Big 'Bots and Belligerent Behemoths Clash in Pacific Rim (2013)

Since I'm planning to wrap up 2013 with a look back at a few examples of Japanese robot toys--one of my favorite kind of toys--I thought I would kick off this year-end series of posts with a review of Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim, one of the big-budget releases from last summer that I missed when it was playing in the theaters.

Summer blockbusters have never been held in high regard by the film critic community, and such critics have been particularly displeased with Hollywood's over-usage of CGI effects to produce increasingly bigger and louder blockbuster movies. To be sure, such criticism is not entirely inaccurate: CGI does permit the creation of larger-scale environments and set pieces in ways that miniatures, matte paintings and other practical effect techniques could never allow. As such, CGI has enabled the production of many, many summer blockbusters that are enormous in terms of spectacle but conspicuously short in terms of creative ideas and conceptual depth. Pacific Rim is not one of those movies, because del Toro eagerly packs every frame of his film with enough details and ideas that fans who know what they're looking at will be reviewing this movie for years to come. Pacific Rim is a "big" in every sense of the term--big CGI, big landscapes, big battles, big ideas, and big ambition. In fact, I can't think of how any other special effects technique other than CGI could have accommodated del Toro's story.

In a nutshell, Pacific Rim is about a group of pilots, military leaders, scientists and technicians who build and operate giant robots called "Jaegers" that are designed to fight a seemingly endless series of giant monsters called "Kaiju" that have been emerging out of the Pacific Ocean for years to regularly trash the nearest city. The movie takes places during the closing days of the Kaiju war, when the Jaeger team is planning its final offensive that promises to put an end to the Kaiju menace.

Pacific Rim is a well-made film in every aspect: a well-written script, a well-cast ensemble of actors, and a well-directed approach to the material. Yet to really appreciate this movie, one has to understand that it is a tribute to Japan's "Super Robot" fantasy-science fiction genre and its "Real Robot" spin-off subgenre. Super Robot and Real Robot anime and manga usually involve giant robots that are piloted by human beings to fight giant monsters, other giant robots, or both. The Super Robot genre began in the mid-50s with the manga series Tetsujin 28, and it has continued with popular titles such as Mazinger Z, Mobile Suit Gundam, Patlabor and Neon Genesis Evangelion.

One of Pacific Rim's Super Robots, complete with "Rocket Punch" action.

Pacific Rim also draws inspiration from Japan's kaiju movies (ergo the collective name of the giant monsters in Rim), and the monster designs in the movie demonstrate how much del Toro and his production crew love and understand kaiju films such as Godzilla and Mothra. Nevertheless, most of the film's other details--the characters, their technology, the situations they face and the world they inhabit--are clearly modeled after Super Robot and Real Robot narratives. To put it another way, Pacific Rim is to Super Robot and Real Robot stories as Star Wars is to pulpy sci-fi space operas such as Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon.

With so many details spread throughout the movie, some aspects feel somewhat lacking. In particular, so much detail is applied to movie's fictitious world (a world where there's even a black market for dead Kaiju parts) that the characters feel more like broad personality types than fully-developed individuals. We see bits and pieces of who they are and their roles within the beleaguered, monster-pummeled society they represent but not much more than that; at times, it almost feels like watching Top Gun with giant robots instead of fighter jets. Yet del Toro's enthusiasm for the material permeates every aspect of the film, so I enjoyed geeking out with him just to see what kind of unique interpretations he could put on machines and monsters that are so closely associated with Japanese pop culture. To say that del Toro went above and beyond what he set out to do is an understatement, making this one of his best films to date.

If you don't understand why anyone would want to make a big-budget, live-action film based on anime and manga stories about giant robots, then Pacific Rim probably isn't for you. Otherwise, if you love big brawling 'bots and are looking for an example of CGI done right, then go grab some popcorn and treat yourself to del Toro's magnum mecha opus.

A Self-Made Superhero Gets an Upgrade in Iron Man 3

Due to financial problems beyond my control last summer, I have begun to catch up on all the box office fun I missed just a few months ago. First up: Iron Man 3, the concluding chapter in the trilogy about Marvel's resident techno-genius Tony Stark and his super-powered alter ego.

Iron Man 3 opens with Stark (played by Robert Downey Jr.) still reeling from the events in The Avengers movie. Overwhelmed by the many possible threats that could doom humanity, he has become obsessed with upgrading Iron Man--and himself--to counter any and all future menaces. Further complicating the picture are the appearances of the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), a terrorist mastermind who has been orchestrating a series of surprise attacks around the world, and Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), a corporate rival who threatens to topple Stark Industries through his own "think tank" called Advanced Idea Mechanics (AIM). When a surprise attack by the Mandarin forces him away from home and friends, Stark has to rely on his intelligence and resourcefulness to stop the Mandarin and uncover AIM's secret agenda.

Long story short, I loved Iron Man 3 and I regret not seeing it in 3D on the big screen. It's everything a high-octane superhero film should be: witty without being campy, compelling without being ponderous, and thrilling without being shallow. It succeeds as a sequel, building upon the events in The Avengers and the previous Iron Man movies to reflect how Stark and his two closest allies Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) have changed over the course of the stories. It also has a plot that makes ample usage of many characters and ideas from the Marvel universe (e.g., AIM, Extremis, the Mandarin, etc.). If Iron Man 3 is any indication of how Marvel plans to develop more movies based on its vast universe of characters and settings, then I think that superhero movie fans are in for many more blockbuster treats in the summers to come.

