Most days on Paradise are quiet. Still relatively new to the island I try to stay out of the coconut’s and other staffers way just diligently cleaning out the pool, occasionally chasing Pinkie away from the staff laundry I just folded and barbecuing behind the small maintenance shed I call home. During the lull of the winter months, I’ve noticed the tourist traffic slow and with the extra time I like to spend quiet nights watching whatever DVDs wash ashore.
The other morning as I was walking about the beach planning my nightly maintenance routine I saw a familiar and beloved DVD case laying in the sand. I rushed over to it, gleefully. Filled with warmth and joy at the sight of one of my favorite movies. I began to clear the sand off the cover and realized it wasn’t what I thought it was.
It was Quentin Tarantino’s cult classic, Reservoir Dogs. For the PlayStation 2.
Developed by Volatile Games, a division of now defunct British developer Blitz Games Studio Limited – most known for their work on other licensed titles like: The Fairly Oddparents, Bratz and Spongebob and other sacks of shit that I’m sure will make its way into my crosshairs at some point.
Published by the quality publisher Eidos Interactive (who have since been taken over by Square Enix) The publisher is well known for their Tomb Raider series.
“First things fuckin’ last.”
The obvious cash grab doesn’t piss me off much – that is the nature of the beast. It’s not unlike Hollywood these days remaking classic films that never needed a remake in the first place. Rereleasing a movie with a new cast instead of ever actually giving fresh, younger writers a chance to show the world their stories. Hollywood feels that the world doesn’t need a new Charlie Kaufman. It needs a remake of Pride And Prejudice starring The Rock or something.
The abhorrent targeting system doesn’t bother me much considering I’ve lived on PS2 planet for quite awhile now and have fully disconnected from the much smoother controls of more modern consoles and games. So I can handle bad third person shooter targeting systems. I grew up with them. They practically raised me. It’s like that meme about some shithead witch telling a lion about magic and then the old magic lion saying something about he was there when it was written. Was that a Narnia meme? I thought I had it around here, somewhere. Anyways, thats like my usual work day – working with a bunch of strapping young lads and ladies fresh out of high school with their whole lives ahead of them and then theres me … an old, miserable magic lion…alas… where was I?
Ah there it is.
It only pisses me off a little that if you happened to never see the movie before playing the game you’d have no fucking idea what’s going on. Considering it offers little to no backstory and just assumes that everyone in the world has already seen the movie. Even as you play through the movie plot the unbelievably bad voice re-enacting iconic scenes is even more distracting than the poorly drawn characters that look nothing like the regular actors.
Generally the story consists of a 44 second clip of a massive plot point that isn’t elaborated on at all – using the incredibly small story window between playable chapters to only mimic legendary scenes from the film. On top of all of this Mr. White’s character is voice acted by that dude that played the fire chief in the Denis Leary show, “Rescue Me”. And once I placed it I just couldn’t not hear it.
This guy.
Are you gonna bark all day, little doggy? Or are you gonna bite?
So alright, I’ll cut to the chase. The thing that pissed me off most about this game? The story can be completed in about three hours. That drives me bananas. Imagine it’s 2006 and you just paid $55 for this game brand new and finished it within three or fours? I hate that shit.
Rule number one about making a video game based on a movie. Make it at least two hours longer than the movie itself you, morons.
Alright so with that off my chest the good part about this game? Is the Tarantino soundtrack. Some classic gems per usual. One I will showcase a little bit later on. The game has a really simple play style meter – between professional and psychopath. The more violent you are the more psychotic your rating and that can alter the ending a bit.
Ultimately the game destroys all of the glorious subtleties of the film and just turns it into a run and gun blood bath that is short, repetitive and exploitive.
Pee In The Pool
So of course – begging the outside world for attention and interaction has essentially failed yet again (even though I stubbornly refuse to give up) I did receive a little feed back on a poll I asked the harsh, cruelly tight lipped internet.
While I also got sympathy love from Kuro and Pinkie as per usual. 😂
All in all the worst game I have played for the blog so far, a game that lacks any sort of charm, thoughtfulness or respect for its original creator and rabid fan base. – Periwinkle.
Periwinkle’s Lowing Hanging Fruit Punch Ingredients (In order of how enjoyable.)
1.) A small chunk of fur from Parka (Cold Winter)
2.) A thimble of Jack Bauer’s sweat (24: The Game)
Konichi-welcome back Island Guests! This blog has been around for a year and a bit now and while I was just starting out fresh as a Pokémon Blog, a movie came out recently that I JUST missed out on being relevant about. Before Halloween Month came along, I decided to review video game movies and.. luckily that Pokémon Movie was specifically based on a Video Game! Even Better .. it’s NOT a sucky Video Game movie! Hurray you guys, I finally reviewed Detective Pikachu.
Researching History
In February a short, almost demo like game called Detective Pikachu hit the markets in Japan. It gained a lot of popularity and in 2018 it saw a Global release in a much more fleshed out, full game version because of it. In it we would play Tim Goodman, a do-good boy that solved mysteries with his gruffly voiced Pikachu! It did not take long before the rumors of this becoming a movie began to pop up! With a huge petition for Danny Devito becoming the hatted electric mouse. Ryan Renolds however wanted it more.. and with Justice Smith taking the role of ..what in the game was a very white Tim, we in may 2019 we got Detective Pikachu the movie. I must say.. I am SOOO happy with these casting choices.
The Tim in the video games was a super generic blank sheet of a character that was like Phoenix Wright if you take all his dialogue and charm away. Just a guy who responds to something and occasionally solves a puzzle in a very kiddy way. The movie while still clearly aimed for kids aimed at kids at least decided to age the characters up a bit to give them actual stuff to do and make them feel like a cohesive part of this world. For that I am grateful. Ryan Renolds clearly cares more for Pokémon than Danny Devito ever would so we got a bland character that is made more interesting and actors who are really involved with the franchise! This is how you do re-casts and change up the status quo! Very well done!
Finding Evidence in the Story
The movie does follow the plot of the game for a big part, with some twists here and there! Since this IS a detective movie and there is fun to be had in solving this riddle.. even if it is quite an easy one, I shall try to maintain spoilers to a minimum but I will spoil what the plot of the movie is about. So if you think that is a spoiler, this review might not be for you. Tim wants to be an insurance guy and live without a Pokémon.. because having a Pokémon reminds him of his neglective father who Tim has since banned out of his life. That ban is put to a screeching halt though when Lieutenant Hide Yoshida calls him from Ryme City! Apparently Tim’s father has been in an accident and he died! Now Tim has to get there to wrap up some business and say goodbye to his estranged father.
However things do not turn out to be that easy! Tim finds some weird “drugs” that turn Pokémon feral in his father’s apartment as well as a talking Pikachu. This Pikachu believes his father might still be alive..but is struck with Amnesia and together the two discover a plot that involves fighting many other pokémon including the most powerful pokémon off them all, Mewtwo. … but since it is not Mega Mewtwo… I gotta say that technically is not true..but hey! We will roll with it. We will see a lot of interesting locations within and just outside Ryme city and are introduced to Pokémon in a way that is less intrusive or knowledge intensive in a plot with some interesting twists. While it all is very predictable there are enough events and plot threats to keep the movie interesting to the slightly older audience. Even if you don’t know that much about Pokémon…because in reality.. Pokémon is just a dressing put over a cyberpunk story for children. Only instead of robots helping society it’s pokémon… or animatronics. It’s Blade Runner for kids!
Interrogating The Pokémon
Without the whole Pokémon thing we have a 6/10 movie I’d say. There is still some very funny jokes in the movie like the interrogation of Mr. Mime working even if you do not know anything about Pokémon. Detective Pikachu making jokes about Cocaine in a Pokémon movie.. and the whole litle “drug” subplot .. and the finding of the father that has gone missing/is dead it can carry the story well enough. The movie is well acted and shines best when Tim is meeting with the lieutenant. Those two bounce off of each other REALLY well. Weird but some of those scenes really hit hard. The heartfelt talk with Pikachu works well enough without any Poképuns with it alll feeling really endearing and there is enough sense of adventure and science for everyone… However the more you know about Pokémon the better this movie becomes. My Arceus the sheer number of easter eggs here in this movie are insane. Everything oozes Pokémon.. even though it somehow is on a completely separate layer than the rest of the movie. This movie would have worked just as well for people not knowing about Pokémon if the plot was with little robots or something fitting in a cyberpunk Scenario.
From the moment Tim tries to capture a Cubone that is very sad and lonely.. right until the very last second of the movie there are some may callbacks to everything pokémon. Mostly in Ryme city itself. The neon lit streets of this magnificent city feature so many pokémon. Every single commercial sign is a reference to a pokémon or something in the pokémon world. From a call to the berries in the pokémon mythos to having brands based on pokémon names, pokémon models and so much more. Pokémon are very much a part of this world. The Jigglypuff singing at the bar.. standing on a table with guests who have fallen asleep. Pikachu riding into battle on a Pidgeot feels like a callback to the original opening of the anime, There is just so much to unpack here! So many layers and on a single view you will never see it all. There is a cleverness in how this world has been built. For example there are Loudred at a club working as “speakers’. Machamp is being used on a crossroads because it can hold up four signs due to having so many arms. Dodrio being a flightless bird thus being seen walking in the city all over and Aipom being mischievous little miscreants it all works wonders.
It is a bit weird to place this in the Pokémon timeline though, as the rest of the regions seem to have the traditional.. capture a Pokemon system.. Ryme city works on a Pokémon buddy system.. humans and pokemon befriend each other and walk across the city as friends and equal partners.. ..but outside the city it is the traditional pokemon world.. I honestly wish they left this scene out.. even though I love the Cubone in the beginning ogf the movie.. it means that Kanto exists in this universe and so the idea that Mewtwo exists suddenly happened twice.. it’s an implication that is tricky to unify. Luckily even then there are small visual cues that could provide an answer. Maybe this research station had a particular organisation funding them ..something from inside the Pokémon world. However since this is set in the future from Red and Blue a few problems still arise with that.. so let’s just not think about it and take a look at how cute Snubbull is! Yes, who’s a good pink doggie!
Effects under the magnifying glass
Like I mentioned before the movie does a pretty good job of following the plot of the movie though some significant twists are made towards the end. Which I think is a good thing, we get a new case with a new perpetrator and new developments. Which means even if you have played the game before the mystery is still yours to solve.. which also is quite in line with the puzzle type of game it is. We do see Tim hunt for clues and little scraps of hints on what happened yet it never feels as Mundane and trivial as in the game.. which isn’t nearly as good as the movie. Not even close! Strangely the video game movie is better than the video game.. as it feels a whole lot more love went into this one. The game felt a bit cash-grabby but here there is so much attention to details it really feels like it is made for the fans. While obviously there is a LOT of CGI in this movie a lot of the pokémon are also made practical. Their faces have been animated in later but there is actually something on set. We get a strange atmosphere of effects that are decently enough to be believed.. but you are aware there isn’t anything there..
I would like to compare it to seeing a ghost.. in real life and you know it’s a ghost.. but you can’t walk through it.. it is still there.. you can bump into it.. this movie feels a bit like that. Pokémon have another wordly quality yet also something tangible. They aren’t there but it feels like you CAN touch them. I think this is the best way to go about this to be honest. Pokémon are strange and if we had to make them realistic they would lose lots of features that would make them so recognisable. Feathery pokemon feel feathery, fluffy Pokemon feel like they actually have fur … and Mr. Mime has that sense of creepiness that his game counterpart has as well. Every effect is a bit like that.. in the fact that it really doesn’t feel like attack..but an effect yet if you saw it in 3d you’d probably still duck dip or dodge. Almost on a seperate layer.. which calls back to how animations worked in the sprite based pokemon game that also was just another layer. So weirdly for me this level of fake.. sells it more as Pokémon. The Squirtles and Bulbasaurs are adorable.. and seeing Greninja, Charizard and Torterra.. gave me that sense of wonder again of first encountering them and thinking they were really cool! Everything is just different enough.
I DID have a few issues with some of the stunts though, it all feels just a bit safe. The stuff human actors have to put up with is kept to a fair minimum except for one scene.. which is such a shame because I think that is a missed opportunity. It would be hard to realise, but the idea of a human facing against the raw power of a pokémon or facing trouble from a pokemon seems very under explored here. There isn’t as much of a sense of danger as I would like. That does fit the videogame .. but it fits the world a lot less. Oh well.. we always have the upcoming Monster Hunter movie for that type of stuff.. *cough*
One level short of evolving
I had a blast with Detective Pikachu but it has issues. The biggest gripe is the “Disney” vibes we get from some dialogue. We get the classic boy whose mother died and now did not want to live with his father.. but now everyone is dead and he must go look for the truth.. while encountering a girl. Who tries to be way tougher than she is.. Luckily it isn’t the Late 2010’s “I can do everything” myself kinda woman. No she acts like this .. but it is shown to be an act to be tougher then she is.. it gives her a sense of frailty and makes her different from most of her peers who are actually that sassy .. bratty ..I can do this by myself type. No, she is actually the footwipe of her boss, not taken seriously in her career and dealing with actual problems instead of being strong enough to rise above them. Making her feel more real. She has some Misty vibes so giving her a psyduck is a bit unfortunate and feels as if this is Misty.. but if we look closer we can see she is different enough! We just need to really look.
