Made Oota Refined Coal
I caught a bit of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory recently on TV, and I really don’t remember it being so damn scary in parts. It’s a wonder they market it as a children’s film. If you need any more evidence just watch this scene where Gene Wilder clearly eats some chocolate laced with acid and goes on a bad trip.
Freaky!
Some sad news today: Dom DeLuise has died at the age of 75. If you don’t instantly recognise the name you might remember him from one of the many classic movies that appeared in over his career. He’s probably most famous nowadays for appearing alonside Burt Reynolds in The Cannonball Run, but he’s worked hard and consistantly for years as a character actor. I really liked him in many of the films that he appeared in. He was one of those “larger than life” actors in the vein of John Candy, Chris Farley and John Belushi who was blessed with comic timing and could make you smile without even uttering a word.
Rest in peace Captain Chaos. The world is poorer without you.
I regularly read a blog called /film which deals with movie industry news and gossip as well as humorous short parody films found around the internet by the writers. It’s content has recently begun to annoy me, although it’s not the blog itself that I’ve found fault with: it’s the Hollywood Movie Machine. /film reflects the movie industry, and as the movie industry seems to be currently suffering from a high imbalance in the talent to toe-rag department. Frankly it’s currently churning out piles of shite in desperate search of dollars and worse than that it’s dragging the English language down with it.
As a result I move we excise the following Hollywood-isms from common speech:
Reboot – Several online dictionaries list the word reboot as a noun, but I consider it more likely to be a verb. You put on boots, but you reboot a computer. I particularly despise reboots – the plural form of this word that’s appeared lately in conjunction with Friday the 13th and others.
RetCon – Retroactive continuity – This is where things are added, taken away or altered to fit the current storyline. Comic books, especially in the 50’s and 60’s were particularly bad for this as they were never written from the point of view of having an overreaching internal logic. Later on as the kids who read them grew up into self obsessed nerds the writers found that they had to write stories that made internal sense or risk the wrath of the fan boys. Retconning allows the writers to resurrect dead characters, change heroes powers and generally get on with telling the story, but it also tends to degenerate into screen time that has to be wasted to avoid a fan-rammy.
Franchise – Just give it up. If a movie makes money it doesn’t have to become a deluge of action figures, novels and worst of all sequels.
Adaptation – Taking a story from another form of media for example comic books, novels, computer games or even burger restaurants and making a movie out of it. Will someone, for the love of god, explain to Hollywood that many of the things their adapting worked perfectly because they were written for the medium in which they were originally presented? No two hour movie will ever capture every nuance of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and no movie adapted to a video game has ever been good.
Sequel – I’ll admit that some stories deserve a sequel, and they do often set the scene correctly at the end of the movie, but for every one that does a hundred more are made because the original was a money-spinner. Star Wars was fine with the first three movies, the lord of the Rings needed three movies to tell the story, but the Matrix should have quit while it was ahead. If the story can be told, and told well, in one movie we don’t need to see the characters going through it all again no matter how entertaining it was, and we certainly don’t need:
Prequels – A sequel where the action happens before the original movie. WHAT THE HELL IS THE POINT? The movie is supposed to be a heroic journey. The critical event in the hero/world/universes existence, but Hollywood doesn’t trust the audience to sit back and accept the world’s backstory. They’ve got to try and show it with better CGI, bigger name actors and huge special effects.
Hollywood-ism – I know I only coined this about 400 words ago, but it annoys me already.
The Hollywood Movie Machine seems to be determined to remake, re-imagine or adapt every book, computer game, novel, short story, play or song ever made. We’ve got the highly anticipated Watchmen movie due out soon, a heretical remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still and even a Far Cry movie from Uwe Boll with a mainly German principle cast.
I find it strange however that nobody has yet tried to adapt the four novels written by James Blish’s that make up the Cities in Flight series. They seem more than perfect for the big screen treatment, particularly the middle two books: A Life for the Stars and Earthman Come Home. The premise of the novels actually begs for a big screen adaptation, especially in the current climate where spectacle seems to be far more important than substance or even plot.
