JoeRants

Ninja Assassin Review

2009-11-28T20:51:00.001-08:00

I'm known among my friends to be a bit of a ninja nut. For the last couple Halloweens I've been some kind of ninja, both from video games (dork). But ya know, I've not really seen too many ninja movies. Aside from a couple movies that feature ninjas, and Ninja Scroll, that's about it. No flat out ninja movies. So when I heard about Ninja Assassin, I was kinda pumped.

I remember seeing the first photographs and thinking it looked pretty cool, but then it sort of dropped under my radar. Suddenly, as a ninja movie should, it popped up out of nowhere, and I needed to see it.

This was a good thing, because I could go in with virtually no expectations (who would go in to a movie called Ninja Assassin with high expectations anyway?). This is also a good thing because the movie isn't. But it is moderately entertaining.

The opening scene does a great job of setting the tone for the film (maximum ninja carnage) but sadly, the rest of the movie never really owns up. My biggest complaint is that the ninjas in the movie never live up to the standards the movie sets for them. I mean, for the first half of it, the ninjas are a force of nature. Uncontrollable, unstoppable, un-not-badass. But later, they start getting owned by really lame things. A scared woman, a car, a fat guy, etc. These guys are trained to move in the shadows and we see (or not see, really, which is part of the magic) them do it, but then we see ninjas running out in moving traffic, totally visible, totally un-ninja. It would have been really awesome to see them sort of poofing back and forth from under cars to the top of the next car and so on, but nah, they're just trotting along and stupidly getting hit by cars as they go. These guys are NINJAS, and they can't hear cars about to smash into them. Now, I'm no ninja, but I'm pretty sure I can hear a car. I have enough self-awareness to know a car could hit me if I'm standing in the highway.

The story itself is pretty standard. Think an abridged version of Kill Bill, but with ninjas. Raizo is training to be a ninja, head-ninja (played awesomely by Sho Kosugi) kills Raizo's love-ninja, revenge/vengeance ensues. It's nothing fancy, and it doesn't need to be at all. But there's an element of international espionage going on, and it proves completely worthless. We get the idea that the ninjas have been hiring themselves out as assassins for various governments, and a few Europol agents start sticking their nose where it doesn't belong. It doesn't really get further than this. Considering how unnecessary the scenes were to the overall story, this isn't really a bad thing. Maslow, one of the agents (played by Ben Miles), "gets in the shit" with his superiors due to his investigations, but in the next scene he's leading an anti-ninja task force. To be honest I'm not really sure what was going on there. Taking all this out and making the movie a period film would have been a lot better.

But the story really isn't all that important in this kind of film. It's the action that really counts. The opening scene was really great, as I already mentioned, but the rest of the movie never truly surpasses it as far as ninja-awesomeness is concerned. We get a few cool moves here and there, but for the most part it's the same kind of fight over and over. The one scene that would have really stood out was the laundromat scene, but most of it is cut out since, well, it's not necessary anyway.

In a movie that really is about action, the action is rather inconsistent. It's not that the fight scenes are too few, or that the fight scenes don't make sense. Here's what I mean. Raizo's first assassination goes horribly bad, though he does succeed. All he has to do is kill this fat mob-type guy, and he's done. Well the fat man beats the hell out of him, a trained ninja. A few moments after the killing, Raizo is on the roof where he's ordered to kill a female ninja who was caught escaping. Raizo turns on his clan and proceeds to kill A LOT of ninjas before being thrown off the roof and almost killed. So he can't kill a fat man with ease, but he can kill full-fledged ninjas. Oh, and he had the element of surprise on both accounts, so that can't be argued. You could also argue that he knows the ninjas fighting style, so he'd know what to expect. Bull. The fat man was a brawler at best. Ninjas are better than that. Or should be, at least. And I've already mentioned the ninjas that can take down fully armed soldiers but can't kill a scared woman with a pistol, and the ninjas getting owned by cars, so I won't get into that. Oh, and they can't hear helicopters or hummers in their valley fortress, either.

The final showdown between Raizo and Ozunu is pretty cool with its stylized set and choreography complementing each other very well, but some of the fight's coolness is lost in the desire to repeatedly get a sweet shot of them facing off. Example: there's a shot of them facing off, Raizo on the left, Ozunu on the right. They clash swords in a variety of shots, and suddenly Ozunu disappears plain from sight, and reappears behind Raizo. Then it cuts back to virtually the same shot of them facing off before, Raizo on the left, Ozunu on the right. Epic faceoffs are cool and all, but it's overused here and disrupts the fun of the action.

I know this comes across as nit-picky, but in a movie like this the action should carry the movie. It does for the most part, despite quite a few stumbling areas that viewers might be able to ignore for the sake of the action.

