The Fake Life - Love movies? We do too!

Monday, October 16, 2006

Which Was Worse? - Part 2

Superman IV won the last round by a unanimous verdict, while Star Trek V was forgiven its terrible crimes mostly for being the kind of Star Trek that doesn't involve androids learning to laugh. Superman IV will now face the winner of this round: Godzilla ('98) vs. Van Helsing.

1993's Jurassic Park was pretty nifty when the dinoasaurs were attacking, so Hollywood spent the next half decade making films with fancy CGI critters attacking people. This led up to the '98 remake of the Japanese classic, Godzilla, by the geniuses behind Independence Day, Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin. After that, Hollywood mostly stopped doing giant monster films.

The writers of Pirates of the Caribbean were originally given the draft and their script was good enough to get the film moving towards production. The then current kings of Hollywood blockbustering Emmerich and Devlin were brought on to make it. Then they popped off on holiday for two weeks and came back with a completely different script. Then the executives let them film the new script mostly because, you know, Independence Day had just made all the money in the world. Unfortunately Emmerich and Devlin did not care about Godzilla, had not seen most of the Godzilla films (let alone the original) and had simply cashed the check and re-written large chunks of Independence Day except with a giant lizard in place of UFOs.

So we get a tense build-up as Godzilla approaches Manhatten which is kind of effective, just as the build-up in Indepedence Day was pretty good, then we get a long sequence of Godzilla attacking and then we get an hour or so of annoying one and a half-dimensional characters being annoying while running around and shouting. Then the monster dies really cheaply. He survives getting shot at, blown up and having buildings fall on him but a couple of missiles will down him? Bullshit.

The first mistake is making the monster look 'realistic'. Gone is the characterful Japanese Godzilla, and in comes a generic lizard scaled up to a couple hundred feet and given Jay Leno's chin. That the irony of trying to make Godzilla (not to mention a Hollywood summer blockbuster) realistic was lost to the film-makers should be telling.

The second mistake was filling in the gaps between monster attacks with dozens of horrendously unpleasant and shallow characters. Matthew Broderick plays a boring scientist who comes over as really boring. Maria Pitillo plays a lying, cheating reporter who, amazingly enough, comes over as a real bitch. And as there is nothing more to the characters than what I have just mentioned, the actors were given no chance to flesh them out or make them sympathetic. Then, when the monster is killed, every single character is given a victory moment as their micro-arc is completed. This 'cheering in the control room' sequence lasts a couple of minutes (too long anyway) but feels like fifteen.

The third mistake was that the film-makers were total pussies. They emptied out Manhattan when Godzilla attacked meaning the only damage done was property damage, which is boring unless you are Donald Trump. Compare this to the original Godzilla which has a young mother covering her children with a shawl as Godzilla bears down on them and telling them to pray because they will be with their father in heaven soon. Compare it even with the mostly sucky The Lost World: Jurassic Park, which has a T-Rex rampaging through a city and chomping on people (some of them are even Japanese) and a dog. In the American Godzilla, the monster steps on Hank Azaria and Hank survives.

The fourth mistake: The baby Godzillas.

The fifth mistake: I'm up to five mistakes, and I have plenty more.

It doesn't matter if you take Godzilla as a serious metaphor for nuclear armageddon, or as an excuse for cheesy action, massive destruction and the always entertaining deaths of screaming Japanese actors, the American Godzilla utterly fails to deliver. Dull, noisy, depressing to watch and a complete waste of potential.

Van Helsing was Universal's attempt to relaunch its stable of classic movie monsters for a new century. They brought in Stephen Sommers to bring a new tale of Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster and the Wolfman to the screen after succesfully turning The Mummy into an fx-filled extravaganza that made loads of cash.

What the executives hadn't noticed was that Stephen Sommers was steadily losing the plot. From Deep Rising, where he used CGI imaginatively to enhance the fun (and the gore) of the story, through The Mummy Returns where a new CGI beastie is screaming at the camera every five minutes, finally to Van Helsing where everything is CGI and everything is screaming all the time.

The original monsters were full of character. Dracula was almost mesmerically charming and Frankenstein's monster was full of pathos and humanity. People still have affection for The Monster Squad, which put the monsters up against some kids and the 80's, because, despite not really being any good, it still had a lot of character and fun. Van Helsing is utterly charmless.

The camera whizzes about like an eight year old on speedballs, wildly focusing on any excuse for a CGI effect, actors run around trying to stay in shot long enough to set up the next CGI effect. Everyone screams, swings on a rope, watches the windmill/castle/another castle explode and then runs along to the next scene. Characters die for very little reason and usually in a very arbitrary way just after an action scene, suggesting that working out what linked the action scenes together, what the character's arcs were, and what coherency was were just details to be given over to an underling while Sommers got on with the important work of blowing things up. In Stephen Sommers' world there is the action set piece, and then there is second unit work.

Even worse, it doesn't even look very good. Nothing looks remotely real and nothing moves remotely realistically. Though giant sets were built, they feel small and clautrophobic due to the shot choices, camera moves and the obscene amount of cluttering. The film has three beautiful brides of Dracula who look mostly like drag queens when they aren't shrivelled, naked, grey bat-things (not a good look). Flames look two dimensional. Digital doubles look like computer game characters. Stylisation is a good thing in films but, on the commentary, Stephen suggests he is convinced everything looks completely real. What film was his addled mind watching?

Every choice is made on the basis of how extreme it is. Thus the pace is a relentless sprint that, after about 30 minutes, simply becomes numbing. Monster transformation scenes are amped until the characters are moving so quickly and spastically that, despite the brutality of the change, it just looks plastic and weightless. Flames will engulf a carriage if a single lamp is broken, but the carriage won't become structurally unstable until the chase is over. Kate Beckinsale can swing a thousand metres on a rope and smash into a wall one minute, then is mortally wounded by a sofa the next.

Nothing makes sense in this film. Now, it is human nature to try and make sense out of what is put in front of you. Trying to be human while watching this film will only result in being beaten about the logic centres with cricket bats for two hours.

They spent a lot of money on this, to the extent of building an entire village in Eastern Europe, hoping to turn the film into a franchise. The film's failure has stopped Sommers from making any more movies for several years, whch is a good thing, but it has also stopped the Universal monsters from being in any more movies, which is rather sad. About the only good thing to have come out of Van Helsing is the re-release of the original Universal films in fancy box sets.

So we have two films that represent everything that is bad with modern blockbuster entertainment. They are shallow, headache-inducingly shrill, parasitically unoriginal, depressingly wasteful of potential and, ulitmately, rather dull. But which is worse? Decide!