylized images, but this is clearly the work of an amateur director. There’s just no sense of pacing, acting or storytelling. It’s all the problems of SIN CITY without many of its strengths. It’s Robert Rodriguez’s cheesy tendencies without his natural born filmatist skills.

I guess I can sort of in concept admire Miller’s dedication to his own stupid idea of what’s cool. At least he doesn’t try to copy what other people are doing that actually is cool. It’s pretty ballsy to start out the movie with a personification of death named Lorelei and a long, melodramatic voiceover monologue about the city being the hero’s special lady friend. It’s a metaphor I just summed up in an overly generous 8 words – he stretches it on for a couple minutes, and then returns to it again at the end of the movie. “She is my mistress. My lover. My damsel. My lady. My fuckfriend. My booty call. My one and only love. I wrap my arms around her streets and run my fingers through her glistening chimneys. She is my city; the only one I would go down on. Ordinarily I’m not into that but for her, I would do anything. Sorry Meat Loaf.” (paraphrase)

In the early ’90s there was a small spate of these retro, defiantly cornball super hero movies, trying to partially modernize these old Saturday morning serial characters but also recapture whatever it was people might’ve liked about them back then, or something. So you had THE ROCKETEER, THE SHADOW and THE PHANTOM. All very flawed but also kind of fun. I especially liked THE PHANTOM where Billy Zane had the balls to wear a bright purple super hero outfit and ride around on a white horse in the jungle protecting African treasure from colonialists. I guess the Spirit looks more like the Shadow, but he’s that type of defiantly old school super hero – a dude in a fedora, tie and Kato mask. He’s a former cop who has mysteriously become immune to gun shots, so he decides to become a vigilante and a spy for the police force. Apparently his crimefighting mainly consists of clumsily jumping across roofs and stopping two pursesnatchers.

Okay, so let’s say you accept the cornball retro super hero deal. Now can I interest you in a SIN CITY hypermacho hard boiled noir thing also? I hope so, because The Spirit is gonna constantly narrate and flashback and talk tough about “broads.” When he disappoints his girlfriend by hitting on another woman right in front of her she will say “You bastard!” but then secretly smile to herself because she thinks it’s adorable that he treats her like human garbage. I’m sure all of America will love the retro super hero/chauvinism combo but just to appeal to a wider audience let’s mix in some juvenile humor like cartoon sound effects during fights, pants falling down and some wacky mentally deficient clones who wear t-shirts with their names written in bubbly cartoon font. That way we’re hitting all the bases of all the greatest things that make movies awesome. Mask, broads, pants falling down. Home run.

It’s all a bunch of tributes to obsolete entertainment styles that don’t mix that well. Didn’t we (those elite few of us) sort of like The Phantom because he was such an old fashioned boy scout? Would it really make it better if he was wearing that purple suit but lived in an exaggerated cartoon of a black and white city and there was blood everywhere? I don’t think those are great tastes that taste great together, necessarily. Maybe in the nerd world of comic books people are more accepting of this fetishistic nostalgia passing for a story because they expect less from reading a pamphlet for ten minutes than from paying ten bucks and 90 minutes to watch a production that took a year and millions of dollars to make and doesn’t have another installment coming for at least 2 years.

And maybe that’s part of the problem, is that those other movies I mentioned looked like they spent alot of money and time on them. This thing would be really impressive if some dude made it in his house and put it on Youtube, but for a major studio motion picture released in theaters it looks bargain basement. Not even bargain basement, more like garage sale. It’s suspiciously lacking in establishing shots, it always seems like it’s in closeup because they only have a 3′x3′ piece of brick wall background to put behind somebody’s head. It seems like it’s always CGI snowing but there’s rarely snow on the ground. They must’ve been real excited about a snow effects filter they had on their laptop.

The thing I really couldn’t figure out is Miller’s obsession with fuckin Converse All Stars. I think him and Will Smith’s character in I, ROBOT are the only people in the world who think Converse are all that fascinating to look at. I mean here is a guy wearing a suit, trenchcoat and fedora, and fuckin Chuck Taylors. It’s like those dudes who wear a suit and tie but then jeans instead of slacks, and that’s supposed to show that they’re laid back. It just looks silly but Miller is so proud of it that throughout the movie he does a special effect where the soles of the shoes are stark black and white like a xerox. So it draws your eye.

I don’t get it man, those aren’t even good footwear to be jumping roofs in, the soles are so flimsy and the traction’s no good. Plus, it’s such an outmoded stupid visual cliche for a cartoon character to be wearing Chucks. Here are a few other cartoon characters who wear Converse:

(I would’ve included a picture of the Spirit for comparison, but I can’t find any online that show his shoes. I guess the marketing people agreed with me on that one.)