The four books primarily revolve around the city of New York, or more accurately Manhattan Island, which has left behind a polluted and increasingly authoritarian Earth and is wandering through the galaxy in search of work. This bizarre situation is made possible by the use of a MacGuffin called a spindizzy which through the magic of science creates an anti-gravity field around an object. The limitation of the device is that the efficiency and power of the device is inversely proportional to the mass lifted. Therefore it’s far more efficient to lift a city than to move a conventional spaceship. The cities themselves form a vast spacefaring culture where they trade their skills and advanced technology to various colonies and alien empires in return for supplies, food and raw materials. They refer to themselves as Okies in reference to the historical Okies who left the American Midwest during the 1930’s due to a combined effect of economic depression and the infamous Dust Bowl.
The first book They Shall Have Stars describes the development of the spindizzy and its associated effects on Earth. The western governments become more and more paranoid over the potential of the spindizzy and eventually execute the protagonist as a political threat after he reveals the science and existence of the spindizzy to the world. It’s interesting, but essentially a political thriller with a hint of espionage.
In the second book A life for the stars a young farm boy living near Scranton, Pennsylvania is accidentally caught up in the departure of the former mining city as it leaves for the stars. He survives several desperate and ill managed disasters before being traded along with many other undesirables to the much larger and successful New York.
The third novel follows the adventure of the boy and the city of New York itself as it travels amongst the stars in search of work. Eventually they reencounter the city of Scranton which has devolved into what the Okies call a Bindlestiff: a tramp city that survives by criminal activities rather than honest work. At the climax of the book the residents of New York install spindizzies on a planet in an effort to escape an increasingly hostile Earth based empire. The planet itself is thrown out of the Milky Way towards the Large Magellanic Cloud where it ultimately comes to rest.
The final book A Clash of Cymbals seems to run off at a tangent to the rest of the series. The New Yorkers discover that the universe is coming to an end imminently and they race to be at the epicentre of the collapse before another group in the belief that whoever is present at the exact time and space the universe ends will be able to shape the destiny of the next universe after a big bang. Weird is the only way to describe it.
I think a combination of the two middle books would work best. Have the protagonist wander aboard a city just as it departs for the stars and document his adventures aboard as he struggles against a tyrannical mayor. It’s a simple story with plenty of room for amazing visuals effects: it is a flying city after all. Hopefully a decent screenwriter, director and producer will take up the challenge and create a Sci-Fi masterwork that we can all enjoy, but I’ve got the feeling that if, or when it does come a film version will be a steaming pile of crap.
I can dream though.
While reading slashfilm.com I came across a post about a forthcoming animated movie called 9. It’s a post apocalyptic tale based on an Oscar nominated ten minute short film by Shane Acker. Interestingly the protagonists are tiny humanoids that look almost as though they’ve been knitted from wool. They are the last survivors of a world apparently destroyed when humanity’s machines turned against us. The tiny ragdoll beings are charged with the responsibility of ensuring that humanity was not destroyed in vain.
The original short itself is available to watch on Youtube but you can view it below:
Unfortunately 9 won’t be out in the cinemas until the 9th of September next year. Yes, that’s right, 9 will be out on 9/9/9. How witty are these Hollywood marketing gurus eh? Marketing BS aside though take a look at the trailer and judge for yourselves.
I think you’ll agree it looks awesome, and I can’t wait to see if the entire movie lives up to the promises of the clip.
Like most of the western world I’m getting fairly apathetic towards the current slew of remakes, reboots and regurgitations coming out of the Hollywood Movie Machine. Worse the few genuinely original ideas seem doomed to mishandling, miscasting or simply being downright crap.
Take Hancock the latest Will Smith blockbuster for an example. The core idea was fairly originally and engaging: What if the world’s only superhero was an alcoholic, self pitying jakey who’s only redeeming quality, his attempts to selflessly help people all is constantly (and humorously) marred by the way he goes about it. It could have been a great comedy movie but instead the Hollywood Movie Machine made it into something else. It swung bizarrely between action movie and comedy while steamrollering over plot holes without even a moments hesitation.
