Resident Evil

directed by Paul W.S. Anderson

Resident Evil was a huge deal when it was first released for the Playstation in 1996. The history of the survival horror genre of video games was originally reserved for ideas like Project Firestart, the Alone in the Dark series, and Doom 3.  Prior to those titles, the developer of Resident Evil, Shinji Mikami, stated that he looked to older horror games such as Sweet Home as an influence to base Resident Evil on. The idea was to have physical monsters attacking your character around a variety of hidden openings or behind doors you would least suspect any danger from being around, and this was accomplished by making your enemies a variety of mutated dogs, zombies, crows, and various other entities throughout your journey in a mansion. This game and franchise opened the doors for other great survival horror games like Silent Hill, Dino Crisis, Clock Tower, and Fatal Frame.

The zombies and mutated beings were all caused by an outbreak of a T-Virus, a genetically modified virus which causes reanimation of the dead, and the zombies are (of course) in search of more victims to feed on to grow stronger. A mere scratch or bite from anyone infected can cause you to turn into one of them, first slowly killing you then reanimating you as a zombie.

Back to the movie, Milla Jovovich plays Alice, a guard for the Umbrella Corporation’s secret Hive operation which conducts genetic research, and its entrance is located deep underground in a mansion where Alice lives in the middle of Raccoon City. Alice is stormed in on by a group of commandos employed by Umbrella Corp. that inform her that she has to go with them into the Hive because the A.I. System for the Hive, the Red Queen, has sealed the Hive shut and they aren’t sure why. After finding that a thief stole the T-virus and infected the Hive’s employees, Alice and these commandos learn the hard way what happens to the victims of the virus while they dodge the Red Queen’s defense mechanism, meant to stop any possible spread of the virus above-ground. So it’s now their mission to override the Red Queen, save themselves from the zombies they accidentally let free after disabling the safety mechanisms while trying to get anti-virus for some of their team who were scratched or bit by zombies, and do so before the Red Queen comes back online and seals the Hive back up.

It’s a whirlwind of a tale. From what Wikipedia tells me, the movie follows slight references and elements to the first four games in the RE series while following it’s own plot with different characters. Anderson used camera angles and certain identical shots from the first game in certain moments throughout the film.

The movie wasn’t half bad, but it’s been panned by numerous critics, which earned the film a current 33% on Rotten Tomatoes according to the critics. However, the audience seems to like it just fine with 68% approval and 6.7/10 stars on IMDB. Either the fans are so biased that they will not let it be dissected critically or the critics are far too expectant of something more artistically original.

Personally, I thought the movie was fine. It did have confusing cuts in the editing, implausible moments where the zombies were whisper quiet (as a group and on their own) just convenient enough to jump-scare a victim, implausible objects hanging from the train car ceilings (like a net full of pipes for no reason other than to battle a CG mutant with), and dialogue that Roger Ebert felt was “more like barking orders with no room for small talk.” I liken this movie to Blade or another film where the movie is generally action without serious thought put into every scene while remaining stylish and slick enough to keep an audience’s attention. There’s a lot of scenes of Milla looking concerned then stone-faced serious then concerned again, back and forth throughout the movie. Her character here felt a lot like her character in The Fifith Element, Leeloo, since a lot of her scenes are spent in confusion and making snap decisions and even hilariously picking a electronic swipe-card door lock (which was explored around the end of this video made by CinemaSins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU5sgZrYh4c).

I don’t think the movie was horrible, but it definitely felt bland and convenient at times. The sets looked a little cheap for some of the zombie actors to pound on. The CG monster (called a Licker…some say a “Discount Venom” like the video above) looked OK at times, and in other shots looked definitely like a CG overlay on the scene. And I haven’t really played the series, so I have to take the words on the Wikipedia editors at their word how closely an adaptation it is, but it sounds like a movie inspired and based on ideas around Resident Evil rather than a word-for-word retelling of its story. Story aside, the movie had great electronic sound design during moments that Alice was remembering her past (she was knocked out with some amnesiac gas after the T-Virus was released), and the artists who performed on the soundtrack are all favorites of mine, so I can’t fault them there.

If you’ve played the game, more than likely you’ve seen the movies. I’d recommend it to those who have played them if you haven’t seen this, just to fulfill your curiosities and have fun comparing the games to the movie. Otherwise, for the general audience, I didn’t really get scared of any of these T-Virus zombies, and the brief encounters with the Licker mutant sort of fell flat onscreen. Plus Michelle Rodriguez is pretty one-note in her performance here, even performing her typical “neck-crack before trying to kick ass” move. If you can get the DVD for $1-5, I’d say that’s about worth it, but I wouldn’t rent it for $3, if that makes sense.

5/10 zombies pausing to build drama

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi and Motonori Sakakibara

If any video game series needed a big-screen adaptation, arguably, it was Final Fantasy. The Final Fantasy series of role-playing games (developed by Square Enix) rose to such popularity that it became Square Enix’s most popular franchise and the eighth best-selling game franchise worldwide (as of 2012). The characters changed in each game, but the themes of the existence of dualism and cycles of “good vs. evil” will always be among us from the past into the future were always the subject of the games.

Please note, I’m not a fan of RPG games, and my combined time of playing only FFVII and FFIX is about 10 total hours (to get a taste of what these games are). From what I know, the story and characters in this movie do not exist in a game form, which makes reviewing this so much easier to compare to the series.

The plot of this completely animated film is simple yet grandiose at the same time: ghosts of dead aliens hitchhike on a meteor bound for Earth, killing every living thing simply by touching it (sort of like stealing everything’s essence). A doctor experimenting with the “phantoms, ” named Aki Ross (played by Street Fighter‘s Chun-Li herself, Ming-Na), becomes infected with a phantom herself, yet remains alive by her mentor’s research on her. They have a mission to gather eight signature spirits that combine with each other to defeat the Phantoms within her and collectively send the dead spirits out of the Earth for good. She runs across a former lover on her quest, who assists in her safety along her mission, and they all have to deal with a general on Earth who is determined to use a powerful Zeus cannon to merely blow them all away instead of repelling them back to their home planet.

