R.I.P.D. (2013)

Title: R.I.P.D. (2013)

Director: Robert Schwentke

Cast: Jeff Bridges, Ryan Reynolds, Kevin Bacon, Mary-Louise Parker, James Hong

I’m sure that as a concept the idea for R.I.P.D. must have sounded good to the people behind this film. I mean, dead cops fighting ghosts and monsters? Sounds cool alright, I mean, with the right crew behind the film, this thing could have been like a mix between Ghostbusters and Men In Black. Unfortunately, judging by the resulting film, the crew behind R.I.P.D. weren’t really interested in making a decent picture. So what we’re talking about here is the first true turkey of the Summer 2013 season. Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re saying, wasn’t The Lone Ranger (2013) the biggest flop of the summer? And you’d be right, The Lone Ranger did lose a lot of money, but at least it didn’t fail because it was a bad film, it failed because it was about cowboys, and kids don’t give a crap about cowboys nowadays. If you ask me, The Lone Ranger is actually a good western that got ignored by audiences because it was bad mouthed even before it was released. I hate it when that happens! But back to R.I.P.D., now here’s a dud that failed because simply put, it’s wasn’t a good film at all, it’s just so average. And this comes from a fan of sci-fi and horror! Where did R.I.P.D. go wrong?

In R.I.P.D. we are presented with Nick, a police officer who bites the bullet in the first five minutes of the film. When he goes to the afterlife, he learns that when police officers die they immediately join an undead police force called R.I.P.D. which stands for Rest in Peace Department, get it? So anyhow, Nick is assigned to work with Roy (Jeff Bridges) who in accordance to buddy cop movie rule #579 immediately hates his new partner. Jesus, when will they ever break with these silly cliché’s in buddy cop movies? Don’t they realize they are making the same damn movie for the millionth time? So anyway Nick and Roy partner up to find some undead dude who wants to destroy the tunnel that people take to go to heaven? Will they manage to stop him before the undead roam the earth?

The concept of undead cops fighting ghost and goblins is a good one, unfortunately the movie these guys made isn’t. Okay, think of the possibilities of cops fighting ghosts? It just sounds cool don’t it? Unfortunately Robert Schwentke, the director behind this film and the writers Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi decided to focus all their strengths into making their own version of a MIB movie but with ghosts instead of aliens, as a result the concept immediately looses any possibility of novelty. You feel you’ve been there and done that, but without Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones and without Rick Baker doing the cool make up effects. What you get though is wisecracking Ryan Reynolds playing the rookie cop and Jeff Bridges playing a grouchy cowboy, similar to the one he played in the Coen Bros. film True Grit (2010). I mean, this is such a rip off of Men in Black that you can literally take any character from R.I.P.D. and find its counterpart in Men In Black. R.I.P.D. is a Xerox copy with zero originality, and you can put that on your dvd cover if you want, free of charge.

On top of all that, the movie is kind of afraid to embrace the kind of film it’s supposed to be, which is an ailment that many films dealing with horror elements are suffering from in todays modern cinematic landscape. I mean, with very few exceptions, like Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead (2013), truly horrifying films have been disappearing from cinemas. And so what we get are these watered down versions of horror, which is just sad. Do you think the folks behind Dead Heat (1988), the movie about two cops who become zombies, were afraid of the fact that they were making a zombie film? Hell no! They made a damn good zombie/buddy cop movie! And they made no apologies about it! With R.I.P.D., we’re talking about a film that deals with the supernatural, the undead, about ghosts, it’s common sense that the film needed to be spookier, scarier, we’re dealing with freaking ghosts here man! It would have been a good idea to mix the comedy with the horror. The way Ghostbusters (1984) or Beetlejuice (1989) did? Instead, the movie is so squeaky clean it doesn’t feel like a movie about ghosts, it doesn’t even feel like a movie about the supernatural. Hell, even the ghosts don’t look like ghosts! And here’s where the film really failed for me. Every single one of its creatures where terrible computer generated images, I mean, just atrocious! And that’s one thing that they didn’t manage to duplicate from the MIB films, the excellent make up and visual effects. I mean in Men In Black 3 (2012) for example, the visual and make up effects were top notch! The movie might have been simple as hell, but the effects were entertaining an extremely well achieved. On R.I.P.D. they failed to deliver good effects, the character designs where just banal. The one thing that matters the most in a movie of this kind -the monsters- where not handled well at all and that my friends is what brought this movie down to the ground.

