Quick, how many Godzilla movies are there? 28. 29 if you count this film. To date, this is the only North American attempt in film towards Godzilla. The only one. Apparently it is so reviled, they didn't go for a round two. Deceptisean has already written pretty eloquently about this subject so I'm not going to dwell on it too much. All I'm going to do is give my perspective.
Now, when I saw the original Godzilla in theatres in 1998, did I hate the film? No. However, before you think you know how this is all going to shake down, let me add something to that fact: I had not seen a single Godzilla film or television show or anything before Godzilla. Of course I knew who Godzilla is. Godzilla is all over pop culture, he's in video games, books, board games, lunch boxes, he was in a Hanna Barbera cartoon, I mean, it's all there man, whenever you see people running in Japan and screaming, you automatically think an enormous lizard is chasing them. However, that's all I knew. So, seeing the movie, I did not immediately understand how deficient this film is.
I now own the original Godzilla, the 1954 one, not dubbed, proper subtitles. J-Man and Decepitisean have shown me a few Godzilla movies. I get it now. I get it. I understand why this movie sucks. It's just not good, it's a terrible representation both of the character and of the world of the character. The scene in Madison Square Garden with the babies? Horrendous. Terrible. There's a reason they haven't made another one -- because this movie sucked so much, they were afraid to do another one. To get it this wrong this badly is inexcusable.
So, even though I originally did not hate this film, I get the hate now. Hey, Total Film can't always be wrong. This one is easy to hate and easy to understand why people roll their eyes and spew all sorts of profane comments when this movie is mentioned. Looking back now, almost 15 years later, this movie just was a terrible, terrible representation of the source material, just a totally vapid and poorly executed film that did no justice whatsoever to the original.
Rating: Worth the hate? Absolutely.
- Stephenstein
Now, before you start commenting that they obviously are naming the remake of this movie on the most hated list and not the original, let me stop you -- I know. The original is considered a classic and obviously the first one wasn't. What I find amusing though is that this film, Texas and Halloween all made the most hated list, but they still omitted other horror classics that got remade. Friday the 13th? Black Christmas? The Hitcher? They made a completely useless prequel to John Carpenter's The Thing, why not get mad at that? I guess we know now where the hierarchy of horror films stands with the person who originally made this list.
So, let's get down to it -- does this film deserve to be on the most hated list? Well, as a movie in the series, it isn't really one of the better entries, Freddy for one thing is too short and basically, it's going back to Freddy's origin which quite frankly, has already been covered by the rest of the series, so it's pointless. Also, calling A Nightmare on Elm Street obviously draws comparisons to the original and next to that film, this one is extremely deficient. So, all in all, I don't think there's much point to this movie and I can understand if you're a Nightmare enthusiast, not being too enthralled with this film.
I think though that is an extremely small subset of the population. The fact is, people have been bagging on the Nightmare series for years, with every film, the reviews just got worse and worse. Personally, I think the first five in the series are ridiculously solid and above a lot of the garbage people heap on them. Sure, a menacing Freddy is better than a silly, wise-cracking Freddy, but there's enough imagination and creativity in those films, enough thrills and neat stuff happening to forgive their shortcomings. Six was a hot mess and Seven is just in a league of its own, I can't even begin to tell you how special Seven is, just for what it goes for and the spin it puts on everything, New Nightmare is a crazy movie that will never be duplicated.
So, what's my point? My point is, people have decided they haven't liked the Nightmare series for years, so for them to hate this new addition, you have to convince me that you loved the original series, not just the original movie, but the whole damned thing because if you hate this movie, it's because it perverted everything that made the original movies so good (I'm not accepting "I love the first film but don't care about the rest, either...that's a copout if I ever heard one). So, is this film a disgrace to the Nightmare series? Frankly, it's not as bad as that -- somewhat pointless, no doubt and it has it's problems in terms of story, plotting and all the logic stuff. It does have decent atmosphere though and Freddy is still the showcase of the film so...like I said, unless you have posters plastered all over your residence with Freddy's mug on it, then quite frankly, I don't get the hate.
Rating: Worth the hate? For non-Nightmare on Elm Street Series fans, I would say no.
- Stephenstein
I've been using a lot of statistics and facts when making my arguments about whether or not I personally believe one of these films should in fact be on the 50 most hated movies of all time list. As you can tell, the vast majority, I believe that answer is a resounding no. There are a few where you could make the case to me, based on who you are and what your personal tastes are. The bottom line is, up to this point, I seriously don't believe many of these films should be on a universal hate list -- after all, I believe it was the Penguin who stated simply but brilliantly in Batman Returns "you flush it down your toilet, I put it on my mantle". While the analogy is more than little...disgusting, I think it's a very effective way to state that not everyone looks at something the same way. With Clash of the Titans though, much like Superman Returns, the debate is a little more on the side of hate, in my opinion.