At face value, the quality of the character’s animation and graphical CGI rendered capabilities is a marvel in movie-making. The fact that it took four years and $137 million to accomplish this 106 minute long “extended modern video game cut scene” is amazing. While the movie was a bit of a box office flop and the “quality-animation” genre of film may be tied to its legacy, the film is a sight to behold at least once. I back-pedal on my glowing review of it for a second as I found the movie a bit boring and nearly put me to sleep a few times while watching it. The tone and the floaty, deliberately moving technology all around them makes scenes impressive to look at but hard to not check your watch to.

There were multiple guest voice actors that made me turn the volume up a tick higher to listen to what they were saying, such as Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi, Donald Sutherland, Keith David, James Woods, and John DiMaggio (Bender!). Noted previously was that Street Fighter/ER‘s Ming-Na was the lead role, and she did exceptionally well despite her difficulties trying to voice act with no other actors to act-off of.

The music was easily forgettable by me, but internet/gamer types love everything about its musical score for whatever reason. It was a decent bed to act over, I guess. The film was also nominated for best sound editing, which must’ve been difficult to do due the nature of how meticulous the film was rendered and sequenced together.

Would I watch it again? Probably not, and if I did, it would only be to see the cool CG insect-phantoms with glowy tentacles and other monster Phantoms that were designed for the action scenes. In summation, most of the movie felt like Alien-meets-Starship Troopers-meets-Star Wars and any other sci fi movies I couldn’t think of right now. I was actually surprised how it didn’t feel like any Final Fantasy game I thought of from the past. I almost wouldn’t associate the movie with the series at all, but maybe I’m missing something crucial from my understanding of the games. Who knows. It was OK.

4/10 references to Gaia, the Earth Spirit

** Multiple resources helped in this review, mostly the following links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy:_The_Spirits_Within

http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_(Series)

Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life

directed by Jan de Bont

So if you watched the first Lara Croft: Tomb Raider movie, you’ll remember how Angelina Jolie demonstrated on-screen how her character (Croft) is basically a superhuman badass who has seen everything and knows everything about artifacts, technology, various forms of transportation, gymnastics, and gunplay.  In this awkwardly-long-titled movie, LCTR – The Cradle of Life, Croft proposes that “everything lost is meant to be found,” until she is faced with finding the mythical place where all life began and a box containing the plague of Pandora which could end life as we know it.  Jonathon Reiss (Ciarán Hinds) is the villain in this film who is a bio-terrorist who intends on obtaining it to threaten the wealthy to give him money in exchange for their lives (or so that’s what I gathered).  Along for the ride and help is a love-interest and drama-starter Terry Sheridan, played by 300‘s Gerard Butler.

The movie is basically Raiders of the Lost Ark with a dash of The Wizard of Oz thrown in around the moment that she finds this place and CG humanoid monsters reveal themselves in the woods, much like the forest scene in Oz with the trees and stuff.  The omniscient characteristics of Croft got under my skin in this movie; the fact that she knows just about everything about tech, gadgetry, fighting perfectly, one-handed dangling from a helicopter and various ledges, and all the know-how about how to defend yourself from monsters she’s never seen before really took me out of the movie.  It’s a bit like watching or reading about Superman because you know this character has to get the trophy and end everything on a good note because nothing seems to get in their way.

The major reason I’m not a fan of Lara Croft in the Jolie films is because of how Croft is marketed and directed as a bored-and-boring, stone-faced dominatrix who seems extremely more selfish and cold than open to opinion or caring of others.  She has moments when she lightens up in this movie, but it seems her lack of trust in anyone created a monster who lives to train and work with a spy agency interested in stopping other world travelers who are hellbent on destroying the world with their conquests.  Yet strangely enough, the beginning of the movie has her being the one trying to unearth medallions and orbs from a conveniently unearthed underwater temple.  Fans of the series don’t want her to be the one turning to the dark side (if she were to realize the power of the artifacts she gathered), but wouldn’t that make for a more interesting movie?  She finds the artifacts, finds their potential, and goes haywire, trying to enslave mankind with her new powers!  No one saw that coming!  But alas, she is to be a role model for the video game playing youths, as this is based on a video game character after all.

The music was pretty boring and standard faire for a worldly action movie, like something you would hear during an episode of 24.  Unlike the first movie, the only known rock band (that I could make out) on the soundtrack was KoRn, and the rest sounded like filler on the end credits only.  The sound effects at times were poorly chosen, such as the effected helicopter propellor sound in a particular scene, which sounded overdone and not realistic at all.

The movie did feature interesting choreographed fighting and general moving in spaces that had the physics of Labyrinth (walking upside-down on tops of the cave rocks, for example).  The visuals of the worldly landscapes, wildlife, and mesmerizing props and artifacts are the reasons you should see the movie.  The 150 costume changes that Jolie makes are a bit overdone, the laughably perfect timing of stunts and landing sequences (from parachuting) will make you sigh, and the James Bond gadgets that operate way too quickly than are possible (like her Google-glass predecessor eyewear that connects to her tech guy’s computer-camera in less than a second) will make your eyes roll.  At least they had better CG monsters and effects in this movie than the first one.

Overall, I’m not certain how much of this story was taken from the video game series of the same name, but it’s the second in a trilogy of Lara Croft films that should keep any 12-year-old interested for a couple of hours.  Even with a love interest thrown into the mix this time, I still feel like this movie is a cliched, “how-to-make-an-action-movie” movie, and the twist is that our hero is a girl who repeats lines with her co-actors, like “Do you ever do anything the easy way?” (Lara Croft): “And risk disappointing you?”  Ah Lara, you clever girl.

