by justingibbs on February 8, 2010
I wasn’t expecting much from Land of the Lost and I surely didn’t get it for two reasons – lack of empathy and context.
Lack of empathy for lead character
The movie starts out with Will Ferrell’s character, Rick Marshall, being laughed out of the Today Show studio by Matt Lauer. His crazy scientific theories then get him laughed out of the scientific community until he’s teaching science at an elementary school. He’s a laughing stock which makes it difficult to empathises with him. Even his scientific theories look crazy to us.
One of the tenants of screenwriting is to create empathy with the protagonist. The screenwriting guru, Michael Hauge, has a short list of ways to create that empathy. One of those is to make them intelligent. Rick Marshall certainly isn’t that, he’s the butt of every one’s jokes. The physical fight he gets in with Matt Lauer only lends to him being out of touch.
Lack of context
Without empathy for the protagonist we’re kind of lost, and not in a good way. Instead of trying to counter that the movie drops us into the actually Land of the Lost that has no context at all. There are dinosaurs, strange monkey creatures, ice cream trucks, hotel pools, etc. There is no law and order, no rules. Not even the dinosaurs have any context as apparently here they can understand the English language.
A skit gone too long
There are some funny parts but it all happens in this land of no context and around a protagonist we don’t empathises with. It makes the jokes a little less funny and makes the whole thing little more than a skit. And like a lot of skits on Saturday Night Live, it goes too long – more than an hour and a half too long.
by justingibbs on January 27, 2010
How many times have I seen the plot lines in Gamer before – The Running Man, Death Race, etc. But beyond that they don’t even get the plot going till 20 minutes in. What’s the point of the movie? Why am I suppose to cheer for this guy? The premise is that real people are used as gaming characters. They’re controlled by people on the Internet but as you could guess, if that player messes up the real life character dies. This control is all managed by some genetic process that is lame and we couldn’t care less. What that basically means is that the lead character we’re suppose to get behind is controlled by a teenager. The teenager however isn’t the protagonist, so I’m confused. The first half of the movie is like this before he is inevitably set free, but by then you just don’t care. And to top it off in the end they throw in a James Bond type destroy the world plan and master villain.
If you listen to the commentary you’ll quickly learn that the writer director team obviously didn’t care much for their own work. It seems more like a haphazard homework assignment. Not surprisingly this is the same team responsible for the Crank movie series.
by justingibbs on January 5, 2010
It seems I wasn’t the only one to visit the theaters over the Christmas break. A science fiction fan I had to catch Avatar. It was entertaining but as everyone says, the plot and story fail in many ways. What was interesting was seeing how Cameron was able to cover up those holes and still give audiences an entertaining experience. I utterly hatted Titanic, but Cameron is able to pull from basic story structure, dramatic techniques to pull us in. He did it with Titanic and again with Avatar.
To see how much of an art this is, just compare Avatar to the other film I saw over the break, Sherlock Holmes. I can’t fault them for trying to make Sherlock Holmes an action star, but I can fault them for their utter lack of character development. The movie starts out more like a sequel, as if we’ve already been introduced to these characters. Even if you’ve read the books, the movie should still get me to empathises with these characters. 
Guy Ritchie seems more happy to play with the unnecessary fighting scenes than trying to build empathy. He did have his work cut out for him though, the great part of a Holmes novel was the explanation at the end, but in a movie that is too late. But Guy Ritchie didn’t even make an attempt at making up for that when he crafted one of the weakest and laughable villains I’ve seen in recent memory.
by justingibbs on December 20, 2009
I finally saw Pixar’s Up yesterday. I’d heard great things about it and that everyone loved it. But like most animated movies, I took my sweet time coming around to see it. Frankly I have a habit of avoiding Pixar films, I like them but they’re not one of my passions. Animation just doesn’t excite me, which is tragic because Pixar puts some great story into them.
What I did find interesting was how many story related positions they covered in the movie’s credits. Which shouldn’t be that surprising, Pixar puts a lot of focus on story. It also farms out story duties, not relying on a sole screenwriter or screenwriters to come up with everything.
by justingibbs on November 23, 2009
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is one of the most convoluted and overdone movies I have seen in a long time. The plot takes nowhere near where we wanted to go but rather opens up some rediculous origin plot that for some reason goes right through the main character, Sam Witwicky. None of the characters are developed beyond being a cliche so after about ten minutes we couldn’t care less what happens to people in the film. The special effects is everywhere but lacking any interest in the characters or plot they just become a bore. It almost becomes comical how they try to out do themselves with each new creation.
In the end the movie actually conjures two questions.
- Why did they make this movie?
- Why did they make it so long?
by justingibbs on November 21, 2009
I just took my new Independent Fabrication Planet Cross out for a spin in San Francisco. My brother has one and said it would be life changing, he wasn’t over egagertaing. I’ve always had mountain bikes or road bikes, but bombing down hills on the cross bike is a completely new experience. Where as I use to have to plot a path around the pot holes and cable car tracks I can now just let’er rip. It also doesn’t hurt that the bike also has a classic Brooks saddle. It looks a little odd but you can’t beat the saddle.
by justingibbs on November 9, 2009
All I’ve got to say, or ask, is why do they keep giving Stephen Sommers movies to director or produce, or whatever? Wasn’t Van Helsing enough?
I was warned that G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra was horrible and it was much worse than I could have thought. Was it just targeted at 8 year olds? With the violence I would have to think not, but it’s so cheesy I don’t see who else it would appeal to. It reminds me of the long forgotten Masters of the Universe from 1987 but on a much bigger budget. At least that film had the cover of fantasy and being of a different world, this one has no excuse for the moronic weapons, characters, and plot.
Wonder how much they lost on this turd.
by justingibbs on October 31, 2009
I hadn’t seen The Dark Crystal since I was a kid. I remembered it fondly and it didn’t let me down, but watching it again I noticed the heavy reliance on narration and lack of true conflict. It’s really more of a spectacle movie. The protagonist just kind of floats along. But the puppets are interesting and it creates a vibrant fantasy world.
I was shocked to see how popular it was in Japan, well at least according to Wikipedia.
In both France and Japan, The Dark Crystal was the highest-grossing box office release for the year (1983) and outgrossed E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial as the most successful foreign film in Japan until Titanic took over the spot 14 years later.
by justingibbs on October 23, 2009
Away We Go was more akin to a foreign film for me. It has some interesting dialog and characters but the whole time you’re waiting for the movie to start. It’s basically a road trip movie with no outer objective other than to investigate potential places to move. But there’s nothing at stake, there’s nothing to overcome, no villain to defeat. They don’t even try to create an artificial antagonist or ticking clock. No matter how cute the characters are you begin to ask just what the point is.
by justingibbs on October 23, 2009
I was never that familiar with the Billy Jack series from Tom Laughlin, but I had seen the iconic images since I was young – Billy Jack on the motorcycle, the mix of Native American styles, the hat. From the images I gathered that it was a classic from the 70’s like Jeremiah Johnson. Watching the second film in the series, Billy Jack, I certainly saw how it was rooted in the 70’s, it’s just a mix of 70’s motifs with little if any plot. At one point Billy Jack goes through an ancient Native American snake biting ceremony to have a vision. However we never learn what his vision was or how it impacts the movie. Add in some experimental theater and it’s just a mess. It’s rooted in the 70’s and can’t be seen outside of that.