Fair enough. Total Recall deals with interesting enough ideas to be turned off by the tone with which it treats them, assuming camp isn't your thing. My own tastes are pretty malleable (not claiming that makes them better) - which isn't to say that I'm without preferences, just that I can usually take things at face value and find some virtues. Total Recall is about as good a campy sci-fi action film I've seen, so I dig it.Cole Burns wrote:Third Man, I agree with you on Die Hard, but disagree on Total Recall. I've not watched it in over 10 years because of the campiness. I feel it detracts from the movie. And TDK has it's own problems, other than the premise. Nolan's novice role as an action director is showing (he openly admitted to taking it on as a primer for doing Inception) and dissection of the action scenes does not hold up. As a story, it's great. As an action movie, it's questionable. As a comic book, it's logical (as a comic book can get).).
I'm with you on Nolan's action sequences. Inception was a step in the right direction, but still marred by a sterility that made it feel at times like watching an especially well-produced video-game cutscene - lacking a distinctive perspective or stylistic flair, and suffering dramatically as a result. Of course, that's a valid aesthetic in its own right, but I don't think it really jibes with an action blockbuster. He's a poor fascimile of Mann, his biggest influence, in that regard. Mann, for all his adherence to detail and professionalism (both in the characters he portrays and the manner in which he portrays them), has always made his action scenes sexy and pulse-raising - the street shootout in Heat, the club scene in Collateral, et al. Nolan only accomplishes that sporadically. What he is good at are characterization, story, editing - and at exploring his themes through those means.
I don't know that Hollywood is any better or worse these days about reviving established stories/properties; they're just more naked about it. Which is kind of a turnoff, granted, reeking of a contempt for mass audience: "You're gonna see this garbage anyway, so here's another Smurfs movie!" Oh well, comes with the territory. It does kind of suck being a snob about the artform most beholden to the bottom line.Cole Burns wrote:I'm turned off completely by all the reboots lately. I won't go see the new Spiderman, and not just because I watched the 25 minute version online and was unimpressed. Prometheus nearly falls in that same trap, and movies like Dark Shadows and 21 Jump Street are plain disrespectful to my childhood (I'm exaggerating, of course, but they don't meet my expectations of a reboot or even an homage).
I will jump to the defense of Prometheus, however. Whether you like it or not is one thing, but, in my opinion, it explores themes and ideas worth exploring as opposed to simply trading on Alien's good name. It even comments intelligently on its influences (Alien, Blade Runner, 2001 - the holy trinity of sci-fi films - being the most obvious), and I saw it referred to on another forum as "a Rosetta stone for understanding Scott's work." I wouldn't go that far, but I understand the perspective. Really, it's just a miracle after the abhorrent Alien: Resurrection/Alien vs. Predator films that we got a new entry in the "series" that's actually stemmed thoughtful debate and criticism. Makes me even more intrigued for the once-unthinkable prospect of a Blade Runner "sequel" (or prequel, or in-universe story, or whatever the hell it's supposed to be) that Scott is working on.