Is there anything good to say about R.I.P.D.? Well, the one saving grace the film has is Bridges and Reynolds keeping things fun with their banter. But then again, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before in thousands of other buddy cop films. The older cop hates his new partner, you know how that goes, they have to learn to appreciate each other for who they are and so forth. There’s a couple of funny ideas squeezed in there, like the fact that the undead has to get into a bathroom and flush the toilet to go to the real world, or the fact that Ryan Reynolds looks like James Hong to humans, and Bridges looks like a super hot model, which creates some funny moments, but you kind of feel they could have milked that premise a bit more. Well, over all, that’s it my friends. R.I.P.D. is a missed opportunity, a film based on a comic book with a nifty premise that unfortunately spawned a very derivative film. You might have some goofy fun with this one, but I say wait for it on dvd and even then, don’t expect too much. Afterwards, you’ll feel like the MIB used their brain washing machine on ya.

Rating: 2 ½ out of 5   

The Shadow (1994)

Title: The Shadow (1994)

Director: Russell Mulcahy

Cast: Alec Baldwin, Penelope Ann Miller, Peter Boyle, Ian McKellen, Tim Curry, James Hong

The Shadow came out during the 90’s, at a time when Hollywood was producing comic book movies trying to duplicate the success that Warner Bros. had with Tim Burton’s Batman (1989). I guess its part of what you’d call the 90’s comic book movie revival? So anyhow’s Hollywood’s idea of making a successful comic book movie at that time was reviving the oldest comic book heroes; the tried and true characters from the golden days. I guess they thought these old characters would still be in the public’s collective mind, but boy where they wrong. While The Shadow is a character with lots of background and history, it is a hero that comes out of the 30’s; out of the depression era and well, that was a long time ago. People don’t want old heroes like The Phantom or The Shadow, they want contemporary heroes like The X-Men and Spiderman. And so, films like The Phantom (1995) and The Shadow didn’t exactly grow legs at the box office when they were released. The Rocketeer (1991) also failed because it was also a period comic book film that took place during the 30’s. So apparently, any comic book film that takes place in the old days is doomed to failure. But if you ask me, The Shadow didn’t deserve to fail at all, it’s a very fun film, a well produced comic book adaptation that is quite faithful to its source material. The Shadow you knew from the comics, novels and the radio shows is The Shadow you get on this film.

The Shadow tells the story of ‘Ying-Ko’ a ruthless opium dealer from Malaysia who is suddenly abducted by these monks, not sure if they are Tibetan or not so don’t ask. But they do have this cool looking temple in the shape of a Snake! So anyways, the leader of these monks is a holy man known as ‘The Tulku’ and he tells Ying-Ko that he will be given a chance to redeem himself. He will live amongst the monks for seven years and learn to “cloud mans minds”. Fast forward seven years and now Ying-Ko is living in New York City, is reformed and calls himself by his real name, Lamont Cranston. During the day, he is a wealthy “man about town” but at night, he roams the city streets using his new acquired powers to fight crime and protect the innocent. He is “The Shadow”, a mysterious figure that has the ability to make himself invisible to others, and hypnotize evil doers. What evil lurks in the hearts of man? The Shadow knows!  

So in my book, this is an excellent movie that didn’t deserve to fail at all. In fact, out of the these three old timey comic book movies of the 90’s, The Shadow is the one I like the most. The production values where high on this one, it had a lot of style, a lot of class and to top things off an amazing cast! I think it’s sad that modern audiences just can’t connect with a period comic book film. I guess this proves that it’s true, the grand majority of movie going audiences are young kids who don’t really care for anything remotely related to the past. The most recent example I can think of right now is The Lone Ranger (2013), a film with huge production values (above the 200 million dollar mark), a good director, a huge star and great visual effects. Unfortunately it is also a cowboy movie and kids just don’t connect with those anymore either, so I guess, the lesson to Hollywood is, if you want to make a movie that takes place in the old days, you better either make it hip and cool (for example The Great Gatsby (2013)) or make it an indie with a low budget, for the art house crowd because if you don’t, you risk having a turkey and loosing your precious millions. My cry out to modern audiences is, give these types of movies a chance because you just might be missing out on a good movie! Case in point: The Shadow.

