Ten Statements About....28 WEEKS LATER... (2007)

You hang your head, Imogen Poots!  YOU KILLED
A FRANCHISE!

"It all makes sense. They're executing code red. Step 1: Kill the infected. Step 2: Containment. If containment fails, then Step 3: Extermination."

1) You can see how badly this film gets it wrong in the opening sequence, where we see an Infected biting and, it is implied, eating a victim.  These Infected act like, well, conventional zombies, which implies that the four writers who wrote this sequel didn't understand the rules Alex Garland set out in the first film.

2) And another thing the script didn't understand about the first film was how the characters came first.  Instead of the small group of people we got in that film, we get a family of unlikable characters surrounded by a group of military ciphers.  We learn nothing about Jeremy Renner's Doyle and Rose Byrne's Scarlet and are expected to sympathize with them solely because they buck the system and decide to protect the kids we're expected to sympathize with solely because they're the main characters.

3) I guess an argument could be made that Robert Carlyle's Don is the most effective of a pretty sorry lot of characters, and he effectively pulls off his Janet Leigh-ing at midpoint...but it's hard for Carlyle to overcome the way Don was so badly written.  He's never quite able to add enough nuance to justify the fact that he was a cowardly dickhead who acts purely on selfish impulses.

Robert Carlyle tries to run away from his commitment to
star in this movie.

Plus he's there for far, far too long after the big change in his status quo solely so...well, we can get more sympathies for his children.

4) ...and don't get me wrong, Imogen Poots (still the most unfortunately named actress in the world) and Mackintosh Muggleton are downright awful as Tammy and Andy.  Andy is a rather one note character, and Tammy is petulant and unpleasant throughout.  And they end up making a decision--much like the decision Don makes when confronted with his wife--that's so stupid as to break the suspension of disbelief.

5) But then, that's the core problem with the script--it is moved solely by stupidity that's not profound, not illuminating, but just...stupid, starting with the way the writers have Tammy and Andy sneak out of an armed encampment by...ducking behind a wall on a bridge?  Hell, we have Doyle noticing their escape, reporting it to the main command center, only for the troops to do...nothing?...for as long as it takes for the kids to discover their mother.  The plot is built on stupid choices which are made solely to expedite the plot and are not supported by the logic of the film's set-up.

"I'm planning on taking up the bow...how does 'Hawkeye'
sound as a codename?

6) Why do you hire Indris Elba as Stone and then give him absolutely nothing to do except call 'Code Red' and order all the snipers to kill everyone and let God sort 'em out?  Is that how you waste an expectional actor like him?

7) I have nothing against characters being used as plot devices....except, you know, when the script doesn't bother to give Catherine MacCormick, well, anything remotely resembling a character other than 'concerned mother.'  Hell, once she re-enters the story, she's there solely to be washed up, have the big reveal about how her blood fights the infection, and get killed off.  We never even learn how she survived the Infected attack at the beginning of the film, or how she didn't starve to death; the implication is that she spent the intervening six months cowering behind that facacta couch.

8) Maybe it's the fact that they're using a different method to depict the Infected, or maybe it's because director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo saw The Bourne Identity and thought shaky-cam was a good idea, but the Infected attacks are not as scary as in the original.  They're messy, confusing and just not exciting in the least.

9) Given all the negativity I have for this stupid, stupid film, there is one moment that captures the feel of the original.  The sequence at the carousel manages to give the film its one breath in between the endless stretches of carnage, and manages to give us one of the best chills in the films as its punctuation.

10) Look, I know that the original script is contradictory about this fact--but it is mentioned by Selena in that film that there were reports of outbreaks in France.  So why is the revelation at the end (brought about, presumably, by the selfishness of Tammy) so shocking?

Overall...Almost everything the first film gets right, this film gets wrong, resulting in a film that does not innovate on the Zombie Film Formula, but slavishly imitates it.

Ten Statements About....PACIFIC RIM (2013)

GIANT ROBOTS!