Other than that.. There are a few instances of weirdly written dialogue that are not akin to normal speech but are needed to further the plot in a certain way and create barriers. For example at one time Tim gets his hand on a part of dialogue.. which seems a clear indication of some dark motives, however later in the movie we see this message has been pulled out of context.. . this trope can work.. but with the reveal that is made later on.. it seems strange that the dialogue flowed like that in the first place. It is just a very awkwardly worded conversation that has been designed to sound confusing if you only hear a specific part of it. It is here that we realise this is a kid movie and then the writer did not want to bother making it more compelling and sensical. There are a few moments like these. where “it’s good enough for children” It’s a shame because so much of this movie seems to be made for all and new fans alike. I know that little kids will not notice this.. but most times kids movies are just as much watched by adults as Mommy and Daddy have to come along… or any combination of the two and not forgetting a non binary parent.. regardless of who sees it with their kid.. there usually is someone.. so that excuse.. it’s just a kids movie.. I find a bad one.
In the end we got a delight of a movie that I had very gleeful feelings watching, both times.Yet it is also a movie whose faults are very apparent from the get go. The predictable plot, the sloppy dialogue and the low stakes make me realise there is more potential in this type of story than we got out of it right now. This is good for everyone… adequate for the non pokemon fan and a blast for the actual pokémon fan. It does get better the more you know about pokémon and the more things you can spot in the background. Having seen it two times now though I doubt I will watch it again any time soon.. at best just to stare at the backgrounds of the more crowded scenes. I would like to compare it to a level 19 Tyrogue. It’s cute.. can kick your ass and we know it has a whole lot of potential. It is not fully clear where this could go.. but it just needed that little push to be better! Now it still great but it will not endure indefinitely. It still is one of the best video game movies made!
Hello Island Guests! I have done it! I have made my way through all the BloodRayne movies! The third movie was a surprising experience! Not only are the rules of vampirism redefined in the same franchise once again …and even in the movie.. but this movie actually dare I say it offers a somewhat okay story. Could it be there is hope for Mister Boll?!
I am not even sure that’ the main actress on the cover let alone that she wore an outfit she actually wears
Third Time’s the Charm
Mister Boll, while on average a horrible movie maker and possibly a worse person, actually managed to craft something that is eligible for the title movie this time. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that the writing this time mostly comes from Michael..who is mostly known for doing stuff for Uwe Boll movies! The BloodRayne movies that came before were just a few action scenes linked together, with some softcore porn, convenient exposition and horrible camera transitions. I am glad to inform you that this time we have an actual story that moves from A to B and the scenes in between only have two of the three usual filler bits. The movie actually uses Rayne’s unique nature to give us a new type of antagonist that feels like we actually scale things up for a sequel and the plans of the bad guys as a result more or less make sense! Whoop Whoop! That is how you do it Mister Boll.
I can believe some blood fell in his mouth! Way to go Mister Boll!
Rayne works with the Bolsheviks in this movie, not that you would know as they aren’t even named that except for an insult once. Never is the location disclosed either. It’s “somewhere in europe” but given that there seem to be concentration camps in the neighbourhood so I guess it is set in Poland?! Rayne rescues some jews from the train but in doing so she accidentally infects an SS officer with her blood. She feeds on him as well. This results in him becoming a Vampire and not a Dhampir that can walk in the sunlight. His Lieutenant and a crazy scientist investigate and decide. They discover Rayne’s blood is a source of power and want to obtain more of it so they can turn Hitler immortal! However the vampirified commandant spirals more and more out of control himself. Wow that’s like TWO things happening at once! Good Job Mister Boll!
Vampire Hitler sounds about as entertaining as Sharknado!
The commandant has no name by the way.. if you read the box art he is named Ekart Brand but he is never named in the movie itself, nor does he have a name on the credits. Same goes for the evil doctor and the lieutenant. This movie .. got adapted into Uwe Boll’s Horror Comedy.. Blubberella.. which is basically the exact same story but Dhampir is now half vampire, and the main character is fat. Every other person except for some actual prostitutes Boll hired for BloodRayne are cast in the same roll! Only in Blubberalla Hitler has been recast. Uwe Boll wanted to play him himself. So.. oddly enough if you want to see a more offensive version of this movie with characters named Slutlana.. you have an option here! Also it’s weird that Uwe Boll Plagiarized himself… BloodRayne 3 is the better version of the two though… so hey.. when you watched the best version of this story if you watch this one as well! That is smart mister Boll.. Also that’s kind of disgusting that you rehash your own plot for a fat joke!
At least the characters in THIS movie were shot nicely!
When it’s Rayne it’s poor!
While the movie is competently written , I did find this the most poorly acted one out of the lot. Rayne and the Doctor who have the most screen time are HORRIBLE actors in this movie. Nathassia Malte does such a poor job in this movie, her lines are very wooden and her acting is very apathetic. There is no emotion at all. Maybe a bit in her sex scenes but when she is supposed to be concerned… well .. let’s just say I was happy there was an actual story to follow! The acting Rayne does isn’t bad in the Tommy Wisseau way. Where Johnny feels like an Alien’s interpretation of a human Rayne here feels like an actor that isn’t really trying. The “this is for a paycheck” acting. Which extends to most of the main cast. The best acting comes from characters like “prostitute” or Magda. The first may or may not be an actual prostitute as Uwe Boll has more than once done this, and the second is this blond decoder lady. Who allegedly decrypted the decoder. The latter has to mostly play acting upon acting and she can get away with some cheesiness. The first gets turned into a vampire (as does Magda later on) and both go very hammy in all their acting.. but it seems fun! Good job on casting them mister Boll! Boo for Nathassia though. I have to say .. she sucks!
Whoops! Looks like I made two enemies in the Boll Universe now!
Where Natassia Malte is the queen of coasting, Doctor played by Clint Howard is the king of “that’s not how you say that”. His delivery seems off! Not in the funny way either. Part of it is because of how the doctor is written. He is one of those “cartoon” mad scientists. However those are on screen way less than one in a movie. That level of energy is not something you can keep up for 75 minutes (as that’s the length of this movie give or take minus credits). There is a difference between a cartoon and a real character. Clint Howard doesn’t commit to one and he switches between cartoony energy and more grounded character and that makes him stick out like a sore thumb. It’s not like he is god-awful.. or well maybe he is but I’ve seen worse. I feel more like he is a capable man but the director should have said.. “let’s try that with one more take, it’s very close but maybe a bit less/more cartoony here”. As a result this movie at times gave me Ed Wood vibes. Where Ed did not have money for reshoots I guess Uwe did not have the talent for reshoots! However I do really love Ed Wood movies so making me feel that way is not that bad! At least I had a pleasant experience. Much better than BloodRayne 2! Much better than BloodRayne 1 and much better than Postal. If we establish Uwe Boll movies as a genre .. it might actually be good within those confines.
You can just hear the fake German accent from the screenshot…..you’ll probably imagine it better than in actuality though.
Deja Vu
This movie unfortunately has some trouble escaping some of the mistakes the earlier BloodRayne movies made. The biggest one is the fact that Vampire lore is very weirdly established. Rayne is a Dhampir born of human and vampire, however her blood seems to turn people into vampires. However her blood allows vampires to walk in the sun. So while Rayne is a half vampire.. her blood makes full vampires, people she creates by feeding them her blood turns them into day walkers.. but if those day walkers create a vampire.. not all of them are daywalkers. Some inherit Commandant’s strengths but to varying degrees. Some go insanely evil others retain their dominant personality. Some get taken down by gunfire others need to be staked. It once again feels like vampirism is a bit of an afterthought.. which is weird because it is a big part of the story. Silver from the last movie doesn’t work anymore and thank Arceus that bullets that were next to cloves of garlic don’t work any longer.
Of course all vampire women become super slutty! Because It’s an Uwe Boll Movie
The weird cuts in scenes also appear again. Nothing as bad as the second movie but a few scenes are really cut short, I could count two or three where it really feels like they cut a scene directly after a sentence which felt a bit jarring. There are also a few fade to black cuts when Uwe Boll was really clueless on where to go. Again making it feel more like a hobby flick than made by a professional. The camera quality is a lot better. Having the ability to make a lot of daytime shots really helped with the image quality. We get no shaky camera shots and it feels fairly obvious this movie had a larger budget than the previous one. I don’t feel like a porn cue is about to chime in as soon as a female character wanders onto the screen… which is funny because this movie dials depicting women as whores up quite a bit.
I wonder how many brothels have velvet bathrobes for female guests!
Every woman in this movie is a prostitute or acts like one! This leads to the most hillarious and inappropriate sexscene ever. Rayne earlier in the movie had sex with a female prostitute indicating she might be into women.. but she gets captured and drained of almost all her blood. When she wakes up she is on a prisoner transport .. towards the Fuhrer.. her love interest got beaten mercilessly and woke up just a little before that… as soon as they see each other.. while being captives.. they just start going at it like rabbits. It’s so Uwe Boll to do this and it’s horrible but at the same time.. it would not be Uwe Boll without it! Thank you mister Boll for staying true to yourself.
And I thought not taking of your socks was a dealbreaker!
For a movie made by a man with no talent we get an entertaining trainwreck. The blood effects that make no sense from the first movie are back! Most of the times people just yell ugh.. and fall down! No bullet wounds, no mar on their shirt, just a soft ugh.. as if they were a video game character. It’s weird but oddly it feels mostly like the video games. The cheesy deaths, the setting actually matching the game. BloodRayne the game has a level of campiness that I think this movie does manage to capture. It doesn’t work in a movie.. at all but it feels like a good video game cutscene… well good is a big word..it’s not on the level of command and conquer not this is those in game video game cutscenes we saw in the early to mid 2000’s . Yes this movie is from the 10’s so it’s many years to late ..but it reminded me of the games. Even the soundtrack feels like a video game one. I am not sure it works for a movie.. but I am not sure we should hold Uwe Boll to that standard. He can’t make movies but with 75 minutes in length, this barely qualifies as such.Maybe I have such low standards by watching these but I actually found entertainment here.. but I never really viewed it as a component product. I wasn’t expecting it.. I did not get it .. like every other Uwe Boll product.. but unlike other Uwe Boll products.. I had fun.. great job mister Boll!
Mister Boll also shows us how German Bratwurst is made!
Uwe Boll Sucks!
This movie is better than the movie with the same characters and same characters Blobberella. That is exactly the same movie with the difference of .. what if the main character is fat and we add some stupid jokes like Slutlana into to mix.So already this movie is automatically not the worst! While I had fun with this movie is it worth a watch?! That is difficult. As a vampire movie I’d say it is a definite no! Vampirism is so inconsistent yet again. Some vampires still die by bullets, Rayne’s Damphir nature barely comes into play other than her blood creating a vampire that can daywalk. As a BloodRayne video game Adaptation I’d say it is not worth your time either.It has the time period right.. but all the other elements that were in the last movies like the hunter organisation, the story about her father which was actually concluded in this time period in the games.. it has been told before. Brimstone has no presence here..and besides Rayne using her swords like twice.. this is just a vampire movie set in World War 2 rather than a BloodRayne movie. She still complains about her mother being raped though .. it is mentioned 5 times in the movie even though it has to do nothing with the plot and happened over 100 years ago.
This movie still raised the bar for Mister Boll still!
No this movie has no viewing merit based on any of it’s tags. It’s not good at horror, even though the torture scene is kinda cool, it’s action is choppy and humorously inconsistent and to complete the series.. this does nothing. Yet for people like me who actively watch bad movies this one has some merit! This is Uwe Boll producing a movie that is watchable. If I had to create an analogy Uwe Boll is like the LJN (a video game company notorious for only releasing bad titles) of movies… he releases a lot of utter shit..but sometimes something is remotely playable. No we are not talking LJN’s Maximum Carnage here.. that game is too good! No this is NES Wolverine, a pretty shitty title that still is a huge step up from Spiderman or The Uncanny X-Men. So if you are the type or person that would play Uncanny X-Men on NES because it’s not the worst the studio has to offer and you want to see them sorta get it right.. this is your movie. It’s as if your kid normally gets F’s in art class and now gets a D+ so you frame it as an achievement for your kid… If you just want a decent movie stay away.. if you want to see a piece of unlikely movie history… it’s watchable. I still stand by that Uwe Boll can’t make a movie.. but now I know he can at least make something that looks like one!
With that we conclude the BloodRayne Triology! Did you see the trilogy?! What is your “favourite” Uwe Boll movie? Let me know in the comments! Now it is time to leave september behind and move into Oktober and I got something special for you guys planned…hey whats that translucent figure floating in front of me?! Oh no! It’s the spirit of Uwe Boll’s Vengeance! You can help me rent an exorcist by supporting my Kofi! It would be much appreciated!
Hello Island Guests! Today we look at another video game movie, like has become a bit of a habit. Yet after I wanted something that I remembered kind of liking. So for once I rewatched a video game movie I had fond-ish memories of? How do these feelings hold up?! Well read all about it.
The Elephant in the Room
Before we start unfortunately this is something I must discuss as it has become this has become a point of debate. This movie starsJake Gyllenhaal and Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsly and Alfred Molina among others. This means it casts western actors in the role of what would be another ethnicity. Even though the Prince of Persia always had an ambiguous design in the matter. Because it does this I found it named the worst video game movie of all times a lot. White-washing however I see as a problem of Hollywood, not of this movie so I will not rate the movie on that gripe. Nor will I consider ethnicity as an aspect for casting (in this movie..a modern movie that was made with the current mindset of the world I hold to other standards)
This doesn’t make me a racist because I do not care who plays the role. Just because a character is from a fictional version of Persia doesn’t mean he has to be Persian for me. Just like Tony Stark doesn’t have to be “white” or Sherlock home doesn’t have to be male. I believe everyone can add something to a part and as long as you play something entertaining and as long as you do not stereotype a race you are not.. or heck even your own race. I do not care. We are humans and I see humans trying to act here. Just like how a kid born from two systematically racist parents isn’t automatically a waste of space neither is this movie bad for existing but having nasty minded person in casting.