The Editing Room deals with Hancock’s problems in a far more witty form than I’ll manage here, go and check it out. I’ll wait, my rage for my next point knows no bounds of time, space or angular dimension.
Now I’ve been reading on /Film about the forthcoming GI Joe Movie and almost every single piece of available information makes me want to set fire to Hollywood. In fact it makes me want to invent REALLY SLOW FIRE and set fire to Hollywood with that.
When I was a boy I had GI Joe stuff, well it was called Action Force here in the UK but it was essentially the same thing with a few decals changed. For those of you unfamiliar with the toys etc, it was all about a unique team of US Special Forces. They were a hodgepodge of every branch of the US armed forces all hand picked for their skills and abilities. No two of them were alike and they all dressed in less than regulation style. One of them was always cutting about in an American football top for a start. They all had cool code names like Snake Eyes, Gung-Ho, Roadblock and they had everything a boy could want: Ninjas, marines, spies, fighter pilots and even astronauts. They were lead by General Hawk and represented truth, justice and the American way.
They were pitted against Cobra, a terrorist organisation with seemingly limitless resources that constantly concocted bond villain-esque plans to rule the world. Cobra was lead by Cobra Commander who spent much of the time with his face hidden either behind a mirrored face mask or underneath a blue hood.
The battles between GI Joe and Cobra spanned pages of comics, a cartoon series and several animated films all of which continue to this day. The comic tended to be darker and more realistic than the films and notably cobra seemed a far more credible threat on the printed page rather than the cartoon’s bunch of incorrigible ragamuffins.
Unfortunately it seems that Hollywood have thrown all of the rich background out the window in favour of one of these god damn REBOOT things. The director Stephen Sommers and the screenwriter Stuart Beattie have managed to make a boatload of stinkers between them. The mummy returns and Van Helsing to name some of the worst.
Sienna Millar as the Baroness doesn’t convey the look or feel of European Aristocrat. She looks like a naughty schoolgirl in that picture. Christopher Eccleston is a good actor and I’ve seen him in a few things I liked, but he isn’t Destro, they should have got a REAL SCOTSMAN to play a Scotsman for once and wheeled in James Cosmo.
Roadblock isn’t in it, and even if he was I bet they wouldn’t cast Ving Rhames as him. Dennis Quade hasn’t been an action hero since the eighties and even that was as a microbe in Inner Space. As for the rest of the cast, I can honestly say I’ve never heard of ANY of them. I’m assuming they’re the latest batch brewed up during happy hour at the POD PEOPLE factory.
The worst insult of all is probably the casting of Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Cobra Commander. I mean seriously? Just look at his pictures on IMDB, the guy looks like cross between a chimp and a Toby Jug. I think that’s as close as you can get to being genetically related to a bell-end without actually being a bell-end. Listen here to me Hollywood and bury this project before it goes any further, these people, these so called actors are not, will not and can never be the one’s to play anyone in GI Joe except maybe some walk on parts in the deleted ROOM FULL OF ASSHOLES scene. Cobra Commander has never been friends with anyone in GI Joe, let alone a former member of it. I mean what was wrong with his original back-story? A man pushed to the brink of insanity by the greed of big business and the indifference of the US government? Too close to the reality for millions of Americans in the process of losing their homes and lives maybe?
The one bit of casting I have to agree with however is Ray Park playing Snake Eyes. He’s got the skills and since he doesn’t have to speak or even be seen it should be an easy ride for him. I will brace myself for the inevitable Snake Eyes spin off movie however.