Where the movie truly does shine is the training scenes. Easily the most interesting part of the movie, we get to see kids training and growing up to be badass ninjas destined to flip out all over the place. Ninja movie legend Sho Kosugi is fantastically ruthless as Ozunu, whipping and smacking his students (he refers to them as his children) into heartless killing machines. If I could get a cut of the movie with just the training scenes and a couple of the fights, I'd be happy. These scenes alone are enough for me to call this movie entertaining.

I'm not even going to get into the acting. Basically Sho Kosugi is the only one who does well. Yeah you could complain about the fact that no one speaks Japanese or German, but eh, it didn't bother me. Kosugi came across way more sinister with his forced, broken English somehow. Maybe I'm just weird.

So that's about it. Not good, but not wholly bad, either. It's just....adequate, which is slightly disappointing to me. I'd see it again, but in all likelihood it'd hurt my opinion of it even more.

Prince of Persia Movie Trailer

2009-11-03T16:24:00.000-08:00

Actually looks pretty good, in a Pirates of the Caribbean 1 sort of way (surprise, eh?) Will we at last have a good video game to movie adaptation? Could be, but let us not forget Silent Hill. Amazing trailer, very very subpar movie. First half = amazing....and as soon as they found the other townspeople, it all went to hell.

When making an adaptation of something, it's most important to capture the spirit of the original work. As long as it feels like the source material, and the story isn't absolute garbage, generally, the movie will work. Look at Sin City, Spiderman 1 and 2, Iron Man, Watchmen (debatable, I know) and 300. All of these movies really feel like their source material, especially Sin City. But those are all comic books, so it's a bit easier to translate.

Video games are another story because the player is directly involved. Games trigger legitimate actions and responses from the player, which can be really difficult to translate to the big screen. Silent Hill started out rather well with this, it captured the feeling of being lost, alone, and having no friggin' clue what's going on, even when the game ends (but not offering us a kind of resolution, usually more about the character than the plot) and let's not forget being surrounded by dubya-tee-eff level monsters. But as soon as the other townspeople were involved, all these feelings disappeared. She was no longer alone, and we had a VERY firm grasp of what was going on, which kind of ruined the tension for me. I dunno, it's been a while since I've seen it, so all that might have made no sense at all.

But what about Prince of Persia? Well, the game had sand-zombies. And I'm definitely not seeing sand-zombies. But sand-zombies aren't the essence of Prince of Persia. The game can be boiled down to a few key elements: 1) absolutely fun and tense stunt work/acrobatics. Unbelievable and believable at the same time 2) the "time travel" aspect, and how it effected both gameplay and story, and 3) the relationship between the Prince and um...hot lady. I don't remember her name. And 4) the story itself, well told, compelling, engaging. Basic adventure stuff, but done well.

Judging from the trailer, it has those aspects down fairly nicely. There are obvious liberties with the original story, but as long as the new story is told well and the other aspects are intact, who cares? Obviously the story does carry the action in a movie, so we'll just have to wait to see.

As for me, I'm surprisingly optimistic for this one.

The Protomen - Act II Review

2009-11-02T10:40:00.000-08:00

Ah, The Protomen. I just found out about these guys earlier this year. They're an indie rock group devoted to making rock operas based on the video game character Mega Man. Now, that link I just posted? That's just for the character of Mega Man. Mega Man in itself is one of the largest game franchises today, spawning numerous spinoffs (even the spinoffs have spinoffs) cartoons, action figures, comics, the whole shpeel. With so much going on in the world of Mega Man...well...let's just say he ain't as cool as he used to be. Now sure, these new games might be good for the new wave of young gamers, but me? Nah, I'm all for the olden days of gaming, when games used to be hard. Like really hard. You could never blame the controls in this game, because the controls are some of the most solid you can find in a game. No, if you suck at Mega Man, you can only blame yourself.

Which brings me to The Protomen. These guys have taken the original story of the original series of Mega Man, added a few twists, and made it rock. Well, rock even more. Their first album focused on the actual story related to the games. This second album serves as a prequel, offering many new insights to the characters and what led to the world falling under darkness.

While the first album was good, the second album is great. Everything seems painstakingly put together, everything serves a purpose. Throughout the entire album there's a concept of progress, of development, change, the new outweighing the old. This is most obviously reflected in the album artwork, where the left side consists of much older buildings and cars, and the right side is alive with sci-fi inspired structures, complete with an Orwellian TV screen, towering over the old way of life. Center stage is Dr. Light holding his fallen girlfriend Emily, representing the old, more traditional way of thinking supporting the lifelessness of the new. At the same time, it shows that the traditional shall rise to save the victims from the new.

