From time to time we come across things on the periphery of gaming, or even outside of the subject all together, that we think would still be of interest to our readers and post them here with the tag “Splash Damage”. Movies are one of the subjects that frequently finds its way on to the pages of GameAlmighty with that tag and one of last year’s movies I was most anxious to watch and then review here came and went before I had a chance to see it in theaters. The film I missed tells the timeless tale of two cultures in conflict. One is comprised of a dark-skinned race of people who are misunderstood and are being exploited by another group who considers themselves superior. In an attempt to gain total control the second group hatches a plot that takes advantage of medical science and uses the enemy’s own bodies against themselves. They also lie to one of the males and trick him into working as their inside man in order to keep the peace and prevent larger-scale violence and destruction.
While it sounds like I may be describing Avatar, that’s actually the plot of a different movie mentioned more than a time or two on our sister site, InfoAddict. The smaller independent film I am referring to is Black Dynamite and it had so limited a release for such a short span of time that I never could find it playing anywhere close at a time where I could make it.
James Cameron was greeted by two fans at the Arlington Theater yesterday, each dressed as Na’Vi and claiming they weren’t from Pandora, but from one of the moons of Pandora. This prompted Cameron to say:
“I can’t say anything about the other moons and the Polyphemus system because that’s top secret because they are going to appear in the sequel.“
I just suffered through one of the worst movies I have seen in a long time. I wasn’t planning on writing anything about it; I was just going to let it pass and hide my shame for even having voluntarily seen the film because I should have known better. However the filmmakers appear to have a huge marketing budget that they’re using to push the damn movie relentlessly through posters at every bus stop and an ad during every commercial break. The movie is “Gamer,” and being one myself, it got me thinking about what the film says about this very unique and diverse classification of people.
Before “Gamer” I had never seen any other films by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor who’d both written and directed it and I had no idea that they already had a reputation, of sorts. Their previous movies are Crank, and Crank: High Voltage which I’ve heard many describe simply as “hectic.” (They are also currently working on Crank 3, said to be in 3D, and finishing up Jonah Hex, which IMDb has explained like this: “In the Wild West, a scarred bounty hunter tracks a voodoo practitioner bent on liberating the South by raising an army of the undead.”)
In the special features of the “Gamer” DVD they themselves said, “Watching [our movies] is like audience torture. We were talking about this the other day, like, not only do we torture our characters [...] but we torture our audience. It’s like hitting them over the head with a ball pein hammer for 90 minutes.”
Michael Bay, one of the world’s worst directors, is already yapping his useless mouth about Transformers 3. However, it appears Michael Bay, one of the world’s worst directors, is going to make a futile attempt to channel his inner-auteur. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Micahel Bay, one of the world’s worst directors, said that Transformers 3 won’t be as “robot heavy”. I mean, why would you want a movie about giant robots to be robot heavy?
Michael Bay, one of the world’s worst directors, is also promising less explosions: “There will be a nice crescendo ending,” Bay said. “It gets much more into the robot character. The last time you kind of met a few of the robots; this time you’re gonna get a much cooler landscape.”
So expect something between Ingmar Bergman and Stanley Kubrick. Or, expect the same pile of cinematic garbage to extricate itself from Michael Bay’s asshole because the man has proven time and time again that he is incapable of anything approaching quality.
Frank Miller revitalized Batman in graphic novel form when he unleashed The Dark Knight, which told the tale of an aging Batman reluctantly coming out of retirement. According to an interview with the Hughes Brothers, who are set to open their latest movie The Book of Eli, Warner Bros studio approached the team about possibly making Miller’s version of Batman starring none other than Clint Eastwood.
“I remember how dark the comic book was. Batman was old. He had to rely more on his tools and other sh*t, and he was a decrepit, 60- or 70-year-old man in this comic book,” said Albert Hughes. “I remember saying to them back then, ‘We want to do this, and you should get somebody like Clint Eastwood to do it’.”
Even though the studio offered the project to the brothers several times, the feeling was that “The Dark Knight Returns” would be the end of Batman movies. “We were never going to do that. We were telling them it was the death of their franchise,” Albert laughed. “Looking back now, we definitely would’ve killed that franchise.“
All hell broke loose yesterday in the world of Spider-Man, with Sam Raimi leaving his directorial position for Spider-Man 4 and Tobe Maguire retiring from the costume. As such, Sony canned the script they were working on and are now going in a completely different direction. Unfortunately, the direction indicated by Sony’s press-release indicates we may be in for a terrible film.
“Peter Parker is going back to high school when the next Spider-Man hits theaters in the summer of 2012. Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios announced today they are moving forward with a film based on a script by James Vanderbilt that focuses on a teenager grappling with both contemporary human problems and amazing super-human crises.”
High school? So this is going to to be Twilight with Spider-Man?
Color me completely uninterested.
On the upside, Sam Raimi is now a free man and that means he has all the time in the world to devote to the cinematic version World of Warcraft, which Mr. Raimi signed on to adapt last year. At that point, Sam indicated he would begin production of World of Warcraft after the next Spider-Man movie. With no Spider-Man movie, Sam can now accelerate his plans on Warcraft.
There is one little problem though: a small movie called Avatar. Avatar has raised the bar so high in terms of world-building and effects that Mr. Raimi will now have to at least equal, if not surpass, the visual wonders delivered by James Cameron. Sam will have to channel new abiltiies, for he has never worked on a project of this magnitude, despite the huge budgets on Spider-Man. Warcraft is a whole new beast that comes saddled with massive expectations and a fan base that will hunt you down and murder you in your sleep if you screw up this adaptation.
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