5/10 disco-ball orb-things

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

directed by Simon West

And now here’s where the “video game adaptation challenge” becomes a challenge to hold my attention.  Let me explain…

When I look back on video games I played in passing around the original Playstation era, the “Tomb Raider” series was definitely on the list somewhere, but I didn’t get obsessed with playing it at all.  I was getting older as a gamer, and I thought I had seen everything up to that point in games.  I understood the basic premise: it was a third-person-angle, run ‘n’ gun-while-maneuvering adventure game, discovering hard-to-reach areas that may lead to the final generic treasure at the end of the game.  The selling point for many is that the hero in the game is a woman, Mz. Lara Croft, changing the game (literally) for what we expected from video game gender roles for years to come afterwards.

Fast-forward five years after the original game was released and those 13-year-old gamers are now 18, nostalgically curious about what if we saw Lara Croft in the flesh on screen.  One thing is for certain, they definitely cast Angelina Jolie in the right role for this one.  As an actress being known for her controversial and daring on and off screen persona during the 90’s with alluring looks to match, the thought of her as the lead was appropriate and brilliant.  The filmmakers were taking the hyper-realistic approach to the adaptation of the character model to match the girl in the game, for sure.

However, after the movie starts is where I get lost.  I haven’t played the game much at all, so I am relying heavily on what the filmmakers want to convey is her primary motivation, and if they want to surround her with adversaries ranging from robots to ninja-henchmen, that’s all well and fine.  Would any combatant or world jewel collector ever truly end up splurging a good amount of their riches on sparring robots or replacement walls to their mansion?  If you answered no, you haven’t met Croft.  She even kicks ass against gangs of henchmen as they try and sneak up on her enjoying her possible daily routine of meditating in her bungee swing.  If Kill Bill borrowed anything from this movie, it would be this scene of her taking on crony after crony while acrobatically maneuvering without any need for parkour. (This is post-Matrix after all).

So…her believability is suspect throughout the entire movie.  Her fighting scenes finish with Jolie’s beestung lips flawlessly catching breath just in time for a closeup Revlon ad to photograph her.  She’s a super clean adventurer who doesn’t shy from a pose-down mid-adventure when chasing after the same artifact actor Daniel Craig is after.  She jet-sets from location to location, tracking down halves of a medallion that forms an all-seeing eye symbol that can be used to time travel or something.  I don’t know.  The plot was a typical Indiana Jones rip off script with exaggerated shots of cool guns, cyalume light sticks, and exotic locales being recklessly driven through by Lara’s jeep while blasting techno music out the back of it.

I enjoyed the soundtrack, as a fan of Nine Inch Nails and 90’s electronic artists.  And then they throw in a U2 song for no reason during the end credits.  That…didn’t fit.  But hey, it’s a fun popcorn movie where little to no sense needs to be made as long as the kids are enthralled and teens are enjoying the action on screen.  And with that, there’s little else to discuss about the film.  Jolie’s real father, John Voigt, cameos in the film as Lara’s deceased father, so that was interesting.  She’s gone on to star in numerous movies just like LC:TR (see the other Tomb Raider sequels, Salt, Wanted, or any of her headstrong female roles in Mr. & Mrs. Smith or Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow).

It’s a fun film but highly forgettable despite the original fight sequences and the fast-moving chase scenes.  The creative ideas displayed in the film were ok, but some of the implementation was a bit cheesy for the time, such as the CG statues and numerous fake tech elements that she used to find these artifacts.  I’ll give it an average score for being a throwaway movie meant to bring the gamers to the theaters because even though it was lacking impactful dialogue through most of the movie, it’s originality for the time helped mold several movies starring new women heroes in the future.

5/10 sideboobs for the nerds

Wing Commander

directed by Chris Roberts

Next up in the “video game adaptation challenge” was this 1999 film, Wing Commander.  Based on the popular video game series of the same name, Wing Commander is an action/adventure/sci-fi movie starring Freddie Prinze, Jr., Matthew Lillard, Saffron Burrows, and Tchéky Karyo to name a few.

It takes place in year 2654 where the evil Kilrathi feline race of aliens and their armada of warships has plotted to destroy Earth by taking over the Vega Sector in our solar system to steal a navigational computer with which they can find Earth.  The unprovoked attacks are met with Earth’s pleas to ceasefire or else they will enter full-blown war with the Kilrathi.  They ignore the pleas, so the call is made to the orbiting space headquarters and their specialized fighters designed to take the Kilrathi down.  1st Lt. Christopher Blair (Prinze, Jr.) is called upon to lead the mission under their “wing commander” Deveraux (Burrows), along with his maniac, hot-dog pilot buddy, Todd Marshall (Lillard).  Through a series of interspace dog-fighting and melodramatic exposition scenes, we find that Blair has a hereditary “gift” for flying not found in typical space pilots which comes to his advantage when squaring off against the Kilrathi.

I thought the movie was fun, for the most part.  It starts like many space adventure and films similar to Top Gun do: a few scenes of watching the pilots in action, see how they solve problems with their keen sensibilities for flying and navigation, and multiple displays of their personalities at work to gain a sense of character about them.  If you’ve seen Star Wars, Aliens, Starship Troopers, or Independence Day (ID4),you’ll get the sense like you’ve seen most of the movie before.  And if you’ve seen The Matrix, they explore the possibility that Blair is gifted with a sixth sense, allowing him to be “the one” who might defeat this alien race at their games.  The twist on this idea is that his abilities are actually looked down upon in the beginning by higher-ranking officials, almost like they were prejudiced of this “special” race or bloodline that Blair belongs to.

The flying sequences looked amazing.  The special effects showing the fighter ships’ take-off and landing simulations looked fantastic, and all of the control panels and set design looked top notch and very believable.  Speaking of The Matrix, the famed 360-degree camera tricks that were used in that movie were also explored in this movie and might possibly be the same technology Matrix used, even though it doesn’t look half as impressive as it does in The Matrix.  (I still feel this movie was the first to use the effect, but The Matrix was filming at the same time and released only a couple weeks after WC so it’s hard to say if the camera technique was stolen.)   There were only a few space fighting shots that looked cheap and quickly shot, leaving the rest of the action to look really close to the footage from the game.  Those scenes received a boost of excitement from the score and sound effects of the film, which really picks up in volume and intensity levels, bringing you closer to the edge of your seat.