As I mentioned in my review of Iron Man 2, superhero stores are at their most compelling when they act as parables of power. As such, Iron Man 3 brings Stark's personal crisis about his responsibility towards others to a complete circle. In Iron Man, Stark bowed out of the international arms race because he felt that he could do more good as a superhero; in Iron Man 3, Stark has to come to grips that he never really left the arms race at all, that by becoming Iron Man he just exchanged his participation in one arms race for another. This is an intriguing dilemma for a superhero movie to portray, and Downey's performance as Stark is up to the challenge. (In light of the film's plot, I think that putting Stark on movie's poster as a falling Icarus was a nice touch.) The fact that the film is able to tell an entertaining story by largely keeping Stark outside of his Iron Man armor--working out his problems without routinely resorting to superheroics--speaks to how well made Iron Man 3 is. I also liked the film's jab at how the modern military-industrial complex needs to create villains for the sake of maintaining profit. In fact, given his role in RoboCop, I suspect that the inclusion of Miguel Ferrer in the cast of Iron Man 3 was a deliberate wink to Paul Verhoeven's dark satire of America's militarism.

I'm sure that Hollywood's current infatuation with superheroes will eventually reach a point of diminishing returns, but Iron Man 3 indicates to me that we are far from that right now. Until DC and its corporate masters at Time Warner come up with a better series of superhero movies, I'll be happy to make mine Marvel.

30 Years Later, Jaws 3D Swims Back to the Movie Theater

My source of disposable income has been tight as of late, so I've fallen behind on this summer's recent blockbuster releases such as Iron Man 3 and Man of Steel. However, my financial problems haven't kept me from squeezing out enough cash to see a limited release of a film that I missed seeing in the theater during its original release in 1983: Jaws 3D.

As I wrote in a previous post about Jaws 3D, "I have a soft spot for the third entry in the Jaws franchise because it was THE film that got me interested in 3D movies. ... Before Jaws 3D, I had a ViewMaster toy and a few sets of reels, and I also knew about previous horror and sci-fi movies from the 50s that were shot in 3D--movies such as Creature from the Black Lagoon, House of Wax and It Came from Outer Space--courtesy of the Crestwood House books and their ilk. But Jaws 3D solidified in my mind just what the illusion of three dimensions meant in terms of movies (as well as comic books and later video games), thus starting my lifetime affair with 3D entertainment. Furthermore, Jaws 3D was the only one of the 3D movies from the early 80s that caught my eye, since it was the only film to offer the chance of seeing one of my favorite movie monsters jump out of the silver screen and into the audience."

The rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia aside, I believe that if you can't see Jaws 3D in a 3D format then it's not worth seeing, because most of the film's effects vanish in a 2D format. In the era before digital filmmaking, studios didn't have the option of converting a film to 3D in post-production. A film had to be shot in 3D for it to be released in 3D, and 3D cinematography required additional planning, funding and technical expertise as part of the production process. When seeing an older 3D movie in 2D, you're missing half of the movie; hence, I've spent the last few years trying to find a DVD copy of Jaws 3D in 3D to see what I was missing in the third Jaws movie.

So far, I've picked up two low definition copies of the Japanese laserdisc release from the 80s, with one copy in anaglyph 3D and one in field sequential 3D. Yet because I never saw the film during its original theatrical run, I had no standard by which I could evaluate these copies to determine how accurately they imitated the original theatrical 3D experience. Thankfully, the nearest Alamo Drafthouse Cinema solved my problem when it announced that it was going to hold a one-night showing of Jaws 3D in 3D last weekend as part of its "Summer of '83" series. Read on for more details about my retro-Jaws experience at Alamo, and what it might mean in regards to future Blu-ray releases of the Jaws sequels.

If you've never been to an Alamo Drafthouse Cinema theater, you're missing a fun movie experience. Alamo holds all sorts of film-related events, and it includes an on-site restaurant that allows you to order food--from snacks to dinner platters--to eat during the movie. For its showing of Jaws 3D, Alamo offered its own Jaws 3D dinner special of fish and chips (see below). I didn't order the special for fear that I would somehow smudge my 3D glasses.

Since this showing was part of Alamo's "Summer of '83" series, it was preceded by a half-hour's worth of various video clips from the early 80s in order to get the audience in the right mindset before showing the big block of 80s cheese that is Jaws 3D. The clips included the SCTV Count Floyd "3D House of Beef" skit, game play clips from Activision's Fishing Derby video game, advertisements for public aquariums, and beach-themed commercials for brands such as Coca-Cola and Wrangler. Inserted between the clips were 2D ads for other 3D movies from the 80s: Amityville 3D, Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn, Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, and Treasure of the Four Crowns. I suppose that Alamo's inclusion of these ads were to remind the audience that 3D movies made a brief comeback in the 80s, but they also reminded me that a lot more money was spent to make Jaws 3D than was spent for most of the 3D titles from that decade.

As for the movie itself, I was amazed at how good the 3D effects were. Many of the notorious gimmick shots (e.g., the bleeding fish head, the floating dismembered arm, the partially disappearing mini-sub, and the pirate skeleton in the lagoon) looked exactly how a good 3D gimmick shot should look, with objects appearing to hover in the air over the audience. There were some minor flares of ghosting from time to time and some of the gimmick shots didn't work at all (e.g., the "biting" Jaws 3D title graphic in the beginning of the film), but none of these glitches were enough to ruin the overall 3D experience. Futhermore, I now believe that Sea World must have been more satisfied than anyone else with how Jaws 3D looked as a finished product. Each of the 3D shots that involved things specific to Sea World--dolphins, killer whales and acrobatic waterskiing--were nearly flawless.

I have heard over the last few years that a digitally remastered version of Jaws 3D has been appearing in theaters and 3D festivals around the world, so I can only assume that what I watched at Alamo was one of the remastered prints. The film didn't have any blemishes and scratches, the colors were vibrant, and the sound quality was clear, so I obviously wasn't watching a 30 year old print. However, there were enough inconsistencies in the print to indicate that if this was a remastered print, the remastering process only went so far. Many shots were sharp with minor film grain, but some others were very grainy. I also noticed a few shots that were flat in hue and/or slightly out of focus, and almost all of the scenes that involved blue screen composites were of poor quality.

