Tag: movies

Why the Wachowskis suck

There is a simple explanation for why the second and third Matrix movies were so bad, and why the Wachowskis haven’t been able to produce a movie that is one-tenth as intriguing as the original The Matrix. They aren’t genuine storytellers and The Matrix wasn’t their story, they were ripping off a comic book that served as the graphic storyboard for the first movie.

In 1999, The Matrix came out and blew everyone away with its insane action sequences, revolutionary cinematic techniques and, most of all, a mind-fucking plot that left the head of every viewer filled with intense philosophical questions.

What It’s Suspiciously Like:

The Invisibles, a cult comic book series created by Grant Morrison, is basically about a group of individuals who fight the establishment because the establishment is secretly keeping people dumb and hiding the fact that reality is an illusion. Turns out that the “real world” is ruled by horrifying insect-like demons. One more thing: The Invisibles debuted in 1994….

The Wachowskis have never acknowledged The Invisibles as an influence, even though they had invited the comic’s creator Grant Morrison to contribute a story for their website. Morrison — who actually liked The Matrix — says he “was told by people on the set that Invisibles books were passed around for visual reference.” His reaction to the second and third movies? “They should have kept on stealing from me.”

The real problem with Hollywood isn’t the lack of creativity among those responsible for making movies. The real problem is the ridiculous pretensions of those who are technically skilled movie makers to be something that they are not, which is storytellers. At its root, the inability of the Wachowskis to give proper credit and continue to utilize Grant Morrison’s storytelling abilities is no different than James Cameron stealing from Harlan Ellison or Peter Jackson and Philippa Boyens crapping all over Tolkien with their idiotic dialogue additions and “feminine energy”. Their pride, narcissism, and incapacity for understanding their limits causes them to produce movies that are much worse than they would be if they would simply focus on their cinematic craft and leave the story construction to the storytellers.

The issue here isn’t IP legalities, but the intrinsic stupidity of trying to claim an idea that wasn’t yours as your own. It’s foolish, because everyone is going to realize that the first idea wasn’t yours just as soon as you’re forced to come up with a second idea and it becomes obvious that you’re completely incapable of doing so.

The Sports Guy was right

Women ruin everything. Everything. This is why women have to be ruthlessly kept out of places to which their sex have neither created nor contributed anything. In most such cases, literally the only thing women truly care about accomplishing is adding more women.

Co-producer Philippa Boyens addressed some changes made for the movie adaptation, especially the addition of a new character or two, something that could be seen as heresy by the literary community or Tolkien fans. Boyens said the story felt weighed down by males, so they created a female elf, being played by Evangeline Lilly and seen briefly in the footage.

“We created her to bring that feminine energy,” Boyens said. “We believe it’s completely within the spirit of Tolkien. We didn’t want her to be a ploy.”

What. The. Fuck? Tolkien’s novels are a masterpiece. A classic. They define a genre. So Philippa Fucking Boyens decides she can improve upon them by adding a female character to do what, discuss tampons and boy bands? Does Tokenlass spend her screen time regaling the dwarves with tedious gossip about elves that none of them have ever met? Does she have sex with Borin before making a hypergamous upgrade to Thorin, then demanding that the dwarves replace their battleaxes and warhammers with lighter ones that she can carry?

The problem with Jackson’s LOTR trilogy wasn’t the omission of Tom Bombadil but the addition of the idiotic dialogue invented by Boyens; HBO’s adaptation of A Game of Thrones is much superior due to the fact that Martin himself is being used to create the additional dialogue required by the new medium. Now, I’ll still watch The Hobbit when it comes out. Like The Lord of the Rings, the source material is too good to be ruined by the “contributions” of Ms Boyens’s script. But it’s unsurprising that the Tolkien estate is less than ecstatic about Jackson’s films, which fortunately means there will be future films that will be conceived and advertised as being more faithful to Tolkien’s text instead of presenting the Ms Magazine version of them.

Anyhow, to Hell with Boyens, her feminine energy, and her fear of an excessively male story.

On Bridesmaids

For those of you who find the free trade discussion to be too esoteric, this might be a little more to your taste. I watched the movie last night. It mostly sucked, although not completely, and it did have the occasional, mildly amusing moment. I actually quite like Kristen Wiig, but she’s much better in smaller doses as her little trick of smiling, passive-aggressive, low-key argument becomes less and less amusing as the movie slogs on. Even the title is misleading, as at least two of the bridesmaids could have been cut out of the movie without anyone noticing and the tedious airplane scene is the longest and least entertaining travel piece since Tyrion Lannister floated along the river in A Dance with Dragons.

It was basically one step above the usual SNL star goes to the movies, but if we are to accept that it is “the female answer to The Hangover“, then it usefully serves as definitive proof that women are simply not funny. To put it in perspective, the ESPN commentary by Cotton and Pepper in Dodgeball alone is funnier than the entire Bridesmaids movie and it is an absolute travesty to even mention Bridesmaids in the same paragraph as The Hangover. In fact, I’m sorely tempted to write a post criticizing myself for doing that here.

It doesn’t surprise me that the critics ratings are so much higher than the audience ratings. This is a movie you must find funny, hein? Equality and social progress demand it! But it just isn’t.