Random Musings - 3 geeks on life, the universe and everything.

So, while Tom and James work on ripping off Yhatzee….

I’ve been doing other crap.

First off, I’ve been helping organize the Salford WARPS for the new year. Since, unlike last year, the event’s officer isn’t 100% on the ball, (the events officer for the student union last year is it’s President this year) my job is distinctly more difficult that I would like. Between our domain expiring and trying to get sorted for the fresher’s fair, I’d rather shoot myself than continue to deal with it, in some ways. Or the union…. you know, that’s not such a bad plan. I wonder how much the severed head of a union exec goes for on ebay.

Second off, it appears that my sanity has slowly danced away with the penguins. Amongst others. So I’m actually beginning to be able to put an ending to 1 of my role playing games I’m running, which had (with player character help occasionally) wandered so far off the beaten track that it’s punched through a small city on it’s way to the goal. And then around the goal in an ever tightening spiral. Hopefully they’ll realize what the end aim of the story was sometime before next session, and I can then get it done with.

And third, I’ve been working on far too many game designs. This may be the cause of the second point, in fact, but I’ve designed an entire tabletop war game or 2 over the past month, begun writing a 4th ed DnD supplement, which I’ll share samples of over time, and also written up a campaign for said supplement.

So expect a few more random posts out of me as my sanity drains. Now, go away, I’m trying to invade Russia in peace.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

My opening statement is that this is a mediocre movie, but an absolutely atrocious sequel.

Spoilers may follow. But don’t worry if you see this movie your eyes will fall out and burry themselves in your ass so read it here and save your eyes.

Perhaps the first clue that this movie was destined for the dumpster should have been Rachel Weisz deciding not to reprise her role as Evey over issues with the script. She had to be replaced by Maria Bello and my god whoever decided that was obviously snorting something brown and five hundered years old.

Here is an example of how crazy this gets:

Brendan Fraser rides a horse made out of rock and molten lava through a Chinese City during Chinese New Year, while Jet Li peels off his face and throws it at his would-be attackers.

I know what you’re thinking: “Is the director smoking crack?”

Well, yes I think he was.

The plot focuses on Jet Li’s mummified Immortal Chinese Emperor who is accidentally awoken, and it’s up to our heroes to stop him before he manages to raise his invincible terracotta army…

But wait he’s not immortal until he gets to a spa in the Himalayas which looks like the place from the second film with a golden statue of Buddha, there is two guardians who are 3000 years old and immortal for no apparent reason. And his invincible army is not so invincible until after it crosses the Great Wall of China and is actually as tough as a china vase…

I can’t go on, THIS SHIT IS BANNANAS!

Is it just me or is the same drivel we’ve seen many many times in the bargain bin at blockbusters?

Fraser is his normal, perfectly affable self, here supposedly “older”, though the poor make-up can’t conceal his youthful features and Bello does a more than decent job filling in for Weisz, in the same way a polar bears fills in for a zebra. Maria Bello is to Rachel Weisz as I am to Muhammad Ali.

Hannah here is fairly wasted, used only to snipe from the sidelines and offer incredibly inane one-liners (I did feel at one point that if everyone would shut up for five seconds, instead of commentating on absolutely everything, or offering up glib quips, that the fighting might go just that tad bit easier). Speaking of which, Jet Li is also fairly underused, with the final face-off between his Mummy Emperor and Rick O’Connell feeling more than a little underwhelming.

Let’s now tackle Luke Ford, to the ground, and beat him.

The son of Rick and Evey Mk II. I don’t know whether to blame the script or him but either way the whole subplot of “healing the father-son relationship” hurts me like fire, it’s painful.

As for Chinese history and culture … well, I know the Mummy doesn’t follow historical accuracy but at least the last two where based on fact. This film is very hanging off the bones.

Just to re-iterate this quote: “Rachel Weisz announced that she will not be reprising her role of Evelyn due to different interests with the screenplay.” Yes, I can see her point. She got off the sinking ship.

So at this point the director wants to spice things up, so add an element of danger that will keep you on the verge of consciousness, Li’s Emperor has the ability to control all the elements, and turn into anything he likes, this part is very much like Reign of Fire meets Lord Of The Rings.

Did I mention there are Yetis in this film?

Yup, Yetis turn up and fight on the side of good against Li’s evil minions, adding barely any weight to the CGI-Heavy, soulless mess that the film has turned out to be.

This film ups the ante in terms of special effects and action, but there’s an undeniably tired air. The action isn’t used to advance the story but to delay it. Tomb of the Dragon Emperor tells a tiny story. The heroes go one place.

Then they go to another place.

Then they meet up with the bad guy.

There’s a showdown.

Frankly this story could have been told in 45 minutes; Instead, Tomb stretches this little bonbon of a plot into 112 minutes.

Coming off far worse is a newly brunet Bello, who appears distinctly uncomfortable in the action sequences and who sports an unfortunate British accent to boot.