As fun as the action and fighting/flying sequences were, several elements kept me from enjoying the film as a whole.  The acting from Freddie Prinze, Jr. was like watching a GAP advertisement try and sell you his one-dimensional emotions in the film, and contrastly, watching Matthew Lillard’s “stinkface” try and deliver a whole array of emotions seemed disingenuous throughout the film.  The plot was random and convenient for the simple storyline, and the “B” plot for the film relating to Blair being from a special race of navigators just heightened the convenience factors of everything.  Combined with his scenes reflecting on his dead relatives and constant interactions (basically just butting heads with superiors) with crew to sell how special he is, the moments where we’re left bored and watching the crew speak with each other makes us appreciate the space-action all the more.  We barely see the alien race of the Kilrathi in this movie, too, which would have been nice seeing how the game featured multiple scenes of full-motion video (in later games) with elaborate costumes, much better than you see in this movie.

The major head-scratcher is that this movie is directed by the video games’ director, and this happened to be his first and last foray into directing a major motion picture.  You would think if anyone could get the facts and story and all the right actors to join in the film (as Mark Hamill and Malcolm McDowell had been apart of at least a couple of the video games’ live action stars), it would be the video games’ director.  However, even he had changes he wanted to see in the movie, such as the look of the alien race Kilrathi, which he STILL wasn’t a fan of after the movie was released.  The movie cost over $30 million to make, and it only raked in $11.5 million, most of which was probably from Star Wars fans who came to see the movie as it was only one of four movies to feature the new (at the time) Star Wars: Episode One – The Phantom Menace much-talked-about trailer.  Stories exist how these fans paid full ticket price for WC and walked out after their beloved trailer was over before the feature even started.

I didn’t play much of the game series (aside from a demo I played for Wing Commander III on the 3DO console numerous times when I had one), but what I remember felt a lot like the space fighting sequences in the movie.  It’s too bad they couldn’t replicate some of the better scenes in those games to be featured in the movie, but that’s the gamble they take with fans’ adorations of a franchise, I guess.  The fans who played more than I did apparently didn’t like the film very much after they changed the look of the Kilrathi and some of the character names to completely different ones (possibly in respect for the original game actors not being available for the movie?).  The addition of Blair’s “mystical abilities” to navigate was a new element not found in the game, either, which plays a huge part in this movie.  As a casual WC player, though, I had a decent amount of fun watching it, but I can’t say I’d own it.  It would make an interesting addition to a sci-fi shooter movie marathon over a weekend, perhaps, but unless you’re a diehard fan who can overlook small changes, you’re not missing much.

4/10 space jumps

Mortal Kombat: Annihilation

directed by John R. Leonetti

Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is the sequel to the 1995 Mortal Kombat film, once again adapting the latest updated characters in the Mortal Kombat video game franchise into live action performers. It was released in 1997, two years after the arcade game “MK3” came out. Most of the cast and crew are different from the original movie except for Liu Kang’s actor, Robin Shou.

In this story, Mortal Kombat, the martial arts tournament meant to decide the fate of Earthrealm and the Outworld realms’ futures by sealing the portal between the two realms, has concluded in the first movie, but the leader of the Outworld, Shao Kahn (played by Brian Thompson), has lied about giving up the portal between Earthrealm and Outworld if Earthrealm succeeds in the tournament. Ultimately, the Earthrealm fighters (Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, Jax, Kitana, and Rayden, minus Johnny Cage’s brief performance) set out to travel through a Portal Sphere to defeat Shao Kahn on his own territory and regain control over the portals between the realms.

There are a number of questionable elements so I’ll start with what was good about this movie first. The character designs are near perfect to those in the games. It was nice to see some of the special moves and references to some of the finishing moves that made the game so unique and memorable for years to come. The weapon-props were pretty interesting to look at, except for Scorpion’s made-up dual-demon-headed-spear.  The techno/industrial-metal soundtrack made the interesting, choreographed fight sequences a fun watch, even if some of the song choices felt tagged on, especially Rammstein’s German-sung “Engel” song at the end credits which feels completely out of place. And it was cool to actually see Rayden fight for a change, unlike his inactivity in the first movie.

The multitude of characters felt like the filmmakers were going for broke, introducing gangs of foot soldiers and ten or more extra characters from the game at a time to the audience, so there was no clear understanding who these characters were unless you played the game. Once an Outworld enemy was defeated, a dragon-like tattoo morphed off of their bodies and flew away, which was a weird addition that never took place in the game and didn’t really have a huge purpose in the film.  A number of the special moves pulled of by these characters looked forced into the movie and some, like Johnny Cage’s flash kick and some of the projectile moves, looked like they just spent five minutes perfecting their look in post-production. Now that’s most of the disappointing aspects they chose, but the remaining movie after these two paragraphs is an abomination.

The worst offending element of the movie that completely went beyond all understanding is the amount of CGI effects that were used to create new characters that don’t exist in the game, create morphing effects into the worst looking animals/dragons/multi-headed hydras you’ve ever seen, and basically cut corners because the filmmakers were shooting for the stars on a shoestring budget. Even crappy, default-CGI elemental blobs were used as the roles of three separate “gods” that Rayden calls for help from.  There was also considerable amounts of horrible acting and delivery throughout the movie that made everything these characters said a complete and utter waste of time, aside from the new Rayden (played by James Remar) who actually felt like he belonged in this insane movie. The filmmakers must have known this, too, because the ratio between scenes with a lot of dialog and scenes with blasting techno/fighting sequences was about 1:1. It felt like a lot of MK references to things in the games existed but lacked context, and when some of the characters displayed random emotions (like why is this fighter so enraged against another one), they seemed to invent relationships to characters that made no sense or didn’t include anything and fast-forwarded the pace to the next scene.