Hollywood I dare you to prove me wrong, I dare you to make this the movie of the year for 2009 but to be frank I think everyone who see it will be of the same opinion: “This is one to downloadTM” I think 
I went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull last night at the pictures and I heartily recommend that you all go and see it as soon as possible. I have to admit that although I usually quite like going to the movies very few have made me smile like a schoolboy all the way through. From the opening scene of a hotrod racing along a highway to the strains of Rock around the Clock to Indy’s greaser sidekick clearly modelled on Marlon Brando in Rebel without a Cause, it was a perfect fit for the McCarthy Era in 1950’s America. I also loved the playful and fun way they dealt with the fact that Indy (and Harrison Ford) are both much older than they were in the first three movies. I think if they had tried to play it of as being a year after the Last Crusade with Harrison Ford’s botox-ed, hair dyed and body doubled to make him look 40 again it would have been a disaster.
Cate Blanchett played a good turn as the cold and calculating KGB villainess which contrasted well with Indy’s world weary but sparklingly cheeky personality.
There were a very few WTF were they thinking bits though and a couple of glaring plot holes that made my teeth hurt but overall it was great movie that I would definitely watch again.
***Spoilers hidden below, if you’ve not seen the movie GO SEE IT FIRST***
I’ve been playing Star Wars: Jedi Knight II – Jedi Outcast (henceforth Jedi Knight 2) for the last couple of days as a change of pace. Command and Conquer 3 has got me burned out on RTS games for the next wee while. I would try Crysis but I’m avoiding buying it to wind up McDowall who surprisingly somehow managed to finished it.
Playing Jedi Knight put me in the mood to dig out the original movies and have a watch. It’s amazing how good they are even nearly thirty years after their original release. I decided to watch Return of the Jedi even though it’s not my out and out favourite (it’s the Empire Strikes Back of course). I cracked open the case and stuck the disk into the player. Then I realised to my horror that I had put in the “DVD Tin Special Edition Disk” of Return of the Jedi. Now don’t get me wrong, the special edition does make some remarkable improvements in special effects over the original theatrical release. Then of course with thirty years of development in special effects, computer animation and digital compositing you would expect some improvement. Sure some changes seem a bit superfluous, making the Star Destroyers lighter in some scenes and replacing Sy Snootles and the Reebo Band with a singing monkey. The battle and crowd scenes look a lot more convincing and exciting though and in the main everything is fine till the last five minutes of the film.
In a nutshell I’m talking about one scene, the scene right at the end when Luke wanders away from the rebel’s victory celebrations and sees the ghosts of Anakin Skywalker, Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Here’s the problem:
The three wise men in 1983.
The same scene in the 2004 DVD release.
That’s right, they replaced the original middle aged Anakin Skywalker with the young pretender Hayden Christensen.
OK, according to the official background it’s supposed to be about twenty years between Anakin falling in the lava pit in Revenge of the Sith and the rebel’s final victory at Endor. In the original theatrical released the now unmasked Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker was played by the British character actor Sebastian Shaw. This seemed to fit perfectly as Vader would presumably have been about 40 to 50 years old by the time of the empire’s defeat. Shaw’s face is seen in extreme close-up as Luke helps him take of his mask during his poignant death scene on the collapsing Death Star. Then we get down to Endor only to find that not only has he become a blue force spirit like his old pals Yoda and Obi-Wan, but he’s been guzzling Oil of Ghost-Olay to appear twenty years younger!
Now a question that I’ve always had is why was it only Sebastian Shaw who was replaced in this edit? I didn’t see anyone rushing to replace Sir Alex Guinness with Ewan McGregor or Yoda with his younger, bouncier CGI self. To add insult to injury they didn’t even CGI in the whole of Hayden Christensen, they just cut off Shaw’s head and stuck the weedy half pint Canadian’s head on his body. Anakin has clearly been kept at least on of his dark side powers, the power of body snatching. This has to rank up there as possibly the most unnecessary bit of editing in the history of cinema and I can only hope the reasoning behind it involved George Lucas’s family being held to ransom.
EDIT: I’ve been informed that the fan uproar surrounding this edit eventually caused Lucasfilm to restore the original. The most recent (2006) DVD release returns Sebastian Shaw to his rightful place as the ghost of Anakin Skywalker.
