This review will be discussing plot points which may be considered spoilers. Consider yourselves warned.
The phrase “summer blockbuster” may as well have been coined for X-men: Days of Future Past. This monolith of cinema was released on Thursday, just in time to dominate the long, holiday weekend, and I went and saw it twice in preparation for this review (mostly because I forgot my notebook the first time, but I digress).
While comic fans probably have a lot of gripes about this movie, and rightly so (yes, this was supposed to be Kitty Pryde’s movie; yes, some of the characters were not true to their comic book profiles), the movie itself was an entertaining ride from start to finish. Continue reading →
I remember the very first “behind the scenes” special feature I ever watched. It was a video of Andy Serkis wearing a motion capture suit in a warehouse, acting out the part of Gollum. At the time we had a 54K dialup modem, and since each of us kids were only allowed an hour of internet per day, we would all sacrifice our internet time to wait for the whole video to download so we could watch it all the way from the beginning. I was fifteen years old, and that was the Golden Age of the special feature.
Hard to believe this method of motion capture is almost obsolete already.
These days, special features are going the way of the Dodo. I would mourn them, but to be honest, I cannot remember the last time I bothered to watch the DVD special features. I think that this progression has been mostly organic, based on technological advances, but I also think that movie buffs are experiencing special feature fatigue.
The birth of the DVD suddenly provided extra space for producers and especially directors to show off all of the things that they do to create the amazing movies that their fans love. At first, we were incredibly grateful! Suddenly we fans felt as though we were right on set. We learned about all the things that go into making one minute of Star Wars. Then we watched as Mark Hamill got better and better at light saber choreography.
Later on, my siblings and I squirmed in anticipation as we waited for the special features from the official Lord of the Rings website to download. (One of my favorite videos was the one entitled “Bringing Gollum to Life.”)
Another movie with great special features was Pixar’s The Incredibles. We watched the voice actors talk into microphones (titillating stuff) and learned how Brad Bird, the director, became the official voice of Edna Mold. I don’t know about other fans, but we watched these short videos over and over until we had almost memorized them as much as we memorized the movie from which they came.
In the early days, few DVDs came with very many special features. A few had the music video to the credit song, and occasionally a blooper reel. Before too long, however, every DVD had a host of special features, including the ever popular actor/director commentary—the entire movie, but being talked over by cast or crew member describing funny stories or explaining the technical reasons behind certain screen decisions. DVDs were released in expensive two- and four-disc sets to have room for all the extras. Even TV series were including commentaries on the DVD releases of each season. Brian Collins of Badass Digest said it well:
“[G]uys actually had to dig out these elements and put them into the movie, not to mention create the other original content on the disc. It probably cost almost as much to put together this DVD (including the remastering, rights acquisition, man hours spent digging up the materials, etc) as it did to make the movie in the first place.”
Since then, technology and the free market system has changed a lot about the way that fans watch movies. Rental versions of DVD’s—once the full movie and all its features from a Blockbuster shelf—are now single discs in a paper sleeve. Distributors wanted to encourage movie renters to purchase DVDs, so they stopped including all the special features on rental discs. Now, many people get their movie fix by streaming videos or downloading digital versions, which come with even fewer features. As time goes on, already fatigued viewers have gotten out of the habit of watching them.
That’s right, kids. DVDs used to come in sets like this.
I personally do not mourn the slow death of movie special effects for the most part. Soon after The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe came out on DVD, I sat down to watch the actor commentary. It didn’t take long for me to be weary of the banal stories of actors in massive costumes tripping over their hooves, and of Georgie Henley’s (Lucy Pevensie) surprise on her first moment in the wintery world of Narnia. While I thought of the older Director’s Cut DVD sets as something like film school at home, I also find myself experiencing special feature fatigue.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I found a video describing exactly how Peter Jackson got the runes on the doors of Khazad-Dum to glow.
Seeing moments like this on the big screen for the first time was amazing!
Much like Andrew, I enjoy movies as escapist entertainment. I had a very sheltered childhood and didn’t get to watch a lot of movies. We did not have a TV in our house, and I was never allowed to go to movie theaters. (This has bemused many of my friends, especially because I don’t associate popcorn, or food in general, with watching movies). As an adult, I’ve had to catch up on a lot of pop culture references that I just didn’t understand (for instance, I was an adult before I had seen a Disney animated movie and I still haven’t seen all of them). I also often don’t have the nostalgic love for poorly made, cult classic movies and shows.
I’m a little more demanding about consistency and plot than many moviegoers, which drives my movie loving friends a little crazy. However, there ARE cinematic influences on my life. Here are a few of them.
Disney’s Treasure Island –this wasone of the earliest movies that my siblings and I saw. I was probably around nine or ten. We reenacted the movie many times in our backyard, using a large cardboard box as a ship. Our favorite character was Ben Gunn because of a goofy line, “Many’s the long night I’ve dreamed of cheese–toasted, mostly.” We were too young (and not British enough) to know what toasted cheese was, of course.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer—if my mother only knew how many days I would ask to go down the block to spend the afternoon with my friend Alex and her dog… but we were really watching Buffy. That was the beginning of my love of Joss Whedon, although I didn’t know who he was at the time.