The fact that I keep trying to push out of my head is that this style of tech was grossly overused in the late 90s because that’s the best they could do, but it wasn’t the best they could do. Look at Aliens, look at Predator. Even look at John Carpenter’s The Thing. You can create crazy worlds that remind me of He-Man’s Castle Grayskull on a smaller scale, then shoot interior shots, but instead they built a clumsily made mountain terrain where Shao Kahn was (I guess) supposed to reign from (?).  There was also a strange callback to Highlander references, in my opinion, with the inclusion of Brian Thompson as Shao Kahn who reminds me so much of Clancy Brown from Highlander (who played the square-jawed Kurgan);  that combined with Christopher Lambert (Connor MacLeod in Highlander) playing Rayden in the last picture, there seems to feel something’s going on.  It’s probably just a strange connection I felt, though.

They introduced an awkward looking “hamster ball” in this picture to explain how Liu Kang and the other fighters were able to cross into the Outworld realm, called the Portal Sphere.  It reminded me of the American Gladiators show and it’s “Atlasphere” challenge.  None of the deaths felt satisfying and most of the fighting felt random.  Being PG-13, again a Mortal Kombat movie is left feeling ball-less compared to it’s insane blood-filled arcade version.  So my guess is that in place of the insane violence, the fans get more characters on the screen, whether their existence makes sense or not.

In summation, MK:A is just a continuance of the MK brand for the fans only.  There’s laughable dialog, horrible CGI, horrible characters added for almost no reason, Shao Kahn looks ridiculous when he tries to act, Sindel’s pretty hot, Motaro and Sheeva really look stupid, and you’ll watch the whole thing through just to say you did it.  There’s no other reason to.  It’s closer to watching a Mighty Morphin Power Rangers movie than a mature, well-thought-out sequel. They planned to release a third movie almost immediately after, but so many of the cast and crew turned it down as the film rights changed hands that we never got to see one.  (Apparently Warner Bros. is working on the third as a reboot, according to IMDB trivia)  My fanatical love for Mortal Kombat pretty much ended after MK3 was released and additional tech was making the games feel contrived and loaded down with unneeded weaponry and insane story arcs, so it’s a good thing I didn’t have to force myself to learn additional storylines for a second sequel.  But it was a valiant try to get the series on the big screen, I’ll give them that.

2/10 convenient brothers of Sub-Zero

Mortal Kombat

directed by Paul W.S. Anderson

Of all the video game adaptations into live action movies, Mortal Kombat is one of my nostalgic favorites over all others, so forgive me if this review comes across as biased. The “Mortal Kombat” series of one-on-one fighting video games revolutionized the arcade world and had a controversial reputation due to its extreme depictions of violence and gore onscreen, including “finishing moves” (fatalities) where one opponent faces the nearly defeated opponent and commits a devastating last move that usually results in a body part or two being dismembered or the player being burnt to a crisp, for example. The popularity in the arcade of the original game led to a series of sequels, a cartoon, a live action martial arts travelling exhibition, and two movies, Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (as well as a few indie projects trying to reboot the look of the characters and feel of the story, as seen on YouTube).

The outrageous plot of the movie stays true to the mystical story in the games: in some form of unwritten contract, a fighting contest occurs once in a generation between two realms in the universe, the Outworld and the Earthrealm. The contest, named Mortal Kombat, is hosted by Shang Tsung, a grandmaster sorcerer who acquires the power and souls of various opponents after their defeat in these fights. Each realm is fighting for the control over the universe, which is decided after the realms defeat their opponents ten times. As the Outworld nears it’s tenth win, Earthrealm’s defender, Lord Raiden, calls upon three well known combatants with their own personal scores to settle, who eventually team up to save Earthrealm. It is up to them to battle against Tsung, his gang of powerful ninjas, and Prince Goro (a four-armed battle warrior who destroys all opponents).

I honestly had mixed feelings about most video game movies up to this moment because after a few years of playing the games, I became more a fan of the action that the game was comprised of more than the story. That being said, this movie flips that formula on its head and brings you into a haunting setting of an otherworldly island that houses various brainwashed super-ninjas that want you dead, so there is constant fighting to eradicate them and face the true mystical masters. The entire pulse-pounding soundtrack became a techno and dance chart hit with various industrial rock and electronic music artists driving the action home. The cinematography was great and made you feel like you were in a third dimension to the game’s experience. The sets were amazingly detailed and worked very well for the action, again bringing the feeling of battling back and forth in an enclosed “arena” from the game to your TV screen. The costuming was perfected for each individual character, and the addition of small touches (like Kano’s Australian accent) opened up the possibilities for further character development. I even applaud the sometimes awkward-looking and acting Goro puppet, which some dismiss as a “Goro Muppet” because of his expressions and limited movement capabilities.

With the good, you have the not-so-good, though. Christopher Lambert as Lord Raiden was a completely awkward choice, in my opinion. His voice, goofing around in shots, and laughter couldn’t have felt any less “god-like” if he tried. The plot is “shotgunned” at the audience, as well, making it hard to get a true feeling of risk or motivation for why these seemingly random fighters from Earthrealm made the final cut to face Shang Tsung. Added to the quickly spat-out plot, you have the presence of other dimensions and portal transporting in more than a few scenes that would easily confuse any random viewer who doesn’t have any reference to the video game. A few nitpicks about the choices in weaponry and character designs exists here, too, such as Scorpion’s harpoon being projected out of the palm of his hand, the end of the harpoon he throws seems to be alive and has many teeth unlike its straightforward use in the game, and the character of Reptile is presented as a poorly made CGI, polygonal demon-spawn design statue-come-to-life rather than the game’s design which looks closer to a version of Sub-Zero or Scorpion. Some of the characters’ motivations are a little weak, too, like Johnny Cage’s excuse for being there is to prove to Hollywood that he is the best fighter in the universe so he can get taken seriously for action movie roles (?).