I'm not sure if the remastering process exposed flaws that were already present in the original print or if something else was at fault. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any information about when the remastering was done, who did it, and to what extent. I even stayed through the all of the credits to see if extra information was added to identify the remastering team behind the Jaws 3D print I was watching, but nothing was there.

So, while I was satisfied with finally seeing Jaws 3D on the big screen, the print quality left me wondering what Universal has in store for the three Jaws sequels. Since Jaws appeared on Blu-ray last August in a fabulously restored format, there has been much speculation in the fan community about if and when the sequels will appear on Blu-ray. On the basis of what I saw, I think that the sequels will either not be released on Blu-ray or if they are, they will be of low quality with little to no bonus features. I'm also basing this prediction on two other details:

* Universal has been very stubborn about the Jaws franchise over the years, so much so that it frequently has been left to the fans to share information about the movies and preserve artifacts from them because Universal refuses to do so itself.

* High-definition versions of Jaws 2 and Jaws: The Revenge have already appeared on on-demand video services but not on Blu-ray.

Between the on-demand releases of the sequels and the limited theatrical re-releases of Jaws 3D, Universal probably believes that it will get the greatest return on investment with these venues of distribution and not through Blu-ray. This is very frustrating, especially since Universal has the resources to correct the misaligned 3D shots in Jaws 3D but won't anyway. With that in mind, I strongly recommend that fans of the Jaws franchise and 3D movies in general should watch Jaws 3D on the big screen whenever it's possible, because I doubt that it's going to be available in any other format.

The Universal Studios Jaws Ride Lives on at the Amity Boat Tours Site

Fans of Jaws and its subsequent franchise were crushed when the Universal Studios theme park in Orlando, Florida decided to close its Jaws ride back in January 2012. Yet while this piece of Jaws history is gone, it is far from forgotten. The folks behind the Amity Boat Tours Web site, a site that has been around for 13 years, are updating the site into the "Finale Edition" that will serve as an archive for all things concerning the Jaws ride.

According to the site, "(T)he Finale Edition of AmityBoatTours.com celebrates the life, and community of the JAWS World -- from the honorary JAWS Skippers to the Summer vacationers of Amity, this site was built and designed for you. We have received many questions and concerns that the site will close, and grow old, now that the attraction is gone. Quite the contrary has occurred. We have been working, since weeks before the announcement of its closure, to begin crafting a brand-new way to bring Amity Harbor to you and something that we can walk away from proud and dedicated to. The Finale Edition of the site is just that... we are extremely proud to bring this new experience to you, as well as 'bulk-up' the AmityBoatTours.com world."

A bird's-eye view of the Orlando Jaws ride. You can see the most of the places 

where the shark surfaces to terrorize theme park visitors.

I've been looking around the updated site and it appears to be on track (no pun intended) to becoming the definitive resource for anyone who is interested in the Jaws ride and its history. The Finale Edition site features a detailed history of the ride, plenty of trivia and photos, and video clips of the fictitious Amity TV station WJWS that would play on monitors in the ride pavilion to keep visitors entertained while they waited in line. The site also features photos of a similar Jaws ride that still operates in the Universal Studios theme park in Japan.

In honor of the revamped Amity Boat Tours site, I'm posting two Jaws ride video clips that I found on YouTube that are different from most others that are available on the Internet. The first is a video of the ride in anaglyph 3D (think of it as the other "Jaws 3D") and a video from 1990 that will give you an idea of how the ride functioned as it was originally designed Ride and Show Engineering, Inc. In this version, the shark would attack the tour boat and spin it to the side, shortly before the final confrontation between the shark and the boat's "Skipper". As you can see in the video, the shark that was supposed to attack the boat wasn't very convincing; however, the shark that surfaces in the boathouse (at about three minutes into the video) is very impressive with its thrashing head and snapping mouth. The ride was redesigned and re-launched in 1993 due to repeated technical problems, but it's a shame that Universal didn't keep the original boathouse shark.

A Look Back at Namco's Xevious

One of the fun things about being a devoted geek is looking back at the stuff you loved as a kid (TV shows, comic books, novels, movies and so forth) and discovering new things about them. In this case, I'm talking about Xevious, a vertical scrolling shooter arcade game that Namco released in 1982. Xevious is credited as one of the earliest vertical scrolling shooters, a subgenre of video gaming that would become quite popular among both arcade and home console gamers alike.

Although I don't remember when I first played Xevious, I became quite fond of it for years--I even bought the Atari 7800 system back in the late 80s because it was the first console to feature Xevious as part of its library. For a long time, I thought that the game was a one-hit wonder, because I didn't see any other games bearing the Xevious title and I didn't know many other gamers at the time who loved the game as much as I did. Little did I know that my assumption was somewhat incorrect: While Xevious somewhat successful in the U.S., it became a cult hit in Japan and its popularity led to a few sequels and a spin-off that were only released in Japan. Read on for a look back at this early arcade shooter and the phenomenon it became in Japan.

In Xevious, players pilot a combat aircraft called a ‘Solvalou’ to fight against alien attack forces from the planet Xevious. I don't remember exactly what drew me to Xevious, other than that it didn't look or sound like anything else in the arcades at that time. It was one of the first that allowed you to shoot down enemies in the sky and bomb targets on the ground, all while a hypnotic theme would play repeatedly in the background. Throughout the levels, you would fly the Solvalou over the forests, fields and rivers that surrounded Xevi bases. A giant flying fortress called the ‘Andor Genesis’ would appear every few levels for you to shoot down--this was one of the first examples of a ‘level boss’ to appear in arcade history. There was also an interesting selection of enemies to shoot at, although each of them looked similar enough to each other that you could see how they would be part of the same fighting force. Sure, Xevious lacked the ammunition power-ups that were commonplace in subsequent vertical scrolling shooters, but that didn't make the game any less enjoyable to play.

