Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Movies: Personal filmmaking.

Odd as this sounds, I'm actually impressed by how atrocious the new Jonah Hex movie looks.



I had recently heard that execs so hated the flick that they demanded 50 new pages of material be created and shot for the already wrapped project. Watching this, I wonder if those demands were not corrective, but punitive. Looking at this Syfy channel sneak peek, I can't help but imagine that some suit decided, "I am tired of these shit comic book movies, people. I'm not only going to ruin your movie, but I'm going to bury it in huge piles of runny, steaming, stinking fail that it will strike fear into the next knuckle dragging funnybook huckster who thinks he's got one of the broke dick comic properties to sell me."

This isn't indifference (see Gondry's Green Who?), simple incompetence (see The Fantastic Four flicks, any of them), or even Oedipal egomania (see Miller's The Spirit, or, better yet, don't). This feels like somebody expressing a visceral, personal hatred of the product in question, like they took the movie as a personal affront and just unleashed every bad idea they could think of on the poor film. "Yeah, tough guy? Some movie just got itself packed with allusions to Sonnenfeld's Wild Wild West. Not so tough now, are you?!"

"Chill out boss. Jonah Hex has learned its lesson."

"I don't want it smart, I want it dead. Tell the writers I want more dialogue for Ms. Fox. Boatloads more."

Kind of breathtaking in a way.

4 comments:

gil mann said...

Some movie just got itself packed with allusions to Sonnenfeld's Wild Wild West

I don't know why that's funny, but god damn that's funny.

DM said...

"I don't want it smart, I want it dead."

I reserve the right to heavily plagiarize that line because it's the best thing ever.

CRwM said...

Divemistress,

It's yours. If it is that good, I've got to assume I stole it in the first place.

Unknown said...

Jon Peters is rolling in his grave...Wait he is dead right? Bring on the Giant Robot Spiders!