Monday, March 1, 2010

Striving too much?

It does appear that directors who dream of making a particular movie are often the last persons who you'd want to make these movies. Case and point: the 2000s versions of Superman and King Kong. Both films were made by directors whose dream it was to make these movies. It was Peter Jackson's dream to make King Kong because he was such a fan of the 1933 version. While the original was a visual breakthrough at the time, the "brand new" version brought nothing new to the story, aside from CGI, which aside from King Kong himself wasn't even that good (case and point, the dinosaur stampede). Say what you will about the 1976 version, but at least that one added something original to the story that was relevant to the times - the search for oil with the plot revolving around an oil tycoon searching for a large oil deposit and when failing that, settling on King Kong instead. You might not have liked the 1976 version (it'll always hold a special place in my heart as the first movie I ever saw in theatres), but at least it wasn't trying to duplicate the original move for move. Peter Jackson's dream made him unable to add anything that was uniquely his to the movie. Without a unique addition, the movie should have been tilted "1933 King Kong with today's CGI - come take a look at what I can do on my computer." Not something that one sees more than once or that makes for a great movie. Same thing for the Superman update. The 1978 original was of course one of the greatest movies of all time, at least for superhero fans (with the sequel being even better).

The 2006 Superman Returns, however, was once again a stinker. It was Bryan Singer's dream to make Superman. He left the X-Men franchise to make it. End result: His film wasn't very good. First, while it may be argued that box office results don't mean a lot, they do show that a not that good of a X-Men 3 easily made more money than Singer's Superman - a movie that one may say meant more to more people than another X-Men sequel. People grew up with 1978 original Superman and one would think that a new Superman film would bring all those fans back repeatedly. While there may have been repeat business, it wasn't a lot. As with Jackson and King Kong, Singer was trying too hard to pay tribute to the original film by making it about stunning visuals and Superman flying around and lifting things and blowing on things and shooting his laser/heat beams. Sorry, nothing new. Add to that a boring script and plot and even the best Christopher Reeve look-alike isn't going to do it for the audience. Yes, Lex Luther is a bad guy, but do we really need to see him again doing the exact same thing - land grabbing. Yes, at least Singer substituted nuclear weapons for crystals and switched up the seacoast (from the West coast to the East coast), but the plan is basically identical with Luther again being swarted by his assistant as much as by Superman himself. And don't even get me started on the Superman's kid. So, all in all, we got better CGI, but given all of Superman's rouge's gallery, we should have had a much better movie. My point is that directors who say that it is their life-long dream to make something should not be allowed within a mile of whatever film they name. Yes, it may be cruel, especially after Lord of the Rings and X-Men success (Jackson and Singer, respectively), but it's better this way than the audience sitting through torture.

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