I never dug the Mummy flicks, but Octopunk has a soft spot for them. From moviesonline, "Oded Fehr, who stars in Sony Screen Gems' upcoming Resident Evil: Extinction, recently chatted with Moviehole.net about the possibilities of a third Mummy film over at Universal. Fehr explains, "I’m not involved [in “The Mummy 3”]. The person that wrote it, created it, tells me they’re doing a third one. They were writing it [when I spoke to him], so I don’t know where it is now. I believe it’s only going to involve Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz’s characters, of the old movies, and everyone else [in it] is going to be new." If you click the link you can read more including why he's happy he won't be returning and how he thinks Uni will have trouble getting Weisz back in action."
4 comments:
Yeah, I don't really like them either. I kind of thought I did, but I actually don't. All that digital oatmeal on screen is one problem, and also, there's the difficult trick of making an ersatz "period" movie that we all know is really just a modern story with modern characters making modern jokes etc. in modern costumes, with modern gizmos that have little gold filigrees on them or whatever to look ancient. The only people who can pull off this particular stunt are: 1) Steven Spielberg (Indy movies); 2) Peter Jackson (King Kong) and 3) (especially good at it) Gore Verbinski, who gave us a totally fun and modern 18th Century in "Pirates of the Caribbean" that somehow didn't seem anachronistic at all. Plus all three of those directors avoid digital oatmeal and have great ILM/Weta effects instead.
"and also, there's the difficult trick of making an ersatz "period" movie that we all know is really just a modern story with modern characters making modern jokes etc." It's the main reason I never watched Xena or Hercules. I hate it when movie characters in period pictures use modern slang to wink wink at the camera. That's true, it was so subtle in Pirates that I wasn't even aware of it.
Yeah, Pirates is a pretty amazing achievement in that regard. It's interesting to compare it to "Master and Commander" (as realistic a portrayal of that period you're ever going to see) to realize how completely modern the story and characters are. Keira Knightley's personality, Johnny Depp's fantastic schtick, all the Star-Trek-like magic; it's about as 18th Century as "Ghostbusters" but it somehow never seems like it. They're all wearing the triangular hats and wigs etc. but Keira is made up like a Vogue cover and Orlando Bloom is behaving like Dirk Benedict on Battlestar Galactica. It's great.
I don't usually find it too useful to defend the Mummy flicks, but I don't think they suffer from the anachronistic style you're talking about.
There's heaps of digital oatmeal, that's for sure, and any number of starting points for critiques that make me grouchily say "okay, shut up, just let me enjoy this movie I like."
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