The film received some harsh criticism by fans for not being R-rated, especially for the significant lack of blood in one of the bloodiest games to hit the arcades. Their scripted lines also lacked the adult punch to the face that would’ve made the movie a bit more ballsy instead of watching a guy cartoonishly punch Goro in his nuts. We did get to see a version of “The Pit” (a spiked floor specifically made to kill anyone who gets uppercutted into it), but even then, it felt staged and conveniently placed right behind Shang Tsung around the end of the film.

The movie’s message of “facing your worst fears” gets repeated so many times that I felt Raiden really did a horrible job at handpicking these supposed “best fighters in Earthrealm.” Speaking of Raiden, he’s a seriously great character in the game who looks like an amazing fighter, but in the film, he does little more than coaches the other fighters and acts like a proud parent over these lovable Mortal Kombat rascals. As a movie, some of the overpowered characters had no reason to adhere to a set of “rules,” yet they do because that would be screwing up the pace of the onscreen matches between fighters. Shang Tsung himself could just walk up to anyone, suck their soul out, and that would be that. And how did prettyboy actor Johnny Cage survive in a match in Hell (basically) against Scorpion? I guess he faced his fears of getting literally sucked to Hell to fight a skull-faced demon ninja, which is important for every actor to explore within themselves, I suppose.

To put it blankly, games like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter were made to explore individual fighting styles and challenged players to win matches given a set of special moves your character had. The story doesn’t make absolute sense because of this reason, and it didn’t have to UNTIL THE MOVIE CAME OUT. Sure the game had a yellow-text description on several exposition screens of what was going on in the game, but that didn’t matter. People played the game because of the characters, the realness in the graphics, the inventive backgrounds, and the fatalities. And for what was included in this film, I have to give it to the filmmakers for finding ways to keep the action going as well as not messing with too many of the characters’ well-known designs for the fans’ sake.

6/10

And for those interested in podcasts and their view on the film, check out:

How Did This Get Made: #81 – http://www.earwolf.com/episode/mortal-kombat/

Film Sack: #26 – http://filmsack.com/2010/04/film-sack-26-the-one-about-mortal-kombat/

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li

directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak

This movie was released 15 years after the original Street Fighter movie, both of which are based on the Capcom video game franchise and characters.  Where the original tried to stay true to the animated and bizarre nature of these characters’ styles, special abilities, and attitudes, SF:TLoCL tends to base the notable character of Chun-Li in a true crime, down-to-earth plot, giving Chun-Li a clear motive for wanting to battle the evil M. Bison after abducting her father many years prior to her adulthood.

The pros: the dark setting of the Bangkok streets added a lot of attitude and grit to the often bright and cartoonish franchise.  The story was easy to follow and remained close to the original story in the games, with some artistic license thrown around to explain a known-character to new audiences of Chun-Li.  Kristin Kreuk (who I know more from Neutrogena ads and her brief scene on Eurotrip as Fiona) does a fine job portraying an innocent girl turned vigilante out for her father’s release from M. Bison’s control, even though her style is more modern and trendy versus her Oriental clothing in the game.  IMDB message boards had a problem with her not being Asian, but honestly, she embodied the character without the need to be Chinese like the character is in the game.

But then we have the bad.  Chris Klein’s character of Nash, the detective, and his love interest/detective, Maya, felt tagged onto the movie for time filler purposes.  M. Bison was nothing more than an evil version of Donald Trump since his “evil plan” was to evict all Bangkok residents in a particular area out of their homes to sell them back real estate at an inflated price, leaving many homeless.  What happened to Mr. Cold-as-Ice, super power Bison from the original?  Even his clothing is boring and uninspired.  He was pretty heartless in a number of graphic scenes for a PG-13 movie, though.  He strings up a female assistant and starts slugging her like one would a punching bag, and during a ridiculously over-the-top heinous addition to the movie, he reaches into his pregnant wife, through her abdomen, to extract their unborn daughter so that he can channel the last remaining ounce of guilt and conscience that he has to gain world domination with no remorse.  Just what the hell?!  Where was this in the game at all?

The effects to show special moves, like an energy ball or her patented “spinning bird kick” were not that amazing, nor believable.  It seems to be that the hardest thing to include in a video game adaptation is a logical explanation for having special abilities like the ability to shoot fireballs or perform highly agile mid-air moves.  When done incorrectly, it simply feels like wire-work.  Guile’s “flash kick,” for example, in the first Street Fighter movie felt real since it’s such a quick move to pull on an opponent that it feels logical yet spectacular.  There weren’t too many other instances of special moves, though, and the movie resorts to typical gunplay and real-life weaponry in many of the scenes, just like the original.

The movie was apparently the gateway to producing a Street Fighter TV series, which, I don’t believe, never got made.  If it followed this movie as an influence on the show, I don’t know how it would be any different from watching any other detective series out right now.  The difficulty I have is trying to imagine what else they could have done for a decent Chun-Li-inspired movie.  They touched on a number of plot points that her original storyline in the game had in this movie but the execution felt clumsy.  All of that martial arts training from her father, and he couldn’t even use enough critical thinking to get himself freed over the potential ten years he was held by Bison?  That really didn’t make sense to me.  Also it’s funny to see these characters flipping around on rooftops in a post-parkour world, where efficiency is the key, not flashiness.

In summation, I would recommend you see the first Street Fighter movie and even playing the game a good ten times over watching this movie.  Chris Klein plays a douchey character who listens to bad hip hop and wastes your time in this movie, as does Taboo (who plays pretty, Spanish boy Vega, for some reason).  You’ll hate yourself for witnessing M. Bison in this version, especially after watching the horrific acts he commits against women here only to get further in his real estate acquisitions.  There’s even a Yoda-like character (Gen) who teaches Chun-Li to harness her power much like Luke had to learn The Force.  The only redeeming factor is the late Michael Clarke Duncan’s voice and physical prowess as Balrog.

