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Oct. 27th, 2008 02:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficMax Payne
Sigh. They overthought it. They overthought it, they overthought it, they overthought it, and somehow they managed to make a game that was designed as a pastiche of bad action movies EVEN MORE FORMULAIC AND CLICHÉD. And yet it STILL treats the notion of a man’s family being murdered and the man becoming obsessed with vengeance as if it’s some revolutionary plot point that the audience has never seen before (I swear to God, they take half the movie before they flashback to the death of Max’s family).
Q: The hero’s wife has been murdered, with the last killer going missing. She worked for a pharmaceutical company, which also employs one of the hero’s oldest friends in a position of authority. How will this scenario plays out?
A. The old friend uses his position to help the hero find his wife’s murderer.
B. The hero never finds his wife’s killer, but comes to accept that vengeance is pointless.
C. The killer died in a car accident; the hero and his friend get roaring drunk.
D. The friend is the killer, the pharmaceutical company is a subsidiary of EvilCo, and the wife was killed because she knew too much™.
The game’s plot was much simpler. Max’s wife and daughter are still killed, but then he goes undercover to fight the drug epidemic (in the movie, it takes hours to reveal that there even IS a drug epidemic). His partner is killed and he’s framed for the murder. That’s right, the bad guys kill both his family AND his partner. You can imagine what happens then.
In comparison, Movie!Max is never really a fugitive. He spends most of the movie following clues that a 12-year-old could decipher (HEY, GENIUS, YOUR WIFE’S KILLERS HAD THE LOGO OF YOUR WIFE’S COMPANY TATTOOED ON THEM! JINKIES, THINK IT’S A CLUE?), and there’s really only any gunplay in the last fifteen minutes. Basically, if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen all the artillery this movie has to offer.
Shoot ‘Em Up got it right, down to the title. Mark Wahlberg ever starred in Four Brothers, which was everything this movie should’ve tried to be. What the hell happened? It's like they took a movie about a guy named MAX PAYNE seriously (the game did it with a wink, sending up its own kitschy narration with a blaxploitation show-within-the-show called Dick Justice: "The rain was comin' down like all the angels in heaven decided to take a piss at the same time. When you're in a situation like mine, you can only think in metaphors.")
It’s funny. I remember all the controversy from the fanbase over the apocalyptic, demonic visions that were plastered all over the trailers. For a movie based on a gritty, but extremely secular video game, it’s as if a Jedi Knight suddenly showed up in a Le Carre novel. As expected, they turn out to be a transparent gimmick. This is why I can’t take anything from Hollywood seriously. Think about it.
Exec 1: Okay, we’ve bought the license to a game that’s beloved for being like playing a cheesy action movie. Now, how do we make audiences care about a cheesy action movie?
Exec 2: We can pack it full of action. Hire a really good screenwriter to come up with a good script. Cast cheap but effective character actors to imbue the various caricatures with a sense of life, clichéd though it may be…
Exec 3: No, that’s crap! Let’s just throw in a bunch of religious CGI imagery so it looks like a supernatural movie. That’ll get asses in seats!
Exec 2: (confused) Then why don’t we just make a supernatural movie instead of tricking the audience?
Exec 1: Uh-uh-uh, you made too much sense! Go sit in the time-out corner!
In case you were wondering, yes, the angelic visions are just hallucinations brought on by drug use. I always wonder about media where some drug causes identical hallucinations in everyone who uses it. What if someone hallucinates a pink bunny rabbit and ruins the game? But no, it’s always a Jodie Foster tattoo telling people to kill each other. Bioware can’t even get a video game to run on everyone’s PC, but somehow these drug dealers get whites and blacks and Brits and lepers and fat people and Mormons to all have the same reaction.
Then there’s Mila Kunis as Mona Sax. This makes perfect sense. Take someone that 99% of the male audience would buy little candy hearts for if they met in real-life, then cast her as a tough-as-nails hitwoman. What, was Alyson Hannigan not available? Look, save yourself a bundle and hire Gina Gershon. She looks just as good in Maxim and she actually sounds like a badass killer who would shoot you as soon as look at you.