Those of you with a long memory will recall my less than favourable review of film called Megalodon. It boasted terrible special effects, abysmal acting and a story that was basically a cross between The Abyss and Jaws without the good bits. It also had an unforgivably fake CGI prehistoric shark that looked like it was a stop motion puppet made by the red headed stepchild of Ray Harryhausen.
These two points bring me directly to the case of the made of TV film Ogre which may in its’ own way be worse than Megalodon.
The movie opens in the remote village of Ellensford, Pennsylvania in 1859. Ellensford itself is a bit of a strange puzzle: For a start it’s a remote farming community that doesn’t have any farmland. The village is surrounded on all sides by thick woods and is choking under the weight of a long winter. Plague is ravaging the inhabitants and worst of all the village is clearly either the original set from M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village or a very close replica.
The Village itself was a flawed classic, a suspenseful period thriller that was spoiled by its’ creators desperate need to throw in shock twists at the conclusion of his movies. It could have been great but it turned out purely mediocre. In fact the main reason I watch this film was the mistaken belief that it was a low budget version of The Village. How wrong I was to make such an assumption.
The instant the movie begins we’re presented by a bleak orchestral score and images of two men burying people in a mass grave. This is followed by a family covered in boils being locked in an underground Pit of DoomTM due to fear of the plague sweeping the village. The town mayor dies of the plague without us even getting a look at the actor’s face (easy money there eh?) The fearful villagers turn to the local evil wizard Henry Bartlett looking for an answer. Seems a bit weird that a mid 1800’s town in Pennsylvania would have a wizard but no local minister doesn’t it, sort of makes you think there might be something weird going on. Whatever the reason it’s clear that something is rotten in the town of Ellensburg.
Bartlett as the local power mad evil wizard type manages to get himself voted mayor before he’ll lift a finger to help the rest of the villager. Then in a fit of over dramatic arm waving he casts a spell over the village that frees them of their plague. Unfortunately for everyone in this sorry excuse for a village Bartlett doesn’t know any actual healing spells, so he dials infernal enquires on 118-HELL instead who promptly give him the number of a man eating monster. This is doubly unfortunate for the poor family incarcerated in the Pit of DoomTM the evil plague is condensed and made manifest as a monster inside their prison. No idea what happens to them after the flash of light but I assume it’s not good. Strangely the magic also converts what was a shallow dugout into a deep underground cave for reasons that will become apparent later.
The scene cuts to some time later with a voice over from Bartlett. This exposition explains that every winter solstice they have to choose and sacrifice one of villagers in payment for their continued deliverance. Two armed men dutifully drag a protesting prisoner out in the snow and chain him to a set of stocks in the middle of the village. He struggles to free himself, his attempts to free himself become more and more frantic as footsteps and noises approach from the woods. Now if the prelude had stopped here it would have been OK. Tension was building, suspense was building. If the monster had even remained out of shot when it grabbed the sacrifice things would have been fine and I wouldn’t have knocked 10 points of the score. Instead we’re treated to the image of a lumbering pot bellied beast that looks like a shaven gorilla zombie stomping out of the woods. Seriously, this thing looks like a fan made render of the trolls from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings.
The difference is those things had character, they were brutish engines of destruction who demonstrated immense strength and resilience. The Ogre just looks like an angry fat man with a bear gut. It’s about as scary as a chinchilla. It also walks like a grossly overweight man who shat his pants after neds stole his mobility scooter for a joyride. The troll roars and mugs at the camera for about five minutes before finally ripping the hapless sacrifice off the stocks and dragging his body into the woods.
The real story begins over a hundred years later as four modern day teenagers are searching through a bleak New-England forest for the town. To call any of these four empty headed fools as characters is a disservice to any real characters that ever existed. Hell I even baulk at the idea of referring the four people playing them as actors. For simplicities sake and because I lost interest in them within minutes I’ve decided to name them based on their overriding character feature.
Clockwise from the top left we have Terry, Mike, Jessica and Leigh.