So with Xevious only having one title in the U.S., what did Japan get? Among other things, two different 3D Xevious titles: Solvalou (1991) and Xevious 3D/G (1995). Both of these games retain the look and feel of the original game, but they added new features and 3D polygon graphics to give players a new gaming experience. Both 3D Xevious sequels are amazing to watch, but Solvalou is very unique in that it plays like the original Xevious except that it allows the player to see everything from the pilot's point of view, essentially turning the original game into a first-person rail shooter. I've never seen a classic 2D arcade game get this kind of a makeover, either before or since. See the video clip below for an example of Solvalou game play.

The other arcade sequels included Super Xevious (1984) and Xevious Arrangement (1995). Xevious Arrangement was not released as a stand-alone game; it was instead included with the Namco Classics Collection Volume 1 compilation, which also included Galaga (1981) and Mappy (1983) and their respective 'arrangements'. There was one arcade spin-off, Grobda (1984), which was based on one of the Xevious enemies.

There were four Xevious titles for the home consoles: Super Xevious: GAMP no Nazo (1986), Xevious: Fardraut Saga (1988), Xevious: Fardraut Densetsu (1990) and Xevious Resurrection (2009). The contributions that the home titles made to the Xevious series were to add new enemy vehicles and two new kinds of fighter ships for gamers to pilot in addition to the Solvalou: the Solgrado and the Zeodalley. Each of the three combat ships could be combined into a single ship, the Gampmission.

Three Xevious 30th Anniversary model kits, by R.C. Berg ...

... their combination into one ship, the Gampmission ...

... and a Grobda tank model kit.

Check out Hardcore Gaming 101 and Arcade History for more information about the Xevious series of games.

Joe Dante's 3D Movie The Hole (2009) Will Arrive in U.S. Theaters This September

I just heard around the 'net that Joe Dante's 3D movie from 2009, The Hole, will finally make it to silver screens here in the U.S. this September. While I still can't pin down the details about how wide this release will be, all I can say is that it's about time.

The Hole is about two young brothers who find a heavily padlocked door in the floor of the cellar of their new house. After they open the door, they discover that they've unleashed a dark force that torments them with their deepest fears.

Why The Hole has been seen just about everywhere else but here is still a mystery to me. It was shot in Canada and it has a very American look and feel to it--it even won an award at the 2009 Venice Film Festival--and yet audiences in the U.S. will be the last ones to see it in the theaters. Furthermore, it's not like Joe Dante is an obscure or unproven director--he gave us such great films as Piranha, The Howling, Gremlins, Innerspace and Matinee, and yet his first 3D movie doesn't make it into American theaters until three years after its initial release? What gives?

Anyway, below are two interviews that I found with Dante that were done during The Hole's release overseas.

The Age of Feature-Length 3D Horror and Sci-Fi Cartoons in America Has Arrived

Feature-length cartoons have been around in American cinema since Disney released Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs back in 1937, but cartoons for genres outside of fairy tale-based musicals have been very rare for most of the time since that milestone. Thus, I've been ecstatic that three horror-themed cartoons--ParaNorman, Hotel Transylvania and Frankenweenie--are being released in American theaters between August and October of this year. Furthermore, all three of them are in 3D and two of them were shot using stop-motion animation, a special effects technique that has almost completely vanished from live-action films.

To be sure, these titles aren't horror cartoons per se--they are mostly comedies with plot points and imagery based on the horror genre. Yet having three of these films debuting in American theaters within weeks of each other is unprecedented and I think that it reflects what 3D and CGI technology can contribute to cinema animation in terms of the kinds of subject matter that animators can explore. I've already posted about how 3D technology has found a home in video games and feature-length CGI cartoons; here, I'll examine how 3D and CGI have sparked new life into animated storytelling, which has resulted in a selection of horror and sci-fi themed cartoons (five of which I will discuss in this post) that will pave the way for new generations of horror and sci-fi fans. In a time where live-action horror and sci-fi films that are released on the big screen have been overrun with remakes, reboots and retreads, this can only be a good thing. Read on ...

For the longest time, the only horror-themed cartoon movie around was Mad Monster Party, which was produced by Rankin/Bass Productions back in 1967, yet that stop-motion cult classic was a rarity even among certain groups of horror fans. I first saw it on syndicated TV when I was just a wee lad during the late 70s (the film was followed by a broadcast of Son of The Blob, which scared the crap out of me before I was old enough to know better). I didn't know the name of the cartoon movie when I first saw it but I remembered enough of Mad Monster Party's visual style and plot that I could tell my friends about it in the years and decades to come, even though none of them had the slightest idea of what I talking about other than to remark that they had no idea that the makers of such holiday favorites as Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman would produce something so monster-centric. Tim Burton would eventually make his own contribution to horror-themed cartoon movies with A Nightmare Before Christmas in 1993, but that still left only two animated titles that dealt with horror themes and visuals amid a long list of American cartoons that didn't.

Things have been picking up for horror and sci-fi cartoon movies in the years since thanks to CGI and 3D technology, even to the point of getting Nightmare Before Christmas re-released in 3D in 2006. Sure, these films aren't as serious as the horror and sci-fi cartoons produced in Japan (then again, what other country is more serious about animation than Japan?), but the fact that American animation companies are willing to expand their subject matter into horror and sci-fi territory is a step in the right direction that is long overdue. In chronological order, here are five examples of 3D horror and sci-fi cartoon movies done right, the models that future 3D animators should follow when blazing new paths of their own.

