My life fades. The vision dims. All that remains are memories. I remember a time of chaos — ruined dreams — this wasted land. But most of all, I remember The Road Warrior. The man we called “Mario.” To understand who he was, you have to go back to another time… when the world was powered by the black fuel — and the desert sprouted great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now –swept away. For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war, and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all.
Ahh, Koreans: the slightly less tentacle-oriented cousins of the Japanese. Equally as insane, but with fewer violated schoolgirls. They stand teetering on the edge of the uncanny valley, somewhere between robots with emotive faces and the average MSNBC newscaster; your brain wants to believe that some parts of them are human, but you know in your heart that they’re not. Most Asian countries have their fair share of image problems, but I’d say South Korea has it worst because they don’t really have an image. Everyone just thinks of them as the sensible cousin to their absolutely insane, kneebiter, bond-villainesque, tosspot neighbor to the North — but South Korea is so much more than that. Like their Japanese friends, they also have an affinity for making the most bizarre tripe imaginable.
Don’t get me wrong, Korean Tron is a masterpiece. It makes the original look like it was filmed by an invalid with a camcorder and a full diaper. The only way it could get any better is if the story had anything to do with Tron or resembled any part of Tron. It’s like they had someone at a party drunkenly give them a vague description of what Tron was, and then based a movie off that information alone. Adding some Tron elements to your Tron movie seems appropriate, but it would probably ruin the effect. Shock, awe, bewilderment, and mild disappointment are a director’s best friends.
Having an out-of-work McDonald’s janitor do all the voice-over work was an absolutely genius move. Everything sounds like a grade-school production of Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf with the same level of comprehension and emotive power. Only having a passing acquaintance with the English language helps too. It offers a viscerally bad experience that’s fun for the whole family — like a train wreck, or a congressional hearing.
They remade Arthur with Russell Brand. They’ll remake Planet of the Apes on a bi-monthly schedule, until eventually they’ll be flying monkeys called up by a witch. There’s another Batman every half-hour, all of them bad, because all Batman anything sucks. They remade The Pink Panther, which is like eating leftovers from a meal you never ate. They remade Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner with Ashton Kutcher, for crissakes.
Remakes suck. They’re wrong and stupid. Do something new and creative. Maybe on the next version of Titanic, you equip it with deck guns and fire broadsides at the icebergs. That would be pretty sweet, but can’t you simply make a movie about the Lusitania instead? Sink something fresh. So let’s all of us agree. No more remakes!
Except Mad Max. They should remake that one. They should remake it while working on the script for the next one. They should have a line of succession like they do for royalty, but it’s just producers for Mad Max movies. When one gets blowed up real good while sitting in one of those deck chairs too close to the splosions, another one is immediately crowned and gets to work. Generally producers don’t get blown up on movie sets, because they hang around offices and let the directors sit around waiting for the actors to sober up enough to mumble their lines; but the Mad Max producer was there to complain to the director that he wasn’t spending enough money, and didn’t have enough splosions and hot rod races in the movie, and he better get cracking because there are 400 directors in line behind him that will have so many explosions they’ll make Michael Bay look like Woody Allen.
I need that level of commitment. I need a movie about a man that understands the value of gasoline, and uses it for everything, including cologne. I need Mad Max.
If you are inconsiderate to others, I too will bite your torso and give you a disease. It’s nothing personal, unless you plan on talking on your cell phone through the entire movie. Then I’ll be forced to rip your ear off and talk into it in a manner that most would find offensive, or boorish. Again, friend, it’s nothing personal. Unless you spill popcorn and butter all over me. Then I’ll politely ask you to stop, and you’ll go home and softly cry yourself to sleep. Nothing personal, friendo, rules are rules.
Better still, just don’t go out to the movies ever. It’s better if you don’t; they haven’t made anything good since 1978 anyways.