Terry who instantly drew my attention simply by the fact that he is sporting a totally unexplained black eye. No attempt is made to explain this prominent wound at any point during the movie. I would dwell on this all day, but he promptly fell and broke his ankle too. In honour of this incredibly bad fortune I’ve decided to refer to him as Lucky. Now Lucky is the reason they’re out there in the woods. In true movie style he’s bought a map off the internet that shows where Ellensford should be, he’s also got a book full of paper clippings that show evidence of its’ continued existence.
He’s quickly joined on screen by Mike, who I’ve decided to call Keanu-a-like because he looks like Keanu Reeves in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Keanu-A-Like complains about being dragged out into the woods on a fool’s quest but admits that it’s, and I quote “a fun excuse to go camping”. He also quickly establishes that there’s no mobile reception, oh goody now they can’t call for help (horror movie cliché checklist at the ready folks).
Keanu-a-like is quickly joined by Jessica the prerequisite Feisty Brunette who helps him in berating Lucky for dragging them out into the wilderness.
Then finally there’s Leigh who I’ll call The Blonde, who’s not all that blonde but she acts like every stereotypical “Blonde in Peril” since the first silent era movie. Her greatest hits include such gems as protesting that “she doesn’t know how to set up camp” and that she’s “had it with the stupid trees.”
With the introductions and argumentative character building over, Lucky promptly falls over a line of stones that mark the outer boundary of Ellensford. He breaks his ankle and they four decide to split up. Keanu-A-Like and The Brunette decide to go and get help leaving Mr Lucky and The Blonde to fend for themselves in the woods.
Naturally the two rocket scientists head straight towards the legendry town instead of backtracking to civilisation. This mainly involves a drawn out march along a long abandoned dirt track that’s easily followed due to the 4×4 tracks running along it. Those puritans and their legendry coal driven ghost jeeps need to be more discrete in future. The pair then crosses through a barrier saying in Ye Olden English “Towne Closed and No Trespassing” and head on up the remarkably clear road. Incidentally I refuse to believe that there’s a square centimetre of the Eastern United States that’s outside the reach of a mobile phone tower nowadays.
Meanwhile Lucky is back on his feet hopping around the forest in search of clues to the fate of the town. He argues a bit with The Blonde as she dutifully follows him around moaning her way through some character development. Without warning they come across a pair of old wooden doors built into the side of a mound of earth. It’s the Pit of DoomTM from earlier. Naturally Lucky does the only sensible thing and bursts them open to look into the pit. It’s suddenly got a lot deeper and more like a cavern that a dugout. That Ogre’s been busy. Lucky has another bit of banter with The Blonde and then a huge badly made CGI arm drags him into the pit, chews him up and spits out his severed leg for The Blonde to catch. The Ogre then clambers out of the Pit of DoomTM.
The Blonde is naturally disturbed by this turn of events as she screams at the Ogre and high-tails it out of dodge. The ogre follows her, shambling along with his pants still full of crap.
Feisty Brunette and Keanu-A-Like meanwhile have found Ellensford. The town looks exactly like it did in the prologue and nobody has aged at all in the intervening century and a half. They spy on a town meeting where Bartlett chooses the next sacrifice for the Ogre. This time it’s his daughter’s boyfriend Stephen and she tries to protest against it to no avail. Feisty Brunette and Keanu-A-Like are predictably captured and thrown in the town lockup while protesting their Miranda rights etc. They beg for some help for Lucky and The Blonde and Bartlett sends some men out to find them reasoning that he could sacrifice the four strangers instead of some of his own people.
The Blonde meanwhile is running through the forest. Irrationally she decides that the best thing to do with a three story high monster chasing her is to stop and have a wee cry for ten minutes allowing the shambling half-mile an hour fat ass to catch up with her. Seriously now, if this thing moved at the pace of a human I could just about believe it, but it plods along like it’s on its’ way to a weight-watcher’s line dancing class. It doesn’t even sneak up on her, you can hear it coming a mile away but she turns round, looks it in the eye and whimpers a bit. The Ogre then roars a bit, mugs some more for the camera and with a couple of big slashes to the torso The Blonde exits stage left.