THE SPIRIT is not so muçh a disaster as a miscalculation, a naive assumption that because people liked SIN CITY that they would also like whatever other stupid crap this same guy tried to do in the same style.

You know what it is, man? It’s nerd overreach. It’s like when one political party takes over the whole government. They start to get cocky. They lose track of reality. They go too far, so far even the people originally on their team get mad. The Nerdening of America may have reached that point.

I truly believe that my associate Harry Knowles and many of his colleagues and competitors have transformed western culture. As recently as the ’80s and ’90s being a nerd or geek was not something anybody would want to admit to themselves. They were the lowest of low, the socially awkward, the uncool. With the rise of the internet though came the rise of “geek culture,” and slowly these people reclaimed the word, turned it into a badge of honor. (I wonder if in 20 years people will proudly call themselves douchebags?)

Guys like Harry and Moriarty started to interview writers and directors and to some extent measure their worth based on if they knew about comic books or collected movie posters or some shit. We’re all used to these articles about, “Trust me, this is one of the good guys! He’s a geek like us, he knew everything about TRON, he has a tattoo of J.R.R. Tolkien on his calf, he has it in his will that a Mexican lobby card of KRULL will be burned and mingled with his ashes.” And people on the internet would become protective of these “geek” filmatists and their projects, hype them up on their websights and postings, petition the studios, force their nerd views into the conventional wisdom. The Nerd Panthers.

As their generation took over the media and entertainment industries the types of movies, TV shows and children’s comic books that nerds love became more widely accepted into the mainstream culture. Now magazines, TV shows and marketing firms try to reach out to “geeks.” They seem superstitious about the geek acceptance much like republicans going after that evangelical vote. In the last year Entertainment Weekly has done cover stories or entire issues on the San Diego Comics Convention, the Watchmen movie, Dark Knight, Iron Man and probaly other ones I’ve forgotten about. And in their endless chasing of zeitgeist tail they end up believing these “fanboys” as they call them might be right and they better be covering all this shit from a “we’re geeks just like you” perspective.

So when Robert Rodriguez made his movie based on the SIN CITY comic book, the table was set for him to try a pretty ridiculous experiment: why not, instead of taking this book and telling the same story as it fits best into the medium of film, dress up a bunch of dudes in Halloween costumes and have them awkwardly re-enact the exact drawings and every last word of the comic book using cheesy low budget special effects to make actual photographs into a limp imitation of black and white ink drawings? And in fact why don’t I quit the director’s guild so that they’ll allow me to have the guy who drew the pictures stand on set with me and credit him as co-director? Nerds always complain about comic book movies not being faithful to the source material, why not make the first ever UNCOMFORTABLY FAITHFUL comic book movie? It’s just so stupid it might work!

And I guess it did kind of work. I forgive SIN CITY its many shortcomings because at least it was an original thing to try, and I thought they were pretty good pulp stories, alot of it worked for me even though it looked like dudes standing in front of greenscreens, which in my opinion is exactly what it was. But if I may make some constructive criticism of the geek lobby – please don’t take this as racist against geeks, some of my best friends have glasses – the motherfuckers are way too god damn literal. Always talking about faithfulness and canonical this and the original that. I understand being a purist but I think some of these guys are sort of obsessive compulsive about it, they focus on one meaningless detail and miss the whole picture. For example I swear to Christ (and Christ will back me up on this I’m sure) there was a dude in the Chud comments on a story about a rumored “reboot” of the BLADE series, and he said he would see it if they went back to the original source material and used wood weapons instead of silver. To him it was the material that the weapons were made of that was interesting to him in that particular story.

What I’m saying is maybe SIN CITY is a pretty good movie that gets a little too much credit just for being literal about adapting the comic strip. That maybe Nerd America is too willing to accept literalness in place of actual cinematic quality. Unfortunately I can’t test that theory because this one is done in the same phoney greenscreen style as SIN CITY, but apparently the comic strip isn’t so much like that. So of course nerds want Frank Miller’s heart on a Lord of the Rings limited edition sword replica with certificate of authenticity for not being faithful. Okay, fine, but another reason to hate this is it’s a terrible fuckin movie. No need to get into the specifics of the adaptation.

If you must watch it, do it in a safe place surrounded by supportive friends.

[ratings]

But you remember how TREKKIES seemed like it was trying to be respectful and non-exploitative of the fans, but the people they found were just so fuckin over the top that it didn’t work? You know, like halfway through the interview with the guy dressed as a woman that he says is the never shown on screen wife of a minor astrounaut character for one episode, they figured “Ah, fuck it, we can’t make a respectful documentary about these lunatics. Let the freak show begin.” Well this is not like that. This is more like a rejected VH-1 special.