What I love about The Shadow is the character itself, the whole set up behind him, the premise. The character looks so cool with his black hat and trench coat, with his twin guns! The red scarf, the mysterious eyes, it’s a great visual in my book. But back in the 30’s, fans of The Shadow could only imagine him, you have to remember, this is a character that comes out of an era when people heard radio shows! Back in the 30’s comic book movies didn’t multiply like rabbits the way they do today, in fact, comic book super heroes hadn’t made the leap to the silver screen yet, that wouldn’t happen until The Adventures of Captain Marvel debuted in 1941, yes my friends, Captain Marvel (a.k.a. Shazam!) was the first super hero to get his very own feature film! So until that day would come along, all comic book fans had during the 30’s were radio shows. They’d have to snuggle up next to their radios and hear their comic book heroes fight crime! Comic book fans had to imagine everything back in those days, which is quite cool when you think about it! I remember when The Shadow hit theaters back in ’94, they re-issued a couple of these old radio shows and I bought a couple of them because I wanted to experience what it was like to listen and imagine these old Shadow stories. I can’t tell you how much fun I had listening to these old radio shows! I remember one of the stories was called “The Man Who Wasn’t There”. There was this aura of mystery to these old radio shows that was just awesome, they were very atmospheric, very spooky. And this is something that this film effectively translated to the silver screen.

On this film The Shadow inhabits a dark, seedy New York City filled with art deco buildings and big band dance clubs. Russell Mulcahy, this film’s director, turned The Shadow into a nourish event, a film noir in every sense of the word. What’s film noir you ask? Well, these are films that usually take place in urban settings (a city), at night and crime, sex and violence usually figure into the story one way or another. The wind is always blowing in the city streets; the lighting on these films is purposely dark, thunder is clapping, there’s always an aura of mystery to these films, and I just love the hell out of all that ambiance, that atmosphere. So The Shadow brings all that mystical mystery from old film noir back to the silver screen. Keeping in line with one of the requirements of a film noir, the hero is doomed somehow, he has a dark side, and The Shadow most certainly has that in spades. The Shadow knows what evil lurks in the hearts of man because he himself has to keep that evil side of him under control, he was once ruthless, once cold, he has a constant battle with his inner demons. One wonderfully awesome dream sequence has Lamont Cranston actually ripping his face off and revealing the villains face underneath! So we got a character that’s tormented by his dark past, constantly trying to forgive himself, redeem himself. Speaking of The Shadow himself, what a wonderfully spot on casting decision it was to put Alec Baldwin in this role! This was before he went into the “Fat Elvis” stage he is now. Back in ’94 Alec Baldwin still had some of those dashing good looks to him, plus that voice is perfect for The Shadow.

The rest of the cast is equally great. I don’t know what happened to Penelope Anne Miller, but man, I wish she was still around making movies. She looks amazing playing Margo Lane. She wears these silky dresses that look amazing on her, especially in dream sequences! The best part about Margo Lane is that she’s is never, for one second portrayed as a helpless damsel in distress. In fact, if we get down to it she plays an important part in saving the day, I liked that about this movie. The damsel actually becomes something of a threat to The Shadow! Then we have the great Tim Curry playing a mad scientist and Ian McKellen playing a goofy one. John Lone plays Shiwan Kan, the last living descendent of Genghis Kan! The villain in this film has the traditional villainous desire to “conquer the world” by destroying it first; which brings to mind that the film isn’t all that original in terms of story. But so what, this movie is more about the look and feel then the brains behind it. There’s tons of style and atmosphere here, not to mention fun. The film was written by David Koep and I have to admit, his dialog was interesting, funny, it kept me entertained. Koep wisely keeps things light by spreading jokes in the dialog to liven things up, so be alert for a lot of word play.  There’s this hilarious scene where hero and villain are discussing the fate of the world and suddenly it turns into this: “Lovely tie, by the way. May I ask where you acquired it?” “Brooks Brothers” “Is that Mid-town?” “45^th and Madison; you are a Barbarian.” “Thank You!” So you should have fun with the script which is very witty and clever.

Russell Mulcahy brings a visual flare to the film by adding lots of interesting camera angles and gimmicks to keep things visually interesting, the production has a lush quality to it as well. I think he was an excellent choice to direct this film. For example, Russell’s visual trickery involves scenes like this inspired moment in which we follow a canister with a message in it as the canister travels through a series of funnels, spread out through the city…awesome sequence! Speaking of visually interesting directors, Sam Raimi expressed interest at one point to direct yet another Shadow film, in fact he stated that he owns the rights to the character, unfortunately, the last he said on that subject was that a good script had not been produced yet, and so, as far as I know, that idea has been shelved. Maybe one day, a hip young director will find a way to make a Shadow film that can connect with modern audiences by somehow bringing The Shadow into the modern age. But if you ask me, I like The Shadow just the way he was portrayed on this film, living in the 30’s New York City, going to dance clubs, moving around in taxi cabs, romancing the ladies. The Shadow works best in that era, working the dark, seedy city streets, hiding in the shadows, cackling away at the bad guys from the nothingness…around every corner, in every empty room, as inevitable as your guilty conscience.