---

Monster House (2006)

When Monster House arrived in 2006, I was amazed. It was produced using top-notch CGI, it was in 3D, it had a great voice cast, and it was an obvious homage to the many kid- and early teen-friendly horror/sci-fi/adventure films of the 80s, films such as Gremlins, Goonies, The Gate, Explorers, The Monster Squad and Honey, I Shrunk The Kids. (Then again, with executive producers such as Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, two filmmakers who excelled at these kinds of movies during their heyday, what else would you expect?) Even though Monster House is told from a kid's perspective and is largely devoid of violence and gore, it still tells as a satisfying ghost story that can be enjoyed by an audience of varying ages. If you're looking to introduce kids to the horror movies, Monster House should place high on your list of titles.

---

Meet The Robinsons (2007)

Meet The Robinsons has everything: A goofy sense of humor, an intriguing story that is both a parody and a homage to the plot device of time travel, a tribute to Walt Disney's futurism, and a heartwarming message about family, belonging and making peace with an uncertain past to move onward into a brighter, better future. In particular, retro sci-fi fans will love the movie's chrome-plated, tail-finned vision of the future that's skillfully rendered in 3D.

---

Coraline (2009)

2009 was a fantastic year for horror/sci-fi 3D cartoon movies, beginning with Coraline. Henry Selick applied his animation magic to an adaptation of Neil Gaiman's dark, twisted fairy tale, and the results were astonishing. Not too shabby for the first stop-motion animated feature to be shot entirely in 3D. Also, even though Coraline is not a CGI-animated film, it could not have been animated without computers: The characters' different facial expressions were molded by a 3D printing computer program, which allowed for up to 207,336 possible face combinations for a single character.

---

Monsters Vs. Aliens (2009)

There are so many nods to Atomic Age horror and sci-fi movies in this cartoon that it's impossible for a creature feature fan like me to resist it. It features homages to such classics and cult favorites such as Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Fly and Mothra, and it casts Stephen Colbert himself as the President of the United States--what's not to love? Monsters vs. Aliens is also the first computer animated movie to be directly produced in a stereoscopic 3D format, instead of being converted into 3D after completion.

---

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009)

Whenever filmmakers decide to take a short children's book and adapt it into a feature-lenght movie, they really need to look at Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs as the example to follow. Not only was this film able to take the book's original idea and expand upon it in a way that could sustain a full movie, but doing so also allowed the filmmakers to do a hilarious parody of the science-running-amok plot that has become a cliche in horror and sci-fi movies. Furthermore, Cloudy's 3D effects are amazing, and this level of quality carries over into the 3D Blu-ray version of the movie.

Sony Keeps Its Seat on the Superhero Blockbuster Bandwagon with The Amazing Spider-Man

Last week I saw The Amazing Spider-Man, a reboot of Sony's series of live action Spider-Man films. This reboot features a new director, new actors and new details added to the Spider-Man origin story that are intended to push this reboot into new directions in subsequent films.

I could say a lot of snarky things at this point, such as how Sony's reboot comes too soon after the last Spider-Man film or how this reboot is another sign that Hollywood is completely out of ideas. Yet the truth of the matter is that Sony rebooted Spider-Man for two reasons: It let go of the director of its first three Spider-Man films, Sam Raimi, as well as his cast, and it had to make another Spider-Man movie this year or else the character's film rights would revert back to Marvel Comics, the company that owns Spider-Man. That's it--there are no other reasons for this reboot. In fact, these were mostly the same reasons behind last summer's superhero reboot movie, X-Men: First Class. (Of course, how Marvel came to own some of its key characters is another story altogether.)

In light of these facts, I can say that The Amazing Spider-Man represents both the best aspects of superhero filmmaking and its possible limitations. The film is much better than I expected it to be even though it feels very familiar at times (more about that later). Yet no matter how much money this film makes in tickets, rentals and sales, it begs the question: Where can the Spider-Man films go from here to keep them fresh and interesting? Read on for my complete review.

The Amazing Spider-Man is a retelling of how Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) changed from an ordinary teenager to a wall-crawling, web-spinning superhero. Like Raimi's first Spider-Man film ten years ago, this story places some emphasis on Peter's relationship with his adoptive parents, Uncle Ben and Aunt May (here played by Martin Sheen and Sally Field). Unlike Raimi's movie, Peter's love interest is Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), whose father, NYPD Captain George Stacy (Denis Leary), is determined to stop the vigilante activities of Spider-Man. Peter's transformation into Spider-Man in the reboot occurs while he examines the genetic research left behind by his long-dead father Richard Parker (Campbell Scott); the examination brings Peter into contact with Dr. Curt Connor (Rhys Ifans), a former colleague of Peter's father and who becomes the villain known as the Lizard after an experimental mishap.

If anything, Sony has obviously learned something from Marvel's examples of what it means to make a worthwhile superhero film. Marvel has churned out a series of top-notch films based on its superhero characters--films such as Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America--so it only makes sense for Sony to release a Spider-Man film that matches the quality of Marvel's cinematic releases. Everything about The Amazing Spider-Man is of high quality, from Marc Webb's direction to the cast's performances to the special effects work; this film rarely hits a sour note, and it will keep viewers enthralled throughout its two hour plus running time. Furthermore, I had the chance to see this movie in IMAX 3D, which I highly recommend for anyone who wants to get the full effect of Spider-Man's dizzying, high-swinging acrobatics. In fact, it was the IMAX 3D preview that I saw during my IMAX 3D viewing of Prometheus that convinced me to give The Amazing Spider-Man a chance.

The film's biggest problem is its underlying familiarity, which may or may not be the deciding factor in whether people will want to see this movie. Even though this film includes several characters from the Spider-Man comics that were not in Raimi's film, they nevertheless serve similar dramatic purposes as Raimi's selection of characters and have developmental arcs that follow familiar trajectories. I thought it was great that this reboot set up Gwen as the intellectual equal of Peter, which in turn added greatly to the chemistry between these characters as their relationship blossoms, but parts of the relationship's arc feel similar to the arc previously seen between Peter (Tobey Maguire) and Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) in 2002's Spider-Man.