I get that this hits closer for some others and I do support those people fighting for their cause. I am simply saying I am not a bad person for liking this movie just because I am not bothered by this as much. I would not be bothered by a person of my race being replaced by an arab/melanated/otherwise person either. I get the ratio is skewed and that should be fixed but I see everyone as a part of humanity not it’s sub groups.. if that way of thinking makes me a horrible person I will happily hold that title. I’ll cry… but I’ll stand by my own way. I will never completely get the injustice or experience what some of you might experience. I will not pretend to know and I will continue to see everyone as humans. And unlike most video game movies, competent humans were cast here!
The Pauper in the Palace
It’s a shame that we can’t see movies apart from other stuff anymore because this movie, while not amazing by any means, does show some great moments. Well great might be exaggerating but there are some very good ones. The movie is directed by Mike Newell and produced by the guys behind Pirates of the Carribean and Disney. Mike Newell also directed Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and did some work on Young Indiana Jones. That combination is basically exactly what you are getting. Indiana Jones, mixed with Pirates a bit of Harry Potter like magic with swashbuckling like Pirates of the Caribbean. In fact it feels like the latter so much it could almost be called Pirates of Persia. I am not kidding. From the cinematography, story cues even the way lines are delivered it feels like a Pirates movie in the desert. The main character is a charming scoundrel who lost his crew after being betrayed as all he has left is some magical macguffin. Mostly causing chain reactions with stuff falling by cutting ropes, swinging to other locations and doing the “free running” thing. Dastan isn’t as annoying as Jack Sparrow either.
Jake Gyllenhaal’s Dastan is indeed a Prince of Persia so if you have never seen this movie? How can you be a Scoundrel and a Prince?! Well Dastan was an orphan boy.. very much like Alladin. When a friend of his is about to lose his hands due to stealing Dastan risks his own safety to protect his friends. This is noticed by King Sharaman who picks up the young boy and decides to give him a life in the palace. After we skip ahead a few years Dastan has grown up as the youngest son of the King, his brother Tus is next in line for the throne as Garsiv is the country’s most prominent military man. When it seems a neighbouring country smuggles weapons to their enemies, Garsiv wishes to attack the city head on. Knowing it will be a bloodbath Dastan instead uses his band of thieves and beggars to sneak into the city while jumping and leaping across plenty of obstacles and dangerous pits. This leads to a chain of events where he obtains a mysterious magical dagger and when he gifts his father a poisoned cloak .. because Persian warriors gift their king something when they conquer a city, he realises he has been set up! He flees with Princess Tamina, who is after his dagger. Together they uncover a plot to release the sands of time upon this world and are forced to save the world from inevitable destruction.
Dastan as a character is probably the strongest element of this movie. While he isn’t always that believable he actually LOOKS like the prince in the video game trilogy that it is based on and he quite oftenly acts like it was well. Of course less static and epic than the video game prince.. and he jumps less but Dastan deals with issues his video game counterpart would have to deal with as well. While not feeling as a video game adventure this feels like a somewhat proper real life interpretation of that story and with that it already does something that 90% of video game movies doesn’t do .I got somewhat right vibes. The dagger is there, it does what it does, the prince does what he does, the setting is correct even the outfit Dastan wears sometimes seems like stuff the prince wore seems pretty accurate. His lines are funny in the cliché disney swashbuckling way. A bit of a love child between Alladin and Jack Sparrow.. but it works. Some of the weird gaming logic can be applied because of how cartoony it is and while it also makes it never that investing.. it at least feels like a video game movie and that is really ALL I ask. Finally!
The Princess of Hell
Princess Tamina however… oh boy.. where Dastan is everything that is right about this movie Tamina is everything that is wrong with this movie. She plays the exact same female as that ALL the females are in these Disney adventures. ALL of them. The one Keira Knightly Played, Blackbeard’s Daughter and I completely forgot about the fifth pirates movie but I am sure the figure was there as well. I hated everything about her. While Dastan was a stereo-type as well he furthers the plot. Tamina up until the last quarter exists to stall the plot. With the stupidest ways and ploys. She could have solved everything by being honest ..but no she has to be shallow and see him as a beast even though we know they end up together… but then .. bla bla bla.. she is so bland and so annoying I was like… Dude.. she’s such a pain.. and you have a dagger! Do us a favour and plant that in her neck or heart please.
Her super posh , I think british, accent I did find rather distracting. Now I have no problem with establishing the British accent as the dialect for that country.. but no.. it’s just her. I think.. She and one other character are the only people in her country who speak and they get like two lines or something and those are super generic. So much of her scenes did not make sense. She is written like one of those power women but Gemma doesn’t have that vibe.. nor the delivery. She really sounds like just the most annoying Tsundere woman you can imagine. Dastan’s abilities are more or less consistent, he is very gullible and naive but a strong fighter in enclosed spaces with amazing spacial awareness and jumping abilities.
Tamina however has abilities that phase in and out of existence. From knowledge of ancient passages lost to man, to very fluctuating degrees of swordman ship. It almost feels like she is an afterthought. Which is kind of funny because that is exactly how the female character in any prince of persia game feels like… this one is just a LOT more annoying. Think how Leia treated Han on Echo Base (Hoth) but then CONSTANTLY that same stuff. Ugh!
While Persia has a fairly interesting story of regicide and finding the betrayer and their real intentions, her country Alamud or something.. is boring. It holds a cave that holds the sands of time..but that is really it. It is said to be a super peaceful prosperous place but it never does anything. It has an important cave and a palace with some weird trap that completely washes the foundations of a structure away without it affecting the structure. It’s a cool scene when it does and it feels pretty like Prince of Persia.. but if all you have is a cave and a palace.. and that palace makes no sense it will stand out. Again.. it’s cool but compared to what we know of Persia and it’s stories about trust and brotherhood it feels shallow. What more can you expect though with a princess that is that lame.
The Ostrich of the Camp
Dastan is the good 30% of the movie, Tamina is the bad 30% and the rest… well that is basically what you get when you copy Pirates of the Carribean and put it in a desert setting. Strangely it works better than it should. The secondary characters that get introduced.. the whimsical ones are flavourful and were characters I did care for! There was a charisma there. Even though everyone in this movie places a piece of work that their mothers might not be very proud of, Sheik and Seso, who are a shady dealer/gambler and his loyal knife thrower respectively, are solid characters. They are fun. They aren’t anything special as they are VERY CLICHED but they are fun! It feels like characters that would exist in the same world as the Lone Ranger and Pirates. As if it’s the same cinematic universe. Which gives the movie a bit more “scale”. It’s a silly thing to like since they aren’t connected at all but I really like the style that comes with that in combination with a video game. It allows for a further going suspense of disbelief.
However it also comes with a HUGE flaw…. It looks a lot like pirates. Dastan also talks a lot like Alladin .. and this movie doesn’t hold a candle to either. At least the good Pirate Movies. (again not counting the actors personal lives or goals here) . I’d say it’s about as good as the fifth Pirates movie. It’s not atrocious and well .. that is already something when it comes to video game movies it just isn;t memorable either. I remembered very big lines of this movie but I forgot the Ostrich racing scene, I even kind of forgot the whole character of Sheik.. while he is entertaining.. he isn’t memorable as he is just another character of that universe. The scenes are entertaining but they aren’t memorable.. Did I see that in the Lone Ranger? Did I see it in Pirates? The Good ones? The Bad ones? Or did I see it in that other movie they made.. the one with the PMS-Princess?! In fact it is so similar in style at times that one scene I actually thought was in a Pirates movie and unfortunately one of the lesser ones.
The Aladdin comparisons don’t help either, part of it is the setting but a princess in danger at the final scene at an hourglass, a hero who can swing a sword and is a beggar that turned into a prince that gets a mystical item of world changing properties. A massive spoiler will follow so be warned for that. I mean it’s pretty much spelled out from the get-go but if you want to be surprised skip this paragraph! Really! This is your final line to change your mind. The Brother and advisor/grand vizier of the king is the traitor who has all sorts of evil schemes. Yet the story isn’t told as clean as in Aladdin.. you can watch this movie just fine.. but you could also watch Curse of the Black Pearl and the animated Aladdin and have a much better viewing experience. So.. yeah.. issue here! It made me miss better stuff. It isn’t bad.. but it’s like someone playing Sonic 1 while you could also play Super Mario World or Sonic 2. It’s fine but there is better stuff out there. Still it has their charm ..partially.. so I am really stuck on where to go with that one! You can decide if this is something you find positive.. or negative.
The Prince of Agrabah
If you want a good life action adaptation of the Aladdin animated movie watch this one, then play the soundtrack afterwards. The movie has a nice sense of adventure, fun sets and while the sets are cliché, A Bazar, A desert, a bandit camp, a palace, a trap filled ruin , an oasis city and a mystical cave they are what you would expect from a setting like this. The almost supernatural Hasansin Killer’s are all over the top but entertaining and they are most of the time taken down in satisfying ways and offer a nice challenge. It feels cliché.. even though it’s not really..but it also feels right. It’s one of those movies that gives you everything you expect and nothing more. Maybe a good chuckle here and there.. but with the producers from Pirates and that same tone so much present that also is kind of a given. It all depends on if you can stomach Tamina for the full length of the movie which is about two hours. The soundtrack like the movie is fitting but forgettable. I would not know if I thought the music was actually good. I know I never minded it. Then again the games also never had a memorable score.
We end up with an odd video game movie, that also feels like an Indiana Jones flick.. that also feels A LOT like Pirates of the Carribean but catered to a slightly younger audience.It’s a nice spectacle that has a few very fake shots but also a lot of clever and captivating shots that keep you entertained throughout. Imagine this was an amazing movie then I would have felt like one of those sultans that is laying on some colourful cushion while being fanned by a palm leaf and being fed grapes by a pretty woman. However instead I am lying on a beanbag chair in front of an electric fan. I have one of those Happy Meal fruit packets instead of the woman feeding me grapes as well. The experience is kind of there.. it hits almost all the right notes but the experience is a lot less epic than the real deal. If this experience is for you really depends. For me it’s a bit of a mixed bag! In that analogy I just described there is that one she-cow in the room! “Pinkie.. .are you playing Sultan again! Stop it you Baka! It’s not like I like you or anything” .. and she repeats this as if she is the boss battle with voice lines in a platformer game!.. While I could enjoy this movie, the blatant ripoffs of other movies really can take you out of it’s flow! It’s okay! I got my vitamins and my coolness! I feel refreshed! I can take on another shitty video game movie next week! Thanks Prince of Persia that is all you need.
A little more direction of it’s own could have pushed this movie into something great. It has some cool ideas and does some fun things with the Prince of Persia IP that makes makes me want to give it the grade of Fine-Apple. Some great action scenes, a Prince that looks like the video game one.. and even kind of acts like it. An adequate story! Unfortunately the glue that holds it together is something I really hate about Disney products, that unoriginality. On my first viewing I would have given it a Fine Apple..now that I’ve rewatched it I will have to drop it one grade! It’s still perfectly watchable.. but it’s not fine.. it’s just okay. Which still is a pretty big deal for a video game movie!
The manager of Paradise is relocating her office soon! Thus it would be extra appreciated if you could help us out by supporting Pinkie’s Kofi! Like always a comment is also very much appreciated!
Dear Island Guests , while reviewing all video game movies I have to deal with this man a lot. Uwe Boll , he is european like me! He seems to like video games like me and he leaves quite a few errors in his content much like me. We both aren’t exactly the best fiction writers out there and I acknowledge writing a good story is hard.. but when you point a camera to that flawed writing.. it will stand out much more! So mister Boll. I shall review the second BloodRayne movie as my suggestions to you! As one hobby writer to another.. well you might be professional in name….but well like with your video game adaptations.. it is just the name that you have in common with the pro’s.
Please! Give us a plot
Dear mister Boll, I commend you for your bravery for your choice in setting the second BloodRayne movie in the Wild West. For the second time in a row that is a time setting that has little to nothing to do with the actual games. I am glad you did not forget she could cross water and walk into sunlight now so at least it feels like a sequel but why set both movies in the wrong time period?Rayne adventures mostly in the early 1900’s, with the majority being set in world war II. I will assume that you could get some Wild West outfits on a budget.. because they sure as heck look like it! You could not even dress up Rayne with cold weather gear in the snow! Instead she wears a crop top in the cold with a duster coat making sure to show some belly button. That is hot!…at least to some I will admit! Yet why make her upset when people address her like a harlot.. you made her look like one!
I commend you for your bravery to only introduce the main character to us after twenty minutes, and even then she is still not involved in the plot still. Now cleverly you basically omit a plot from the movie up until about the midway point. For the opening twenty minutes we see random stuff unfold, like a Vampire grabbing some kids.. and that same vampire taking over a town. Yet we are not told what he does there. Rayne just happens to be friends with the people whose children you took.. out in the middle of nowhere.. but why did you take children out there?! We later find out you wanted the town! So why get those specific kids? There is no connection, it happens just so that Rayne can get involved. Since it is snowing in the area the kids are stolen from and muddy and dirt filled in the town.. I can assume that these areas are a fair bit apart. Given how much snow there is! It doesn’t seem like very good and rather convenient writing mister Boll.
Also why does the plan of the evil vampire guy named Billy the Kid have to be so lame?! The bad guy wants to spread vampirism across the land using the railroads, so he can be the boss of them all. You go to lengths to tell us he is a old vampire and in a short time he has made 30 vampires in this town. If he is so old.. why does he not travel around and make vampires all across america. He is immortal.. he can take his time. Sure he can spread it faster.. but he has not been spreading vampirism before? Because he waits for a railway station in a sleepy town to be fixed? He could just kidnap children and travel across the west creating an army?! I probably lack your insight but to me his goal seems super achievable.. if he actually had his vampires spread around the states. Since he is so old, clearly he came from elsewhere himself. When using a mc-guffin it might not hurt to think on how else a character can achieve their goals.. like taking over a town that actually has a Railroad already?! Or making the children vampires and let people find them.. and spread vampirism to them.. or using your immortality to build that army over the years. I just gave your villain a hand full of backup plans and I wasn’t even really thinking about it either! So I don’t think you really told us a story here! Well you did but it makes no sense other than within the confines of a script! If the villian is this stupid.. he was never a threat anyway.