Rating:  4 ½ out of 5 

Robot Jox (1990)

Title: Robot Jox (1990)

Director: Stuart Gordon

Cast: Gary Graham, Ann Marie Johnson, Paul Koslo

Cast:

Robot Jox is one of Stuart Gordon’s most expensive films, but don’t go thinking Robot Jox is a “big budget” movie, in fact it’s quite the opposite, for a movie about giant robots, Robot Jox’s budget is actually quite small. But that didn’t bother director Stuart Gordon, a director who’s always been accustomed to working with really low budgets. I mean here’s a director who’s used to making movies below the 1 million dollar mark. The amazing thing is that for working with shoestring budgets, he’s always made pretty cool movies, movies that have gone on to become cult favorites. For example, he did Re-Animator (1985) with a mere 900,000 and to this day Re-Animator is still considered one of the best zombie splatter fests ever. The ultra gory masterpiece called From Beyond (1986) only cost 4.5 million. Fortress (1992) a science fiction film about a futuristic underground penal colony that cost 8 million dollars to make, yet somehow managed to look better than Robot Jox which was made with 10 million! His budgets always went a little higher with each feature he made until he made the most expensive film in Gordon’s career; a science fiction film called Space Truckers (1996), a film about these space truckers who unbeknownst to them carry a deadly cargo on their space ship. Space Truckers was a pretty cool little sci-fi movie that hardly anybody saw. That one cost 25 million, the highest budget that Gordon ever worked with, yet strangely enough, it’s one of his lesser known films! So anyhow, with all the excitement surrounding Guillermo del Toro’s excellent giant robot movie PacificRim (2013), I thought it would be a good idea to revisit Gordon’s Robot Jox, a film that plays with many of the same ideas that Pacifi Rim plays with, but with a  far, far smaller budget.

 Robot Jox is all about a future in which war has been abolished and countries now settle their disputes by having giant robots kick the living shit out of each other. You’d think they go for a bigger budget when thinking about making a film about giant robots, but nope, they decided to do it anyway with just 10 million. As a basis for comparison, Michael Bay made Transformers (2007) for 150 million and Guillermo del Toro made Pacific Rim with 180 million!  Yet here’s Gordon, the miracle worker, making this big on ideas sci-fi movie with a mere 10 million. The problem with Robot Jox for me is that its low budget shows. Sets look half assed, miniatures look unconvincing, and the futuristic wardrobe looks like motorcycle driving gear. Why do they always do this in cheap sci-fi films? Got no money for some decent wardrobe? Hey, it’s okay! We can use football shoulder pads! We’ll make it look futuristic! Problem with that is that I always notice! Who wouldn't right? Are all those cables on their suits RCA cables they ripped out of some television set? Sure they are! All this adds an unexpected level of comedy to the whole film which some of you might enjoy.

Then again, ten million dollars is about the average budget of a Godzilla movie and Robot Jox definitely plays in the same ball park as a Godzilla movie. I mean, were talking about giant robots fighting each other here! And truth be told, the scenes with the giant robots fighting each other in the middle of an arena in the dessert are the best part of this film. The effects were achieved with a mixture of stop motion animation and traditional miniatures which gives the robots a tangible feel, your brain instantly recognizes these aren’t computer animated images, these guys made these miniatures and these puppets for real, which is something I always admire. The stop motion animation and the miniatures were done by Dave Allen, a guy who did a lot of stop motion animation work in z-level movies like all those Full Moon Pictures that were so popular during the 90’s. I’m talking about films like Doctor Mordrid (1992) and Subspecies (1991). Full Moon pictures we’re popular amongst genre fans during the 90’s because they were cheesy fun. They might’ve looked cheap, but they were also unabashedly geeky, these films displayed a genuine love for genre films. David Allen brought all his low budget know how to Robot Jox, his stop motion animation is a highlight of the film.

      

One of the big problems with this movie is the uneven tone. When studios think of a film about giant robots, their target audience is immediately children, this is the reason why Godzilla films always have ‘Godzuki’, which is like a baby Godzilla, a character deliberately placed in Godzilla films so the kiddies will have something to identify with. Well, at first glance Robot Jox feels like a kid’s film, but then it has many double entendre jokes, harsh language and even some nudity and sex. I hear the writer behind the film, Joe Haldeman, wanted a more serious, dramatic picture while Stuart Gordon was more interested in making it a cheesy, b-movie, akin to a Saturday morning cartoon, so I guess in the end this is why the movie ended up being uneven in nature. The cheesiest thing about the movie though is the dialog which always feels unnatural, in the end, the lines spoken in this picture will more than likely make you laugh all the way through the picture. I know I did! It’s one of those movies that’s funny because it’s bad. But basically, if you enjoy low budget cheesy films, then you are more than likely going to enjoy Robot Jox. I enjoy it because I have high tolerance for cheese, in fact, I love it!

