I didn't realize Devil was coming out this weekend. The prospect of another foray into the mind of M. Night Shyamalan seemed so unpleasant that I must have blocked all info about Devil from my mind. It has only been out for a couple of days so I have yet to hear much in the way of word of mouth, but in terms of various critic reviews (from critics I trust) I have heard both good and sort of bad.

What do I think of it? I don't know because I don't plan to see it. Granted, Shyamalan only produced Devil. That means he most likely only came up with the idea for it. It is directed by Drew and John Dowdle, the same two who directed the American adaptation of Quarantine. I will admit that avoiding this film on principle is unfair. There is a sense of betrayal in having liked someone's creations for so long only to have them become consistently bad. Also there is the fact that Shyamalan's ruined The Last Airbender when it so easily could have been good.

Anyone who was around in the late 90s and not living under a rock should be familiar with The Sixth Sense. In 1999, rookie director M. Night Shyamalan took the world by storm with it while starting up hopeful young actor Haley Joel Osment's career. Most notably, Shyamalan established his shtick as the "plot-twist guy".

He followed it up one year later with a unique superhero movie starring Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson. I daresay that Unbreakable beat Batman Begins to the punch in terms of being a realistic superhero film devoid of cheesiness. If Unbreakable had been made with minor improvements in pacing and some more action, it could have been as fondly remembered as even The Dark Knight. Unfortunately this movie fades into obscurity and is usually forgotten when people try to name all of Shyamalan's films.

In 2002, Shyamalan came out with Signs. This is arguably where things began to decline. I will concede that the plot twist is weak, but Signs was still an interesting film with exceptional character development and relationships as well as extra drama occurring alongside the looming alien invasion.

Basically it had everything Independence Day needed to be a good movie

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From there, the definitive trend was that every other year, another lame film with a contrived plot twist would come out. There was The Village which most people dislike, Lady in the Water which generally everyone dislikes, and The Happening whose trailer seemed to depict people running away from nothing which somehow did not grab the interest of audiences.

Mark Wahlberg talks to a plant. Riveting!

Then we have the pièce de résistance. The Last Airbender.
Avatar: The Last Airbender is a widely acclaimed series and probably the greatest cartoon series of the decade. It seems like the kind of show that would have typical childish humor, cheesy acting, and lame writing, but it does not. It pushes the boundaries of depth for a cartoon show. For example, among the main characters is a comic relief character named Sokka. Not only is this character genuinely funny but he is also believably serious when he needs to be and deals with real issues including dating and even the death of a girlfriend.
And unlike Harry Potter, Avatar's world is accurately based off Buddhist lore and an in-depth knowledge of how chakra works. This gives all of its mystical aspects a feeling of realism since the rules for element bending are so detailed. Harry Potter relies more on plot convenient spells.

Winguardium Deus ex Machina!

With a series that has already been written and with a world that is so well developed, surely a visionary like M. Night Shyamalan would easily be able to strike gold and bounce back from his decline. That's what I and many others thought. How could ANYONE screw this up!?!

Well M. Night Shyamalan sure did. This is especially surprising when you see how gung-ho he was to make this movie.

So his daughters introduced him to the show and he loved it. He loved it so much that he asked Paramount to be given the chance to make the movie. That sounds like the recipe for a great movie. Then when you see the actual movie... ouch. The film focuses on unimportant aspects of the first season of the show. Not only that but he consistently breaks the "show don't tell" rule with a saturation of expository dialogue and narration. The above interview indicates that he knows which scenes from the show to omit from the film for time purposes but he ends up creating plot holes for the film. Even the simplest things did not make sense. When Southern Water Tribe members Sokka and Katara discover Aang the Avatar, they don't even bother to ask him his name until a couple of days into their journey.

I hope that Paramount decides to cease production on the two sequels. Heck, they should start over and let Guillermo Del Toro direct instead! Now that would be a good trilogy.

How The Tables Turned

Resident Evil: Afterlife just came out last Friday... whoopdeedo. I'm not a fan of poorly written films based on video games but in name only. Some friends of mine were dragged kicking and screaming to the movie by roommates, much to my wry pleasure. But I'm not talking about video game adaptations today. I spent my Friday night watching something much better.