Please use your setting!
Dear mister Boll, I love a good western..from time to time. I think it is brave to spread Rayne’s journey out across a wider variety of time pieces I really do! You do not have to take textures and game size into account so you can move from an medieval setting to a wild west one to a world word II setting without filling up disk space with 1000’s of different textures and weapons and playstyles. I like that now guns are a thing..but if you tell Rayne’s tale through time.. you gotta use the time as well. It is super clever to make Billy the Kid a vampire! It allows for some interesting ideas.. but Billy the Kid was named the Kid because he was so young! Why did you cast a middle aged man to play him? And why did you make him look like a cartoon character rather than a real person. And what is with that wig the guy wears. The hair looks so gross. I do like the idea of saying that Billy never was killed when he did because he was a vampire…but instead of making him a revolver hero.. you made him bad with guns, which is stated.. way too old and he isn’t a bandit at all he is a megalomaniac mayor like person.This baffles me? If you want him to be Billy the Kid why make him nothing like it?!
Then there is the dialogue. People do not really talk like it is a wild west setting. The first big line Rayne has is telling some stranger who wants to kill Billy the Kid that his fly is open. That does not seem like an insult befitting the time period. Partially because women would not talk like that in those days neither would men nor would they care because they are out in the wilds..secondly the idea of the fly that can be open was only really popularised in the 1940’s…the period BloodRayne is supposed to be set in! Back then they mostly have flappy things or buttons! This is only but an example of dialogue not being written in the time period. It happens quite a lot. You end your movie with the quote “Life is like a Penis.. if it is hard you get screwed and when it’s soft you can’t beat it’ that is a recent quote that was not around in that time. The way most people talk feels modern, watch any western to notice the difference please.
You might also want to think of how a western setting contributes to vampire hunting. For a bit you do! Vampires can not be killed by anything but silver bullets with garlic oil! Which is clever…well maybe not clever but after seeing four of your movies I am not expecting much anymore! However dear mister Boll. If you put silver bullets in a box with some unpeeled fully intact pieces of garlic.. not even cloves but the whole thing. Those bullets are not going to become covered in garlic oil. If suddenly the citizens can pick up their guns and kill the vampires as well. Where did they get silver bullets? These people can’t leave and trade is very low since there is no railroad yet, how did they suddenly get resources. Most of all why.. oh why.. would have the sleepiest and most boring town in the west…as established by yourself.. gatling gun in a random barn?! The vampires could have gotten it somewhere I guess…but if they were in a place where they can steal gatling guns..why not make your army there! Clearly that would have better arms?! If you want to make it a wild west setting with guns.. don’t use such a sleepy town.. if you want the civilians to be meek and compliant don’t give them the most powerful weapons of the time period! These two do not match. You are not creating a believable world here!
Please hire a proper crew!
Dear mister Boll, one of my best friends is a cameraman and once I helped him out a bit so I know how heavy camera’s can be! But when you make the heroes of the movie do a power walk.. the camera man is not supposed to shake the camera so hard that I get nauseous from looking at the scene. Yes this actually happened! The most badass scene is meant to look professional not as if someone is filming it on a seesaw. This is not the only time the camera work sucks. A hand-held camera has a place but when the terrain is rougher and your camera man can not handle it.. perhaps you should not choose to do shots like that. Using a dolly or two fixed cameras instead of course having more equipment means there is less money to embezzle so I understand your choices here I am just telling you it shows. I am not even being nitpicky here! Never EVER have I said something bad about the cameraman other than.. that shot could have been framed better..but your crew is more fundamentally flawed.
This becomes very clear when we look at your editors. Shots linger way to long, fight scenes are cut together way to fast.. and most important scene transitions aren’t scene transitions. In a good movie we see a shot of a sunrise over a tree, to indicate it became day again then that same tree is used to show a character riding inside the frame. Or we see blood pour out of a wound that transitions into the villian pouring win into his glass and smiling. There are two transitions in this movie. Other than that it’s just a fade to black followed by a fade in, it makes this movie feel super cheap mister Boll. It is like I am watching an amateur film and even those use transitions better. The shot in which you introduce Rayne we see her galloping on a horse.. but there is a piece of straw for the camera blocking like half the shot! Who told you that was a good idea?! That’s not artistic it feels like something got in the way of your shot.. and that is not the only time! That should have been taken out on the cutting room floor! And what is up with the obsession the browned out teeth. There are so many mouth shots in this movie. I counted like 25 seperate ones at the very least. Not always fangs either.. sometimes it’s just brown teeth or Rayne playing with a toothpick. This is a vampire action movie yet about 3 minutes of the movie are just close up of mouths! Eeew!
When I saw this movie start I was like , oh no… this looks like a cheap porn movie. At least as far as I have seen those. It has a slightly better camera than Birdemic Shock and Terror but not by that much! It is somewhere halfway between that and a 90’s action movie. Raynes swords look fake and impractical as heck, revolvers look okay.. I think?! I am not a gun expert but they do look samesie a lot! I would think there would be more diversity. Still everyone can use the same bullets here regardless if they have a rifle, a revolver or whatever. The gatteling gun is different though. It completely blows up the chest of one guy.. while lightly grazing a guy that stood closer’s shoulder. I will be honest I do not know what happend in that scene. I saw a character die. .and then he was alive again..it might be a different character that wears the same coat and hat with a similar style beard but because you can not tell the difference between vampires and the hunters.. I had no idea what was going on. Sometimes images are slowed down for no reason sometimes they are sped up and it all looks so weird.
The worst part of the crew however are the actors though. The cast is basically everyone who played in Postal the movie. They constantly phase in and out accents that can range between texan and a louisiana accent and basically any state in america that is ever ridiculed for their hillbilly accent. At one time Rayne has southern pronunciation, shifting back to current day american again while in reality she should have a british accent. The preacher (and yes that is the characters name as he is never named in the movie) is not understandable at times and then suddenly loses his accent entirely just to replace it with another one by the end of the movie! Billy the Kid is SO overacted I felt like I was watching an amateur stage play! Mister Boll I know no one wants to return to working with you once they done it.. but just because a single cast was as talentless as you are does not mean you should use them again. Everyone acts insane.. like they think they are soap opera actors or something.. it doesn’t work! Again normally I still see the character.. and I notice an actor has trouble with a line or two.. but here.. I see an amateur giving a drama club performance.. Honestly some of them are approaching the level of Wiseau. Most of them have acting skills equal to the level of the Mother in law with breast cancer in the Room. Bottom of the barrel acting.
Please roleplay your characters just a bit
I can go on.. but I am running out of space here! Dear mister Boll for once please try to roleplay some of your characters so you can see how wrong the situation is and how much it doesn’t work. My biggest example is the gatling gun scene.Our heroes chase some vampires in a barn and 20 of them point their guns at them. Instead of shooting them then and there.. as they clearly plan to kill them they tell them to throw away their weapons. This is stupid idea number 1 mister Boll you already established these vampires will kill those standing in their way so there is no need to force them to surrender. Then the heroes refuse and a rip of Ennio Morricone’s theme begins playing rather dramatically ..this is the only western flavoured piece of music by the way and it is everywhere. The heroes are ONE STEP from stepping underneath the second floor of the barn..but instead light a cigarette, and then fire at random vampires in the attic allowing the gatling gun guy to gun them down. If they took one step .. NONE of the vampires except for maybe one or two guys with a pistol could hit them.. but they stay out in the open and shoot at everyone.. except for the greatest threat.. the guy with a f’ing gatling gun! No character made a normal decision in that entire scene.
The conclusion is even worse. Billy the kid has used a millstone to make a contraption that will hang all the children when Rayne enters his room. Why does he not just shoot. her the moment she walks through a door.. but no .. he tries to convince her to be evil with him.. she enters the door and grabs the rope and saves all but one of the children who gets really visibly hanged. Instead of attacking the defenceless Rayne they start talking even after she refuses to join him he keeps talking to her.. and when all her allies have been killed…she suddenly realises she can launch herself using the stone and cut all the ropes of the kids before they choke. She saves everyone.. and even then Billy the Kid allows her to get up and fight him.. not threatening the kids. In the first movie mister Boll people gave you critique for the plethora of dialogue in the final encounter so just to spite them you added more?! At one point Billy manages to pull out his guns on Rayne during the fight but he doesn’t shoot them!
He has to load them still..if he does have to cock the gun why doesn’t Rayne attack him.. if he had them cocked and ready to fire why would he not fire! No one acts like a person in this movie.. they are all forced to do stuff by the plot! Nothing.. and I mean NOTHING makes sense. The allies they recruit are swindlers and bandits and no one knows of vampires.. but when a weird girl ask them to join her in death to fight vampires they say sure! It goes against everything established. In the end you make the coward have a change of heart but then when he gets a shot to save the day he chickens out.. and the people make him a sheriff for it?! Dear god mister Boll .. did you ever stop to think about these things for longer than a single second?!
I think that NEVER have I have seen a movie where characters make this little sense. At least Johnny from the room had a reason to shoot himself. At least in Birdemic the characters fought for survival. Ed Wood movies made more sense than this, he could not afford reshoots so he had to make due with one take.. but even in Plan 9 from Outer Space there was a motivation… here there is nothing. Story happens for no reason, scenes happen for no reason and characters lack any sense of being able to think logically. Why certain shots are chosen makes no sense.. mister Boll this movie feels like you just had three cool shots in your head..failed to make them come true and settled for a movie student version of it..then strung those three scenes together with the cheapest attempt of plot possible! Where the last movie was kinda fun to watch in it’s badness. this one doesn’t make ENOUGH SENSE for that.. This is “movie” is as much of a movie as a four year old kid’s robot he made during arts and crafts is a robot… and that comparison is MUCH closer than anyone might realise.. dear mister Boll.. upon review I have to conclude this is not a movie.. this is …
There is one more BloodRayne movie left! Third Reich! It is the only one that is set in the proper time period of the movie so just by existing it is already more faithful than the other two movies… so I got a good feeling about that one. Well good might be a big word! It has the same main actress after all! If you want to help me get some bravery for what is to come.. or if you like me to make a video game movie of my own please consider supporting my Kofi Page! I can’t do much worse so just a kofi’s should help me make a better thing than this!
Hello again my dear island guest! While you may very vividly remember the day my content graced your life for the first time… for me it was wednesday. That’s right I have crowned myself General of my own island so I can wear capes and stuff! I am still attempting to review all Video game movies ever made.. and what made me experience this change is none other than the amazing Street Fighter 1994!
Actually it’s based on Super Street Fighter 2 The New Challengers..but also not much!
Double Lariat to the Lore!
Street Fighter (1994) is a movie written and directed by Steven E Souza. It stars Raul Julia, Jean Claude van Damme, Ming-Na and Kylie Minogue as it’s most well known actors. It holds a score of 40% on Rotten Tomatoes, a 10% critic approval rating and a 20% fan approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Which is waaaay too low! Considering that Postal gets a 60% approval on RT this is so much better. Don’t get me wrong.. it’s not good.. but we are talking video game movies here! This is easily top 10. In this movie Guile is sent to deal with Bison in a..let’s call it non canonical approach to this story we are treated to what almost feels more like an 80’s set action movie than a martial arts movie. It reminded me of a buddy cop movie more than anything with an all american hero! The only problem is.. this all American hero can not speak American all that well. In a strange mishmash of scenes we get a very interesting cheesy movie that is much more fun to watch than it has any right to be. Nothing really works together and in a way that is what makes it so amazing. While the legend of Chun-Li (which I will unfortunately review soon) takes it’s lore fairly loosely… this one.. feels like it has been written by just having a few words written on a paper sheet with a picture of a handful of characters.
Guile arrives in a place called Shadaloo which now is a country instead of an evil organisation run by Bison. Here Bison wants to build the great nation of Bisononia and it’s main capital, Bisonopolis. For this he has a bunch of evil plans which for now involves capturing the innocent people of Shadaloo and asking for a 20 billion dollar ransom. Poster boy of the Allied Nations Guile arrives there to stop him. When his best friend Charlie Nash… I mean Charlie/Carlos Blanka gets captured by Bison and slowly turned into a green skinned war machine, by the likes of Dr Dhalsim, the stakes are on. Meanwhile reporter Chun Li Zhang with her camera man. E Honda and her sound guy Balrog have a hidden vendetta against the tyrant as well. Which puts them right in the middle between the Allied Nations forces and Bison. Then there is Sagat, who is the mob boss of Shadaloo! After he gets scammed by con artists Ryu and Ken he ends up in jail with them along with his priced cage fighter Vega. Guile discovers who Ryu and Ken are and decides to enlist their con artists’ skills to win Sagats trust. Sagat will be an arms dealer to Bison leading into his hidden base location. Then they can all get their revenge and free the hostages including Charlie. Cammy and T.Hawk are also there! Oh and Deejay is the second in command for Bison!
