Movie reviews
Jan. 26th, 2010 01:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficDaybreakers
I blame AD&D. To be sure, there are other culprits, but AD&D most definitely gave geeks the notion that the only important word in Storytelling 101 is setting. Sure, we’ve all enjoyed Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Blade Runner, with their detailed histories and made-up languages. But without good character to inhabit a world and interesting things for them to do, even the most vivid world is just a bunch of crap thrown on screen. That’s fine in an RPG, where the point is camaraderie, but in a movie, it’s all on the filmmakers.
Okay, so in the future, an epidemic has turned everyone into a vampire (although there's also some references to people choosing to become vampires, so whatevs) except for a few humans who are imprisoned for their blood. Oh, and all this, everyone in the world becoming a vampire and then us building underground pathways for everyone to travel through in the daytime, happens in ten years. Seems a bit implausible, is all I'm saying. The vampires are running out of blood and are trying to develop a substitute, while the human resistance is trying to find a way to cure vampirism. Enter our hero, Ethan Hawke... wait, did I just lose your interest?
Knowing the premise of Daybreakers, you might wonder how they stretched the blood farm scene from Blade Trinity into an entire movie. And they didn’t. All they managed was half a movie. Just take a look at these characters and tell me if you’ve seen them before.
A suave but evil master vampire.
A balls-to-the-walls vampire hunter.
A nice vampire who hates drinking blood.
A spunky love interest who is captured and has to be rescued.
Dafoe and Neill do what they can with the roles, and the movie coasts for a while on that, but it runs out of ideas way before it can solidify as a fun time-waster. Vampirism is cured so easily that you wonder how it was ever a problem, and from there on it just regurgitates clichés until it hits feature length (whew, I thought that guy was going to shoot that other guy, but then someone else shot him from offscreen!) As if being cured by a suntan wasn’t stupid enough, it turns out that drinking the blood of someone cured will cure you. So a cured human gets ripped apart by vampires, who turn human and get ripped apart by other vampires, until only a few humans are left, standing around like even they don’t know what the fuck that was all about, and they read the script!
Remember, kids, story first, setting second. Setting is just frosting, it’s not cake. You can make your love story about a vampire and a werewolf, but if it’s a bad love story, you’ll still end up with Underworld.
In its defense, Daybreakers does show off some great creativity in the first half, and even though the ‘out of blood/peak oil’ metaphor is obvious, it isn’t too preachy. No one ever holds up a ‘no oil for blood’ sign. I can’t tell if this is because the filmmakers respected our intelligence or couldn’t figure out a way to extend the metaphor.
Ink
Ink is a good movie. It could’ve been a great movie.
You see, each night when we go to sleep, two forces enter our world. The Incubi gives us nightmares and the Storytellers (I know) give us good dreams. One night, a rogue creature called Ink kidnaps a little girl. As the Storytellers try to get her back, it turns out that the girl’s father may be more involved than anyone realized.
Most of this is laid out with a refreshing respect for the audience’s intelligence. We see the Storytellers giving good dreams and that’s it. But I do wish there was a little explanation, like why Ink is trying to join the Incubi instead of the Storytellers. That seems like an odd choice, creepy nightmare people over the nice, well-dressed folks. And this movie really could use another five or even ten minutes of characterization. But there's a certain amount of early, unrefined Terry Gilliam to the execution that makes it worthwhile. Even when they're treading on well-worn cliches, the creators are doing it in ways you probably haven't seen before. I know it’s unlikely that I’ll fall in love with everyone, but I would at least like to know their names.
So Ink is planning to sacrifice the little girl to join the Incubi. At the last minute, a Storyteller (the one that isn’t Dina Meyer, not the one that isn’t Zoë Bell) reveals that he’s the girl’s father from an alternate future where he committed suicide.
Rule 4: Never use time travel in a story that isn’t about time travel. It just gums up the works.
So, let’s review the title character’s redemption arc. “I plan on killing an innocent girl for personal gain. What, she’s my daughter? Not! On!” Someone learned the wrong lesson from Return of the Jedi.
I blame AD&D. To be sure, there are other culprits, but AD&D most definitely gave geeks the notion that the only important word in Storytelling 101 is setting. Sure, we’ve all enjoyed Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Blade Runner, with their detailed histories and made-up languages. But without good character to inhabit a world and interesting things for them to do, even the most vivid world is just a bunch of crap thrown on screen. That’s fine in an RPG, where the point is camaraderie, but in a movie, it’s all on the filmmakers.