4/10 spider web tattoos and constant reminders of them

Street Fighter

directed by Steven E. de Souza

Street Fighter  was the 1994, action-packed adaptation of the video game series of the same name (actually stated in the opening credits, it’s based on “Street Fighter II” with some of the “Super Street Fighter II” characters).  It starred, most notably, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Raúl Juliá, and Kylie Minogue, among many other actors less known than them.  (This was Juliá’s last movie he appeared in before passing away in October of 1994)  The movie feels like a combination of multiple other large scale movies such as Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and the James Bond series, but the cast of characters is so large with such diverse motives that you’ll be confused who to cheer for or even pay attention to in the film.  Instead of using the canon story from the “Street Fighter” games, the plot was created by writer/director Steven de Souza and focused much of the action around the characters Guile and M. Bison.

The “Street Fighter” game is simply a one-on-one fighting game with timed matches and best “2-out-of-3” rules to determine the winner.  A player chooses one of the characters and an animated airplane travels from your character’s point of origin to the next destination to take on the given opponent.  The story in the game isn’t exactly clear until after you defeat M. Bison (the final character’s name in the U.S. version of the game) where the player is shown a small animated scene describing what the characters were fighting for throughout the entire game.  So with that knowledge, you can see the filmmakers had to devise a much clearer plot from the beginning of the movie than the game ever allowed players to know.

One thing the fans did expect, though, is a high quality of replication of their favorite characters onscreen with some of their trademark attitudes and looks.  They got that with most of the characters, even though Ken and Ryu (two of the most popular characters) ended up looking weak and generic, and arguably, they should have been the focus of the movie since Capcom, the developers of the “Street Fighter” series, seem to center the series around their origins more than other characters.  Also lacking in the traditional sense was Dhalsim and E. Honda, who were changed into a doctor (stereotypical much?) and a Hawaiian/Samoan bruddah instead of a Japanese sumo wrestler.  Fei Long was omitted from the movie because the director thought the character was too close to a generic Bruce Lee character, which he is, but so what?  One of my favorites, Sagat, was portrayed by an older gentleman who plays a gunrunner for M. Bison, not a badass Muay Thai kickboxer.  The origin story and ties to Guile throughout the movie are completely independent to the movie as well, and the attitude that Guile shows towards the transformed Blanka (to shoot him and put him out of misery) is completely heartless.  However, the director was good about including lines of dialogue and background settings from the game, including the end pose of the characters which was designed exactly as the characters pose as a group shot in the game.

That brings about another point: the gunplay.  There was no need for gunplay in the game because the characters were all a bit superhuman in their own right with super powers that matched their attitudes.  Ryu, Ken, Chun Li, Dee Jay, Dhalsim, Guile, and Sagat all had fireball projections that they could throw, and the rest had variations on impossible physical feats that they could have added to the screenplay.  I suppose the director thought he would have to explain these super powers to the audience who didn’t understand the source material, but too many explanations aren’t needed if you introduce the characters in the beginning of your film the best you can as extraordinary fighters who have learned these special moves to compete for their individual victories.

The director borrowed many shots from other movies (as mentioned above) and elements such as the “Bison Troopers” (which looked like red Storm Troopers out of Star Wars).  The allegiance the members of his military show Bison is very Hitler-meets-his-Nazis, complete with salutes that look like the “Heil Hitler” salute, and Bison sports a crusher hat with a skull and wings very close to the SS Nazi death’s head design.  (Off course, the director and costuming departments didn’t create the design of his costume as M. Bison was already designed like this, but it was interesting to see so many allusions to Nazi Germany to show how evil of a tyrant Bison was supposed to be)  Even though he was supposedly super evil, though, he took his time to respect one-on-one combat with Guile, though?  He probably just wanted to show off his Peter Pan flying skills in private.

Now even though I talk a lot of crap about the bad stuff in the movie, there were some elements that I thought worked.  Having Van Damme play as Guile in the movie seems like the best thing the movie has going for it, who had the physical look and actions of Guile perfected onscreen, despite his fluctuating accent and line delivery throughout the film.  Actually, I take that back, because Raúl Juliá’s portrayal of M. Bison was menacing and sinister while maintaining a lighter side, as shown in his private quarters where he humorously changes into a smoking jacket and evening-attire crusher hat.  The light humor throughout the movie is actually a good addition, especially when it involves Zangief or Dee Jay.  And I enjoyed seeing the arcade joystick controls on Bison’s floating podium as a nod to the gamers.

As hip as the music tried to make the movie feel, it felt out of place at times, and by the end credits, the hip hop and world music tracks felt like they were put on shuffle play.  I feel that if they got a remix artist to produce less digital sounding recreations of the famous music in the game, having just that music would be enough for the film.  You can definitely leave out the track by MC Hammer and Deion Sanders, haha.

In the end, I felt like it was a worthy video game adaptation with a bit of a convoluted plot to tell each of the characters’ motives for ridding the world of the evil M. Bison.  If you can overlook the bad acting by a number of actors (including Chun Li’s reading of lines off a cue card to a reporting camera and Van Damme’s mugging at the camera), you’ll find a fun action movie with complex sets, tongue-in-cheek humor, and a balanced cinematic feel to every shot.  I’d recommend the movie to any fan, despite any negative feeling I felt above, because the writer really did try and tie together the characters as best he could while retaining their individual attitudes.  And probably the best line said by Bison sums up the storylines from the video games and the movie: “Had you worked together instead of against each other, you might have been successful.”