Feisty Brunette and Keanu-A-Like are still in the town lockup where we’re treated to a bit of exposition from Stephen on the origins of the Ogre. Meanwhile the Ogre slaughters some villagers that were sent out to find Lucky and the Blonde.
Bartlett’s daughter Hope argues with her father about why he’s done nothing about the Ogre for all this time. He refuses to see it her way and sends her away with a flea in her ear. News reaches Bartlett that their search party hasn’t returned and he becomes mighty annoyed.
Hope then overhears her father’s plans to sacrifice the strangers in place of his own people. She takes it upon herself to rescue them and her boyfriend from the lockup and the four flee towards the edge of the town. The Ogre chases them forcing Keanu-A-Like, Feisty Brunette and Stephen across the ring of stones around the town. The Ogre can’t follow due to a force field of some kind Stephen bursts into a bright light and disappears. Feisty Brunette and Keanu-A-Like run away into the night at Hope’s urging without even taking a minute to look for their two friends. The village wakes up to find that the sacrifice has not been carried through and the Bartlett has disappeared.
Hours later Keanu-A-Like and Feisty Brunette are plodding through the forest arguing about their next course of action. They find a tarmac road and follow it to civilization.
Meanwhile Bartlett is confronted in the woods by Hope. She suddenly reveals that he has taught her lots about magic and she’s packing a magic pendant that protects her from evil. The pendant repels her father who she accuses of being evil. It’s revealed that her father caused the plague to gain power in the town and used the ritual to do away with his rivals and critics in the town. Hope abandons him in the woods where Bartlett is confronted and killed by the Ogre. Yet again this huge lumbering pant’s crapping bad rubber monster manages to sneak up on a perfectly health human being. Bartlett tries to use his magic but the ogre just looks at him funny and then gives him a short back and sides. He calls it an “Unclean beast” and just stands there as it kill him. Doesn’t anybody know how to run in this movie?
The people of the town call a panicked meeting and start slinging blame around like a middle management meeting of the local council. Hope bursts in and announces she can save them all. She gives them all magic candles to ward off the Ogre.
While Ellensford is imploding on itself Keanu-A-Like and Feisty Brunette do the only sensible thing when confronted by a supernatural mystery: They hitch a ride with a passing car to the local sheriff’s office where the sheriff quickly laughs his ass off at them. Unable to convince him Keanu-A-Like and Feisty Brunette do the only other sensible thing. They steal his police cruiser from outside the sheriff’s office while he and his deputy stare after them in awe and stupefaction. Damn city slickers.
The drive until they get stuck on the dirt road then retrieve a shotgun from the boot and hoof it the rest of the way towards Ellensford. Surprisingly there’s no sign of any pursuit by the local sheriff. You’d expect at least a police helicopter by now surely or maybe some distant sirens? The Ogre meanwhile is getting in some exercise as he slashes the crap out of the second search party.
In Ellensford Hope has managed to get everyone to throw salt around the doors and light magic candles to keep out the Ogre. The Ogre initially isn’t impressed and tries to attack the village anyway but it finds the barriers around the village impenetrable even to its’ monumental beer gut. Naturally one of the asshole villagers manages to knock over their candle and cant get it lit resulting in their brutal slaughter by the enraged ogre.
Keanu-A-Like and Feisty Brunette turn up at the village and blast the Ogre with God’s own weapon, the shotgun sending it fleeing off through the forest. The town calls up another meeting and they manage to convince themselves that living forever with a yearly bloody sacrifice isn’t all that hot after all. They come up with a plan to bait the Ogre while Hope cooks up a spell to do away with it forever.
The half dozen remaining villagers arm up with muskets and pointy sticks and lay an ambush for the ogre with Keanu-A-Like as the bait. The brainless big bastard wanders out of the forest in his unclean underwear and has a go at eating the teenager only get his foot stuck in a bear trap and be force fed 00-buckshot instead.
