James's Weblog

Another year, another movie outing with my (mostly) teenage cousins on New Year’s Eve. This time we saw Tron: Legacy in IMAX 3D, even though none of my cousins had seen the original Tron or were even aware that the new film was a sequel. My impressions:

• It was visually awesome.
• Daft Punk’s soundtrack was great. It was a bit overpowering, but…
• … I wonder if the film wouldn’t have been better as a feature-length music video with no dialogue, letting the audience piece together their own plot (a la Daft Punk’s Interstella 5555). The actual plot was ridiculous.
• I think it would have been better as a reboot instead of as a sequel. You can’t build a solid story on top of an awful foundation. The first Tron film is almost 30 years old, so most people probably don’t remember it very well anyway, especially since its plot is best left forgotten. A reboot also would have provided an opportunity to give the “Tron” name to the world instead of to a character. (It’s a little telling when the film’s titular character isn’t even significant to the story. I don’t remember if Tron: Legacy even explained who Tron was.)

I finally got around to watching the Watchmen movie. (Yeah, I know I’m late to the party. I meant to watch it in theaters, but my plans fell through, and by then everyone else had seen it already.) I have to agree with Ben’s remarks: I liked it, but I didn’t love it.

Even in the director’s cut, a lot of things from the comics were omitted, but that’s to be expected. I was a bit disappointed that some things were left out (mostly involving Rorschach’s origin). I was skeptical that Watchmen would work as a film—a lot of what makes Watchmen great is how it takes advantage of the comics medium. The movie adapts it as well as probably can be expected; it does an admirable job, but by itself I think it falls a bit flat. It’s too late to be groundbreaking, and I think familiarity with the comics is necessary to appreciate the movie.

(Spoilers below.)

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I saw Avatar in 3-D on New Year’s Eve with a bunch of my cousins. Impressions (spoilers ahead):

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I really liked The Bourne Identity. I thought The Bourne Supremacy was not as good. I had heard that The Bourne Ultimatum was better and was looking forward to it, but after watching the DVD this past weekend, I think it’s the worst of the bunch. Some spoilers follow.

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VMware took us all to see Revenge of the Sith on opening day last week. Woo! Overall I thought it was okay; it was way better than The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, and it could have been a lot worse.

Impressions (spoilers ahead):

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On the other side of the movie spectrum, I watched the rather disappointing Cube last night.

I try not to write about the nitpicks I have with movies, especially with non-mainstream movies like Cube, because who really wants to read someone complaining? But I just can’t help myself.

The bad math soured a lot of the experience. For example (spoilers ahead):

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Well, I finally watched The Incredibles. Even though I found it to be totally predictable, it managed to be really fun along the way. Who cares if it’s full of clichés when they’re done that well?

I think it’s probably the best movie I’ve seen all year (okay, that’s not saying much… best movie I’ve seen in the past year, then), and possibly it might turn out to be one of my all-time favorites.

Brad Bird is my new hero. (He made one of my other all-time favorite movies, The Iron Giant.) He’s not a gun—he’s Superman!

So everyone knows that Star Wars: Episode III is going to suck and blow harder than Charybdis. Episode I, Episode II, and Lucas’ butchering of the original trilogy certainly don’t provide much evidence to the contrary. (Han shot first, damnit.)

Not only will there doubtlessly be poor dialogue and worse acting by the main players, but we already know the plot. We know where Episode II leaves off and where Episode IV begins; we only need to connect to the dots. Yawn.

“Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.” or “I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

But maybe there’s a way to salvage this mess. What if we don’t know what we think we know?

For example, everyone is expecting Anakin to become Vader. What if he’s not? Perhaps Vader is a clone of Anakin. This could explain a few things:

• The stupid midochlorian plot element of Episode I. It could have been written in as a (lame) way to get a blood sample from Anakin sent off to Coruscant.
• How Vader was unaware that he had children. Perhaps they weren’t his but instead were the original Anakin’s.
• Obi-Wan’s lies and half-truths from different points of view. Maybe Vader really did kill Luke’s father.
• Why Emperor Palpatine, while speaking to Vader in The Empire Strikes Back, refers to Luke as “the son of Skywalker”.

Or it could be the other way around, and a clone of Anakin sires Luke and Leia.

Of course, it’s far more likely that Episode III is going to be another boring piece of trash with nothing substantial to add. I can dream, though…

(“Nerrrrrrrrrrrd.”)