So as you can see there are a few slight changes to the story! The only thing this has in common with Street Fighter is a few names, some looks here and there and an easter egg like a movie looking..sort of similar to something people use in games. There are no super powers though. Bison can wield the power of Electromagnetism trough having Electromagnets in his gear but other than that we just get punches or pocket knives. No Hadoken, no Sonic Boom. It feels more like Beverly Hills cop on steroids with the balance of comedy and action swapped. This movie walks a bit of a comedy to action balance from the 00’s marvel movies. With a character occasionally spouting a funny line. Mostly Zangief! Who in this movie is sooo dumb that he causes a few chuckles because he doesn’t fit in this universe at all. It reminded me of Brendan Frasiers Mummy movies a bit. The tone of the world is so disjointed it feels as if we got several directors and no one really knows how the Street Fighter characters work. For example Chun Li turns into a Ninja at one point and Bison uses aquatic mines by playing on a Street Fighter Arcade Control Stick! It’s not Street Fighter but it sure is fascinating!
Sure you can’t …act
The most glaring flaw in this movie is that nobody seems to be able to act. There is promise in a few of them but no one seems to play in the same movie. Ming-Na plays a very gloomy serious Chun-Li that is your average 2000’s broody super hero. E. Honda and Balrog and Ken and Ryu play almost buddy cop like pairs including the classic motivations of one being more righteous than the others. Cammy seems to just be there to look pretty and as a pairing for Guile.. but there is no romance there and in the end he might date Chun Li?! Guile is your standard 90’s action movie. With one-liners in the line of the greats. Stalone , Arnie, and of course JCvD himself. Zangief seems to come straight out of a slapstick comedy as if he is like a Scooby Doo character. Sagat and Vega meanwhile go a bit with the Jojo’s Bizarre adventure menacing style with a bit more 90’s cheese. Basically they are Bond-Villains. Dhalsim and Blanka go for the morally grey tormented style and play this movie a bit “Power Ranger” esque mixed with some classic Mary Shelly Frankenstein type acting. Then we have Raul Julia.. who plays Bison..who leans so heavily into overacting that he seems like a comic book character or maybe even anime. I can see this Bison having Tea Parties with Dio.
Bison steals this movie! He is by FAR my favourite character and it gives this movie so much flavour. He is not playing the Bison from Video games but rather his own thing. In fact M. Bison is not the real name of the Shadoloo commander anyway. In Japan M. Bison is known as Vega and Vega is known as Balrog. Balrog the boxer is there called M. Bison as a pun on M Tyson. Yet the western world thought that would give problems in the legal department so they swapped the names around. Why they did not just change the name of the boxer I do not know but something similar happens with M Bison in this movie. On paper Julia portrays all aspects of Bison’s behaviour, as the ruthless, megalomaniac insane ruler he is. However these words get swapped around. Where game Bison is mostly Ruthless, movie Bison is more of a madman. Then his ruthlessness takes second place but being very different in its depiction as game Bison was well. This Bison is a showman! Setting up a whole thing where Chun Li tells her story and then scoffing. “For you the day Bison graced your village, with an unforgettable event, for me it was tuesday! That is cruel indeed.. but other Bison would just snap your neck for looking at him funny! We got a character that looks the same, and has the same name.. but it’s a different beast all together.. A much more flavoursome and awesome beast than that in the games! I wish this Bison was cannon! He is much more intimidating. I truly see a madman on my screen!
Unfortunately the same can not be said about Jean Claude van Damme’s depiction of Guile. His acting is very bad and barely understandable. The movie does well to steer into comedy as it plays into many actors’ strengths. It fits the goofy tone of the movie. Cammy and Guile however do not really have comedic timing as actors. Minogue has a cute line in the end and little enough dialogue for it to not be too abrasive but when it comes to Jean.. he does not have the talent or at least the timing for comedy. As a result he doesn’t come off as strong. When Guile defies the Allied Nations and their call to pay Bison.. he gives this inspirational speech about being heroes.. but it somehow feels like it is also meant to be funny.. with that guy watching. Guile isn’t funny! When he threatens a group of Bison soldiers with a tiny knife, he gives his blade this look as if he did something great but he can’t really do it right. He has a few one liners but they happen too late! When the victim is already dead or during a loud explosion in the background. They aren’t even that memorable! So he can’t fully help it maybe! There might be direction involved here but he is by far the worst character in the movie! He really brings it down a few notches.. unfortunately he is the main character so he gets a lot of screentime. He makes the least amount of sense as a character as well.. Why would the army hype up a single soldier who fights along on the front?!
Putting the Haha in Hadoken
I really enjoy this movie, I watched it once I was really sick as a kid and I found it pretty horrible but ever since I started to appreciate the “so bad that it’s good” thing .. I love this movie. It isn’t THAT bad even it is just so camp and B-movie level that it is so good to watch. Physics in fights makes no sense. Someone flies straight back from a Roundhouse kick for example or a punch makes someone spin around so they have to resort to a move that sort of looks like that in the video game. It all seems so incredibly funny to me. For example Bison gassed his own bedroom, he has a panic room built in his weapons display to keep him safe.. but the windows of that quarter are open.. as in.. it’s one of those gridwork doors so all the air and thus the gas would flow out. Everyone blindry runs into that small little room as well. No one standing guard or going ahead to find an exit or whatever.. everything is so scripted by movie logic that it becomes a delightful guilty pleasure to watch.
Raul Julia, rest in peace, as Bison causes so much of that guilty pleasure. The way he goes crazy on those Street Fighter controls .. while we only see four mines explode is already super funny, as in he pressed the button 30 times but only four explosions happen. Yet the fact that we see a lot more mines than buttons make it so much funnier. There is no way this real and the suspense of disbelief is completely gone! Yet you see a man getting consumed by this part having fun and going absolutely nuts with it. I laughed when Dr Dhalsim got bald for no reason whatsoever but just so they can end with a bald indian and a fire ball.There is so much wrong with this movie but that is what makes it so amazing at the same time. Had we gotten the classical Bison this movie would have been utter trash but it’s not! Julia saves this movie by bending it’s tone almost single handedly to something that makes this work. You could be pissed that Ryu is a con artist.. but then this Bison is like.. “Look at me.. we are an exaggerated cartoon and your like.. I guess that is pretty funny, and this too.. oh and the fact that they mixed Charlie Nash and Blanka ha! Way to get Guile involved with lore but also with the actual Street Fighter roster.
Zangief had me chuckling out loud for the dumbest jokes. For example there is a scene where he sees something bad happening on the security screen and he says “quickly , change the channel” . It’s a classic joke but it felt so out of place and not in line with what happened before that I just laughed out loud. The chaotic tone for this movie is so great for that. That moment Chun Li turns into a ninja in a really lame set up.. where the camera causes the idea of stealth but a normal person would have had the perception! I had way too much fun for that. It does so many things wrong. E Honda gets tortured at one point and he acts like it doesn’t hurt but then it is revealed that actually it did.. by showing the rounds and they look so tiny and badlu framed that once again I laughed out loud. That happens a lot in this movie, the gun scene at Sagats hideout is another great one that had me snickering. Their stealth boat had me in stitches! So heck.. this movie sucks.. but in such a good way!
Solid Boom
Now I could easily mark it down and say the fighting sucks, guile sucks, there is no rhyme or reason to the logic of this world. There is no consistent tone, not all comedy lands and so much more. If I objectively would count the good things I might indeed end with a score like most people give it on Rotten Tomatoes, but in the end I was entertained. I had fun.. not in the way the movie was going but I had fun all the same. I can’t say I had that much fun with Bloodrayne.. I had fun writing about it.. and thinking of bad things to say.. but this movie just kept me entertained. I don’t care that things aren’t right because they are entertaining. We often make to much assumptions expecting something to be “like the video game” or “ should not contain plot holes” but if it is fun to watch who cares? I can see some actors having fun, I can see silliness and a chaos that is not in a lot of movies and because of that I qualify my viewing experience in the good half.
But where to put it?! It lacks the total lack of the rules that Mario did, it also lacks a good soundtrack and it lacks a captivating lead. It has an amazing antagonist.. but so was Dennis Hopper. Bison is better than king Koopa but not by that much! However where you to take King Koopa out of Mario I think you could still have a fun movie but if you take Raul Julia’s Bison away from this movie it would fall flat quite fast. Where I’d call Mario’s viewing experience very good, this one is still a bit below that so it’s time to pull out your Pina Colada again because this movie sure packs some kick! I had a good time with it and would watch it again.. so to me this movie is ranked:
Some of the action scenes in this movie were legitimately funny! I liked the E Honda versus Zangief Fight, Chun Li versus Bison had me laugh out loud and somehow I was happy everyone except for like three?! Characters survived. For some reason the only warrior that doesn’t appear in the movie at all is Fei Long! Instead we get Captain Sawada played by Kenya Sawada as Capcom tried to push him as their mascotte! Fabio was considered for the role of Vega! Have you ever seen this movie?! Did you recognise the characters? Let me know in the comments?!
Yay Island Guests it’s time for everyone’s favourite director again! Uwe Boll! Where Postal made me hate him as it was one of the worst movies I’ve EVER seen, I had high hopes that this one would at least be better. Then I found out that 2005’s Bloodrayne fairly commonly is seen as Uwe Boll’s WORST movie. Where Postal just proved Uwe Boll is a horrible person.. this one taught me that Uwe Boll is a horrible writer as well. The greatest mystery to me is not the Loch Ness monster, it is how Uwe Boll can get well known names in his movie… and there are quite a few of them .. in Bloodrayne.. As Michelle Rodrigeuez with her super fake british accent would say in this movie… it was bloody awful. This post will spoil the entire movie as we will need it to unearth it’s flaws.. but trust me.. it is not relevant to your enjoyment of this film.
Writing Rule Number 1: Every Story Needs A Setting
Lord of the Rings is set in Middle Earth in the third era or something. Star Wars is set a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. Rampage is set in modern day Chicago.. and Bloodrayne isn’t set anywhere. We start in an undefined kingdom in an undefined timepiece and we do not know if this is our world or some magical world. Only the THIRD movie in this series would reveal that it is set on earth at least with the subtitle Bloodrayne Thirdreich. The THIRD movie has a setting.. this one not so much! Now you may argue that it does , it’s probably the dark-ages as black powder from China is new and unknown and everyone talks with a British accent except for Michael Madsen and Matthew Davis, who both play vampire hunters.. with american accents.. .. before america was even born. But heck that is the least of the consistency errors in this movie! This movie doesn’t do world-building at all.
The movie opens with Michael Madsen and his crew riding in a town, they are looking for someone or something, the local barkeep might have some answers when Davis character Sebastian spots a tavern goer not having a reflection and stabs him, everyone takes this very calmly..so it seems we have a world where vampires are very common and hunters as well. That could be cool…the next scene we are introduced to Rayne, she is a captive at a circus where she is used as a freak show, where they make bank on showing the monstrosity known as vampires to the world…..uhm.. but did the last scene not show the world accepts them as common? Also why are vampires allergic to plain water… I would not mind but later they go trough lengths to get holy water..uh oh.. its going to be THAT type of movie?
A scene later Rayne is raped..cause Uwe Boll thinks women are equal to condoms just something to hang Woody Woodpecker in, but she escapes, in a weird mix between a flash forward that through cinematography reads as a dream or flashback. They add in some nausea inducing screen smears and we are in the next scene, the vamp hunters now are in the camp, Rayne went on a rampage and killed those who wronged her and bit her friend on accident..so without explaining to the circus troupe the hunters start beheading their dead and murdering those who have been bitten. Of course there is no reaction from the carnies whatsoever because to them vampires are common now! Jeesz Uwe cant even be consistent with this on the same group of characters! And I am only 10 minutes in. Then we see Rayne killing a vampire by just stabbing and slashing her?! So why stab that other guy in the heart with a stake?!…Oh.. this rule isn’t gonna be consistent right?! ..That’s right!
Writing Rule Number 2: Every story should happen for a reason
We get the backstory of Rayne told soon after, she is a Damphir a half human half Vampire that can wear crosses and feed on vampires. She seduces a female vampire, who from being into guys completely abandons her male prey to get killed by Rayne allowing herself to be bitten and drained in seconds. First of all.. if you had a sure thing.. why trade it in? Second for Rayne to seduce the woman and assume she is into women as well is quite a stretch whenever this movie is set and third, the woman is a vampire! Surely she’d be aiming at Rayne’s neck not expose hers for some cheap thrills? She was hunting why turn her into just a skank looking for some hot woman on woman action?! Because Uwe Boll doesn’t understand the difference between a woman and a sextoy thats why! Anyway.. the vampire is dead now from a two second bite..stupid but more movies do that. A Roma fortune teller shows up and sees this and tells Rayne to follow her and trough tarot her backstory is told. Rayne’s father Kagan played by Ben Kingsley raped her mother and later to kill his daughter from said rape. Since he is an evil vampire he wants to be immortal… or more immortal? For this he needs 3 items called the talisman and with it he can rule the world… also he nearly destroyed everyone who can resist him already and actually manages to dispose of every organisation oposing him during the movie BEFORE he gets any relics…so had he not done the whole plot thing.. he would have won anyway..so Why is he looking for these?
Rayne must find these things to stop him, why he hunts for these relics now and not when she was little? Who knows?!It would have made sense if he searched for the relics while his enemies were at full strength but now there is only a single cell left! Okay he didn’t know where they were. No one does, so the fortune teller obviously just tells Rayne the exact location of one With these artefacts Kagan may be able to rule the world and become immortal..which he already is..one of them just allows him to take a bath..another would allow him to wear a cross around his neck….. so these artifacts sounds REALLY underpowered., so if Rayne wants to save the world.. she has to find these artifacts before he does. Regardless Rayne tells the Roma lady “No I do not care about the world .. I just want revenge”. Then she goes out to find these artefacts.