6/10 Peter Pan “psycho crushers”

Super Mario Bros.

directed by Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton

The Super Mario Bros. movie was the first live adaptation of a video game franchise for international release.  Aside from having interesting yet off-model designs for the costuming and sets, the convoluted storyline makes this pill hard to swallow.  Yet the filmmakers saw this franchise as an opportunity to dust off their new directors’ chairs after creating the 1980’s TV character Max Headroom and his short-lived TV show.  Having big name actors of the time like Dennis Hopper as King Koopa (not Bowser), Bob Hoskins as Mario, and John Leguizamo as his brother, Luigi actually made sense to me, as well.  However today it remains a polarizing film for fans of Nintendo’s most recognizable mascots, and I’ll share a bit about what I thought after viewing it (for only my third time ever).

When the movie first hit theaters and I initially watched the trailer, I immediately dismissed the movie based on the confusing and off-model designs of the Goombas and King Koopa.  “What did they do?!” I gasped.  I honestly decided that this movie was completely horrible and made so many erroneous choices that it was blacklisted from my eyes from any future viewings because it hurt too much that one of my prized childhood franchises turned into this.  However, I’m older now and I have more insight on what it takes to develop a decent film out of this crazy and diverse source material, so I examined what the filmmakers had to achieve.

When you break down the story of the Super Mario Bros. video games, the princess is always captured by King Koopa and held in the last castle that you get through.  But why is she being held?  What purpose is she to King Koopa?  The story of the Super Mario Bros games is arguably the weakest part of the franchise when you start to explore the characters’ individual motives.  (You’ll see this occur in many video game movies where the source material is not as strong as the technology and graphics as those games possess.)  That question was one of the major problems the filmmakers had to answer creatively while worrying how they were going to create a logical universe filled with these diverse enemies that the brothers face.  Economically, you cannot design and replicate individual enemies to look exactly as they appear in the games, and it might not make any sense.  I mean, how do you replicate a cartoon-like world (as the games appear to exist in), convey that almost every enemy can easily be defeated by jumping on their heads, and still keep the feeling of risk and adventure high for our heroes?  I suppose if you remade the movie as something like Beowulf or Who Framed Roger Rabbit? achieved by shooting an entire film in the same technological spirit, you might be able to, but otherwise, it looks ridiculous having Mario try and stomp simple mushroom-men in a movie.

 – Some trivia time: Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo reportedly hated working on the film and would get drunk between shots.  Hoskins even ended up breaking his fingers on the van door the brothers were riding in during the beginning of the movie.  When asked numerous questions regarding Hoskins’ worst experiences with making a movie, all of his answers were the “Super Mario Bros.” movie.

…Now here comes the problem: with so many missing motives in the game for the bad guys to go after these plumbers (the Mario Bros), sometimes the creative writing for the film creates more convoluted plot points than you need, and I feel this movie suffers from too much of this nonsense.  From the beginning of the film, it’s all about dinosaurs, meteors, alternative dimensions (that are quite similar to our dimension), portals that only some characters can easily open (a la The Sword in the Stone), and fake technology that threatens our own de-evolutionary state, along with tons of made-up tech, fashion, trends, and future junk that no audience has time for.  Almost none of this exists in the simplicity of the game, mind you.

Where the set and costume design team lost me with these shrunken-headed, football-player soldiers they called Koopas and Goombas, they spent a lot of quality time throwing shredded brown sheets on scaffolding and calling it “fungus,” and  they tried to give a lot of fun screen time to the Mario brothers “adventuring” between dimensions and trying to find their romantic interests.  The effect that the Mario Bros and other characters had anytime they were mid-air (i.e. making long jumps, popping out of pipes sliding on mattresses mid-air) looks horrible, and there were many moments that the intelligence of the enemies never matched the action on-screen (i.e. Iggy and Spike were made “smart” by Koopa, yet two scenes later, they are horrible drivers and can’t behave any better than fighting dogs.  When Mario climbs up the side of the podium Koopa is suspended on, Koopa can’t figure out where he is although it’s very evident.  And the whole scene of Luigi leading individual Goombas to dance in an elevator without their knowledge that he’s behind them is just lazy writing).

I give credit to the filmmakers for using their style on the main bad guys, even if they didn’t look like the characters (i.e. Big Bertha is a giant, red, mother fish in the game, yet here she looks like a pro wrestling woman in red with spikes all over, and King Koopa basically has Max Headroom’s hair and suit combo to remind the viewers where the directors came from).  The directors are also fans of rock music and animation, so they understand creative liberties and probably got psychobilly musician Mojo Nixon to play as “Toad,” which was a decent and entertaining choice.  They went for reality with just about all of the characters, so the cartoony, ridable, dinosaur-buddy Yoshi appears here as real as a CGI dinosaur from Jurassic Park, yet (trivia time from IMDB) ”nine operators worked his complex puppet-self which was capable of 64 separate movements inside that 3’ tall structure”.

At times, I felt like I was rewatching an innocent kids’ film like Home Alone, complete with the whimsical score starring the same oboe soloist as Home Alone, Tom Boyd.  It also had hijinks and slapstick comedy like a simple kids’ film or older Three Stooges feature might have.  However to give the movie that “real stakes” feel around real actors and not cartoon ones, the realistic set for Dinohattan (yes, bizzaro-Manhattan) felt gritty, dark and foreboding.  There were moments of fun with known music tracks like Was (Not Was)’ track “Everybody Walk the Dinosaur” and (finally) a new Roxette track called “Almost Unreal” (originally written for Hocus Pocus, but whatever; they got their song out there, I guess).

So there you have it, a popular franchise that probably left a lot of gamers confused and irritated, but it holds up, creatively for its own reasons, which is admirable and confusing.  I sort of recommend the movie to those who like adventure films, slapstick comedy, and watching a lot of weird visual effects for the early 90’s.  It was brave of the directors to tackle this project, but sometimes I wonder if a team of college film students couldn’t remake it with more relevancies to the source material, especially now when technology has become a normal addition to movies (dare I incorrectly imply that I like most CGI movies).  Check it out with some younger relatives and see what they think about it; the trick to the movie might be that the older gamers might be more jaded about it than anything.

5/10 omissions of Princess Peach