Blade Ruinner

As many of you have probably heard by now, Ridley Scott is going back to one of his greatest masterpieces and royally screwing it up.  That's right, Blade Runner is coming into the era of pointless remakes and sequels, drawing the ire of every fan who ever saw the original.  Literally, I have yet to see one post, comment, or article where anyone, apart from Scott himself, that says "Oh goodie, they're making a an unnecessary sequel/prequel to a sci-fi classic 30 years after the fact!"

Let's face it.  Hollywood has run out of ideas.  I know, big news, huh?  You all know that; we've all known it for years, but that doesn't change the fact that it still hurts.  A vast majority of current and future projects are either sequels or remakes of perfectly good films (see Ghostbusters 3, Men in Black 3, Jurassic Park 4, etc).  There is a method to their madness besides lack of creativity.  One, it does bring in a new audience, a younger generation that might otherwise have dismissed it as their square parents' piece of crap.  Take Star Wars, for instance.  I know a lot of people who had never even heard of the original trilogy until the prequels came out.  Unfortunately, these reboots offer a lot more Jar Jar Binkses than Darth Mauls, which brings me to my second point. 

They are out there.  Everywhere.  You work with them, go to school with them, may even live with them, and you may not even know it.  They are...the fanboys.  When filmmakers decide to redo a movie or revive a movie series, I know what a lot of them are thinking.  They are thinking about how much they loved the movie when they were a kid, but now they've got a billion dollars and want to do it their way.  The problem is there are other people out there who love those movies as well, so much, in fact, that they don't want people screwing with the original or its legacy.  When news hits of a remake/sequel/prequel, the first question asked by the general public is "Will this live up to the original?"  The first question from fanboys is "Why the &@#$ are they doing this?  There was nothing wrong with the original!"  The problem with a lot of directors is that you can't just use the same title and pretend its just as good.  There's more to a beloved movie than just good acting or special effects.  Take the recent Clash of the Titans remake, for instance.  I enjoyed it for what it was, which was a pretty action film.  However, it lacked the camp of the original.  Yes, the first was cheesy with the claymation effects, but that's what made it so enjoyable.  You could totally redo The Ten Commandments and add an actual river of blood instead of painting the scene, but it would never be the same.

Now don't get me wrong.  Sometimes the remakes do work.  The original Piranha was dismissed as just another Jaws ripoff, which it was, but the remake set up for the dvd release and did fairly well at the box office.  Rob Zombie's Halloween is another good example, or even the new Fright Night.  Both take relatively tame, slightly cheesy movie classics and give them that sexier, more violent new millennium shine.  But all of these are horror movies.  Horror franchises can put out films until kingdom come because people go to see them to either be scared, to see terrible people ripped in half, or to see gratuitous nudity.  Nobody goes to a horror movie for story and characters, which are the backbone of good movies like Blade Runner and can't be replicated, no matter how much money they pour into it.  Maybe it will be good, maybe it won't.  I'm not holding my breath, but I will withhold final judgment until its release in 2014.  At least Ridley Scott is toying with his own movie.  The Dirty Dancing remake, on the other hand?  That guy can go fuck himself.  RIP Patrick Swayze. 

Thoughts on Raw at 3 am

Consider this an introduction.  I'm a huge wrestling fan in the sense that I like good wrestling, good stories, and unexpected plot twists.  With TNA sinking faster than the Titanic these days, I stick to my good old WWE.  So naturally, when I have my Monday nights off, I like to plop down on the couch, Turn on Raw, and turn up the volume.  In more recent years, I have come to realize that I have a somewhat insane/masochistic relationship with my wrestling, insanity here being defined as doing the same action over and over expecting different results and masochism as doing something you know will hurt, whether physically or mentally, whilst grinning like an idiot.  I watch Raw and Smackdown when I can, knowing full well that the show will probably suck.  I can predict the outcome of every bit in the show, and my brain hurts from doing it.  Each week, I tune in hoping that maybe, just maybe, tonight's show will be a little less sucky, and it rarely is.  I watch to see talented guys put on an entertaining show that keeps the audience glued to the action, not get put in stupid bits and cheesy movies while an interchangeable group of impractically dressed skanks pull hair and fake bulldogs for the tenth week in a row.  However, in spite of all that, I was generally pleased with the results of the show from 8/15.  Rey Mysterio and Alberto Del Rio put on a great match.  It was a fitting ending to the show, and I was all ready to flip over to catch the second half of Jon Stewart until who should arrive like an unwanted Superman but John Cena.  Heaven forbid they have one show without this overhyped army-wannabe.  He pummels Del Rio and decides that he's pissed off at him.  Not at CM Punk, who beat him down, or at Triple H who made the controversial 3-count, or even the guy that directed 12 rounds(because God knows after I saw it, I wanted to bash someone in the head), but Del Rio.  Why?  Because Alberto cashed in his Money in the Bank briefcase on a weakened champion, which was for whatever reason terrible.  This coming from the same guy who commended both The Miz and Edge for doing the same, "sensible" thing, the latter against.....Cena himself.  Yes, I know it's scripted.  I don't hate John Cena on a personal level; I respect the work he's done for charity and such.  But the writers and the guys organizing these shows need a real wake-up call.  First of all, do they even pay attention to old storylines?  It doesn't really work when you just magically change a guy's attitude towards another for no apparent reason (see Undertaker/Kane we're brothers/I hate you gimmick that gets rehashed every few years).  The wrestling audience, for at least some part, is smarter than that.  Want proof?  Watch the shows, read the tweets and the facebook posts, read the magazine articles.  Pay attention to each fan and who they're favorite wrestler is.  See the kid whose first show this is, who's not quite old enough to realize that it's not all real, who's decked out in the shirt and the hat with the fake belt his parents got to enhance the experience?  Chances are he's screaming for John Cena.  Same goes for the preteen girl who thinks he's just so dreamy, or the middle-aged trailerwife who "knows" it's real(this comes from personal experience).  Now find the real wrestling fans, the ones who know real names, failed gimmicks, win-loss records, and are virtually walking wrestling encyclopedias.  Chances are, they're the ones responding to every "Let's go Cena" chant with a heartfelt "Cena sucks!"  Just because you're in the main event week in and week out does not mean you're the best wrestler or even the best entertainer.  It just means that you're going along with what you're supposed to do.  I have seen plenty of very talented guys and girls who could outperform the best of them get stuck with bad gimmicks and get relegated to 5 minute time fillers or the unemployment line.  The more I think about it all, I am taken back to the mid-90s.  They tried to tell us that Bret Hart and Rocky Maivia were the good guys, while Steve Austin and DX were villains, but the audience didn't go with it.  The bad guys became the most popular superstars, while Rocky's career really took off after his heel turn.  The guys at the top need to realize that their audience does not consist entirely of children and simpletons who have to be told who is good and who isn't.  Until then, I will just sit back and wait until next Monday so I can watch two hours of the same thing again.  Or maybe not.....