The Fake Life - Love movies? We do too!

Friday, October 13, 2006

Which Was Worse? - Part 1

Our co-editor Charlie Brigden just watched Batman Forever again and, once again, realised it sucks. I understand his pain. That desire to have more good Batman films (or just one completely good one, dammit) overcomes your reason and memory as you justify another viewing with 'Maybe it has aged well?', 'Maybe I have some perspective now?' and 'Maybe it can be enjoyed ironically?'. It doesn't work. The film still blows. Not done it with Batman? Well how many times have you watched the Star Wars Prequels? Don't look smug, I bet there's a crappy movie or two hiding in your closet that you can't quite let go of. We all have them, which leads, indirectly, to this new column.

Our pure and beautiful geek love for certain things means we are dashed upon the rocks of these abominations again and again. It also means we have a little more knowledge about crappy movies than we should and spend a little too long arguing about them on message boards. Well I say embrace it! Any fool can come up with a top ten, but only truly committed geeks can come up with a well thought-out bottom ten. I shall introduce two terrible films in each article and then you can argue over which is worse on our message board, seperating the 'worse than castration' from the 'better than a kick in the balls, I suppose'.

First up: Superman IV vs. Star Trek V

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier was directed by William Shatner after the previous two entries in the series were directed by Leonard Nimoy. The original story was by William Shatner. In the film William Shatner battles an omnipotent being and wins. I wouldn't dare suggest that this was a movie born more out of vanity than of passion. I will suggest that it is the worst of the Star Trek films, which puts it at a cinematic level slightly below spitting on your tv and watching it dribble down the screen.

A low budget meant the special effects were knocked off and, often, stolen from the previous entries. The story, which has Spock's half brother taking over the Enterprise to find God at the centre of the galaxy, is enourmously pretentious, ham-fisted and, to cap it all, botched. Shatner's original script had the 'omnipotent being' actually be The Devil, but in the final film he's just an alien, represented as a hologram of a bearded man.

That's not to say that having The Devil in the film would have made it better, but it would have made it funnier. As it is the film takes the boring, unimaginative route, which it takes with every other decision too. The comedy is forced and low - Scotty after saying 'I know ths ship like the back of my hand', then bangs his head on an overhead beam! The plot either makes no sense - There are some Klingons running around mostly just becuase Star Trek films have Klingons in - or is hopelessly overwrought - Kirk gives a big speech about our fears, saying 'That's...what makes...us...human!'. The aging of the crew, so ably handled in previous films, is embarassingly glossed over here - Kirk climbs a mountain, Kirk's hair seems a lot more brown and lush than it used to be, skin is stretched tight and the girdle budget was more than the sfx budget.

Maybe these things could make the film ironically entertaining, but it's the amatuerishness of the execution that stops any fun dead. It is a lumpen, knocked-off mess of a movie that should never be watched ever but, predictably, it is one that Trekkies will still defend, saying that it captures the relationship between the main characters really well. If that sort of desperate 'looking on the bright side' myopia isn't worth our mighty scorn, what is?

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace also has a terribly worthy and ultimately daft plot, involving Superman collecting all the nuclear weapons of the world and throwing them into the sun, because that will solve all our problems won't it. Unfortunately Lex Luthor attaches a strand of Supeman's hair to one of the missiles and the resultant explosion creates Nuclear Man and him and Superman fight a bit until the film ends.

Superman IV is a disaster. The original producers and star Christopher Reeve believed the franchise was dead after the overly jokey and mostly crummy Superman III, but Cannon Films bought out the rights and decided to make another, tempting Chris back only if they would make another film of his choosing and he could have story input. Chris chose to put all the anti-nuclear stuff in in order to make the film more 'serious' which, while well-intentioned, tends to stop any fun in its tracks. It also means that everyone was just doing it for the money. The problem was there was no money. What should have been a $40m budget turned into $17m and the results are painfully obvious on screen.

English new town, Milton Keynes - the butt of many jokes about how dull and soulless a place it is - was used as a stand in for Metropolis. The London Underground was used as a stand in for the Subway. In the space sequences you can see the black cloth backdrop actually moving in the wind. You can see the wires in the flying sequences. The list goes on and on. Here's a quote from Christopher Reeve:

"For example, Konner and Rosenthal wrote a scene in which Superman lands on 42nd Street and walks down the double yellow lines to the United Nations, where he gives a speech. If that had been a scene in Superman I, we would actually have shot it on 42nd Street. Dick Donner would have choreographed hundreds of pedestrians and vehicles and cut to people gawking out of office windows at the sight of Superman walking down the street like the Pied Piper. Instead, we had to shoot at an industrial park in England in the rain with about a hundred extras, not a car in sight, and a dozen pigeons thrown in for atmosphere."

Also Nuclear Man looks like a camp 80's wrestler. Try looking at this man without laughing a little bit. It was bad when it came out, and twenty years has done nothing for his fashion sense.

Also there was around 50 minutes cut from this film, which renders the film mostly senseless and choppy. The last act mostly consists of Superman beating up Nuclear Man, thinking Nuclear Man dead and then Nuclear Man coming back and them fighting some more. I remember this getting boring when I was a kid, and if a kid doesn't like a superhero movie, you know you are in trouble.

Superman IV killed the franchise for nearly two decades, until Bryan Singer managed to bring it back this summer with Supeman Returns and then promptly kill it again. Amazingly, Star Trek V didn't kill its franchise and there have been five further entries, a couple of which are almost OK.

So, please visit this message board thread and decide which is the worst film. It's all up to you! The winner will then move forward into the next round where it will face another enormous piece of crap.