My college has a wonderful organization called Meteor Theater which plays films often not yet on DVD. For free. This last Friday they played Toy Story 3. FOR FREE! Definitely a step up from Resident Evil for $12 in my opinion. Even in my 3rd time seeing it, I still shed a tear or two. Manly tears of course! Ummmm...

EXPLOSIONS!!!

 Anyway, Toy Story 3 is Pixar's 11th film as well as 11th entry in a list of consecutively spectacular films (well except for Cars which was run of the mill). So far TS3 is the only film beating out Inception in box office totals with $410 million. Even more impressive is its global gross of over $1,000,000,000!

Pixar sure is something, but who is responsible for its greatness? That man is John Lasseter. It might be difficult to imagine but the ideas that brought Pixar to the top were originally looked down upon by Disney. That's right, this is a rags to riches story.

Way back when, in the archaic era of the 80s, there was a young, Hawaiian shirt-wearing artist at Disney: John Lasseter. He dabbled in 3D animation. At the time Tron had just come out. It was one of the first films to use 3D animation at all but it didn't do too well at the box office, so 3D animation was thought to be a joke. Lasseter saw an art form with potential. His idea was to use 3D and 2D animation together. A method used quite often to this day, this idea was revolutionary. Usually when a setting is viewed by a moving camera in animation, the scene would have to be drawn over and over but at a different angle and perspective. If you can imagine it, it is a very difficult task. On the flipside, moving a camera around an area is easy in live action film. Lasseter had created a solution to one of animation's greatest limitations!

But Disney thought it was stupid, so they fired him! Fortunately, Lasseter was hired by a department of Lucasfilms known as The Graphics Group. They were in charge of some special effects until Lucasfilms sold them to some nobody who was just fired by Apple. That nobody was Steve Jobs. He changed the company into Pixar Computers.

At first it did not do so well. However, it earned an Oscar for one of its short films in 1988. From there Disney signed a deal with Pixar to make Toy Story. As Pixar and John Lasseter himself gained notoriety, Lasseter began a movement for improvements to Disney. The Disney corporation is known for being one of the biggest corporations and smartest at making money. One way they have been doing so is making cheap Disney sequels to cash in on the non-critical audiences who will pay to buy them. John Lasseter is someone who believes film should have heart. As such, he threatened to take his things and go, Pixar included, unless Disney agreed to straighten up and fly right. Disney was cornered and had no choice but to concede, buy Pixar, and make Lasseter the new head of animation. There was much rejoicing.

Also of note, John Lasseter is very good friends with the head of Studio Ghibli and alleged greatest animator in the world Hayao Miyazaki. So much so that Studio Ghibli's most popular and well-known character Totoro makes an appearance in Toy Story 3.

Lasseter says that the heart in Pixar films as well as visuals and even cinematography are inspired by Miyazaki's films. This is apparent in Up where there are many panning shots that display and glorify the beauty of the natural world.

Miyazaki himself is not a fan of 3D animation. He claims it is too "eccentric" whatever that is supposed to mean. Regardless, he had a hand in bringing it into prominence. Hayao Miyazaki's very first film, Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro, had an intricately designed and animated climax in a clock tower. This scene inspired some writers and animators at Disney to make the climax to The Great Mouse Detective take place inside of and on the face of Big Ben. Rather than multiply the budget of the film for just one scene, they tried a revolutionary idea. They made the clock tower gears with CG and combined them with the 2D animated characters. This idea was so good that to this day it is used and even overused to cut corners and save money. I bet John Lasseter wishes he'd thought of something like that.

Wait what?

Fox's Marvels

A little over a week ago, word spread that X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2 has two potential directors taking the reigns: David Slade and Darren Aronofsky.  Both of these men carry some notoriety with them.  Slade is credited as directing the action packed 30 Days of Night and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. According to critics, Eclipse comes closest to appealing to men dragged in to see any Twilight movie by their girlfriends.  I suppose that's saying something.  Even more hopeful yet bizarre is Aronofsky, notable director of art film classics Requiem for a Dream and Pi.  Is it just me or is this project a little beneath Aronofsky?