The first one is guarded by a bunch of monks. Who immediately believe a woman of healthy colour, no damaged clothes and carrying two huge swords indeed lost her family on her road and is so sick and weak that she needs shelter. In a world where vampires are established to be super common(sometimes). Mind you these monks protect a relic from vampires! So without a doubt they invite this Vampire into their monastery and allow her to kill their molten faced guard.. who for no reason at all has a face like that.. He can wield a big giant fake hammer.. and again for no reason he swaps that out for a spiked club… Both are bludgeoning weapons and both are used in the exact same way.. the only reason the creature swaps is so Rayne could feasibly lift it to bash it’s face in. I am willing to believe these monks don’t turn away a plea for help..but come one Uwe! These monks protect the relic against vampires..and when a warrior woman without a scratch on her body shows up at night they just allow her to roam into their reliquary? Jeesz.. also why is there one monster monk?! It makes NO sense!
His necklace unlocks a secret passage because..of course it does.. and Rayne finds a room that is trapped by the Looney Tunes.. like seriously its that exaggerated. THink hexagonal tiles and across all lines sawblades are fired faster than your eye can track. I mean that literally I could not keep up with the trap visually.. so of course she leaps trough it seeing a pattern..to discover the relic is an eye. When she takes this eye.. which allegedly makes her more immortal.. she activates the final trap. Now before we move on from here let me explain how these relics work. There are A Rib, an Eye and A heart. One makes you immune to sunlight, one makes you immune to the holy stuff and one makes you immune to water. So I would assume the eye would make you immune to sunlight, cause blinding light etc.. the heart against holy stuff cause you know heart/love goodness god etc. And why a rib makes you immune to water would be a bit weird.. but a rib kinda looks like a boat?!
But no.. the eye makes her immune to water. The heart makes you immune to sun and the rib lets you resist holy stuff talk about random! Now let’s play a game! How well can Uwe Boll Write! I am gonna write a scenario Uwe Boll has set up.. and then you have to think like him.. for an awfull solution to the problem. Here we go : So a Damphir/Vampire just stole that item that can make them immune to the harmful water… Oh no! The vampire can take a bath now.. and travel across a lake apparently..cause they would normally not be able to do that either. What trap do you design to stop them after gaining Water Immunity?! Mind you.. you already fired 20 cartoon sawblades at them and it missed. … How would Uwe Boll write the NEXT trap. To stop an even stronger vampire! …………….. If you thought that stopping someone with water immunity through a water trap would be the way to further this story… you are correct! The room fills up with water..about ankle deep. But that is not all.. there is a trial after that.. a monk politely tells her off! Also fun little detail NONE of these monks wear the same cross around their neck… which just feels stupid. They are an ORDER..
So for some reason, Ben Kingsley Vampire who never knew his daughter was alive.. now knows she is alive and exactly where she is .. and has a guy from his castle follow her..which means riding out with a battalion of dark knights.. obviously they arrive at the EXACT time that Rayne finished the trial.. despite not having searched for her.. they just go to the right location.. fight some monks and if they do not want to tell where the eye is .. they kill them..including the last guy who could possibly know. This of course lets the bad guy realise it is Rayne who has the talisman so he captures her. Because..otherwise they are stuck and the plot won’t further. Obviously the Bad Guy actor knows Rayne has the eye! He has the script! They bring her to Meatloaf Vampire who can offer them shelter for the night but he wants to add her to his harem.. because 14 boobs are not enough. The henchmen guy doesn’t agree which sends Meatloaf in a very over acting rage. Then the vampire hunters.. two of them.. come in after having fought off dozens of vampires and the henchman guy..decides to flee…..later he would demonstrate he could take both of them at full strength fighting them simultaneously.
Meatloaf being a vampire of course chose the room with windows that have the sun shining in from 4 different directions and while Rayne perfectly rolls in a blanket four beams poof Meatloaf vampire away. Man.. the price of that house with every side facing the south (or west) must have been hella expensive. Also… dear Mister Boll… that is not how Sunlight works. It’s a beam.. You can never have four perfect beams of lights from all directions.. heck with one direction it is even flat out impossible whatsoever. Why am I even surprised by this though! Stuff doesn’t happen in this world because it makes sense in the context of a world. Things happen because Uwe Boll thinks it’s cool..or because he feels he needs to proof women are all floozies and addicted to male genitalia..or female ones.
Writing Rule Number 3: Give your characters relevant development.
So after that the hunters take in Rayne and train her as one of their own… Sebastian doesn’t trust her too much and she is very mean to them.. because she has suffered so much! She explains her backstory…which by the way she also told the monks so this is the third time we see that story in flashbacks and it is also depicted in art in the opening credits I think.. so this story .. He raped my mother and killed her.. is now VERY well known. She tells no one else could possibly feel what she feels. Sebastian tells her his parents both turned vampire and he saw hunters kill them right before his eyes.. as they saved him as his parents were about to kill him. I lost both my parents, he says!…This of course triggers the romance scene and Rayne and Sebastian begin to fuck like animals against a cage… because both of them had dead parents… here I thought the Martha from Batman versus Superman thing was kinda lame! Boll did it first and worse though.
After that they are in love , which is shown by the fact that they smile at each other cutely once or twice.. other than a few spars together with the worst looking swords you have ever seen in a movie.. and I am not kidding.. There are high school plays that have better looking swords and no I am not overreacting. I shown these pictures to some weapon buffs and some who barely saw a movie and both set this was the fakest stuff they had ever seen. Sebastian is tagged out by Katarin, who is the character played by Michelle Rodriguez and has a very weird british accent. She seems friendly to Rayne at first but then shows her narrow mind. Also her father is a vampire..that is her backstory. He wants to get back in touch with her as they care for each other…so clearly she totally isn’t going to betray the group and have a fight with Rayne right?! Nah..
Actually no.. set up for a destined fight! Hah! No time for that plots gotta happen! Katarin betray sthe group almost immediately after this scene and that sword fight they kinda hinted at happening never does . Katarin betrays the order and it gets slaughtered. Her reason.. she doesn’t believe in Vladimir anymore and doesn’t want him to make everyone rush into their death. So obviously she kills everyone! This happens Rayne Sebastian and Vladimir are fetching weapons because.. one of Raynes blades broke.. and they have to go to a few hoops to get two crates of weapons. Why is this a task that needs to be done by the leader of the order?! Also there are SOOOO many weapons in the order already. They just did this for two black powder grenades and Raynes akwards swords! Why did they go?! Well so that Katarin can betray them of course. It turns out she has the third talisman as well. it was always in the fort hidden underwater. How lucky Rayne got the water immunity earlier. Why she never told anyone this when she still trusted her leader.. who knows! It’s never explained. Oh also Ben Kingsley found the second talisman of screen somewhere. Each time he is shown on screen we are shown the exterior of his castle first with a lightning sound effect.. it’s basically the same as lord Zed is introduced in power rangers.. so Sorry I forgot.. I did not take it seriously enough. Katarin and Rayne wrestle in the water.. because… it’s an Uwe Boll Movie and women have to mud wrestle. Michelle Rodriguez’s character is finished off without any honour and in a very lame splashy way. As we move towards the finale of this movie.
Writing Rule Number 4: An Ending should feel earned and in line with the story!
Rayne of course now knows where her father lives.. while she was looking for him earlier.. because everyone instantly gains knowledge they did not have before as soon as the plot requires it. And no.. she did not learn this from Vladimir or Sebastian.. she seperated from them! Knowledge directly being gained from the script is the most consistent thing in this movie.. Now to stop Kagan she lets herself be captured and hands him an artefact..which in fact is an empty box like all movies. One that not one but 4 seperate people fail to check before it is time for some sort of ritual. Oh yeah this ritual since Rayne absorbed one relic…but secretly two.. it will allow Kagan to remove these parts of her. Even though no one ever obtained these before and originally they were part of a very hard to kill vampire. There is no way this ritual should exist let alone that Kagan should know about it .. but the plot would strand without it so now he knows!
Rayne is disarmed and put in a prison! But no worries Sebastian and Vladimir come rushing in and ..get themselves captured. Which leads to Rayne being strapped to an altar as the ritual starts. This must have been part of her original plan..even if she did not know Vladirmir and Sebastian would come.. in fact.. she should not know or assume this.. but had they not been here.. this plan would have surely killed Rayne.. without a fighting chance. So why did she settle for it? By now you should know.. her actress read the plot. In the fakest Guard My Cellmate has vanished act, which no real person would belief.. heck which 90% of fictional characters would not believe, except for Looney Tunes Villains and Uwe Boll characters, the two guys are freed and manage to get to the altar to free Rayne . A fight breaks out and Vladimir and Sebastian now effortlessly kill the soldiers that stopped them before also effortlessly I might add .. but it’s different not because now the soldiers are aided by some more elite troops….uhm you might have gotten that reversed Uwe. Ben Kingsly gets the lamest kill in the movie.. as he impales Vladimir who is held by two vampires .. ..by simply walking into him. Of course no one reacts to his death.. not even Vladimir himself. Sebastian gets mortally wounded.. with again.. no one reacting to hit.. but by holding the plastic stick close to Hencheman’s neck.. his neck explodes and henchman is killed instantly as Sebastian slowly fades away. There is an extreme amount of blood in this fight. Everyone is equipd with red water balloons and squirty devices.
Rayne and her father face off and it is revealed Rayne absorbed the heart. Shocker!. Ben Kingsley calls Rayne an ungratefull bitch..which makes perfect sense, such elegant dialogue.. he given her so much to be grateful for.. nearly sacrifiing her.. killing her only friends, murdering and raping her mother and leading her to lead a cursed existance as a Damphir. What not to be thankful for. Well she is a women.. in a Uwe Boll movie so she must be grateful for sprouting of the seeds of a man I guess. She isn’t though and manages to kill him.. after a super lame fight scene that had more dialogue that most of the movie even. Riveting combat! Kegan dies.. in a very weird effect..again that only the vampire in the beginning mimicked.. no other vampire died like that. I was shocked to see he had Pigtails all along!
Rayne goes to her fuckbuddy and is so upset that he is also passing away and that he doesn’t want to be a vampire that she sits in Kagan’s throne and thinks about blood..seemingly turning evil.. and with that.. we end this atrocity..
I had my way of fun with this flick! I was amused in analysing it..but do not misunderstand This movie was bad! It made no sense anywhere.. , the effects were super lame, the writing was non existent and how the heck did all these actors agree to this?! What the heck is wrong with people?! I think Uwe boll might be some sort of Incubus! THis movie made it very clear to me.. while he can remember like 20 video game titles.. and can befriend movie actors.. he can’t do anything else! Stay away from this one! Please! If you like me can enjoy a bad movie it might be fun.. but Uwe Boll doesn’t do the “so bad that it’s good” thing. It feels to lazy for that. It doesn’t take itself seriously enough.. yet also takes itself seriously enough for it to never be clever or witty about it’s bad or shitty choices. While this movie made me less angry than Postal did.. this one clearly shows less competence as a fill maker. So once again even though I really hoped ot only give this grade once.. this movie is …….
PS all of this had very little to do with the actual video game!
Now I am sure that next week there will be a more competent film waiting for me… I might not be strong enough to pick up the sequel just yet…then again it can hardly be any worse! Now that I have a security guard I am not even that afraid for Mister Boll. If he challenges me to a fight Indigo said he would fight in my stead! I would still love to see mister Boll make a Fortnite movie… as long as I do not have to see it! That would be so bad it would probably kill me.. then again… maybe two negatives cancel each other out!
In an attempt to watch video game movies , except for the in universe ones, (as in they exist besides the games as part of the same universe) I wondered. What counts as a video game movie. BloodRayne was up next but I could not stomach Uwe Boll right now. So instead I looked for something more innocent, a road trip movie about a boy and his autistic brother, wanting to travel to California.. for unknown reasons. That is right I watched 1989’s The Wizard.
But Pinkie! The Wizard That’s Not A Video Game?!
How Astute of you.. my dear Island guests.. or me pretending to be an Island guest! That paragraph title is Correct! The Wizard is not a video game movie in the classical sense as we do not follow the story of a video game… not that any video game movie does that ..but I mean … non of the characters in this movie is a video game character. Instead this is a movie about video games. A boy playing video games to be exact. One could call it a 90 minute Nintendo commercial. It has received.. a fairly poor reception. Having a Metacritic Score of only 2.3 and a critic approval rating of 32% on Rotten tomatoes. With an Audience Score of 60% and a 6,1 on IMDB.. this however promises to be one of the better watches I get in all 43 video game movies I counted. It scores less than Postal on Rotten Tomatoes though.. which is absolutely wrong. I enjoyed this movie… .okay enjoy might be a big word.. but I certainly did not hate it.
The movie was made in 1989 and directed by Todd Holland. It stars Luke Edwards as the autistic young Jimmy Woods, who later gets the nickname the wizard. He is in an institution for his heavy form of autism. His family has broken up after his sister died a few years ago and now the boy constantly tries to run away from home to go to California. One day after his father played by Beau Bridges, kinda distances himself from the boy his brother Corey played by a young Fred Savage breaks him out angry at his father for ignoring Jimmy’s wishes. Together they travel to California but they discover.. they need money. A young girl named Hayley joins up with them and convinces them to let Jimmy play Nintendo games ..in arcades.. for money! They can use the money to travel.. when they discover that in California there is a big video game competition with a big cash price.
Divorced mother and now involved with the owner of the institution Christine hires a professional Child returner/kidnapper. This angers Father Sam who sees the error of his ways of neglect and travels along with his eldest son, played by Christian Slater in order to find his two boys! While they travel Nick.. the Slater Characters, brings along an NES and father and son bond over playing video games like Mario 2 and Zelda 2. While also playing a very hillbilly esque cat and mouse game with the Childnapper guy. Who finds Jimmy first.. and can he make it to California, will he win the elusive tournament or will it go to the almighty gamer Lucas.. who wields THE POWER GLOVE? All these questions as well as why Jimmy wants to travel to California will be solved in a hundred minute movie.