Comparing Raimi's interpretation of Spider-Man to Webb's interpretation is like comparing the depiction of Spider-Man in comics from the 60s and 70s to his depiction in Brian Michael Bendis' Ultimate Spider-Man comic book series. Some things are similar, some things are different, and some things are similar but are still different. Some plot points make more sense in one while others make less sense in the other, and vice versa. In my case, I like how Webb's movie spends more time with Peter's high school years (as opposed to breezing through them like Raimi did), but I didn't like the removal of Dr. Connor's wife and son from the script. The fact that Connor has a family makes him a different kind of challenge for Spidey whenever he fights the Lizard in the comics, so removing them from the movie made Connor feel less distinct than his comic book version. Nevertheless, if you're a comic book fan and can accept how frequently both DC and Marvel have rebooted their own characters and/or "retconned" their timelines on the printed page, then seeing The Amazing Spider-Man probably won't bother you in the slightest and you'll probably have a fantastic time.

Unfortunately, the pervasive familiarity The Amazing Spider-Man hints at possible problems with future installments in Sony's franchise. I understand why Sony would want to re-introduce Spider-Man in a new way so that it could take this character and his supporting cast in a new narrative direction. This allows Sony to keep audiences invested in its latest version of a classic Marvel character while Marvel continues to bring its other classic characters to the big screen. Yet even with the new Spider-Man movie putting a greater dramatic emphasis on Peter's late parents and on OsCorp, the company owned by the villainous Norman Osborn, I honestly don't know how the next few Spider-Man movies can be that much different than what has been seen before in Raimi's Spider-Man movies. Much like it does in its comics, Marvel has the opportunity to involve characters and situations across multiple movies to keep the stories interesting and interconnected within a single fictional universe (as seen in this summer's Avengers); this is one major advantage that Marvel will have when and if it gets the movie rights back for Spider-Man. Sony can't do that, which means that its efforts to prolong its ownership of Spidey's film rights through a reboot may ultimately prove to be futile and self-defeating.

The Amazing Spider-Man shows that with the great power of owning the film rights to a popular character comes the great difficulties of maintaining such ownership through a reboot. As a film by itself, I highly recommend The Amazing Spider-Man to fans of Spider-Man, superheroes, high-quality 3D and action-adventure movies. Yet even with the ample amounts of talent both in front of and behind the camera, this film and its inevitable sequels might not be enough to keep Sony out of the entangled legal and creative web of its own making.

It's Martian Tripods Versus Steampunk Tech in War of the Worlds: Goliath

Fans of H.G. Wells and the steampunk genre, take note: The animated War of the Worlds: Goliath is scheduled for worldwide release in fall 2012.

Goliath is a sequel to Wells' original novel, and it will take place 15 years after the first invasion. An international defense force called A.R.E.S. has been established using technology derived from the fallen tripods, and it is called into service when a second wave of Martians arrive. In this alternate steampunk timeline, there are armored battle zeppelins and human-made tripods, and A.R.E.S. is led by none other than Theodore Roosevelt. (Move over Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter--War of the Worlds: Goliath will have Teddy Roosevelt, alien fighter!)

Goliath is also a reunion of sorts for some of the cast and crew from the Highlander TV series (1992-1998). This film was co-written by David Abramowitz, a creative consultant for most of Highlander's run, and the voice cast includes Highlander vets Peter Wingfield, Adrian Paul, Elizabeth Gracen, and Jim Byrnes. Goliath is the second War of the Worlds sequel project for Adrian Paul: He also had a starring role during the second season of the syndicated War of the Worlds TV show (1988-1990), which was a sequel to George Pal's 1953 film adaptation of Wells' novel. Additional voice cast includes Adam Baldwin (Firefly, Chuck) and James Arnold Taylor (Star Wars: The Clone Wars).

A diagram of human-made tripods, courtesy of Heavy Metal.

Click here to visit the official War of the Worlds: Goliath site.

Ridley Scott’s Prometheus: Building Better Biomechanical Worlds

Being the obsessed Alien franchise fan that I am, I saw Prometheus last weekend in IMAX 3D. I was very impressed with the whole experience, both the quality of the 3D and Ridley Scott's return to the franchise that he started. Yet when it came time to write this review, I had no idea where to begin. Scott's film has so many details and ideas that I could rapidly identify and understand due to my appreciation of all four of the Alien movies, yet I keep seeing reviews, articles and posts on the Web that gripe over how incomprehensible and creatively bankrupt they think Prometheus is. So, since this is a fan blog of sorts anyway, I'm going to drop the pretense of providing some kind of neutral review and discuss the Alien prequel as an Alien fan. Besides, my general rule of thumb about movie franchises is that the best of them build upon ideas and themes over the course of several movies, so it is pointless to discuss sequels--especially third, fourth and fifth sequels--without mentioning the previous movies.

Here's my short, spoiler-free review: Prometheus is a fantastic movie, both as a prequel and a stand-alone. Scott shows a genuine interest in bringing new ideas into the Alien franchise, which is the main reason why this film works. Sure, the visuals are amazing, the effects are impressive and the cast is top-notch, but it all would've fallen apart if Scott didn't want to push the franchise into bold new directions. If you have any interest in Alien and its sequels--or if you have any interest in films that successfully blend horror and sci-fi--Prometheus is an amazing cinematic experience.

That said, I can see why Scott remained noncommittal about the Prometheus's status as a prequel. By making an indirect prequel to Alien, Scott is able to explore a theme that is present in all of the Alien movies but couldn't be adequately explored in those other films due to their emphasis on a monster-driven narrative. The theme in question can be summed up in the slogan of the omnipresent mega-conglomerate in the Alien universe, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation: "Building Better Worlds". Read on for my spoiler-filled thoughts about what drives Prometheus and how it broadens the Alien franchise into frightening new areas of deep space dread.