Pollyanna—this movie was influential not because of its content, but because in my house every movie was compared to it. It was actually a very perky, overly bright movie about a little girl who was good all the time. We kids were supposed to look up to Pollyanna as an example, but she was mostly just annoying.
NOT The Wizard of Oz—I put this movie in here because it was NOT actually an influence on me. This was my mother’s favorite movie when she was a child, and she made the fatal mistake of introducing it to her children when they were teenagers. Of course, we make snarky comments about how cheesy the movie was, which frustrated her quite a bit.
The Lord of the Rings—these were the first movies that I properly “geeked out” about. The Fellowship of the Ring came out when I was fifteen years old. By this time, even we had the internet, so I was able to follow the process and development of the movies with intense anticipation. I will never forget sitting for over an hour waiting for our 54k dialup to load the official trailer so that we could watch it in all its glory.
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith—was the first movie I ever saw in a real movie theater. I was nineteen years old, and was living on my own. A friend of mine found out that I had never actually been to the cinema and dragged me along. I enjoyed the experience but thought (and still think) that it was far too loud.
Those are just a few of the movies and TV shows that have had some profound influence on my life. Mine are more like milestones of development, but even so, they each mark a significant piece of my life. What movies have influenced you? Let me know in the comments! -t
There is a curse on our society. It is a dangerous and insidious plague that works its way into the very heart of the most precious part of our lives: our entertainment. I am, of course, referring to DVD bonus features. While tempting and tantalizing, they have cursed us with the knowledge of what might have been. This extra content often reveals the director’s original vision, before things like budget and other physical constraints get in the way. Without this knowledge, fans are more than happy with the final product, but with the additional knowledge we begin to ask ourselves how much more would we have loved what might have been.
An artists vision of what Starship Trooper‘s power armor looks like.
Starship Troopers is my favorite book, hands down. I’ve read it at least a half dozen times. Robert Heinlein crafted a fantastic science fiction universe, and the centerpiece of that universe is the Mobile Infantry, with their suits of powered armor. These suits protect the infantrymen and provide them with enhanced strength, sensory perception, communications, and weaponry. These suits are described in the book as looking like giant, armored gorillas. Of course, this is not what appeared in the film. Instead, it was a box office disaster that didn’t have powered armor at all. That being said, the movie has some redeeming qualities as a B movie and I was willing to accept the movie for what it is—that is, until I saw the special features. In them, director Paul Verhoeven spoke very excitedly about what he was planning to do with the suits. Special feature interviews with Verhoeven show various concepts of what the suits might have looked like and, while they were all very different, they were all really cool looking. Instead we got really crappy body armor (This same armor made an appearance in episode two of Firefly). Had I never seen Verhoeven’s original vision, I would have never expected anything other than the final movie version.
If you thought the armor looked familiar, you are not going crazy.
While Starship Troopers was an all-around disappointment, of which the armor was just one small part, J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek was an awesome film. Abrams was able to successfully reboot the franchise while still retaining the aesthetic, the positive vision of the future, the characterizations, etc. that made Star Trek so amazing in the first place.
Accompanying the reboot is a refreshingly streamlined Enterprise. Everything looks so shiny and sleek. Well, almost everything. The engineering spaces are completely out of place with the new look. They have more in common with the engine room of a modern cargo ship than with any of the previous incarnations of Star Trek engineering spaces. I felt that this disconnect detracted from the film and for quite a while I was forced to wonder why J.J. Abrams made that particular choice. When my answer finally came, I was both pleased and disappointed. Again, thanks to DVD special features (ok, this time it was Blu Ray) I was shown the original designs for engineering. Everything I could have hoped for, it was streamlined, and meshed perfectly with the rest of the redesign. So what the hell happened? Turns out it was the almighty dollar sign. There just wasn’t enough money in the budget to make everything happen, and since it isn’t as integral to the film, engineering was forced to take one for the team. Unfortunately, now that I have seen the concept art, I can’t help but think about what the engine room could have looked like and how cool it would have been.
Of course DVDs are not the only place to get these kinds of behind the scenes secrets. Thanks to the internet there is a plethora of information and it usually doesn’t take more than thirty seconds of searching on Google to find it. In recent years studios have gone so far as to release concept art well in advance of the movie’s release in order to drum up as much excitement and anticipation as possible. I’ve always thought this was tremendously risky. What if the final product doesn’t live up to the expectations of the fans? If they didn’t already have this information, they would have never known and might have been satisfied with what they actually got.
DVD special features are great. They can be lots of fun, but they also carry with them the inherent danger of ruining the final product for the fans. One must be careful not to become too fixated on those things that might have been. Instead we should be content with what we have and leave the speculation for someone else.
Therefore I Geek 