The End of the Page

Terminator Salvation: More Human Than Human

Yeah, that’s right, you stupid robot. Pull my finger…

Rating: 5 out of 10

I’m going to change up my tactic for you. I’m going to make an effort to increase your enjoyment of this movie without giving away any type of spoilers. Great debates have been held inside my head about the formation of this review, so let’s see if I can get them all to come together in print and actually make sense. If I get lost along the way, please send a search party and ask them to bring Nerd Rope.

Terminator Salvation brings the robot-battling franchise charging forward into the year 2018 and lands us deep in the war between machines and humans. The humans are being driven underground while the machines seem to be gaining more and more ground every day. When a miraculous tool falls into the hands of the humans which could swing the momentum their way and possibly end the war, John Connor has to make a choice between following logic and following his instincts.

Here’s the hint I’m going to offer you in hopes it will help you enjoy the movie just a little more: John Connor (Christian Bale) is not the main character in this movie! The trailer and the story arc up to this point have built him up to be the main focus, but while watching the movie your attention is drawn toward two other people: Marcus (Sam Worthington) and the teenage version of Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin). These two characters, greatly helped by the actors portraying them, provide numerous layers and poignant moments and steal the focus away from the top billed Bale. Bale suffers both from narrow development of his character and one-note deliverance throughout the film. For large stretches he just feels like Batman without the mask. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy him as Batman, but in those films we get to see him as Bruce Wayne as well and he achieves a balance between different sides of the character. Salvation doesn’t really give him that chance, so the blame doesn’t fall completely on him. Worthington and Yelchin, on the other hand, really become the main story of the movie and steal the spotlight. Worthington shows great dramatic range, but he does lose a step during a romantic subplot with Moon Bloodgood. Yelchin, who also plays Chekov in the J.J. Abrams reboot of Star Trek (so far the summers best flick), lands another major role in terms of storyline and mythological importance. As the young Kyle Reese he single-handedly represents the past and the future for the life of John Connor, which is a lot of weight to be shouldering on such a young actor, but Yelchin proves he is up to the task. Displaying innocence and hardened street smarts at the same time, he manages to bring the much lacking human element to this movie front and center.

There is an argument to be made that movies in this genre are not here to astound us with great acting or well thought out plot development. They are here to create insane CGI and never-before-seen special effects to literally knock us out of our cushioned seats. In that realm, Salvation did an exceedingly good job. The robots were bigger, the explosions were louder and you could literally hear each and every gear and servo inside the machines as they whizzed towards our woefully under-prepared human survivors. There is a pair of impressive chase sequences which included some very unique moments and that kept people glued to the screen. Very little of the action seems to move the plot or story along though and in the end you begin to wonder what it was all for; you almost feel the entire film didn’t even need to happen. No matter how deep a movie is inside the action genre, the audience needs to feel that the story had a distinct purpose and Salvation fails to completely deliver in the end.

The decision to focus more on the effects than story falls in the lap of director McG, who gained massive exposure when he brought the 70s iconic TV show Charlie’s Angels to the big screen. It doesn’t seem like he’s really changed that much in his style since then though. It is still all about flash and visual onslaught to keep the people bouncing in their seats without a foundation to make any of it meaningful. Charlie’s Angels was meant to be summertime fluff, so it worked out well, but Salvation has a darkness and grit which needs to be motivated in the writing and direction as well and that just didn’t happen. To extend the olive branch slightly towards McG, he was definitely weighted down by massive paradoxical plot holes in the film created long before he ever dreamed of taking the reins of this apocalyptic franchise. Despite the poor directing and plot development flaws, the box office numbers are not terrible ($68 million opening weekend), so you can be sure the graveled and gruff voice of Bale will be heading our way in a couple years to remind us, “You are the resistance.”

Recommendation: If you are interested at all in seeing this, do yourself a huge favor and see it in the theater. The sound and picture are a large part of what makes this watchable, so don’t discredit yourself with lesser visual and aural impact.

Added recommendation to McG: Leave out the Arnold cameo next time. Seriously. Really.

Street Fighter: 14 Years Evidently Not Long Enough

Should it be mentioned that neither of the fighters in the silhouette are in the movie? Nah…that’d be silly.