Hope meantime is busy chanting away trying to break her fathers spell. The villagers tear into the Ogre with bows and muskets but it breaks loose and starts slaughtering them one by one in spectacularly gruesome style. Realising they can’t stop the thing with hot lead Keanu-A-Like and Feisty Brunette run off to lure it to the edge of town. Once there they distract it with shotgun shells till hope can cast a spell to destroy the creature once and for all. Finally after a couple of half arsed attempts she manages to catapult it over the edge of the stone line demarking the town and it explodes in a burst of light. Hope says thanks to Keanu-A-Like and Feisty Brunette and disappears along with the rest of the villagers in a flash of light.
There’s still no sign of the local authorities after the theft of the cruiser though as Keanu-A-Like and Feisty Brunette return to the real world no doubt to jail time for grand theft auto. That’s if the local law enforcement don’t manage to pin Lucky and The Blonde’s murders on the pair of them. Should be fairly easy as their bodies are mostly missing, the sheriff’s guns been fired repeatedly and all the witnesses have all disappeared in a flash of light.
All in all Ogre is a terrible movie, and for the straight to video/made for TV market that’s saying something. The Ogre himself is a terrible lumbering beast but his character could just as easily have been a remorseless psychopath like Jason Vorhees. The cast were wooden and unlovable to the extent that I spent the movie looking for anachronisms and plot holes, some of which I’ve outlined above.
C’est Terrible.
I’ve been thinking about computer games a lot recently. I’ve also been giving some thought to the subject of the living dead. Specifically the trailer for I am Legend. It got me thinking about my old idea for a MMORPG based on a Zombie Apocalypse. Now I know I’ve mentioned this before but bear with me. I’ve been mulling the whole thing over in my mind a bit and have made some more progress on the idea.
Firstly it would be based around the tech of a first person shooter. It has to be a first person shooter or you’re never going to get to the fun of shooting zombies in the face. If the game was a button clicking grind fest like World of Warcraft or its ilk it would get old very fast. Ditto if it were to be programmed as a half-in-half like Hellgate London with its’ mix of RPG stats and faux first person shooting. I’d probably add in a dash of physics based zombie bashing action from the upcoming zombie filled Dead Island. Then I’d liberally sprinkle with some MMORPG staples such as crafting.
Setting
Hellgate London has given me some inspiration for the setting though, along with the film Land of the Dead by George Romero. I’m thinking of something along the lines of the game being set within the ruins of downtown Manhattan. The East and Hudson Rivers form natural barriers on either side. To further fortify the area the survivors have built barricades and demolished buildings north of Madison Square gardens. The rest of the city is swarming with the living dead who constantly assail the survivors.
The reason for the dead rising will be kept a mystery to the players. They’re supposed to be concerned with day to day survival. I would leave the origins of the zombie hordes a mystery till I was sure the game would survive more than a few months.
I’m guessing the main zombies would be just reanimated, shambling humans like in the movies. Their main threat would be from their unnatural resilience and overwhelming numbers.
Players
They players control a single character from the first person perspective just like a regular first person shooter. The player would only control a single character with regenerating health similar to Call of Duty 2 rather than some Hit Points based thing.
The combat would all be based on twitch skills so a good fighter in say Quake would be a winner in the combat. There would be an extra layer of non-combat bonuses, perks and skills built on top of this for the other MMORPG stuff which levelled up through some kind of XP system based on their use.
Scavenging
Scavenging would be integral to the game’s economy. The players would have to hunt down items and resources outside of the “safe” areas. The areas closer to the barriers will have been picked clean of the high level materials forcing players further and further out into the zombie infested city. The safer areas closer to the fortified areas will hold lots of lower the quality materials.
Examples of scavenged items could include canned foods, paper, plastics, ammunition and electronics.
Crafting
Crafting would play a big part in the game and would be responsible for the manufacture of everything from clothing to rocket launchers. These would be purely player produced. If everyone is out popping caps in the heads of zombies they’ll very quickly get reduced to waving melee weapons about. Then all of a sudden their melee weapons break and they have a problem…