A behind the scenes look at the crew working on the "giant robots"

Production wise this movie has a sad story because it’s the film that put an end to Empire Pictures which went bankrupt while making this movie. To give you an idea of the troubled path that Robot Jox had to go through to get released, the film was completed in 1987, but the whole thing with the bankruptcy held its release in theaters all the way back to 1990! At the time, this had been Empire Pictures most expensive movie yet! This film was certainly a risk for them, but I’m willing to bet it’s one they were willing to take because of the whole popularity with the Transformers cartoons. They thought they had a potential hit in their hands because of this! Unfortunately fate had other plans for it and so the film ended up being released in 1990, when the Transformers cartoon show had faded away. Empire Pictures was the company behind such low budget sci-fi/horror fare as Spellcaster (1988), Creepozoids (1987), Mutant Hunt (1987), Terrorvision (1986), Zone Troopers (1985), Trancers (1985), Ghoulies (1985), Troll (1986), Rawhead Rex (1986), and many of Gordon’s previous horror films like Dolls (1987), From Beyond (1986) and Re-Animator (1985). Basically, if it was the mid eighties and it was low budget direct to video horror/science fiction, these guys were behind it. Sadly, Robot Jox brought all that to an end; I guess they bit more than they could chew. Too bad because I actually liked all those cheesy low budget movies they helped produce and distribute during the 80’s, they were cheap low brow fun, I still find myself revisiting many of their films.

One giant step for humanity! 

Personally, I enjoy Robot Jox because it’s a film I’ve been watching since it was first made, and at the time, these kinds of films were a rarity. True, there were cartoons about giant robots, but nobody was making motion pictures about giant robot like this one. There were no films like Transformers (2007) or Pacific Rim (2013), so I guess in its own small way, Robot Jox was a pioneer in American science fiction cinema. Strangely enough, it was the Transformers cartoon show which inspired Stuart Gordon to make this film, Gordon’s intention was to capitalize on the success of the cartoon show, unfortunately, by the time Robot Jox was released in theaters the popularity of the cartoon show had faded and so, the film tanked. It did poorly in theaters and received bad reviews, but it later garnered cult following and found its audience on home video, I know that’s where I discovered it. It was followed by a series of films that were sometimes marketed as sequels to Robot Jox, but in reality weren’t. These films were Crash and Burn (1990), which actually borrowed its title from a line from Robot Jox and then there was Robot Wars (1993). I never saw either of these, but I’ll see if I can my hands on them for review. Bottom line with Robot Jox is that it’s not a terrible film, it has its entertaining moments, especially those robot fights that while dated when compared to films like Pacific Rim, are still fun to watch in my book.

Rating: 2 ½ out of 5

Crash and Burn!

Pacific Rim (2013)

Title: Pacific Rim (2013)

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Cast: Idris Elba, Ron Perlman, Charlie Hunnam, Rinko Kikuchi

Pacific Rim is the most fun I’ve had this summer so far, I mean, this 2013 summer season has been incredibly good, with big, loud, bombastic pop corn movies and it’s not easy narrowing it down to “most fun had this summer” but dammit, I had such a blast last night watching Pacific Rim that I officially declare it the most fun summer movie of 2013! And without a doubt, this is the best giant robot movie I’ve ever seen! Giant robot movies are not easy films to make because they will always involve either miniature effects work or lots of computer effects, in other words, these type of movies always require big budgets, if you don't have the money to pull off this kind of film and make it anyway, then you might end up with a goofy film like Stuart Gordon's Robot Jox (1990), which was one of the first attempts to bring a giant robot movie to the silver screen; by americans anyway. The results with Robot Jox or it's "sequel" Robot Wars (1993) were laughable at best. Then we have the Transformers movies, that while having the budget, didn't necesarilly have the best talent behind the camera. Which reminds me that as I watched this movie, a mental image of Michael Bay (the director behind the Transformers movies) furiously taking notes kept popping into my head. Yes sir ladies and gentlemen, with Pacific Rim Guillermo del Toro has just given Michael Bay an explosive class on how to make a giant robot movie work. So, what exactly made Pacific Rim such an entertaining ride?