Of course, Mona's entire subplot with Max is supremely pointless. They have no chemistry, she contributes nothing to the plot. You could take a hatchet to all her scenes and the movie would probably make MORE sense. I’m entirely sure the only reason she was included instead of Vlad was because she has tits. I mean, you want to do a betrayal plot and a sequel set-up and yet no Vlad (full disclosure: the sequel hook is Max, apparently fully-recovered from the 100% addictive narcotic that he took TWO DOSES OF, sitting down with Mona. I would’ve given this movie an A+ if he had sat down with a Russian gent who said “Max, dearest of all my friends…”)? FAIL.
Amaury Nolasco… when there needed to be a soldier in Transformers who was vaguely discernable from all the other soldiers, you were there. When Street Kings was being made for no reason anyone could figure out, you were there. I don’t get it. He’s charismatic, he’s funny, yet he keeps getting nothing parts. Does all of L.A. periodically dress up in white robes and burn crosses? However, he was in that Prison Break episode where his character had to GAY HUSTLE FOR GREAT JUSTICE, which I am still laughing about, so you get a pass. He even has one good scene, where we get a look at his character before drugs turned him to the Dark Side. But even that is ruined by a "GET IT!?" announcer that keeps tolling "winning the war on terror!" and "the strength of freedom!" Yes, how very subversive. SHUT UP.
Beau Bridges… his character is pretty much created wholesale, yet he’s still given the uber-villainous name of… BB. Try that out. “You’ll pay for what you did to my family, BB!” “Time to die, BB!” “See you in hell, BB!” No. Just… no. However, the scene where he describes how the rape and murder of Max’s wife gave him the Nietzschen will-to-power to become a drug lord is one of the rare effective moments (naturally, the movie has no idea what to do with it), so he gets a pass. But seriously… BB?
Like I said, everything’s just kinda lame and you’d really be better off playing the game, which only costs ten dollars on Steam now. With popcorn the price it is, that’s a savings. It’s sad, but Max Payne the movie can’t even be the kind of flick Max Payne the game would pay homage to.
Best moment was when Max was propositioned by a nearly-nude-but-not-enough-to-cause-the-censors-worry woman (what, don't you chastely cover yourself with a bedsheet after stripping down and slipping into a stranger's bed to seduce him?). He turns her down, because any self-respecting loner would lose his angst cred if he actually got laid, so my dad turns to me and said "'I can't, this is a PG-13 movie!'"
An American Carol
Shut up, my dad and little sister wanted to see it and I could get them in for free. The big problem here is that even though the movie was pretty much designed to preach to the choir, it still spends far too much time dropping anvils and taking cheap shots to be funny. So for every one minute of good, dumb humor, you get four minutes of Republican talking points/grievances. Agree with them or not, the movie can’t find a way to make them funny nearly often enough.
Now Airplane! made great fun of the disaster movie genre, but its first priority was being funny, not pulling a Pullman on the damn things. They didn’t pause the movie so Robert Hays could read a bad review of Airport. I don’t care if you’re a liberal, a vegetarian, a furry, what. If you want to send a message, either use your cell-phone or find a way to make it funny or dramatic. Wall-E had a theme of environmental conservatism and screwing apathy, but it never preached. It laid out the theme and let the audience take it or leave it. It never shoved anything down anyone’s throat.
I will give it points for at least having jokes, unlike the various Movie Movies, and for the sheer fnord surrealism of a sequence where Dennis Hopper (who I last saw in Land of the Dead, which if anything had even more bone-headed satire) plays a judge that wields a shotgun against ACLU zombies, climaxing in General Patton shooting Muslim terrorists and telling them to “enjoy your privacy rights… in hell!”
I then detract that point for a criminal underuse of Leslie Nielsen. The man’s not getting any younger, Hollywood, and it’s not like he’s picky!