Nintendoes
First of all it should be noticed that the movie has a fairly competent cast which already is a good sign. Secondly a big name to Nintendo is connected to this film. I don’t mean in the way like “yeah go ahead and make a movie about us” either. This movie was the World Wide reveal for Super Mario Bros 3 of all things. One of my all time favourites if not THE favourite Mario game. So there was some confidence in this movie. We also see the movies antagonist Lucas use The Power Glove, a peripheral/weird controller I talked about in the past. It’s so bad.. and hey.. that line is in the movie! We also take a peek inside Nintendo Power magazine in america.. or the Nintendo Hotline for tips and tricks! I am not sure if it’s one and the same back here in the Netherlands it was so I assume it was a similar type of deal. We get this type of movie we don’t really see anymore. Three kids on the road..united by friendship. It takes inspiration from movies like Stand By Me which came out three years before. For those who don’t know that movie.. well remember that first screen in Pokémon when you click on the tv? “Four Boys walking on a railroad.. time to get rolling myself?’ Well that’s the movie they got that from! As a result the movie has this solid “frame” to build itself onto. Which benefits it.. it does feel fairly focused..which is hard to do for kids travelling across America.
It is also not afraid to do it’s own thing where Stand By me is very set in the wilderness this trip of the Wood Boys and Hayley is much more suburban, which comes with a different set of challenges. Challenges this movie handles fairly well. They have to deal with people wanting their money back after a lost bet, they have to deal with robbers, using their tiny statues to get what they want easily, they have to deal with stuff like.. wanting to gamble for money..but not being allowed to play in a Casino so.. having to arrange a mule. It shows Universal Studios theme park.which is funny because that later became a video game on Nintendo,, and has a few interesting choices. The kids in this movie for the most part act like kids. For example how Hayley lies about how awesome her life is .. only to later reveal her father left her because her mom had a gambling addiction. The skills she have stem from having a gambling mother and a trucker father not from some form of greater intellect. Jimmy being so autistic he easily sees patterns in video games is a bit iffy.. but hey he’s kind of like Nintendo Rainman that’s kinda enjoyable.
The kids deliver a fair performance and the whole being unable to communicate with your little brother thing and that sometimes they have to guess what Jimmy is feeling makes the kids part of the journey very fun to watch. It is funny so see classic NES games like Ninja Gaiden, Double Dragon and the first Turtle game be played on camera. While there are plenty of movies of games.. movies about gaming are fairly rare.. the only other ones that come to mind are Ready Player One, Gamer and Pixels. All the others are exaggerations though.. this one has no superpowers, no virtual treasure, no aliens.. no this is just a story about a boy who is talented at video games. It’s “romanticised” enough to be entertaining bu in the end all this movie is about is how video games can strengthen your bonds and a trip that started because a family was unable to communicate. In it’s own way it is kinda cute! For a lost 100 minutes it isn’t even that bad. …. However…………
Ninetendon’t
Unfortunately this movie is plagued by a myriad of flaws as well. The most glaring one is that the movie is not written by a gamer. “Wow Jimmy you got 50.000 points in Double Dragon” sounds a bit cringe.A beat them up is not about points it is about survival.Later they even do points in Mario and Ninja Gaiden.. and while it is true that Championships do mention points there is a clear dissonance here. You can tell the team here doesn’t understand video games. A lot of the writers and the actors don’t understand video games. Why does Cristian Slater have to hold a controller that awkwardly and instantly tab buttons when playing Mario 2. The gameplay doesn’t match his hands.. how hard is it t to actually make him play or at least learn him how a video game works.. even if you then use a pro all he has to do is understand the controllers and you make him do the actions he sees on screen.. then you put that shot a second or so earlier in your timeline and voila. But no people feel rather like incompetent games..even the amazing Lucas seems to make way too many button clicks for a game he is playing. It does seem like he knows how to use a Power Glove though! So maybe he is just that BAD.
That brings me to a second element of this movie that isn’t great. It has aged incredibly poorly. It has been written with a fairly “hip” language for 1989.. but we do not talk or dress like that anymore. While that can be a hilarious time capsule effect this time it affects everything. Where for example Sentai are a timeless concept so a time setting just gives it body.. like an aging wine..only not persé as good.. more like a distinguished flavor kind of thing. Yet in this movie, it’s the lingo people speak in, the games that are being played, the way that tournaments are being held, the way plot devices work and in fact the whole complete type of storytelling. Gaming isn’t as strange anymore so 90% of those who watch this these days will be able to tell you gaming is not about score.. that is the gaming of a generation before. The way they say Mario works.. “You gotta score points Jimmy score points” doesn’t work and the fact that they know.. how an item works in an unreleased game is odd at best. Finding a Warp doesn’t give you more points! Back then.. you could pull that stuff “Mew Under the truck” was a thing. The lingo sometimes makes characters hard to understand. Bad was good back then. The whole running away story would not work these days. As a result the focus on the movie becomes.. how different were those days which takes you out of the movie.
While that point gives the movie a positive point as well, a new angle to watch it from doesn’t fully work with how the adults in this movie work. Which in my opinion is the greatest weakness. For some weird reason, they always end up in exactly the right places in exactly the right towns. One would assume that the kids may find themselves unable to travel in a straight line, because they are dependent on hitchhiking. They might travel to the west but have to settle for moving a bit more up north?! Yet both the kidnapper guy and the father and son keep up ending up in the right towns. Where then they are able to run in each other’s cars and attack each other with shovels without consequences. Weirdly enough it’s the Adult scenes and not the kid scenes that show we have to deal with a movie aimed at children. The adults go to a car repair shop and hook up their Nintendo to their tv.. while waiting for their car to be repaired. The Kidnapper ask a towing guy.. “do you want to make a quick 50 bucks.. tow my friends car away”.. which is fine.. some tow goes would that. I can accept that.. but then they bring it to a scrapyard that immediately begins to disassemble it? Jumping the shark a bit there. Beau Bridges not wanting to stop playing Zelda II is a funny joke.. because we as kids did not want to stop playing games.. but he is trying to rescue his son from a sure to be traumatic experience…you are just turning him into an asshole by making him want to get another item in Zelda first.
Nintendo’s Entertainment System
Comedy in this movie is great.. but some jokes really do not land. Haley getting the Kidnapper guy in trouble by repeatedly yelling “He Touched My Boob” every time he almost captured Jimmy is good for a chuckle.. She is creative and cunning in this and it both works for the plot and would actually be helpful to draw attention…so when he hears truckers tell him “so you touched a young girl’s breasts you pervert” and we see him sigh we can chuckle. It’s lowbrow and will make a kid chuckle as well. Even the awkward kiss between Corey and Hayley which is a stereotypical childish joke works and it’s great.All comedy from Beau Bridges and Christian Slater however ….DOESN’T work. They are needed in the movie but they should have been made more caring. It’s nice to see father and son bond on a journey and it would not even be that bad to make them bond over something Jimmy enjoys like video games.. yet almost all their scenes feel disconnected because Nintendo just had to make the old man enjoy games as well… at the cost of his sons! The whole Power glove scene in fact is quite redundant as well.. we already know he cant use it at the tournament.. so it is just a tad too commercial. This scene is better now that it has aged because of how BAD it is yet somewhere along the way it feels as if this movie is having an Agenda.
This movie can be compared to something like Ice Age. The story of the human baby being taken ot a certain location is the main plot. Jimmy has to be delivered by two caretakers to a certain location. Along the way is a lot of child friendly humor but also a heartfelt journey with people becoming friends for life and really bonding. Then there is Scrat. You know that rat thing that wants an acorn and just ends up getting hurt? Imagine taking those scenes out of ice age and replacing them with Ola Ice Cream product placement. We see Ice age baby humans looking for him.. but when a Scrat scene would show up they get distracted by Ola Ice cream. In the end you will be a bit upset that the baby finds his way back. The ending of the movie makes up for this a bit tying the desire of the boy together with a deep trauma and making him hug his father for the first time in forever. His father needed to be there at that moment.. things needed to be broken for things to heal yet to me he will now always be the jackass who thought getting through Death Mountain in Zelda 2 is more important than finding his kid. Up to a point where I almost found that the movie failed because it wanted to promote gaming for adults.. cause Nintendo makes such addicting games you forget your family?!…
I was gonna visit my mom.. but then I saw this scene in the movie! Now I don’t know who she is! I just wanna play Contra.
I do think that the critics are too hard.. but The Wizard is a series of odd choices which leads to a conceptually strong enough movie. How good this movie actually is depends on how forgiving you are as a movie go-oer. Let’s compare this movie to Star Wars Episode 1. It is a very different story than what we are used to from Video Game/Star Wars movies. Yet that can be good or bad. It is catered at a slightly younger audience and while it certainly had some great revelations.. it makes some very stupid choices as well. If you are the type that thinks.. JarJar ruined that entire movie.. than this will also be a movie that you are going to hate. If you take everything face value that one broken element breaks the entire movie. If you are more like me though you can see that other element as just an element. “They tried to make a comical character, it did not work out, let’s take that at a loss but judge the movie on the merits it has. If you are like that you can have an enjoyable time with this.. if you at least have an affinity with old timey games. Then there is the type like my friend Bean thats like.. “It’s meant for kids writing doesn’t need to make sense’ Then I think a little bit less of you.. movies should always be for everyone no matter who your main audience is.. but heck as long as you have an affinity for old games and love to dig around in time capsules this movie will be your jam.
It’s a movie with just one very broken element and to come to a correct judgement I will compare the show to a car you want to buy. The engine .. in this case , the story is fine, the steering wheel is fine, the movie goes where it needs to go and addresses relevant story points and it feels paced fairly neatly..though it tends to drag at some points. It isn’t very user friendly.. the car makers didn’t know much about driving so your direction indicator has some super colourful flashy symbols and kinda makes a lot of noise and your car horn is a jaunty tune making the car a bit more tacky. However your brakes.. are completely broken. The handbrake works fine but you only apply that when you have come to a stop already. Sure you can throw out a land anchor or just install new brakes.. but you would not pay full price for this car. Nor would you say it’s a star on the road. You wouldn’t even call it very good. If you get a hell of a discount it can be fine if you really want to drive this particular car. If you have other options this one will just be okay.. and if you are a nag.. this car is clearly sub par. I had a fun drive.. and when it comes to video game movies.. being forced to use a land anchor is the least of my worries! But you have been warned!
So my quest to watch all Video Game movies goes on! Next week I probably should watch BloodRayne, now I just have to find the courage to put it on! What is your favourite Video Game Movie? Which movie should I watch next?! Let me know! Have you played NES?! Are you some sort of video game Rainman I can bank on by making you go to tournaments?! Very important questions being asked here! Speaking of making bank! I also have a Kofi. If you want to help out please click the cute picture! However I also really appreciate likes and comments all the same! So let’s have fun interactions together! Have an amazing day and I hope you’ll visit Paradise again!
Dear Island Guests, Welcome back to my attempt to watch all video game based movies ever made. By Arceus, I did it! I watched a video game movie that is not total shit! I mean sure it isn’t great.. but heck it is based on a button bashy game about a wolf a lizard and a ape destroying cities! How did this happen?! Have I killed to many brain cells with bollshit?! Or is this actually a fairly competent movie? Let’s find out together. Also my apologies the changing image format. I watched this on Netflix so I got the screen grabs from IMDB..who apparently takes their screens from everywhere!
It’s not Congo
Rampage came out in 2018 and stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as primatologist/former black ops and poacher murder Davis Okoye. He now works at the San Diego Wildlife sanctuary when unbeknownst to him stuff goes awry in space. An evil company by the name of Energy has been making a flexible DNA pathogen on a space station where one of their rats broke out. A lonely scientist trying to escape gets locked in until she retrieves the pathogen samples. She manages to retrieve three samples before fleeing back and escaping the exploding space station. However the rat has damaged her escape pod and upon reentry in the atmosphere the little window cracks and see is burned to a crips! The pod explodes and the three samples land on several places in the United States.
One in the Everglades where the Pathogen gets eaten by a crocodile, one lands in the forest lands of Wyoming where a wolf gets infected and one….what are the chances strikes at the San Diego Wildlife reserve. Here it infects George, an Albino Gorilla that happens to be Davis best friend. (That’s kinda sad) But George is a good boy gorilla who can speak in sign language! …Wait a second.. a Gorilla that is a best friend, whose sign language and Albino Gorilla?! There is a lot of stuff from the movie Congo here!
As George suddenly begins to grow and more erratic and aggressive a totally legit woman working for Energyne shows up telling she made the pathogen that made George like this. She has a cure but Davis needs to help her proof Energyne is using this pathogen for weapons. Being the evil company they are Energyne builds a radio tower to draw in these beasts so they can retrieve their pathogene.. but that doctor trying to save the world, Doctor Cate Caldwell she has to go! Can our hero use his bond with George to save Chicago? Can he bring back George from madness. All of these questions will be answered, in a vastly illogical but fun to watch movie. I mean there are plothoes the size of Kaiju here but hey this is a movie about a albino killer gorilla wrecking some stuff up and being almost immune to everything humans can throw it. Al becomes of some diamonds..wait no that’s not right! No diamonds! Flexible DNA pathogen that’s it.. this movie is not Congo.
A Man and his CG Gorilla
I played a lot of Gampage as a kid and George was never my favourite..but it makes sense to tell the story with him as a hero! A Gorilla that knows sign language makes a lot more sense than a wolf that follows every command or a a story about a man who trained Velociraptors that gone and mutated into something else. In fact I could argue that the interactions with The Rock and George are best thing in this movie. George is a fully CGI Gorilla obviously but there was a sense of bond I got from them still. I did not really feel the Rock was talking to nothing.. There was a legit bond between this Davis and George. Only in the action and funny moments though!
