I think the movie Alexander was one of the worst movies ever made, and such a huge disappointment and missed oppurtunity. Though that is now typical for Oliver Stone. Alexander was one of the greatest generals of all time, yet the movie doesn’t give us a clue as to what made him great or a sense of what made the Macedonian army so much better than their opponents. It portrays Alexander as an infantile whiner with some weird oedipus complex. And the cheesy dialogue just goes on and on and on…but Rosario Dawson was fucking hot…IMO she is Angelina Jolie with bigger boobs.
[quote]gojira wrote:
Godzilla (1998) - I saved the worst for last. I actually watched this abomination again the other night (which is what got me started thinking about this subject). Toho made these movies for years with very little budget and a guy in a rubber suit. When I saw the first preview, I was so excited, I thought finally Hollywood will use its resources and special effects to make a great Godzilla movie. But what did we get? A giant iguana. Oh excuse me, a giant, parthenogenetic iguana that lays eggs but is referred to as “he”. And Matthew Bodrick. I wanted to slit my wrists. No wonder Toho was pissed. I was furious that Hollywood had missed this opportunity and now they can’t go back because no ones gonna wanna see a sequel to that piece of shit.
[/quote]
Ditto. What I can’t figure out is why Doritos is dredging up that crappy Godzilla in their recent commercials.
I remember just before that steaming pile of crap came out I read a write-up on it in my local newspaper, giving all of these facts and tidbits about how this Godzilla is something like 3 times more massive than the original, but the movie producers chose not to give him radioactive breath because it “wasn’t realistic”. Excuse me? Realism? In a Godzilla movie? The movie would be about 15 seconds long if you wanted that:
Act 1, Scene 1: Godzilla emerges from the water and is immediately crushed to death under his own weight as he reaches the shore.
THE END.
And as far as Conan goes, Gojira, now at least I know I’m not the only one in the world that thought Arnold was, at best, a ho-hum casting choice, although probably for differing reasons than you. I read and collected a lot of the Marvel Comic Conan the Barbarian stories, and The Savage Sword of Conan, which was for mature readers in a black-and-white magazine format (they showed blood and boobies!) from the early 70’s on.
From the way his dialogue was written in the comics, I always pictured him sounding like Thundar the Barbarian from the saturday morning cartoon series. I did read one Conan novel, though (Conan the Wanderer when I was about 10), and I had no trouble picturing the character I had come to know in the comics as saying and doing all of the things he was portrayed as doing in the novel. I’m guessing that means that the writers for the comics were probably fans of the novels and wanted to stay true to the game; too bad they didn’t have a hand in the movies.
Two words
RESIDENT EVIL!
The first resident evil game was and still is the scariest game ive ever played.So thy bring out a resident evil movie and im all exited.
One of the worst movies ever.If they had the movie exactly like the game it would have been a hit(scary huge mansion).Instead they had some stupid ass little girl in a holagram controling things PFFTTT. They needed Val kilmer in that movie to play albery wesker? i think that was his name?
I have no probs with Jill valentine but they also need another main actor(chris)to star as well.
How good would it have been to have that huge snake that u fight in the game to be in the movie.
Sure the monster in the second movie was cool but they needed the big mutent from the first game(cant think of it’s name) but that would have been good.
So in my opinion the blew that movie BIG TIME!
Peace
K of K
Starship Troopers
I was brought up on Heinlein - and thought - they are gunna ruin it!.
And ruin it they did.
They didn’t even think about making the MI’s Gorilla suits - and the suits were the Mobile bit that made up the Mobile Infantry.
i’m so bitter.
Whoa whoa whoa…Arnold was a bad Conan? I thought he was awesome. The role didn’t call for any acting that Arnold couldn’t pull off (not that that’s a testament to his acting ability) and his physicality was perfect in my opinion.
I never did read the comics so perhaps I’m missing something.
And as far as the accent goes, what accent should he have had? Any accent is still an accent, even what we think of as “standard American” is an accent to Austrian folk. My point being that there is no generic way of speaking.
Like I said though, maybe I missed something from the comics.
-MAtt
[quote]King of Kings wrote:
Two words
RESIDENT EVIL!
[/quote]
Great movie. I loved the first one. I hated the second one. I think doing a movie drawn directly from the game would have been a mistake. We’ve seen “haunted house” movies thousands of times. It was new to play one that well done as a video game when it came out. It wasn’t a new idea in movies.
Resident Evil was not bad. Apocalypse, however, was garbage. One of the biggest misses, I actually watched, was DOOM. They could have done that twenty times better. W-T-F? That shit was almost unwatchable. They had nothing to do with the game’s story, even though there wasn’t much of one, but damn! I read the novelizations of the game, and they weren’t great, but at least they were entertaining. I did like the first-person parts, though. I thought they were cool.