Sigh. They overthought it. They overthought it, they overthought it, they overthought it, and somehow they managed to make a game that was designed as a pastiche of bad action movies EVEN MORE FORMULAIC AND CLICHÉD. And yet it STILL treats the notion of a man’s family being murdered and the man becoming obsessed with vengeance as if it’s some revolutionary plot point that the audience has never seen before (I swear to God, they take half the movie before they flashback to the death of Max’s family).
Q: The hero’s wife has been murdered, with the last killer going missing. She worked for a pharmaceutical company, which also employs one of the hero’s oldest friends in a position of authority. How will this scenario plays out?
A. The old friend uses his position to help the hero find his wife’s murderer.
B. The hero never finds his wife’s killer, but comes to accept that vengeance is pointless.
C. The killer died in a car accident; the hero and his friend get roaring drunk.
D. The friend is the killer, the pharmaceutical company is a subsidiary of EvilCo, and the wife was killed because she knew too much™.
The game’s plot was much simpler. Max’s wife and daughter are still killed, but then he goes undercover to fight the drug epidemic (in the movie, it takes hours to reveal that there even IS a drug epidemic). His partner is killed and he’s framed for the murder. That’s right, the bad guys kill both his family AND his partner. You can imagine what happens then.
In comparison, Movie!Max is never really a fugitive. He spends most of the movie following clues that a 12-year-old could decipher (HEY, GENIUS, YOUR WIFE’S KILLERS HAD THE LOGO OF YOUR WIFE’S COMPANY TATTOOED ON THEM! JINKIES, THINK IT’S A CLUE?), and there’s really only any gunplay in the last fifteen minutes. Basically, if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen all the artillery this movie has to offer.
Shoot ‘Em Up got it right, down to the title. Mark Wahlberg ever starred in Four Brothers, which was everything this movie should’ve tried to be. What the hell happened? It's like they took a movie about a guy named MAX PAYNE seriously (the game did it with a wink, sending up its own kitschy narration with a blaxploitation show-within-the-show called Dick Justice: "The rain was comin' down like all the angels in heaven decided to take a piss at the same time. When you're in a situation like mine, you can only think in metaphors.")
It’s funny. I remember all the controversy from the fanbase over the apocalyptic, demonic visions that were plastered all over the trailers. For a movie based on a gritty, but extremely secular video game, it’s as if a Jedi Knight suddenly showed up in a Le Carre novel. As expected, they turn out to be a transparent gimmick. This is why I can’t take anything from Hollywood seriously. Think about it.
Exec 1: Okay, we’ve bought the license to a game that’s beloved for being like playing a cheesy action movie. Now, how do we make audiences care about a cheesy action movie?
Exec 2: We can pack it full of action. Hire a really good screenwriter to come up with a good script. Cast cheap but effective character actors to imbue the various caricatures with a sense of life, clichéd though it may be…
Exec 3: No, that’s crap! Let’s just throw in a bunch of religious CGI imagery so it looks like a supernatural movie. That’ll get asses in seats!
Exec 2: (confused) Then why don’t we just make a supernatural movie instead of tricking the audience?
Exec 1: Uh-uh-uh, you made too much sense! Go sit in the time-out corner!
In case you were wondering, yes, the angelic visions are just hallucinations brought on by drug use. I always wonder about media where some drug causes identical hallucinations in everyone who uses it. What if someone hallucinates a pink bunny rabbit and ruins the game? But no, it’s always a Jodie Foster tattoo telling people to kill each other. Bioware can’t even get a video game to run on everyone’s PC, but somehow these drug dealers get whites and blacks and Brits and lepers and fat people and Mormons to all have the same reaction.
Then there’s Mila Kunis as Mona Sax. This makes perfect sense. Take someone that 99% of the male audience would buy little candy hearts for if they met in real-life, then cast her as a tough-as-nails hitwoman. What, was Alyson Hannigan not available? Look, save yourself a bundle and hire Gina Gershon. She looks just as good in Maxim and she actually sounds like a badass killer who would shoot you as soon as look at you.