The movie has sort of an overview of the writing and publishing of the books, how they got popular and then just a bunch of interviews with the stars of the movies talking about how they hope the movies give people hope and believe in theirselves or whatever. Some of this stuff is actually pretty interesting. They interview David Carradine and at first you’re thinking okay, yeah, let’s see what the guy from KUNG FU thinks about Lord of the Rings, I guess. Er– huh? Then you find out that in the ’70s when he heard there was a LORD OF THE RINGS movie being made he called up the studio trying to get in on that, but they told him it was gonna be animated. He claims he was a fan of Ralph Bakshi but actually went and tried to talk him out of doing it as a cartoon.

Also there’s a part in here where they claim the Beatles tried to make a LORD OF THE RINGS movie, first with David Lean and then with Stanley Kubrick. Ain’t that a bitch? They act like this means the Beatles would’ve starred in it but I’m betting they just wanted to fund it like HOLY MOUNTAIN. I mean how would you do LORD OF THE RINGS starring the Beatles? On the other hand Ringo would’ve been good as those two fuckup hobbits that get stuck in a tree for most of the trilogy.

Unlike TREKKIES this doesn’t have profiles of nutbag freakos who wear wizard hats to work and are trying to get surgery to turn into a giant talking eagle. You bet your ass those people are out there but these “Ringers” are just people who came into a little booth at some comic book convention or other and talk to the camera about how “AWESOME” Lord of the Rings is. The closest thing to a lunatic is some lady who claims she sold her house to go to the premiere of RETURN OF THE KING STARRING VIGGO MORTENSEN. But she seems like a normal lady and at least she got to go to New Zealand. I heard it’s pretty there this time of year.

They try to act like the fans interviewed are at some big LORD OF THE RINGS related event, but I’m guessing it was more of a generalized nerdfest. Unless it is normal to dress up like Pirates of the Caribbean at a Lord of the Rings festival. Anyway, you can only watch so many earnest people in costumes professing their profound love for Lord of the Rings before it gets old. And by “so many,” I mean one.

One of the few enjoyably uncomfortable moments here is when a teenage girl tells Elijah Wood the thrilling tale of the time she saw him in FLIPPER and said “Oh my god he’s so hot” and then checked the credits to see what his name was. But that’s just teenybopper shit, that’s not true obsession. The only truly great moment in the whole thing is when a little kid talks about his favorite villain in the movies (I couldn’t tell which one he was talking about) but says if he saw him in real life he’d “just kick him in the weiner.”

The style of the movie is inexcusable. For a while, all the segments start out with some “funny” little cartoon with wacky sound effects. There is a cheeseball score that sometimes makes you think you’re watching Access Hollywood. Some of the history is illustrated with fake black and white archival footage. Okay it’s harmless here but let’s just not do that in a documentary, asshole. Worse, they illustrate each decade since the publishing of the books with fake stock footage of young people sitting around in ridiculous “Hippie” Halloween costumes (or whatever cliche best represents the decade in question) pretending to read the Lord of the Rings books to each other. Which is of course what everybody did in the ’60s, drop acid and sit around in a bedroom READING to each other. This is pretty much the worst thing I’ve ever seen in a documentary, ever. Including G.G. Allin shoving a banana up his ass.

There are alot of things I could suggest that these filmatists could’ve done. First of all, erase all the tapes of everything they shot and fire the animator. Then don’t ever make the movie. Short of that, they could’ve at least done the Billy Boyd interview at a SEED OF CHUCKY press junket, sitting in front of the SEED OF CHUCKY poster. That would’ve been kind of funny.

Also, the entire movie could’ve been about David Carradine’s adventures, going around asking for roles in movies or trying to talk people out of making movies. Maybe he could tell some stories about the making of CIRCLE OF IRON. Shit, EVEN if he had to stick to the topic of Lord of the Rings, this guy is clearly more interesting than most of what’s in the movie. You gotta learn to let shit happen in a documentary, don’t force it. In other words, leave the camera rolling on Carradine. See what unfolds. Don’t worry, you’ll have time to do more montages of dudes dressed up like orks later on.

The thing I don’t get is, why does these fan groups have to have names? I doubt anybody really uses the word “ringers,” but I know for a fact that there is a name for people who like SERENITY, two names for people who like STAR TREK, one for kids who wear evil clown makeup. What’s the deal, man? Can’t you just be a guy that liked the Lord of the Rings books? Do you really gotta have a name for it? What if you like more than one thing, how the fuck are you supposed to identify yourself? David Carradine says he likes that shit, you don’t see him going around calling himself names. Come on man get with the program.

