By Jason Apuzzo. • Tron: Legacy opened reasonably well, although well enough to launch a franchise? I have doubts. I can’t escape the feeling that Disney blew a major opportunity here – that a film which could’ve been a major ‘tech noir’ classic slipped away into something frivolous … something that audiences really weren’t pining for to begin with (an over-merchandized sequel to an almost 30 year old film, featuring an extreme overdose of Jeff Bridges). I bought the Daft Punk soundtrack over the weekend, loved it (read interviews with Daft Punk here and here), and was left with the sense that what Disney could’ve had here was the anti-Avatar: i.e., a large-scale, humanistic sci-fi epic with the style and design of Blade Runner, and the heart of the original Star Wars. It’s too bad they settled for so much less.
Sci-fi’s Big Three – Lucas, Spielberg and Cameron – get a lot of criticism, especially in the overheated world of the internet. The reason those three are such indisputable masters of their craft, however, is that they focus attention on their lead characters – who typically are broken or otherwise unfulfilled young people with major challenges in their lives. I never had the sense that the spoiled-rotten billionaire kid in Legacy had really ever had his teeth kicked in; everything in life was just a little too cozy for him – and neither Lucas, Spielberg or Cameron would’ve allowed their lead character to have such an easy time of it.
By the way, the LA Times just ran this interesting piece on whether Tron‘s world reflects the way the schizophrenic mind works. It’s an interesting question, actually, and one that I was ruminating on myself while watching the film; Tron really does present quite a paranoid vision of the digital/virtual world we ‘live’ in nowadays.
• The trailer for the new Transformers movie is out, and it’s actually a good deal better – and more epic in scale – than I would’ve expected a trailer for one of these films to be. The only question I have is how representative the trailer is of the rest of the film, as the trailer feels like something designed to capture the first 5-10 minutes of the movie in which the plot’s set up. I assume the rest of the film will involve watching Shia and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley run around, which I’m not necessarily looking forward to. In any case, the trailer is a nice start so far. Here‘s another new interview with Michael Bay, incidentally.
• On a similar note, Apollo 18 just started shooting in Vancouver – which, by the way, is apparently where Disney shot Tron. California’s back to being unaffordable again for filmmaking, which Hollywood’s Democrats didn’t bother to tell you when they were all out stumping for Jerry Brown recently. The new Total Recall, by the way, will similarly be shooting not in LA but in Toronto.
• A new poster for Battle: Los Angeles is out. I have the feeling this film is going to be the cream of the Alien Invasion crop, so to speak.
• First it was Rose McGowan, and now word has it that Anne Hathaway may be attached to the on-again/off-again remake of Barbarella. I generally have nothing against Ms. Hathaway, but she’s a bit gawky and a poor choice for this role – as I suspect she would ultimately push the film too much in the direction of Austin Powers-style comedy. With that said, she’s certainly fetching, sympathetic, and she meets the ABF Standard (Anybody But Fonda).
• There were a flurry of rumors recently about Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel(s), one of which was that the film would be titled Paradise, but those rumors were subsequently shot down by a Fox exec. The latest news is that H.R. Giger may be involved in the design of the new project; also, Olivia Wilde has confirmed that she’s not going to be appearing in the film. Hooray!
• In other Alien Invasion News & Notes: Sam Raimi’s huge alien invasion thriller Earth Defense Force is being rewritten right now; I Am Number 4 director DJ Caruso has a new interview out, and that film also has a new, extended trailer; Universal and the SyFy channel are going to partner on making low-budget (probably $5-$10 million) sci-fi films; production art has leaked for the forthcoming Battlestar Galactica prequel series Blood and Chrome; Matt Damon may end up toplining Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium (God help us); J.J. Abrams confirms that the screenplay for the new Star Trek still hasn’t been completed yet; Terry Gilliam will be godfathering a new, animated, retro-sci-fi spectacle set in 1884; the new Star Wars Frames book really looks wonderful; check out this great post over at TCM’s Movie Morlocks on Howard Hawks’ The Thing as a Christmas movie; and people in China are now getting Avatar-themed weddings, which is really depressing.
• On the Classic Alien Invasion Front, Green Slime is finally getting a decent DVD release! And it’s about time. That news pales, however, in comparison to news recently that an extra 17 minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey (cut from the film by Stanley Kubrick right after the film’s release) was discovered recently, although Warner Brothers claims they already knew about the footage and have it themselves under lock and key. Apparently, since Kubrick himself edited the footage out, Warners has no plans of putting it back in the film or re-issuing it on a Blu-ray. We’ll see if their resolve on that point holds.
• On the Aquatic Invasion Front, Ving Rhames may be back for Piranha 3DD, which is currently planning to shoot in New Orleans (doesn’t that sound like fun?). Also, David Fincher has apparently confirmed that he’ll be directing 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, so we should be seeing giant squid squirm across the big screen a few years from now …
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Brazilian model Sasckya Porto adopts the Tron look, which more women should really should adopt in their everyday life – don’t you think?
And that’s what’s happening today on the Alien Invasion Front!
Posted on December 23rd, 2010 at 1:08pm.
Battle: Los Angeles Haiku –
Alien Attack
Los Angeles gets pounded.
They’ve suffered enough.
Absolutely brilliant. Thank you for that contribution.