Of course, Mona's entire subplot with Max is supremely pointless. They have no chemistry, she contributes nothing to the plot. You could take a hatchet to all her scenes and the movie would probably make MORE sense. I’m entirely sure the only reason she was included instead of Vlad was because she has tits. I mean, you want to do a betrayal plot and a sequel set-up and yet no Vlad (full disclosure: the sequel hook is Max, apparently fully-recovered from the 100% addictive narcotic that he took TWO DOSES OF, sitting down with Mona. I would’ve given this movie an A+ if he had sat down with a Russian gent who said “Max, dearest of all my friends…”)? FAIL.
Amaury Nolasco… when there needed to be a soldier in Transformers who was vaguely discernable from all the other soldiers, you were there. When Street Kings was being made for no reason anyone could figure out, you were there. I don’t get it. He’s charismatic, he’s funny, yet he keeps getting nothing parts. Does all of L.A. periodically dress up in white robes and burn crosses? However, he was in that Prison Break episode where his character had to GAY HUSTLE FOR GREAT JUSTICE, which I am still laughing about, so you get a pass. He even has one good scene, where we get a look at his character before drugs turned him to the Dark Side. But even that is ruined by a "GET IT!?" announcer that keeps tolling "winning the war on terror!" and "the strength of freedom!" Yes, how very subversive. SHUT UP.
Beau Bridges… his character is pretty much created wholesale, yet he’s still given the uber-villainous name of… BB. Try that out. “You’ll pay for what you did to my family, BB!” “Time to die, BB!” “See you in hell, BB!” No. Just… no. However, the scene where he describes how the rape and murder of Max’s wife gave him the Nietzschen will-to-power to become a drug lord is one of the rare effective moments (naturally, the movie has no idea what to do with it), so he gets a pass. But seriously… BB?
Like I said, everything’s just kinda lame and you’d really be better off playing the game, which only costs ten dollars on Steam now. With popcorn the price it is, that’s a savings. It’s sad, but Max Payne the movie can’t even be the kind of flick Max Payne the game would pay homage to.
Best moment was when Max was propositioned by a nearly-nude-but-not-enough-to-cause-the-censors-worry woman (what, don't you chastely cover yourself with a bedsheet after stripping down and slipping into a stranger's bed to seduce him?). He turns her down, because any self-respecting loner would lose his angst cred if he actually got laid, so my dad turns to me and said "'I can't, this is a PG-13 movie!'"
An American Carol
Shut up, my dad and little sister wanted to see it and I could get them in for free. The big problem here is that even though the movie was pretty much designed to preach to the choir, it still spends far too much time dropping anvils and taking cheap shots to be funny. So for every one minute of good, dumb humor, you get four minutes of Republican talking points/grievances. Agree with them or not, the movie can’t find a way to make them funny nearly often enough.
Now Airplane! made great fun of the disaster movie genre, but its first priority was being funny, not pulling a Pullman on the damn things. They didn’t pause the movie so Robert Hays could read a bad review of Airport. I don’t care if you’re a liberal, a vegetarian, a furry, what. If you want to send a message, either use your cell-phone or find a way to make it funny or dramatic. Wall-E had a theme of environmental conservatism and screwing apathy, but it never preached. It laid out the theme and let the audience take it or leave it. It never shoved anything down anyone’s throat.
I will give it points for at least having jokes, unlike the various Movie Movies, and for the sheer fnord surrealism of a sequence where Dennis Hopper (who I last saw in Land of the Dead, which if anything had even more bone-headed satire) plays a judge that wields a shotgun against ACLU zombies, climaxing in General Patton shooting Muslim terrorists and telling them to “enjoy your privacy rights… in hell!”
I then detract that point for a criminal underuse of Leslie Nielsen. The man’s not getting any younger, Hollywood, and it’s not like he’s picky!
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Date: 2008-10-27 08:45 pm (UTC)no subject
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