I would mostly agree with the sentiment, but realize that there ALWAYS has to be compromise because you are adapting things from completely different media.
Anyways, a few comments to the CONTRARY:
U-517
Yes, mathematicians cracked the code, but not without some help from the war side of things. I believe that we in fact did retrieve a significant number of Enigma documents from a submarine that was JUST about to be sunk (we being the Allies, as I’m not trying to a pompous American ass here, although I am one). The captain had set the scuttle charges but they didn’t go off or something. Check any good U-boat history.
Not to say the movie was any good, but do get your facts straight.
Troy
There’s a reason it’s called “Troy” and not “The Iliad”. Essentially it’s a look at what COULD have happened in real life. In REAL life, there are no gods, and there was no way Achilles was invincible. So how do you explain the myth of Achilles? Make him the ultimate warrior…strong, lethal, but above all fast and technically perfect.
I won’t defend any other aspect of the movie, I just thought that the method of telling the story had merit.
I think everyone would just be better off if they did like most of America; stop reading books and just watch movies.
Then you wouldn’t be upset with casting or the story as there would be no alternate reality for you. You could be blissfully ignorant and instead getting upset, you could be happily eating your Tub-o-popcorn and drinking your gallon of soda.
Seriously, who knew movies were based on books? Interesting. I’ll have to look into this.
[quote]Matgic wrote:
Whoa whoa whoa…Arnold was a bad Conan? I thought he was awesome. The role didn’t call for any acting that Arnold couldn’t pull off (not that that’s a testament to his acting ability) [/quote]
And therein was most of the problem. Conan’s character (from the novels and comics) was a worldy bad ass that spoke several languages, was well-read, and could do just about anything he wanted but chose to be a wanderer because he saw better than most how much civilization corrupts a person.
[quote]
and his physicality was perfect in my opinion. [/quote]
This, I’ll admit, was pretty close to the comic renderings. Plus the fact that there just weren’t that many guys who could have pulled off that kind of freaky musculature when the film was shot. His hair should have been jet-black and his eyes blue, but oh well…
[quote]
I never did read the comics so perhaps I’m missing something.[/quote]
Quite a bit, actually, but I understand one can’t expect the same depth of character from a two hour movie as with 10-20 years of novel and/or comic reading. If I were just to assess it as a stand-alone film with nothing to gauge it against, my opinion would probably reflect yours.
[quote]
And as far as the accent goes, what accent should he have had?
Any accent is still an accent, even what we think of as “standard American” is an accent to Austrian folk. My point being that there is no generic way of speaking.[/quote]
Granted, but this was a character created by an American in a Hollywood film, and was an icon of Marvel Comics (can’t get much more American than that) for about 10 years before the film was made. German/Austrian just made no sense, just as a lead character in a German film speaking German with an American accent for no apparent reason would seem pretty silly.
Also (I’m reeeally dating myself here) I had a Conan book-and-record when I was a kid, and the guy doing the voice of Conan sounded exactly like Thundar the Barbarian from the saturday morning cartoon (if anyone wants to know what a book-and-record is/was, I’ll put it in another post).
[quote]
Like I said though, maybe I missed something from the comics.
-MAtt[/quote]
Well, it’s never too late. Even in my 30’s with a family of my own, I still love dragging out and rereading old back issues or, even better, buying back issues I’ve never read before and pouring over them.
Join us, Matt; embrace your inner geek. ;-p
[quote]boomerlu wrote:
There’s a reason it’s called “Troy” and not “The Iliad”. Essentially it’s a look at what COULD have happened in real life. In REAL life, there are no gods, and there was no way Achilles was invincible. So how do you explain the myth of Achilles? Make him the ultimate warrior…strong, lethal, but above all fast and technically perfect.
I won’t defend any other aspect of the movie, I just thought that the method of telling the story had merit.[/quote]
This is exactly how I interpereted the movie. Most legends have a grain of truth at their core; the city of Troy itself was long thought to be a mythical place until it was unearthed not so long ago. If the city is now known to have existed, why not the battle of legend that could have been the inspiration for Homer to write The Iliad?
It still gives the proper nods to The Iliad in the right places though, I think. Odysseyus getting credit for the creation of the Trojan Horse, and the first arrow that wounds Achilles going through his achilles tendon (oh, the irony!) are a few off the top of my head.
Tom Cruise is great as Lestat.
And actually Anne Rice shut up about the casting choice after she saw the movie and realized Tom Cruise kicked ass in the role.
[quote]King of Kings wrote:
Two words
RESIDENT EVIL!
[/quote]
In order to redeem themselves, they should make one that is a direct game-to-film adaptation of Resident Evil 4.
I’m not sure about casting, but roundhouse kicking zombies heads off and fighting a giant penis monster (Salazar. Every man wishes for a member that could eat people and SMASH THEM FLAT)? You’d have to go pretty far off to make that a bad action movie.