He would be attached to a series where Will.i.am is supposed to be accepted as an actor!

Wolverine Origins may have done well in the box office, but as I mentioned last week, the box office is not a reliable scope of whether a movie is good or not.  Wolverine was a dumb film wrought with plot holes and continuity errors that would make Transformers 2 shed a tear.

Why did they run when they could drive an Autobot!?!?!

 

 

Fans have been burnt enough times by Fox to know that any superhero movie they churn out is likely to disrespect its source material seeking only to make money off the mainstream crowd who will go see it anyway.  Heck, even the fans fully in the know will go see it when their friends ask them to see it with them.  After all, they star an onslaught of big name actors and actresses who show up only because they had nothing else to do during filming.  Fox is killing two birds with one stone each time they make one of these films since their contractual rights to each franchise (X-Men and Fantastic Four) extends with each film they make.  Spider-Man is taken by Sony in the same way.  Earlier this decade, Marvel handed out its licenses like playing cards which was all good and well until they realized that they would do better to make their own film studio thereby creating consistent continuities with the films it made.  The aforementioned contracts is exactly why we won't be seeing Wolverine or Spider-Man joining The Avengers which is scheduled to come out in a couple of years.

There is hope though... hope that should be taken with a grain of salt.  We are still talking about Fox after all.  Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick have been confirmed as writers for the upcoming Deadpool movie.  That's right!  The guys who brought us the comedic genius of Zombieland have been chosen to bring the Merc with the Mouth known for his comedic personality in Marvel comics to the big screen.  Even better, Robert Rodriguez is most likely to direct the film!  It's not set in stone, but it is probably a good idea.  When not making films that appeal to children like the Spy Kids series, he is best known for his gory action flicks such as Desperado, Planet Terror, and last weekend's Machete.  If anyone can capture Deadpool's odd and quirky comedy while also keeping his chaotic and amoral sway to violence, it is Rodriguez.

Although, he is responsible for the start of Jacob's career.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The Audience

Scott Pilgrim is Bryan Lee O'Malley's magnum opus. On August 13th, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World was released in theaters with high hopes of success from fans of the graphic novel series and the geek community in general if the excitement at Comic Con was any indication.

However, it made little more than $10 million on its opening weekend, and as of this post Scott Pilgrim vs. The World has only made $26.2 million. Fans have been asking, "why is that?" It had a famous leading actor, a hefty budget, flashy and stylized special effects, fast-paced action, and exceptional reviews, yet it didn't get the turnout that was expected.

We can only speculate why exactly this happened. Some say that the Comic Con crowd from which the greatest hype originated was the only crowd truly interested in the film. The mainstream crowd was more interested in safe movie ventures such as The Expendables which came out the same weekend while the romance crowd went for Eat Pray Love.

Negative comments surrounding Scott Pilgrim called it hipster trash. Rather than criticize the film objectively, they would attack the audience they assumed it was made for. A couple years ago, the pop culture clique that everyone would sneer at was the "emo" crowd. Lately it seems to be the "hipster", a group often characterized by their trendy clothes and snooty tastes in music among other things. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World's avant-garde visuals and premise have marked as an indie film which is easily seen as a play to the hipster crowd.

Back in April, another popular graphic novel series saw a film release with high expectations but met with less than desirable results. Both of these films gave free screenings about a week prior to their opening weekends. While the idea may have been to hype up the movie and give critics a chance to rate the movie early and give confidence to an opening audience. Instead, the result seems to be that fans got to see it for free while no one else showed up to watch. That's a shame since fans seemed quite pleased with the film.

Positive reviews remark that Edgar Wright has done it again. Wright was the director of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, two action-comedy films that are inundated with their respective sources of parody to the point that the comedy is derived many subtle references to source material as opposed to blunt references like one might see in a Tarantino film or something like Austin Powers.
Other fans call Scott Pilgrim the best video game movie ever although it is not based on a video game and it has just as many references to manga and anime as video games.
Even with little to show from box office sales, Scott Pilgrim will probably succeed in DVD sales.