Rating: 3 out of 10

Video game adaptations have always had a hard and belabored road to the silver screen. The creative vision it takes to transform something from a playable game into a captivating and enjoyable story is chock full of pitfalls. First off, you find yourself dealing with the legions of video game fanatics who play these games religiously and feel the control on the joystick also issues them control over every facet of the character. So, pleasing them can be a particularly sticky task. Next you find out that many video games really don’t have a particularly interesting storyline, which means some writer clawing and scratching at the door to Hollywood has to earn his big break by taking on an adaptation, or re-imagining, that very few others would touch with a ten-foot fountain pen. Lastly, the studio has to try and balance the idea of making the movie enjoyable while still including enough reference to the game itself so they can use the title and character rights. Tack all that together and you’ve set yourself up for one hell of a struggle, and I didn’t even mention casting it! Yet, in the end the studios are happy to jump into the joystick-controlled quagmire because they are banking on the pre-made audience to show up and support their well-played games. Unfortunately, that only works when the game the movie is based on is still popular.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is loosely, very loosely, based on the 1987 Capcom arcade fighting game. In the original game there were eight players you could choose from who resided in various countries and you fought your way around the world tournament style until everyone, including the final boss, was defeated. In this updated movie version, M. Bison (the original final boss) is a crime lord who runs a rapidly expanding syndicate taking over massive amounts of waterfront property in Bangkok. He kidnaps Chun-Li’s father to use his political connections and Chun-Li vows to take revenge and save him. Along the way she meets Gen, an old sage who once was a partner and fellow criminal alongside Bison, but has since turned his effort to helping people instead of hurting them. He teaches her to focus her energies and discover the secret to defeating Bison when the time comes. Running parallel to Chun-Li’s story is a rough and rugged Interpol agent who has been chasing Bison for most of his career and with the help of his new, vivacious partner in the Chinese gangland police force, he vows this is where the chase ends.

Now, brace yourselves, because this is where the niceties and political movie speak comes to a crashing halt.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is terrible. It is a prime example of a studio and creative team reaching way beyond their abilities and trying to force the movie into a category it doesn’t belong (that being “good films”). They attempted to create a story out of a game where there really was none and build it into a possible franchise, but God help us if we get one of these for each character in the game. Other than the names the movie had virtually nothing to do with the game and only references it in the most trivial of ways. Street Fighter was a fighting game and for some insane reason they decided to make a movie with very few fight scenes, one of which, the highly anticipated battle between Chun-Li and Vega (barely acted by Taboo from the band Black Eyed Peas) only lasted thirty seconds and underwhelmed in an unimaginable fashion. Most of the first half is spent building up Chun-Li’s past and why her dad gets kidnapped, but all we needed to see was her kicking ass from the moment the lights go down. I never thought I would ever write these words, but here you go: this movie could have learned a lot from Dead or Alive (which didn’t even get a theatrical release). DoA never tried to be more than a video game movie and they respected the silliness and ridiculous nature of what they were trying to adapt. (Phew, I need a nap. Uttering that statement left me winded.)

On a lucky few occasions you might be able to power your way out of terrible writing and terrible directing with the power of strong actors, but Street Fighter chose in the realm of casting to continue its tradition with all things terrible. Kristen Kruek became an instant star and teenage fantasy of young and old men alike across the nation when she appeared in the TV show, Smallville. Capitalizing on her mixed heritage, she definitely has the look to pay Chun-Li in a Hollywood adaptation, but unfortunately all she has is the looks. In the time since she was a headliner on Smallville, where she is now mainly a cameo on random episodes, Kristen has not improved her skills to the level of headlining a feature film, even one as minimally dramatic as this. Right behind her in the sense of being cast on pure physicality is Neil McDonough, who plays the villainous crime lord M. Bison. He has been cashing checks based on his bad guy stare for years, but here it just felt overplayed, underwhelming and just, plain silly. Briefly showing a touch of inspired choices, Michael Clarke Duncan appears as Balrog and holds it down quite well, even if the Balrog in the game was nothing like him. Also, Moon Bloodgood, who briefly appeared last year in the short-lived TV show, Journeyman, plays the local gangland cop in charge of cleaning up the chaos Bison has brought to her city. Her character is completely unnecessary to the film and routinely just fodder for her partner’s bad pick-up lines, but she at seems to have the sense of the level of quality and tone the film was looking for. Last on the good side of things is Robin Shou, who plays the wise, mystical mentor, Gen. He is no stranger to the video game adaptation having starred as Liu Kang in the Mortal Kombat films, which are another pair of films the makers of Street Fighter could have taken some cues from. In all of this mess, this time I have gone against the grain and saved the worst for last, Chris Klein. Let me first say that I respect actors who know their type and play to it, while also holding respect for other actors who try to push their boundaries of skill. Chris Klein used to reside in the former group, playing the down home, clean-cut, high school quarterback type who just gosh darnit couldn’t seem to catch a break, but the mentally deficient casting agent somehow looked at him and thought he would be perfect as a grizzled Interpol agent with a penchant for bad one-liners and a total aversion to showering. Every scene with Chris reeked of a community theater impression of Colin Farrell ala Miami Vice (and even Farrell didn’t pull that off very well).