I really don’t feel I can destroy this film any further and so I shall end by saying I feel this film would be improved by saying its called The Mummy 3: Curse of the Emperor Penguin.

National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets.

Let me begin by saying that I saw the first one and thought despite the fact it’s a lovechild of Indiana Jones (Which on a side note has now launched itself in a hydraulic powered flip off the tracks into a nearby barn, then spontaneously combusted) and despite the fact Disney has yet to grasp certain aspects of historical consistency I did like it in the mesmarised braindead sort of way. National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets is the same shit with a bigger budget, less enthusiasm, less mercenaries and more extinct native American populates.

More opinions to follow after this warning:

Spoilers May Follow.

You have been warned.

Like I said I have seen the previous National Treasure, and armed with that memory and the knowledge that this is a Disney movie, I watched its sequel without a great deal of expectations.

The first thing to catch my attention is that it contains gargantuan amounts of predictable adventure drivel to the point where I accurately predicted what was going to happen. A note to Disney here is diverse situations are the way forward. Now I know it’s slightly Clichéd but this really is Indiana Jones with the action sucked out.

However this aside there is two major problems with this film I want to write about here so I’ll get straight to them:

(1) it doesn’t make any sense

(2) The acting is awful.

On (1), I really don’t mean to nitpick on historical minutiae, hell I’d be happy to suspend disbelief for two hours on topics such as Lincoln’s assassination, Mayan treasures, Mount Rushmore geography, and all that other nonsense, no problem there. But the point of a treasure hunt movie is the ability to follow the main character in his struggle, perhaps struggle with him, see him figure things out and perhaps guess with him. This first movie achieved this to some degree. However its offspring sequel hasn’t lived up to its parent.

For the treasure hunting and clever figuring out of clues relies on consistence. The universe of the movie doesn’t have to be consistent with the world we live in, but it has to be consistent with itself. But the universe of this movie is like a great big fairy tale, and a fairy tale on Prozac at that. It quite often has the central character pulling white rabbits out of his sleeve whenever he needs them, they seem to crop up more often than not and have the power of Ret-Con.

Another qualm I have with this movie is action and drama, or more precisely the lack of. Yes the movie tries its hand at some drama, but it just doesn’t work. Things go pretty smoothly for the most part, into the Queen’s office, out of it again, oops, we are being chased, heck, let’s take a photo, oh no camera, ah, there is a traffic camera, yep and by the way, can you just hack into the computer and download the picture without a physical access terminal to the central network like we do, oh every day. Then it’s onto the next event, Repeat previous events getting into the oval office, then again when kidnapping the president.

Meanwhile the hero manages to MacGyver his way through an increasingly preposterous story. You get the feeling that it might have been better if he had not stolen the Constitution in part 1, so the writers would not have to top this. This in itself makes me cringe at the fact Disney announced a third and possibly a 4^th, meaning that by the time we get to the 4^th it will have escalated to the point where we are on mars fighting cybernetic Dinosaurs for gods pyjamas.

Back in the second all I have to say about the ‘villain’ is he’s lame and for the most part useless, not to mention somewhat incoherent.

None of the story really makes the slightest bit of sense, including the motivation of the hero. To clear the name of his great-great-grandfather he risks his life, the life of friends and loved ones, his own good name (Again) by kidnapping the president and even breaks into his own house to steal his ex-girlfriends card key so he can gain access to a page that may or may not contain the secret of ages all based on a hunch.

At this point it’s all becoming a steaming pile of nonsense aimed at people who really do not give a damn about storylines, consistence, and coherence and are possible into cranial intrusion. It requires the target audience to want nothing more than a lot of movement/action, high-tech gobbledygook, explosions, and cheap patriotism. Call me needy but I’d like an interesting, involving storyline, believable characters and humour, dark or otherwise.

However, as bad as the story was point number (2), the bad acting, I’m afraid to say, is even worse. Everybody in this movie was disappointing, even a non-actor like Kruger. Her career should end with this movie, over, out, finite. She cannot do it, and it’s not been for a lack of opportunity. If you had a consistent record of failure like hers in any regular job, you’d find yourself with a lot of spare time very soon.

But even the real actors here just make you cringe, Greenwood, Harris, Mirren, Voight, they all deliver horrible performances that seem to betray their lack of passion and their paycheck mentality. Since we know they *can* act, we have seen it before, but they just don’t in this movie. It seems to suggest to me there trying to convey the message “WE HATE THESE MOVIES, SAVE US, STOP WATCHING THEM!”. Keitel comes away without much harm, his part is so tiny, there just isn’t a lot of opportunity to screw things up too badly.

My Question at the end of this is why oh why do they keep making this fluff?

Because for some reason we attend it. We go there, drop our cash, and watch this nonsense. I am free of guilt here as my parents bought it and I got curious. But if you haven’t seen it, you and your money can still make a difference. Watch a good movie. There are plenty out there. In the DVD collections from 20 years ago.

And now I go to polish my tiny scrunched up cynical heart.