In Pacific Rim there’s no time for building up a back story to nothing, we are thrown right smack into the middle of a world in which giant monsters are beginning to emerge from the depths of the ocean, scene one take one, giant monsters destroying the San Francisco Bridge. At first humans think that these giant monsters popping out of the ocean is something temporary, that these monsters will just go away, but soon they realize that these monsters just won’t stop coming, so the governments of the world join and create the “Jaeger” robots. These are robots gigantic in size that use different weapons to destroy the giant monsters, which by the way are referred to as ‘Kaiju’, a Japanese word that translates to ‘monster’. So the humans get all cocky because they are beating the monsters with their giant machines. But that cockiness soon fades away when even bigger monsters start to emerge from the depths of the ocean! Soon the Jaeger robots are considered a waste of money because too many millions are being lost, and too many fighters have died. The battle against the monsters is being lost! Can the dwindling Jaeger program go up against these giant creatures? And just what is it that these creatures are hoping to achieve by laying waste to our world?

Pacific Rim is Guillermo del Toro biggest movie to date, he’s worked with medium sized budgets before, for example Hellboy II (2008) cost 80 million dollars, which is the highest budget he’d worked with up to that point, but now Del Toro’s gone over the 100 million dollar mark with Pacific Rim which cost a whopping 170 million dollars! But trust me, you’ll see all that money up on the screen, this is certainly NOT one of those movies that costs 300 million dollars and you don’t see the money on the screen, nope here you’ re gonna see them, and you’re gonna be impressed. Seriously though, the effects work on this movie is simply amazing, the scope of the ideas is way bigger than any other Guillermo del Toro movie. This is the kind of director who has a lot of imagination. Right from the start of his career Guillermo del Toro has demonstrated that he is a director with true admiration and devotion to the sci-fi/horror genres. You can tell that all you need to do if you are producer is give this guy a couple of millions and he’ll bring his imagination to life on the silver screen for you, which is exactly what happened here; Pacific Rim was a project brought forth by the guys at Legendary Pictures. They searched out Guillermo del Toro to work on this project, and Guillermo del Toro made it his own. He took the script, re-worked it to his liking and placed his sci-fi loving stamp on the project. I’m so glad that it was Del Toro who ended up directing, this movie might have turned out to be a lesser film had he not been involved.

Comparisons to other films are inevitable, for example, many of you will immediately associate it with Transformers, but honestly, this movie blows all Transformers movies out of the water. The effects work alone surpasses anything that Michael Bay might have conjured up with his 200 million dollar films like Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen (2009). I give credit to Del Toro for making a far better movie with less money. For example, a great thing about Pacific Rim is that the giant robots look way more realistic, they don’t look like CGI creations, they look truly gigantic, truly massive in dimensions. And of course, I couldn’t help thinking of Godzilla films when watching this, because in all honesty, what is Pacific Rim if not Guillermo del Toro making his own Godzilla film? It’s true, I mean, to me, this is Guillermo saying okay, I’m not making a Godzilla film, but I am? I mean, the premise is the same you’d find in a Godzilla movie. Let’s see, giant monsters coming out of the depths of the oceans? Check! Humans creating robots to fight these giant monsters? Check! Human drama in the midst of it all? Check! If I had to compare this one to any of the Godzilla films, it would have to be to Godzilla AgainstMechagodzilla (2002) and Godzilla Tokyo S.O.S. (2003) which by the way are two of my favorite Godzilla films ever.  On these two films the humans create a mechanical version of Godzilla to fight against the real Godzilla. The whole thing with humans driving Mechagodzilla is similar in nature to what we see in Pacific Rim. Plus, that whole element of monsters destroying buildings that is such a trademark in Godzilla films is very evident here. So what I’m saying is that any lover of Godzilla films or Kaiju films in general should be extremely happy with this film. For all intents and purposes, Pacific Rim is the biggest, most expensive and overall best ‘Kaiju’ movie ever made, and you can quote me on that one!  

Guillermo del Toro is such a massive genre fan, that when he does a film, well, you can see he loves many of the things us geek boys love, and he gives us exactly what we want. For example, there’s this scene that seems to have come straight out of a Voltron cartoon! Anybody here remember that 80’s cartoon? Most of the episodes ended with a giant robot fighting monsters in space? He always cut the monsters in half with his ‘blazing sword’? Well, you’ll see something on this movie that will bring all those Voltron memories rushing right back into your brain! It also brought memories of Mazinger Z, but I’m probably talking gibberish to most of you out there now. Also, In terms of monster mayhem and destruction, this one delivers. So this movie gets an “A” on the massive destruction of public property department, but what of the human drama? This is something that is always taken in consideration when watching a Godzilla movie. We all love the monsters and the destruction, but what of the human side of the story? Sometimes in a Godzilla film the human side of the story will blow chunks and sometimes it’s quite good, the best Godzilla movies are those that deliver on both grounds. Well, I'm happy to say that Pacific Rim delivers on both grounds as far as I’m concerned. The whole thing with the Jaeger pilots connecting their brains in order to drive these robots was such a great idea! They have to share their minds and memories in order to be able to join their brains to drive these gigantic robots! So there’s this whole psychological side to the film because these pilots don’t just drive these things, they have to get inside each other’s heads! Now that’s a pretty cool concept because not only do they have to drive these robots and fight these monsters, they also gotta do battle with their own demons.