Why? First of all it's a remake and not just any old remake, a remake of a classic film. The original Clash of the Titans was the last film ever made with Ray Harryhausen working on the visual effects. For those of you who don't know, Ray Harryhausen is a legend in the effects field, the amazing effects we all take for granted today could not have been achieved without Ray Harryhausen pioneering stop-motion animation. So, when you remake a film involving a legend of cinema, you better be pretty damned good, which this movie actually isn't. In fact, it's a mere shadow of its predecessor, which is already enough reason to make me dislike the film. However, there is also the problem with shaky-cam.
Okay, I think we've all mentioned this to death, but if you've stumbled across this blog for the first time and have no idea what I'm talking about, here's a crash course: shaky cam is that effect where the camera is un-anchored and basically bounces around the frame like a alcoholic stumbling home. On stationary objects, it's an annoying effect, with action, its annoyance factor increases a hundredfold simply because you cannot see what's going on. Add to that the fast editing that filmmakers in North America seem to favor and what you have is a total waste of time. I'm serious, shaky-cam does not add excitement to an action scene, a well-executed and choreographed action scene is exciting enough without tricks. What shaky-cam actually does is try and mask how really inferior the stunts and the action really are.
So, this movie did not start the whole shaky-cam process and did not begin the era of the shameless remake, so why the hate? Because it has all these elements. The movie is not exciting, it's storyline is full of holes and the you can't see the action. Everything that you can possibly dislike and yes you could say hate about modern-day movies can all be summed up in the problems this movie has. That's a reason to hate a movie, not because you're bored with a movie series or because you happen to want a certain genre of movie from a certain filmmaker, it's because you have valid points about what you don't like about movies and then present a movie as an example. That's what Total Film's list missed out on and that's what I'm trying to figure out and qualify in this series.
So if you were a fan of the original or if you just don't like your action scenes bouncing around like a ball in an ocean, then I can understand you hating this film. Hey, Total Film can't be wrong all the time, can they?
Rating: Worth the hate? Sure.
- Stephenstein
When they first announced they were going to remake Halloween, I'll be completely honest with you -- I was angry. How dare they remake a horror classic! Mind you, this was a complete knee-jerk reaction on my part because by this time, why not ,they were remaking every other horror classic! It's just I like the first film so damned much, I just didn't see a point to doing this film. Rob Zombie was doing it and it seemed though that everyone else was on board with it. I thought they all were afterwards as well, as there was a part 2 which J-Man reviewed a few months back on this very website. Needless to say, I may have been mistaken considering it's on this list now...but then again let's delve into this a tiny bit deeper...
I only saw the work print of this film, I guess you could call it the director's cut? I'm not sure, but from what I saw, yeah, I didn't like it. The first part was just pure backstory, trying to justify why Michael Myers turned out to be a knife-toting psychopath. Umm...wasn't it that he was just purely and simply evil? Must everything be explained ad nauseum? Why did I go bald? Well, you see Stephenstein, there are hair follicles and stuff happens sometimes...yeah, we don't need explanations for everything, especially considering we had a perfectly good reason in the first place. The second half was like Halloween's greatest hits, just with more annoying people.
That being said, I have come to understand that Rob Zombie himself is a big fan of the original Halloween (not to mention horror movies in general...House of 1,000 Corpses and Devil's Rejects, anyone?) and the wanted to pay a sort of homage to the original. Now, whether or not he should have bothered with remaking it instead of making a part 9 and just making it really well, we could talk about that all day, but the point is, based on the second half and how Michael Myers is treated as a sort of anti-hero, I can believe he is a big fan of the original, if not the iconic killer of the series. If he was going out with a smart-assed attitude that he would make a better Halloween than the original, (something I doubt anyone could do), than we may have a problem, Houston. However, based on the fact he just really wanted to show his love for the original (as well as pander to today's audience who clearly all have ADD), then how can the film be hated?
Okay, so it wasn't as good as the original. Did you think it would be? Halloween is a classic, one of the first if not the first slasher film and to this day, it still gets me. When the kid is running and bumps into Michael and you get that sound cue? Awesome. When he's chasing Laurie across the street and you have that unbelievably amazing soundtrack? It doesn't get better than that, ladies and gentlemen. You could say that I'm letting Zombie off the hook for Halloween while I blasted Singer for Superman Returns, but it's different. Zombie loves Halloween and you can kind of see it, at least in the work print, which I consider the director's cut. Singer didn't show any love for Superman in Superman Returns. That enough is good enough for me to say this movie should not be on the hated list.
Rating: Worth the hate? No, but it should have been part 9 instead of a remake. That may have avoided some of the hate, at least.
- Stephenstein