Anyway this movie is a lemon. It’s one of those movies strictly for the people who actually appear in the movie. Except the FLIPPER girl, she probaly doesn’t want to see that shit again. Anyway, I say don’t bother watching this one, even if it is an extra on a DVD that you find for free in the bushes.

[ratings]

Like

Unlike

Anyway, Laremy gives me a heads up on alot of these, and he has a pretty good track record. He told me about 40 Year Old Virgin, he warned me that Lord of War was not as good as hoped, and a couple other ones. So I took him seriously when he said “SERENITY will be HUGE. Nice flick, nice laughs, nice action, well done all the way around. Summer Glau is highly doable as well.” When I asked him if that was that one space ship movie he got a little more thoughtful and warned not to get too excited because “it’s better with no expectations, like peyote.”

Well I gotta agree with Laremy again although I’m not sure which one it was that somebody was gonna “do.” This is a well put together space movie, all made out of familiar elements but not feeling like your typical hollywood space picture you would expect to see in a theater these days. The story is about the crew of one medium sized spaceship (a little smaller than Hans Solo’s ship) which is called Serenity. That is why the movie is also called Serenity, it is the name of the spaceship. Anyway there’s maybe 7 or 8 people on this ship but the important ones are 1. the captain, who will serve as our rogueish hero and 2. a babbling/maybe retarded teenage girl named River who is wanted by the space government because they made her into a psychic/kung fu killing machine and she may or may not know their secrets.

And then the other most important character actually doesn’t have a name for me to forget, but he is a super secret black ops type deadly assassin motherfucker who works for the space government. And he has a sword. Not a light saber, a sword. He’s trying to kill the retarded psychic but they won’t give her up on account of morals so he starts massacring everybody they know. Alot of innocent people die in this movie.

This is a weirdly old timey kind of future. Yeah they got spaceships and planets and what not but they still use bullets and knives. They punch alot. And they talk this kind of cowboy talk like “reckon” and what not. But it’s also kind of current because they still have silk screened t-shirts, vibrators and other modern conveniences, not space-ified. This is maybe the first ever non-porno space movie to have a reference to a vibrator. Unless I missed something in 2001.

Also this story is based on the civil war, only in space, and not about slavery, so the south are the good guys. The captain and another member of the crew were veterans of the war, on the losing side, before they became smugglers or whatever it is they do now when not running from the nameless space assassin sword guy.

I like the idea behind this movie because it’s real different from the STAR pictures. Unlike STAR WARS it’s not a huge epic. No princesses or chosen ones. I admit they do take on the government and accomplish something big, but they really do seem like regular space joes. They just stumble upon it. And it’s not like STAR TREK because the “federation” (I think it’s called the alliance here) is the bad guys. Not comic book Darth Vader bad guys but bureaucratic government asshole bad guys. The movie does a good job of explaining this with the opening narration which tells about the war between the civilized worlds and the savage outer rim planets. And then you realize the narration is biased, it’s a history lesson being told to a classroom of rich kids. And history is written by the victors. Stupid victors.

Also, the heroes aren’t goodie two shoes. They shoot first, they like to kill, and they start off the movie by pulling a payroll job. They’re the heroic criminal types, which is one of my favorite types.

And maybe the most surprising thing for a modern sci-fi movie: not a single alien! Everybody is human earthlings that speaks English and Chinese. They do got these bastards called Reevers though, named after Keanu Reeves I believe. They’re roving bands of self mutilating cannibal rapist space savages. They’ve gone completely crazy so not only do they rape and pillage and eat people alive, they decorate their space ships with body parts and they roar like snorks. Or whatever those inbred troll guys in Lord of the Rings were called.

So you got some genuine threats in here. I don’t think anybody ever had to worry about getting raped in space before, although that Harvey Keitel robot in SATURN 3 was a real pervert and I didn’t trust him. Anyway there’s lots of tension which is good for a movie that is basically a series of chases. It’s a well paced movie with a good build escalating into a fun action/character climax.

But more importantly you got some good characters, likable and reluctantly heroic, played by good actors you never seen in anything before, except one guy I think was on Barney Miller. It’s a little bit scarier than a STAR WARS picture but it’s light-hearted and has some funny lines I think, although I’m not totally sure because of the trenchcoat wearing ponytail motherfuckers in the audience laughing over every god damn punchline cause they’d already seen the fuckin thing 3 times earlier in the day.