Recommendation: For the sake of clarifying why I gave this film any points at all; one point for Bloodgood, Duncan and Shou combined, one point for the film makers actually allowing people to die (which doesn’t often happen in these PG-13 versions), and one last point for giving me a big screen to watch Kristen Kruek on, who still remains quite cute, even after all this time. For those who might be wondering how this ranks up against the 1994 Street Fighter film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, which was front-to-back a true black hole of quality, amazingly enough, they almost cancel each other out.

Sticky Stamps to Street Fighter Goddess: A day in the life of…(5/12)

1 – A proposed increase of one penny a year for stamps is not really all that alarming or outrageous for me to hndle, but when that increase is announced two days after I just bought a new book of 41 cent stamps, now me no likey postman. Grrrr… [via CNN]

2 – I wonder how many pairs of socks it takes to ride this bike. [via JoshSpear]

3 – What kind of thoughts would run through your mind if you worked in a hospital that only treated video game characters and their completely outlandish array of injuries? It might sound something like this. [via CollegeHumor]

4 – NBC quietly nnounced a little while back that they were planning a spin-off to The Office, but no details have since come out about what the show will be about, but the spin-off tidal wave might only be beginning. House, which coincidentally is also owned by NBC, is going to be spun into another show starring a new private investigator character who will be introduced on the Sarcasticm Hospital phenom sometime later this season. Personally, I love House and if they give the spin-off the same attitude and charm, more power to them (and less power to me since I will become a lazy bum watching all this TV). [via Perez Hilton

5 - And a little bit of Jon's bondage side creeps out (which in turn, creeps me out as well). [via Garfiled Minus Garfield]

6 – Warner Brothers has created the full movie site for Get Smart. There are a handful of interactive things you can do, including creating your own agent for Control or Kaos. If you want to say hi, find the Kaos agent named Dunder, from the town of Mifflin. He’ll be the one doing two handed behind the back karate moves. [via ComingSoon]

7 – John McCain vowed to “fight evil” if he gets into the oval office. While that is a nice sentiment, it rings a tad dangerous since the idea of what is evil changes from person to person, and possibly from day to day. Most of what he talked about in his speech I completely agree falls under the banner of “evil”, but what happens when he decides that abortion is evil, gay rights are evil, or anything else the conservative right wing decides on that week? I’d rather hear someone come out against specific issues and detailed plans for change rather than making grand statements which were once used by people in the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition. Not exactly those you want to emulate. Oh, and his appearance recently on The Daily Show where he had to pull out a cue card just so he could make a joke about electing Dwight Schrute (the character from The Office) as his Vice President, well let’s be honest, that was pure pandering to an embarrassing level. [via CNN]

8 – This artist found out that puzzles made by the same brand are usually identical in piece structure, so you can easily make puzzle montages or mosaics. That could be the most exciting news in puzzling since someone actually finished that one with the picture of dogs playing poker and found out the pug on the right was cheating. I’m not bragging or anything, but I told you so. [via JoshSpear]

9 – An updated version of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”. No one really believes anymore when they hear the word “Cannonball”. Such a shame. [via CollegeHumor

10 - Here's one of the first pics of Moon Bloodgood as Chun-Li in the upcoming Street Fighter movie. It's looking like it could be rather cool, but it's hard to honestly find anything cooler than that actress's name. Seriously, Moon Bloodgood. She really should be a warrior goddess or something. [via Film School Rejects]

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::