With the music itself, the aesthetic is again used. The first half of the album is extensively Western-themed. Think Ennio Morricone's work. If you don't know who that is, watch a recent Tarantino flick, his stuff is used pretty often by QT. The second half is much more technological-based. I'm talkin' synthesizers galore. This is where the album gets uber-rock operatic; Meatloaf would be proud. It's cheesy and amazing, almost like a Robot Footloose. While I prefer the first half over the second half, the work as a whole is quite remarkable. Now, it ain't for everyone, that's for sure. Not everyone can appreciate the attention to Mega Man-detail like the Protomen's fans can. But if you're into indie-rock, or you're a dork, or both, check it out.

Transformers 2 Review

2009-11-02T10:20:00.000-08:00

Transformers II does not exist. But there is a version of Transformers I that has more explosions, more crude (and unneeded, and especially unfunny) humor, and less coherence.

I was a fan of the first film, sure it had its problems. The plot, the comic relief, adding far too many contemporary elements. But the main point in Transformers is watching robots kick each other in the ass. And it did that pretty well. So naturally, I was really looking forward to the sequel. Or "sequel" in this case. It's basically the same movie.

There was a lot of hype. Bay promised more everything. More robots, more action. But in this case more was definitely less.

It was bad, to put it briefly. Sure it was pretty, and the effects were awesome, but the plot is virtually the same exact thing as the first one (robots trying to find an artifact of great power) the dialogue was incredibly bad. Whenever there wasn't a pretty explosion to look at, I was pretty much cringing.

Probably most disappointing is that none of the new robot additions are done well. Almost all of the added bots the film focuses on are there purely for comic relief, and the robots that would have been really interesting are hardly in it at all (the Arcee bikes, the Constructicons/Devastator, the other new Decepticons we know nothing about). The twins (Skids and Mudflap) are the worst additions to a movie since Jar Jar Binks. They're loud, annoying, and useless. Same thing goes to Wheelie. And no, robots humping a leg and giant robot testicles are NOT funny.

Since the addition of the twins and Wheelie was CLEARLY not enough "comic relief," we're given Sam's new college roommate and John Turturro's character again. And the parents. And dogs humping. And pot brownies. And lots of nutsack jokes. So most of the characters the movie focuses on are there for the lulz.

At least Optimus Prime didn't say "my bad."

When the movie's not trying to be funny or exploding stuff, it's feeding you its incoherent plot. Here are my issues (SPOILAHZ):

• Megatron is resurrected by a shard of the cube from the first film (the cube that KILLED him, mind you) but somehow that won't work for Optimus, so we have to spend 45 minutes in Egypt playing Indiana Jones.

• The Primes and the Matrix. They sealed it away in a "tomb made of their own bodies." .....why? wouldn't it be a much better idea to just keep it and stay alive to protect it from The Fallen (an incredibly lame bad guy, actually).

• Why not just ressurrect Optimus Prime with the cube shard?

• I guess it takes like 5 minutes to get to Cybertron.

• Even the action scenes suffer from a lot of incoherence. Characters disappear and reappear when it's convenient. Example: Megatron's not in the final fight for a long time....why? What happened to the twins after escaping Devastator? Where was Bumblebee when Sam was getting attacked by crazy Decepti-bitch? Why was Sam and Mikaela RUNNING to where Optimus was when they could have easily just DRIVEN there in one of the annoying twins? (they started running before Devastator attacked, just FYI)

Here's my favorite one. A character orders an air strike...RIGHT where the human characters are. "I told them to aim for the orange smoke!" "you mean THAT orange smoke?!" I've never seen a blatant excuse for making a "running away from an explosion in slomo" scene in any movie ever. Leave it to Michael Bay.

• Robot heaven? And where was Optimus Prime during this scene?

• Did we really need to reuse the exact plot from the first movie, but with a different artifact? Transformers are about robots beating each other up, surely they could have come up with a different device.

Sure, I know the first movie's plot was crap. Appliances coming to life because of some space-cube is pretty dumb. But at least the first one wasn't filled with so many blatant contradictions.

But the action was cool, and Optimus Prime does kick a lot of ass (even if he's only in the movie for half of it) , but the eye candy wasn't good enough to salvage this movie.

Everyone knows the main appeal of Transformers is sweet action scenes. So why so much stupid comic relief and stupid dialog? Why take 2.5 hours to tell a story that's largely irrelevant and completely riddled with plot holes? I mean it doesn't have to be anything amazing, and it shouldn't be. But it's not an excuse to give us this crap. I don't expect much from a movie based on a toy, but a little coherence and originality would have been greatly appreciated.

And this is the icing on the cake. The budget for this film was $200 million. The entire Lord of the Rings trilogy was $285 million. With Transformers II's budget, you could have made 2/3rds of (arguably) the greatest movie experience of the decade. But instead we get dick jokes and sex jokes and amazingly uninteresting robots. I hate you, Michael Bay.