Okay, so in the future, an epidemic has turned everyone into a vampire (although there's also some references to people choosing to become vampires, so whatevs) except for a few humans who are imprisoned for their blood. Oh, and all this, everyone in the world becoming a vampire and then us building underground pathways for everyone to travel through in the daytime, happens in ten years. Seems a bit implausible, is all I'm saying. The vampires are running out of blood and are trying to develop a substitute, while the human resistance is trying to find a way to cure vampirism. Enter our hero, Ethan Hawke... wait, did I just lose your interest?
Knowing the premise of Daybreakers, you might wonder how they stretched the blood farm scene from Blade Trinity into an entire movie. And they didn’t. All they managed was half a movie. Just take a look at these characters and tell me if you’ve seen them before.
A suave but evil master vampire.
A balls-to-the-walls vampire hunter.
A nice vampire who hates drinking blood.
A spunky love interest who is captured and has to be rescued.
Dafoe and Neill do what they can with the roles, and the movie coasts for a while on that, but it runs out of ideas way before it can solidify as a fun time-waster. Vampirism is cured so easily that you wonder how it was ever a problem, and from there on it just regurgitates clichés until it hits feature length (whew, I thought that guy was going to shoot that other guy, but then someone else shot him from offscreen!) As if being cured by a suntan wasn’t stupid enough, it turns out that drinking the blood of someone cured will cure you. So a cured human gets ripped apart by vampires, who turn human and get ripped apart by other vampires, until only a few humans are left, standing around like even they don’t know what the fuck that was all about, and they read the script!
Remember, kids, story first, setting second. Setting is just frosting, it’s not cake. You can make your love story about a vampire and a werewolf, but if it’s a bad love story, you’ll still end up with Underworld.
In its defense, Daybreakers does show off some great creativity in the first half, and even though the ‘out of blood/peak oil’ metaphor is obvious, it isn’t too preachy. No one ever holds up a ‘no oil for blood’ sign. I can’t tell if this is because the filmmakers respected our intelligence or couldn’t figure out a way to extend the metaphor.
Ink
Ink is a good movie. It could’ve been a great movie.
You see, each night when we go to sleep, two forces enter our world. The Incubi gives us nightmares and the Storytellers (I know) give us good dreams. One night, a rogue creature called Ink kidnaps a little girl. As the Storytellers try to get her back, it turns out that the girl’s father may be more involved than anyone realized.
Most of this is laid out with a refreshing respect for the audience’s intelligence. We see the Storytellers giving good dreams and that’s it. But I do wish there was a little explanation, like why Ink is trying to join the Incubi instead of the Storytellers. That seems like an odd choice, creepy nightmare people over the nice, well-dressed folks. And this movie really could use another five or even ten minutes of characterization. But there's a certain amount of early, unrefined Terry Gilliam to the execution that makes it worthwhile. Even when they're treading on well-worn cliches, the creators are doing it in ways you probably haven't seen before. I know it’s unlikely that I’ll fall in love with everyone, but I would at least like to know their names.
So Ink is planning to sacrifice the little girl to join the Incubi. At the last minute, a Storyteller (the one that isn’t Dina Meyer, not the one that isn’t Zoë Bell) reveals that he’s the girl’s father from an alternate future where he committed suicide.
Rule 4: Never use time travel in a story that isn’t about time travel. It just gums up the works.
So, let’s review the title character’s redemption arc. “I plan on killing an innocent girl for personal gain. What, she’s my daughter? Not! On!” Someone learned the wrong lesson from Return of the Jedi.
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no subject
Date: 2010-01-28 04:24 am (UTC)Remember, kids, story first, setting second. Setting is just frosting, it’s not cake. You can make your love story about a vampire and a werewolf, but if it’s a bad love story, you’ll still end up with Underworld.
I wanna take this and put it like in a full-page ad in Variety or something.. and run it ALL YEAR!!
no subject
Date: 2010-01-28 04:29 am (UTC)off-Broadwayoutside Hollywood production, it's amazing.I wanna take this and put it like in a full-page ad in Variety or something.. and run it ALL YEAR!!
We'd probably only end up getting Underworld rebooted.