m-vinteuil

Whereas it is easy to sympathise with Alien, Terminator, Matrix (etc.) fan boys for feeling shortchanged and insulted as they watched their beloved franchises complete the circle from B-movies masquerading as A-movies to ending up as D-movies, I'll never understand the Resident Evil crowd's objection to these flicks. The original video games were not brain food with lines like "Jill sandwich" and "you, the 'Master of Unlocking'" delivered by the most stilted voice actors heard since the Zelda CD-I games. Also, considering Romero and Co. have botched the simple concept of the zombie genre, it's fun to just escape into the post-apocalyptic fantasy land where slow moving flesh-eaters 'live' again.

It helps that I never enjoyed the entirety of Mad Max, Alien Resurrection, The Matrix, Land of The Dead and any number of other movies this steals from. And that they only chose to steal the good stuff and trim away all the talky bits. So instead of all that cod philosophy horsesh*t and exposition meetings with the Yoda Oracle that bore you to tears, you get Milla Jovovovovavich able to bend time and space until Umbrella turn off her power switch. Simple.

The film starts off with a clone Milla biting the dust: 'Evil corporation constantly cloning until they find the perfect specimen' cribbed from Alien 4. Steal from the best, I guess. This was cool. A concept so illogical that it pulls you into the fantasy. Cut to a Mad Max rip off of a truck or bus or whateverdafu*k pimped out in faux-Megaweapon armor dicing the head of a zombie as the kids aboard Dead Reckoning cheer. This was also cool... just because. Some other stuff happens like that annoying comic-relief character from the second movie getting bitten and Milla acting a more likable lead for once. Both very cool. Come to think of it, this movie is perfect at quickly dispensing with secondary characters you had just assumed would become permanent fixtures. "Mar, I don't like her... oh cool she's enveloped by crows!" it took him two movies to get there, but Paul Anderson now knows that people don't want to be annoyed by those on screen.

Although this movie lacks fundamentals like a fortified mall or a Tenpenny Tower safe zone, a Milla ginger muff shot, and a scene of a drunk sniper in a cowboy hat taking gleeful potshots of ambling zombies fueling every ten-year-old boy's dream lifestyle (they used up all three by the second pic), it does have Super Milla64. An indestructible super badass who's super motorcycle boots drove me to cross dressing with super envy. All the wire work in the climatic super duper zombie showdown in a very sandy Las Vegas elicited the same "woah!" from me as when I first saw Ted Theodore Logan bouncing off the pillars wasting regenerating video game enemies with unlimited ammo. And that's kinda the point.

I'm not one to advocate piracy, if only because it gives the McGs, Bays and W.S Andersons an argumentative advantage should any of their dross ever actually lose money. Nor am I one to revisit a widely publicised train wreck simply to stick the boot in. However when this dropped I attempted everything to avoid paying for it without being left out of the water cooler sewing circle. Any internet pundit worth their 'retro gaming' review site was picking apart continuity errors in Terminator 4 long before Bale lost his rag. And that alone is what prompted me to throw my De Bono hat o' many colours into the bog. A large chuck of Western Civilization refuses to grow up. And consider Xenomorphs, T-800s and Autobots cherished childhood memories. Not that this is a GOOD thing, but it is wiser to treat THEIR icons with a lil' bit of respect lest you become as universally loathed as George Lucas.

Yes, the third one was much worse. Even meth addicts knew that. But this installment has the added "fu*k you!" of pulping 25 years worth of fan fiction and comic books depicting the possibilities of the post "Judgment Day" landscape. It's not funny, it's not "awesome", it's not fun, it's just sad. Bale wants to make the effort, but after hearing a line like "you have to send your father back in time so you can be born" all he can do is facepalm. I caught myself at that moment contemplating a chuckle, which is rarer than catching yourself thinking. Feel guilty for making fun of Bale now?

Restraining myself from whinging about bleedingly obvious holes in plot, continuity and logic, the crumminess of the pre-T-800 terminators (complete with Doc. boots and superfluous clothing) and the fact that everybody is trying their damnedest to give weight to the names John Connor and Kyle Reese by pausing and looking shocked after they say them, this is more a hatchet job on entertainment itself. Not so much a night out as slow punishment for those who gave it the benefit of the doubt. What do we have to show for this decade? Dead franchises given the monkey paw resurrection by a small Scientology junta in Hollywood? Slowly turning the act of movie making into an East Asian Communist Republic where being creative will have you labeled 'Bourgeoisie' and thrown in the Gulag until you learn to tow the Party line.

So yeah, piracy alone is responsible for everything wrong with the entertainment industry.

"God, you can go crazy thinking about all this"