It seems I can’t stop gushing over this movie, but what can I say, I truly loved it. It’s the kind of summer film that you immediately feel the urge to see again. Word of advice though, do not see it 3-D. The 3-D was a post conversion which means that it wasn’t originally filmed with 3-D cameras; the studio converted it into a 3-D film after they made the movie, so the resulting film won’t truly be 3-D. Since most of the film takes place during the night and in the middle of a storm, I’ve read some reviewers state that the 3-D actually hinders your full enjoyment of the film because as some of you might now, 3D glasses actually makes the images darker. So my advice is watch Pacific Rim in 2-D, the film does not look any less spectacular in regular 2-D, in fact, it might actually look better. Guillermo del Toro was against the 3-D conversion thing from the get go, but you know how studios are when an opportunity to make extra cash comes along. Can’t blame them, they need to make their money back and I hope they do because I wouldn’t mind seeing another one of these. I was happy to see Guillermo del Toro making such a huge summer blockbuster, really proud to see this director come full circle, he has truly bloomed into a class A director and I applaud him for that. Now go see Pacific Rim, if movies where a drug, then Pacific Rim is crack for the eyes! Pure entertainment, you won’t be disappointed! My only question is: how is director Gareth Edwards, the director currently filming the second American Godzilla film, going to top what Guillermo Del Toro has done here?

Rating: 5 out of 5  

Idris Elba (left) and Guillermo del Toro (right) talk out a scene on the set of Pacific Rim 

The Phantom (1996)

Title: The Phantom (1996)

Director: Simon Wincer

Cast: Billy Zane, Treat Williams, Catherine Zeta-Jones, James Remar, Kristy Swanson

My introduction to the Lee Falk’s The Phantom was by way of a cartoon show from the 80’s called Defenders of the Earth; boy I was a fan of that show! It united Flash Gordon, Mandrake the Magician (another one of Falk’s creations) and The Phantom in a show that turned them into a team of super heroes who in every episode would go up against Ming the Merciless in his attempt to conquer the earth. Back then I must have been about 11 or 12 years old but little did I know that The Phantom had such a legacy as a character! Here’s a character that started way back in the 1930’s as a syndicated comic strip. It has gone on to appear in all sorts of media outlets including films, cartoons, video games, comic books and novels. Sad part about the character is that even though Lee Falk constantly made efforts to get the character out there to the public, for some reason modern audiences never connected  with the character, which is probably the reason why the film made back ’96 flopped in such a big way.

After the mega success of Batman (1989) and its sequel Batman Returns (1992) all the major studios were looking for a way to duplicate the success of those films and so suddenly, comic book films where the hot ticket. Before Burton’s Batman, big budget comic book films were a rarity. Yes my friends, there was a time when comic book lovers were starving for superhero films! We earned for worthy adaptations of our favorite comic book characters. A glimpse of light showed itself on the horizon when Burton’s bat films made it so big. After Batman comic book fans got least one big budget comic book movie every summer. The problem was that most studios didn’t go for modern comic book characters, for some reason they opted to go with old comic book heroes, like The Rocketeer (1991), The Shadow (1994) and the film I’ll be reviewing today, The Phantom (1996). I guess studios wanted to go the safe route by making films of these established characters. No matter how old they were, studios thought movies based on these characters would make huge bank at the box office because they were classic super heroes. But boy were they wrong! Studios didn’t know it back then, but people didn’t want to see super heroes from the 30’s, they wanted to see modern day super heroes brought to life. The disappointing box office success of these three super hero films based on old characters taught film studios that what people wanted was something else, something modern. It was 20^th Century Fox who finally went the right way and did a film based on Marvel comics X-Men (1999). Comic book movies haven’t stopped since, the new age of comic book films was born. But it seems studios haven’t learned their lesson entirely, cause they’ve just gone and spent 200 million dollars in making The Lone Ranger (2013), which has immediately lost a ton of money at the box office and is poised to become this year’s runaway turkey.