"Today, the apocalypse is cancelled."

1) While Guillermo del Toro not only is clear about this being his version of a kaiju film (it’s not for nothing that the film is dedicated to Ray Harryhausen and Ishiro Honda), this owes more to Starship Troopers than any Godzilla film imaginable.  del Toro structures this film as a war movie, with all the military politics and soap operatics that entails in the modern world...and he makes it work.

2) And because it owes a lot, structure-wise, to Starship Troopers, it doesn’t surprise me that del Toro builds its narrative structure firmly on the back of Indris Elba.  Much like Michael Ironside in the previous film, Elba serves as expository device, guiding force and character mirror, giving the entire film a consistent tone it might not otherwise have.  Because he’s a rock in the center of a very chaotic story, Elba grounds the film and leaves the other characters free to have their own little storylines.

3) Thank God that del Toro respects us enough to let the relationship grow naturally between Charlie Hunnam’s Raliegh and Rinko Kinkuchi’s Mako.  Hell, give him credit for making it clear that the two are heading for a romantic relationship without hitting us over the head with it.  The two never even kiss, never say anything that expresses their feelings, yet we know.

4) Considering how much I despised him in Torchwood as Owen Harper, I have to give Burn Gorman a lot of credit--and maybe an apology--after his turn as Dr. Gottleib.  Gorman submerges himself in Gottleib, allowing himself to be used as comic relief while retaining a sort of dignity as a scientist.

GIANT MONSTERS!

5) You wanna know a way to retain a sense of reality for your science fictional world?  Fill your world with character actors who look more or less like real people.  Outside of Elba and Ron Perlman, this is a movie populated by people we may recognize vaguely, but only vaguely.  Since there’s rarely a moment where we stop and go, 'hey, it’s _______’, we’re able to lose ourselves in the world.

6) I respect how del Toro, knowing we’re jonesing for robot vs. kaiju action, never lets us go thirsty for giant creatures beating each other up.  Sure, there are only a few set pieces...but in the spaces in between there’s always something to remind us this is a world under attack by monsters primarily thanks to a series of news reports.

7) Boy, given what he goes through in this film, Ron Perlman must be the best friend ever.  And he also must have the least amount of ego.

...oh, and these guys.

8) It gives me great satisfaction that when the World Leaders believe the Jaeger Program is failing, they end up with a new plan--namely, to quote Centurion, ‘a fucking wall.’  And it gives me greater satisfaction to see how that shakes out.

9)  I have to wonder if there is a way to connect the Pacific Rim universe to the Hellboy universe.  There are strong commonalities in the way the entropic elements work in each adventure, and one could see a comic-book-y ‘unified field theorem’ going on in the mind of comic-book fan del Toro.

10) You’ll notice I haven’t talked much about the actual, you know, robots fighting monsters thing.  That’s because the action sequences kick ass, they’re well thought out, and it’ll feed that primal need we all have to see big honking things roaring and smacking each other around.

Overall...del Toro does it again--finding a way to do something big and shouty that appeals to our younger selves while giving us a degree of nuance you’ll never find in most other big budget blockbusters.

I went to the Atlas again for this, and through the use of strategic bathroom breakage managed to avoid the bulk of the Regal Firstlook (fuck you, Firstlook).  Amongst the trailers I saw were Elysium (the new Neil Blomkamp, who seems to be making a subtle sequel to his District 9 judging from some of the tech on display), Anchorman 2 (I just don’t get why the first was so amazing--I found it stupid and puerile--that it needed a decade-later, inferior looking sequel), Ender’s Game (which looks like it would be the kind of science fiction film I’d want to see if, you know, the person who wrote the original wasn’t a homophobic ass) and Seventh Son (a fantasy movie that bugs me for, at turns, obviously wants to be a franchise and wanting me to buy Julianne Moore as an evil witch/dragon).  We are entering some dark, dark days, my friends.