Which brings me to what and why it’s all Laremy Legel’s fault. Actually, it’s Laremy’s fault I saw the movie but in truth this one’s on me. Laremy gave me a chance. I could’ve seen it with a safe group of critics you never heard of before. But no, I had to stand up on some abstract outlaw critic code of honor, I had to pay money to see it myself. On opening night. With nerds. Stupid bastard.

You see, I’d rather not go into it because they explain it in every review, but it turns out SERENITY is based on a failed tv show. Actually nobody could miss this fact because it’s the whole emphasis of the advertising. “The cult phenomenon beloved by millions” I believe is how how some breathless narrator described it on the trailer. I checked imdb – this filmatist worked on shows like BUFFY THE VAMPIRE and ROSEANNE, so I guess that’s where he gets the fanatic following. The newspaper ads are all about how now YOU can be A PART OF the NEW SCIENCE FICTION PHENOMENON. You will be able to tell your grandchildren that YOU WERE THERE, you saw SERENITY. Fuck the Berlin Wall coming down this is god damn SERENITY. The cult phenomenon beloved by millions.

I thought that was just some pathetic horse shit cooked up by some marketing wackos, but then I waited in line to see this movie. I ain’t seen a collection of nerds like this in years, and that includes Star Wars 3 and the time the International Math, Chess, Video Game, Role Playing, Rennaissance Fair, Lord of the Rings, Robots, Virginity and Matrix Convention came to town. To be fair there were no sword fights, but there were many costumes, pins, novelty hats, suspenders, home made t-shirts. They say if you’re going to see Skynyrd or whoever, you don’t wear the band’s t-shirt to the show. Not the case with SERENITY. You want people to know you fucking know. Alot of people were talking about how many times they’d seen it already and whether or not there were enough people in the line. I got a sense they were doing their part for humanity, voting with their dollars by seeing the movie as many times as they could take. I’m sure they’re nice people (they passed around pizza) but I can’t quite comprehend these evangelist types. They have a dream for their children and grandchildren, and that dream is SERENITY PART 2. I mean I guess I would understand if it was DIE HARD. Or BLADE. Or GHOST DOG. I mean that would be different. But this space shit–

I don’t know. Maybe if it was THE LIMEY or POINT BLANK. LONE WOLF AND CUB. The MARIACHI series. Maybe KILL BILL. Something with DMX. Or anything with Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, Bruce Lee or Toshiro Mifune.

Oh my God, I think I almost do understand now. I better stop thinking about this before it’s too late.

I consider myself a brave man but more than once I found myself eyeing the fire exit. I was planning my escape and it wouldn’t have been a daring one like in the movie, it would’ve been more like when Old Dirty Bastard fled the hospital without checking out.

Inside the theater was worse. There was a singalong of a folk song about the characters. There was people trying to talk in space cowboy talk. There was a trailer for DOOM, the new movie by the director of CRADLE 2 THE GRAVE, and these people were laughing harder than I’ve ever head anybody laugh, ever. It was like laughing gas was being pumped in through the A/C vents and only I was immune. I thought, are these assholes belittling my man The Rock? Until I realized that DOOM is based on an old videogame, and between this audience literally hundreds of thousands of hours of DOOM had been played. It’s a video game thing, I wouldn’t understand.

When the movie started it was troubling too because everybody would laugh HARD at every god damn thing anbyody said, often before they said it. It was like a movie with a laugh track. And no matter how good a movie is it’s hard to watch with a group of people that are clearly enjoying it WAY more than you are. I guess they love these characters and want to show their support. It’s an image projected onto a flat surface using light, though. I don’t think they can hear you. I could be wrong.

The director of this movie, who must get around because they all seem to be on a first name basis with him, I think he hates these people too. Because he makes sure some of their favorite characters get it bad. But he does appreciate them enough to make a decent movie for them. That is a sure sign of respect because I’m sure he could’ve just done a movie of himself taking a crap (in space) and they would’ve still gone to see it more than once. To support him.

Anyway I’m not trying to belittle these freakos. Like I always say, don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want them to do to The Rock. They are obviously happy. Very, very, happy. All I’m trying to say is, those ads are no joke. I didn’t pick up on it until it was too late, but those ads are a warning to non-members. See this movie, but for God’s sake not on the opening weekend. Believe me, you don’t want to be a part of this science fiction phenomenon/cult/beloved etc. You just want to see the movie and then go home.

*If you are googling Laremy please understand that he’s a nice guy and should not be associated with my anti-social behavior, etc. just because my review came up when you typed in his name. I don’t like having to change my review because of you judgmental potential employers, landlords and stalkers. I vouch for Laremy, or don’t vouch for him, whichever is more impressive to you. If you need a letter of recommendation or something let me know.

[ratings]