The Phantom, next to his horse 'Hero'

But what of The Phantom? Why did it flop? Aside from it being an old comic book character? Well, to be honest, the film isn’t all that exciting. I mean, be it old or new, what really matters at the end of the day is if the film is worth a damn, if it entertains. So doe it? Well, in my book it half way does. For me the film never truly takes off. Even though it was written by Jeffrey Boam; the guy who wrote Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (1989), The Phantom still managed to be boring and flat. Even the fights were filmed in a boring way! Here I was watching the climactic fight between the good guy and the bad guy and I was like, that’s it, this is the best they could muster? The film isn’t impressive enough. I mean, I did appreciate the way the film tried to convey this feeling of old adventure films, of the old cliffhangers from the 50’s. Hidden caves, hidden treasures, good guys chasing bad guys while riding horses, the hero jumping off planes, pirates, swords…cool ideas, my only problem is in the execution, it all amounts to a boring film, which is a sad thing to be if you’re a superhero film.

Another thing that rubbed me the wrong way was how many elements were ripped off from the Indiana Jones films. I mean, okay, you got the same guy who wrote Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to write this, but damn the similarities are so many that you almost feel like you are watching the Indiana Jones films all over again. Let’s see, the whole film is about these three magical skulls, kind of like those three magical stones from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)? When they get together they are all powerful? Been there seen that. They have this scene where the bad guys unite the three magical skulls and laser lights come out of the skulls eyes and the lasers point out a spot on the map that shows the bad guys where they need to go to get the third skull….which instantly reminded me of a similar scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) in which Indy does the same exact thing. There this scene in which The Phantom jumps off a plane with his girl and the plane crashes on a mountain, a scene plays out in the same exact fashion in Temple of Doom, even the shots are similar! Even the opening of the film takes place in an old bridge, same as that old bridge that Indy dangles from in Temple of Doom, so yeah, the filmmakers behind The Phantom used the Indiana Jones films as a blue print. Unfortunately, they were unable to duplicate the excitement behind those films.

On the positive side of things, the film does scream Saturday Morning Matinee, and it does manage to have that old fashion sense of adventure to it, and come on, let’s face it, that cheesy, cliffhanger stuff is cool if you’re a genre fan. The overall vibe is fun and nutty, and when we take in consideration Treat Williams performance as the villain ‘Xander Drax’, the film is also over the top, not meant to be taken seriously at all. This is not a serious or close to reality take on a super hero like The Dark Knight (2008), in fact, this is the complete opposite, pure ridiculousness. In fact, the writer of the film, Jeffrey Boam, wrote his original script as a spoof. Unfortunately, the director didn’t go with the funny vibe, he tried playing it straight. Still, you can see glimpses of the comedic elements that Boam put into the script. I mean, we are talking about a guy wearing a purple skin tight suit while swinging from tree vines in the middle of the African jungle! In fact when I think about it, this film has a lot in common with the Batman television show from the 60’s! You almost expect a WHAM! to appear on the screen when The Phantom punches a bad guy. So I guess if you go in expecting pulpy, over the top, campiness, then you should have a better time watching this, but still, there are many things that hinder the enjoyment of the flick, for example, the sets are so obviously sets! They didn’t even try to make them look realistic. The ending of the film, which takes place inside of a cave is so obviously a sound stage it’s not even funny! The whole thing looks so cheap.

Many directors were interested in bringing The Phantom to the big screen. At one point, even Sergio Leone himself expressed interest in directing the film! He even wanted to follow it up with a Mandrake the Magician film! Can you imagine that? The Phantom directed by Sergio Leone? Damn, that sounds cool just reading it! Joe Dante and Joel Schumacher were also at one time going to direct, but the project eventually fell on the hands of Simon Wincer, the director behind D.A.R.Y.L. (1985), Free Willy (1993) and Operation Dumbo Drop (1995). If you ask me, any of the previous directors that came before him would have made a better film. The studio had wanted to make this film since the late eighties and early nineties, but various factors stumped the production. One of the reasons why the project came to a screeching halt was The Shadow, which ended up being an abysmal failure, so suddenly, comic book films based on characters from the 1930's didn't seem like such a good idea. Still, the project pushed on and we got The Phantom, which while not the worst comic book movie ever made, leaves a lot to be desired. Still, the film does have a good performance from Billy Zane as The Phantom. He actually pumped iron for more than a year so he could get all beefed up for the part. He didn’t want to use fake muscles like other superhero films. But then again the mind wonders: what would Bruce Campbell have looked like playing The Phantom? That’s right my friends he was up for the part! So was Dolph Lungdren! Instead we got Billy Zane, a lifelong fan of The Phantom. So in the end, I’d say that The Phantom is still a fun watch, just go in with low expectations and you just might have some fun.

Rating: 3 out of 5   

Lee Falk and Billy Zane