Of course, the reverse has been proven true:
http://www.seanbaby.com/nes/egm15.htm
Another disappointment:
I, ROBOT
I was expecting Powell and Donovan, and they gave me Smith. It wasn’t SO bad, as it MIGHT have worked as another story in the book, but don’t re-write the thing! The book was rife with laughs, and it was made into a full-out action movie. I believe this and more could be explained here:
And one more link before I go, speaking of bad movie, if you don’t like them, Uwe Boll will KICK YOUR ASS:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=24707327&sid=6152650
[quote]KBCThird wrote:
Col-ossus wrote:
In the novel Hannibal, Mason Verger has a sister, Margot who is a bodybuilder and is described as having massive shoulders and arms. She is fairly central to the plot in that it is through her that Lecter escapes. I couldnt wait to see who was cast in this role when the film came out, only to find that she had been left out. She had a workout scene in the book with a male nurse called Barney who is also a bodybuilder, he isnt a bodybuilder in the film although a character with his name is in it.
I actually thought that Hannibal was one of the worst pieces of trash ever written. I was on a harris kick and read Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs, and started Hannibal. I didnt even have the stomach to finish it. In my opinion he was clearly writing it with the idea of cashing in on a movie deal. I felt like I was reading a friggin screen play. And Hopkins was an excellent choice for the role in terms of acting ability, but make up couldve done a much better job - Lecter has blonde hair and RED eyes.
[/quote]
I agree. The book was a total crapfest.
His other books were great. He was totally cashing in. Huge letdown.
All I wanna know is when are they going to make the playstations game “Metal Gear” into a movie and when is training day 2 coming out.
I have to say most videogame - movie adaptations are extremely poorly done!
But damn Metal gears are some good games and i think they would make awesome movies if done well, maybe by someone like Woo.
Who would play snake though. My bet is on Hugh Jackman, hes got the voice, rugged looks although he may need to bulk and cut before hand.
As for tombraider, it doesn’t say who attened her funeral in Chronicles (although i got a bit bored with it half way through!) and in legeneds, her dad is dead and her mam is missing, presumed dead, and that takes place before chronicles supposedly, when she was alot younger.
Silent hill waas an average movie, nothing great, nothing poor. Resi evil 1 was probably the best game movie of all time! 2 sucked though, not enough suspence and chills, too much action.
Doom was a good movie, im sure we all remember doom, hours of frantically tapping at the keyboard for hours on end. Well without playing the latest game (doom 3) i can’t say for sure how well it sticks to it but it sure is cool! Especially the first person action sequences, another great vigeo game movie, #2 on my list 
AVP, i was really looking forward to this. i think its the closest ive been to walking out of a cinema.Maybe my expectations were too high, but with two of the most badass aliens in movie history i think the standards should be high.
it was set in a rubix cube, and the predators got their asses handed to them on a plate. i just hope it doesnt damage any futures sequels, id love another predator movie, but with the current spate of movies being made, maybe they should leave it alone.
[quote]pegasus3 wrote:
AVP, i was really looking forward to this. i think its the closest ive been to walking out of a cinema.Maybe my expectations were too high, but with two of the most badass aliens in movie history i think the standards should be high.
it was set in a rubix cube, and the predators got their asses handed to them on a plate. i just hope it doesnt damage any futures sequels, id love another predator movie, but with the current spate of movies being made, maybe they should leave it alone.[/quote]
Your expectations weren’t too high. They just royally screwed it up. That movie could have been classic and could have started its own franchise had they really brought both stories together better.
I thought that after seeing Mr. Wayland at the beginning (the eventual father of Bishop and apparently one guy who was cloned more times than anyh being alive) they were really going to give something special. Instead, we got crap. I even bought the dvd just out of the simple fact that I grew up the characters, but I may never get over what they did to them.
I still cry at night.
…and We’d better get back, 'cause it’ll be dark soon, and they mostly come at night…mostly.
So far I think the best translation of a comic book to a movie were the first few batman movies. They were more or less faithful to the movies and the movies seemed to change along with the comic books. The first batman movie they made back in the late 80’s early 90’s was the best of them by far.
Monster
I can’t believe I haven’t seen a roll call of Uwe Boll’s films yet, sure one or two cropped up, but I’ll be damned if theres a movie out there that he can’t fuck up.
On a positive note I really enjoyed Batman Begins, it got me reading some Batman comics, which I never had before [sure I read Frank Miller’s take on Batman, but still…]
While on Frank Miller, I gotta say Rodriguez’s take on Sin City was fantastic, and thou they should have cast anyone else as Nancy.
You have to admit, its great when a rare artist makes a novel / comic adaptation and not only respects the base material, but has the integrity to keep it whole.