One of the curious details about Prometheus is how its plot parallels that of Alien in the sense that they are both about space travelers whose true mission has been concealed from them by sinister interests. In Alien, the crew of the Nostromo thought that they were returning an ore refinery from some distant mining operation back to Earth, only to find out that their employer, Weyland-Yutani, used this mission as a front for them to retrieve a deadly alien organism from the planet LV-426. In Prometheus, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) think they are leading a scientific expedition to the planet LV-223 to learn more about the human race's possibly extraterrestrial origins, only to find out later that they are merely facilitating the wish of their elderly benefactor, Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), to become immortal through seeking favor with an advanced alien race, the Engineers. Whereas the android Ash (Ian Holm) in Alien was willing to jeopardize the Nostromo crew by letting an alien life form on board, the android David (Michael Fassbender) in Prometheus meticulously analyses the Engineers' remains on LV-223 and deliberately exposes the expeditionary crew to unknown alien pathogens in order to understand the dangers present before allowing Weyland to meet with a surviving Engineer.

(It should also be mentioned here that a previous post I wrote, which was a speculative comparison of Prometheus to Alien vs. Predator (2001), turned out to be accurate. While both films feature scientists who travel to a remote location to seek out "ancient astronauts"--and they both feature terminally ill characters named Weyland who meet similar ends--Scott's movie brings many more interesting ideas and visuals to the screen than Paul W.S. Anderson did in his crossover story.)

While this comparison may sound like Scott merely rehashed the same story he directed back in 1978, it is quite the opposite. Scott uses the plot device of a space expedition to learn more about the Alien through their creators, the Engineers. Prometheus begins with one of the Engineers roaming Earth before life evolved out of the oceans, only to have him sacrifice himself in a way that will ensure that his DNA will be encoded into the life forms that will subsequently evolve. The prequel uses this opening to later provide motive to the space expedition, that the scientists are traveling to another planet to understand humanity's true origins.

It is never explained why the Engineers wanted to incorporate their DNA into the early life of prehistoric Earth at all. The movie plays up the idea of humans meeting and understanding their true creators, along with a few fleeting conversations between characters about the nature of divinity and faith. Yet the early scene with the Engineers also suggests something else entirely--that the Engineers planted their DNA on Earth for possible future colonization. In other words, by adding their DNA to the building blocks of life that were already forming in Earth's ancient oceans, the organisms that would later evolve and the ecosystems that surround them would be compatible with Engineer biology and thus make the Engineers' colonization easier to achieve with a breathable atmosphere, non-toxic food sources and diseases that could be understood scientifically and cured. Think of it as extremely preemptive terraforming, the process of deliberately modifying the atmosphere, temperature, surface topography or ecology of a planet, moon, or some other astral body to make it habitable by humans--or in this case, Engineers.

The idea that the Engineers seeded Earth with their DNA for possible colonization explains a few of the film's plot details which are otherwise vague. For example, the Engineers visited Earth multiple times since their initial DNA seeding and left behind a star map to tell ancient civilizations where they can be found--that's how the crew finds LV-223, as well as what prompted the expedition in the first place. These ancient visits could have been surveys by the Engineers to see how their DNA seeding process was evolving and if Earth could still be considered fit for colonization. As for the star map, it could have been the Engineers' way of coaxing any space-faring race of humans that would rise out of Earth to visit their labs on LV-223 so that the Engineers could assess human technological development without drawing unwanted attention to themselves.

Terraforming and space colonization has been the recurring themes in each Alien movie, which hinted at (but never fully detailed) how humanity during the time of the movies have developed all sorts of off-world operations, including colonies, ore mines and prisons. In fact, the main setting of Aliens, the Hadley's Hope colony, was a terraforming operation that was established to turn LV-426 into an Earth-like planet through an atmosphere processor. From the films' contexts, Weyland-Yutani is a major corporate player in the space colonization industry--ergo its "Building Better Worlds" slogan. In Prometheus, we see the early years of Weyland-Yutani when it was just the Weyland Corporation, but even in those early years space travel and colonization was on Weyland's agenda. When we first see corporation founder Peter Weyland in pre-recorded holographic form, his is surrounded by construction that is taking place on one of his colonies. It is in the common themes of terraforming and space colonization where the name "Prometheus" finds its significance: Much like how the mythic titan Prometheus shared fired from the ancient Greek gods with humanity, self-proclaimed world builder Weyland uses his ship, the Prometheus, to learn the secrets from aliens that have been building worlds long before humanity existed.

Where the Engineers differ from Weyland-Yutani in their approach to terraforming is in the area of microbiology. Instead of building giant machines such as an atmosphere processor to make a planet habitable, the Engineers appear to understand that habitable ecosystems are initially built on the microscopic level. That explains the melting Engineer at the beginning of the movie, as well as the dark liquid that the expedition team finds in the Engineers' labs on LV-223. The dark liquid contains some kind of micro-organism that is capable of deconstructing preexisting DNA and bonding with it to create new complex organisms. Of course, this DNA bonding weapon is deadly and unpredictable, as it clearly led to the deaths of almost all of the Engineers on LV-223, but the exact logic behind the weapon is never explicitly stated.

The Engineers planned to send the DNA bonding weapon to Earth (even after an unexpected delay that lasted over 2,000 years) to wipe out humanity, but it is unknown why they chose DNA bonding as a weapon as opposed to some other technology. It could be that it was intended to further shape Earth to the Engineers' exact specifications, much like the red weeds that the Martians planted on Earth in H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds novel. It could also be that instead of creating a less complex bioweapon such as microscopic pathogen, the Engineers concluded that their DNA bonding weapon would be more effective because it could attack humans on both micro- and macroscopic levels.

The DNA bonding weapon ultimately sets the stage for the evolution of the Alien as it is seen in the original films. Prometheus shows two different kinds of proto-facehuggers, and a proto-Alien emerges from one of the Engineers at the end of the film (in a scene that reminded me so much of the Newborn birthing scene in Alien Resurrection). The logic behind the DNA bonding weapon matches that of the Alien's lifecycle, in the sense that both can adapt to almost any environment and they both reproduce rapidly through parasitic infection and bonding with the host's DNA. In fact, the prequel strongly suggests that the Alien, as it is seen in the original movies, is the perfected version of the Engineers' imperfect DNA bonding weapon.

Everything I'm rambling about here is purely speculation based on what I've seen in Prometheus and in the original Alien movies. The prequel ends with a cliffhanger, and the answer to why the Engineers would want to wipe out the human race--even over 2,000 years after their original target date--has not yet been provided. I think that the Engineers want to destroy the human race because their own civilization (which by the time of Prometheus could span multiple solar systems and even galaxies) has started to fall apart so unexpectedly and at such a rapid pace that colonizing Earth is their only option left for survival. If this is so, it would give greater significance to this line of dialogue from the prequel: "Every king has his reign and then he dies. That is the natural order of things."

The sequel to Prometheus could prove everything that I've written here to be wrong. Nevertheless, any prequel or sequel that can provide this much food for thought is a success in my opinion, and I look forward to seeing what else Ridley Scott has in mind next for his fascinating franchise.

Men in Black 3 Review: Not Quite Back in Black

After many years of watching films from all genres, I've come to the conclusion that making sequels to comedies are much more difficult to make than sequels to films in any other genre. It's not that good comedy sequels are impossible, it's just that comedy films (at least in the U.S.) don't seem to lend themselves to serialized storytelling, a crucial element in the making of a worthwhile sequel.

With that in mind I saw Men in Black 3 this last weekend, which returns Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones to their roles of MIB Agents K and J a decade after Men in Black 2. MIB 3 was better than I expected it to be and it's a better sequel than its immediate predecessor. However, it suffers the same problem as most comedy sequels--namely, how to keep the humor going while providing a story that meaningfully expands upon the first film. Read on for my complete review.

MIB 3 begins with Boris The Animal (played by an unrecognizable Jemaine Clement), an old alien enemy of Agent K, escaping from his lunar prison. Following the escape, Agent K suddenly disappears without a trace, leaving Agent J to travel back to 1969 to save the younger Agent K (Josh Brolin) and prevent an alien invasion of Earth.

MIB 3 is a solid sequel. The time travel premise works better than it does in most time travel movies, and it gives you more insight into why Agent K views J the way he does. (In fact, you'll probably watch the first MIB much differently after seeing MIB 3.) It's also commendable that Rick Baker is back providing exceptional alien makeup effects. Movies like MIB 3 are ideal for effects artists such as Baker, so practical effects aficionados will want to see this movie just for that alone. Unfortunately, MIB 3 almost completely forgets that it's supposed to be funny. It has a few humorous moments here and there, but the sequel feels more like a lighthearted sci-fi action-adventure movie than an actual sci-fi comedy.

Movies like MIB and Ghostbusters before it are essentially parodies of the horror and sci-fi genres, genres that are rife with parody-ready quirks and absurdities. Yet the sequels for both of these movies lost their sense of genre satire and they severely suffer for it. Yes, MIB 3 is certainly better than Ghostbusters 2, but it's better because it relies on action set pieces and a well-written time travel story instead of just repacking the same jokes that were told before. In other words, if you want a solid time travel movie, watch MIB 3; however, if you want an amusing time travel parody, watch Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure or Hot Tub Time Machine. That's MIB 3's biggest disappointment as a comedy sequel, and it's hard to overlook that shortcoming when writing this review. (That said, the sequel does briefly recycle some of the same gags from the previous two films: the revelation that odd real-life celebrities are actually aliens, the unusual anatomies of aliens, goofy-looking alien technology, etc.)

I have no idea why the MIB sequels have a difficult time finding new jokes from the premise that was established in the first movie. The central idea behind MIB is a send-up of the "Men in Black" legend that is frequently and fervently discussed among UFO conspiracy groups. There's plenty of goofy, paranoid humor waiting to be mined from this kind of source material, yet MIB 2 and MIB 3 seem reluctant to stray too far from the jokes told in the first film, as if it will get too strange for mainstream audiences. For that reason, watching MIB 3 piqued my curiosity into seeing the Men in Black animated series, just to see if that cartoon was more willing than its live-action counterpart to embrace the wild and woolly weirdness of sci-fi and UFO culture.

Jones and Smith fit comfortably back into their roles of Agents K and J, although Jones is missing for much of the movie. Brolin does a wonderful job as the younger Agent K, and his performance is key to understanding the movie's plot twist. (Then again, it would've been nice if MIB 3 included a scene between Jones and Brolin where the two different Ks meet. It's a time travel movie, so why not?) Michael Stuhlbarg has lots of fun in the role of Griffin, an alien who can see multiple future timelines; in contrast, the alien menace Boris isn't a particularly memorable villain, even though Clement eagerly chews up the scenery from underneath his alien make-up. Emma Thompson plays Agent O, who steps in to run the MIB agency after the passing of Zed (Rip Torn, who is not in this sequel). Thompson isn't given much to do, and it feels like such a wasted opportunity given her talent and background in genre titles such as the Harry Potter and Nanny McPhee movies. Then again, Alice Eve, who plays the younger version of O, gets even less to do than Thompson.

MIB 3 is an entertaining sequel, it just doesn't work as a comedy. How you feel about that will determine whether you go see it in the theater or wait for it on home video.