There are a few dramatic moments and here the Rock falters. He has become a pretty good physical comedy actor over the past few years. He even has some comedic timing to his lines. When he needs to be sad for a cgi gorilla though.. he isn’t always there..Still there is this very enjoyable bond between Davis and George I can’t help but like! Even though George is way too intelligent take seriously for example, this movie really establishes it is going over the top from the first moment! It starts in space! With an evil space rat and super evil organisation shenanigans. This movie practically is a 90’s cartoon including the talking animal sidekick.. but it leans into that.. and for that reason it really works. It’s camp but if you expected anything else after the first 10 minutes or heck even from the beginning you are in the wrong movie more so than the movie being wrong. If you see this movie as a live action cartoon you might have a great time with it!
The movie uses a lot of foreshadowing. After the first scene with Davis and George I was like… oh they better end the movie like such and so or I will be upset! I got exactly the ending I wanted..but also predicted. Well there was one joke I didn’t see coming at the end that made me giggle but all in all this movie is fairly predictable. Yet in a good way. After having seen a lot of video game movies this one at least feels capably made. It isn’t a masterpiece by any means but this movie does deliver what it promises. Character traits in both George, Davis , Cate and heck even the cowboy government agent they meet somewhere along the way are fairly established.
We know why Davis does the things he does even if it is not beneficial to a situation. We understand. Sure making him a former black-ops guy feels cheap and allows him access to a set of skills that are very convenient, yet at the same time he utilizes almost ALL of those skills. So it is not a wasted plotpoint to make him more cool.. it’s a trait so insane action sequences make some semblance of sense. Plus this movie is basically a 90’s cartoon! Of course he is a black-ops!
George is even used as more than just ape, Davis actually learns from him, and while again it is very convenient to the plot it happens for a reason. Davis has a reason to care for George and the fact that George cares for him has deeper implications. Cheap but it’s there. So every time the Rock interacts with this CGI monstrosity is when the movie really does shine! You can see George sometimes breaking out of it;s aggression because it cares about Davis as well but never so much that it becomes that much more than an animal. In a way this movie creates a symbiosis. Both need each other, and the movie also needs both. it just doesn’t really need the side characters.
A Saturday Morning Cartoon
The weakest point is definitely the villains. Brother and Sister leading Energyne, which by the way is such an generic company name it hurts, are really clearly evil incorporated. I also do not really get their plan. Their plan is basically, make a pathogen that can make Kaijus ….. …… make money! Clearly there is a step missing there! They have no way to control the big beasties , so they make them freak out with a radio signal to draw them all to the city and let the military blow them up.. so they can take blood from their corpses. Or something?! They also decide now.. after she got locked up for trying to break the project that Cate has to die… why not when she stole from you?! Why when she already told the cops about you and is just hanging with a Primatologist, do you decide that now she is very dangerous. Why would you build that radio signal on top of your own company when you know the military has to bomb these animals to death. The nervous brother and the cold sister again seems like something of a Saturday morning cartoon. They also act a bit like Pinkie and the Brain.. if Pinkie was a corporate weasel instead of an dumb dumb. They are so in your face evil you can tell they are evil by just saying hello.
This comes with a few issues. At one point the heroes realise that Energyne is luring the monsters there into the heart of chicago by a signal on Energyne’s roof. In the middle of Chicago. They don’t care the city gets destroyed.. but your still a company.. if people are going to find out it was you who drew the monsters to Chicago even if they are blown up.. you are in trouble still.. I don’t think you can freely walk about and just take these monsters blood. Also you need to sack another multi billion dollar asset. The space station you blew up cost them 20 billion already and they just shrug it off. I am pretty sure no company can take a 40 billion dollar loss without any consequence. Their plot makes very little sense and their acting is quite poor! Funnily enough .. they end like 90’s cartoon villains. Like really.. (And no this is not a spoiler unless you think the Rock losing in a younger audience movie is actual a viable option) this brings a charm to the movie but also a makes it a bit of a guilty pleasure. Why was I so entertained by this?
The action is similarly over the top and delivers you some fun moments such as the Rock swinging a woman in a crashing plane to launch a forklift truck into the giant Gorilla, only to see them then do similar antics to yeet themselves and a cowboy cop out of plane grabbing Parachutes while the plane breaks up. A battle royal between Lizzie , George and Ralph is pretty good as well and given that there is a fair amount of environmental destruction, which was what the games are all about , it is at least somewhat faithful to the source material. Not that there is a lot to be faithful to. We see the most ridiculous action scenes and they are all fun. Yet they also recognise the limitations of their CGI and while it does make things more believable it also makes some of the camera work very unappealing. When a mercenary company is hunting Ralph in the woods of Wisconsin for example we get very dark shots, fog is used to bloom up details and most kills happen off camera. Never do I cringe that much at the CGI but at the same time I do wish that some of these scenes could have been a bit more visceral. There is almost no blood in the movies, which makes sense given that it seems to target a younger audience.. but the actions shots.. do not justify the lack of blood. I am talking bisections, a beheading and impalement here.. all relatively bloodless. That just seems odd. But hey damaged characters do get dirty and get scuff marks… kinda like… you know where this is going.
I tend to use analogies to compare the movie to somewhere around the end of a review and in this case.. the best thing I can compare Rampage to is the game Rampage. Both are just a good bit of fun, with a story that is to dump and makes so little sense to put to words. Both have scenes that drag on and on but also some great action moments. It can keep you entertained for a good 90 minutes but after that you do not feel enriched or satisfied.. you just had 90 minutes of fun and that is it. I appreciate the movie for knowing that is is exactly that. It never oversteps that and that suits the movie.. yet at the same time that lack of ambition to ever be more is also its greatest flaw.
It’s like as if the movie makers saw this movie as a school exam. They answered the questions they knew the answer to REALLY REALLY well and got enough points to score a passing grade.. but if they had taken a moment to try to figure out one of these other questions they just might have gotten a better grade by scoring some half points on other subjects. If you ever want a movie to just turn your brain off with and enjoy stuff blowing up and the Rock doing Rock things.. this is a solid movie to watch! I watched it in this mindset and definitely will have to put it in my top 5 favourite video game movie adaptations. It isn’t anything special but fun can be good enough.
This movie is on the higher side of the fineapple spectrum a nice popcorn-flick that feels like a Saturday morning cartoon. As long as you don’t expect more this movie doesn’t dissapoint. If you do expect more.. you probably have not played rampage before! Did you see this movie? What did you think about it? Do you think Dwayne Johnson might be overused in movies?! Let me know in the comments! If you want to prevent me from ever starting my own genetics lab to make evil super creatures..please consider supporting my Kofi page! Support money is better than evil super creature money! If you have no money to spare! Just follow the blog, leave a like or a nice comment! I can’t start an evil firm if I never turn evil anyway!
My dear island guests… I will warn you. This review will contain extreme negativity as well as very controversial movie subject. Today I will talk about not the worst movie I have ever seen, but the movie I hated most . When Uwe Boll makes a horror movie it becomes so bad it “devolves” into a comedy. It is so bad some bits are funny .When Uwe Boll makes a comedy it makes me wanna go postal on all the people involved with this film.
The movie Postal is a comedy movie based on the equally titled film series and this movie has 2,2 critic rating on MetaCritic and a 6,3 user review rating. So I thought.. hey this film might not be so bad. This movie also has a 9% tomatometer and a 34% audience score. I find every single of these reviews to be too good! The movie’s box art proudly tells it is super offensive and I’ll be honest.. I don’t always dislike offensive movies. There are a few times where offensive humor can give me a chuckle… the key word.. humor being part of the equation. That is not the case here! Uwe Boll can not make comedy! This movie proves that. He is worse at comedy than he is at horror movies. but before I began tearing this thing apart let me tell tell you this movies plot.
We follow a main character that never gets a name and is just referred to as that Postal Dude. His story starts up when he starts applying for a promotion in a corporate job where A douchebag manager lets him do all sorts of weird things while he stares at the severed heads of some other corporate drones who failed at their job. They make jokes about them being a fake and blood drips off them as soon as they say it. He goes home to find his obese wife who lives in a trailer cheating on him… or well he finds out she is cheating on him. But I am already getting ahead of myself. This movie opens up with the Hijacking of the 9-11 planes. Al Qaeda terrorists have taken control over the ship because they want to surprise the others by actually taking them on a trip to Cabo or the Bahamas or something nice and tropical. The people who fought for their lives on those planes break in and try to subdue Al Qaeda actually cause them to crash into the twin towers. On this briljant opening… we move to the Dude.. and the stuff I told you happened. Why do I mention that intro now? Well because it ties in with the rest of the story. Osama who is actually living in the states and is best friends with George W Bush is planning to steal a shipment of Krotchy dolls. Krotchy is a crotch plushie that is the mascotte of some sort of weird thing. But they are not the only one who wants to steal this doll that is a penis with a set of balls.
There is also Dude’s uncle who started a bogus christian sub cult to get laid. However his organisation is not paying their taxes and now has a few million dollars debt. His attendant warns him about this and points out these Krotchy dolls sell for like 3000 dollars each or so. It turns out that these dolls have vials with Avian Flu hidden in them which Al Qaeda wants to use to destroy the western civilised world, while the attendant who actually beliefs the new bible of the uncle character to destroy the world. Dude and his uncle just want to earn some easy money! The only way that Dude can keep the world safe is by killing everyone else.. so he has to go postal! For this he has to kidnap Verne Troyer and let him get raped by a 1000 monkeys team up with some random gothic chick from a coffee shop and use a cat as a silencer for a gun among other things.
Now the cat silencer was in the games so I see why it was in there.. but Postal has never been this much about being offensive.. it was always more about just going on a random meaningless killing spree… that is NOT what this movie is. In Postal you can pee on the elderly before whacking their head of with a shovel but it always gave you a choice. You did not need to be offensive, you just vented a shitty day… in a very trash way..but there is a difference in choosing this or seeing it. The humor in this movie is akin to that of your average Scary Movie film..with the offence meter dialed up to 100 and the comedic timing turned back to 0. Each joke is so cheap.. and meaningless that it isn’t a joke anymore it is just offensive. Let me take you through the movie in more detail. We begin with that dreadful 911 joke… While I am iffy on those already I think in a movie like these you CAN actually make jokes like that. It’s for a very limited crowd but you could still do it. Take for example the Family Guy joke where the terrorist fly through that seattle arc. Sure I’ll chuckle at that. Turning heroes into villains for the sake of comedy however isn’t fun.. it’s a role reversal that thereafter gets completely negated by having Al Qaeda be their classic evil. Had they made it so they were actually the good guys but kept being blamed.. maybe ..you had a funny joke.. but no.. it served no point! They even add in a window washer to make it more slapstick!
The song about the evil corporation and them actually cutting of heads is not funny either, the joke has been done a million times before and it leans heavy into such standard timing and is sooo in your face obvious that it isn’t fun at all.. also the company doesn’t come back at all so again it is completely pointless. It just shows this guys life sucks. When he moves back and finds out his wife is sleeping around while he steps in dog poop.. we get the message. His wife is just made so gross that it is almost as if Uwe Boll says.. every woman has to look super fit.. and slightly slutty.. because literally all the other women are super models or goth chicks. That are super skinny with flawless skin and etc. Everything else is trash. Why?! You could have made the man miserable with a normal looking woman she did not have to be Jabba the Hutt. Religion is than mostly seen as a sham and we see cops kill minorities for not understanding the language.. that joke certainly aged well.A dark skinned cop shoots an old Chinese lady who is old and flustered and doesn’t know what to do under a traffic light anymore! I get that people too old to drive can be annoying but again these cops are mostly a side story.. they actually follow a line skewed to the plot… It’s almost as in those Ice Age Movies… where we see scenes of Scrat trying to get his nut.. these cop show up and mess with the Chinese people or with a crippled man just to be offensive.. but never is there a joke.. as if Uwe Boll things that offensiveness IS the joke.
Again I am not that squeamish.. there is a way to make offensive jokes. They are not for everyone.. but they can when used correctly make us aware of our flaws. South Park used to be able to do this quite well. Yes it was offensive but it also held us a mirror this is us. It has been made more cartoony. South Park and Family Guy can make this (subjectively) work for two reasons. There is more behind just an offensive punchline.. there is either a clever idea or a lesson to be learned OR they get away with it because it’s a cartoon. Inhuman behaviour is acceptable because we do not see a human we see a cartoon character. Postal’s character are more one dimensional than the “offensive” cartoon shows. Take Verne Troyer playing himself for example… he has to go to speech at the Krotchy doll festival because he looks like the thing and people want to use him as the spokesperson for these dolls. He travels with a suitcase bigger than himself..because HAHA he is a tiny person, but when he gets locked inside the suitcase we find out there is nothing but Dildo’s and crossdressing stuff inside. Where is the joke?!
It took me 3 days to finish this movie as 30 minutes a day was about as much as I could stomach! I never had to turn off a movie before for not being able to work my way through. Even Coco Avant Chanel.. which I found an atrociously boring slog I managed to sit out. This actually hurt me to watch. Nearly all of my gripes are all directly Uwe Boll’s fault. The actors aren’t the worst out there, I just wonder what made them this desperate. I know a few of these actors , mostly from tv and these are like B/C list actors that are quite passable. Postal Dude looks really awkward in front of a camera though maybe that is his character I am not fully able to tell.. he is a kind of awkward guy. His Filmography isn’t all that great either.. but come on! JK Simmons is in there just to do his JK Simmons thing.. only to be blown up by a suicide bomber in a sort of running gag.. where nobody wants to do it so Al Qaeda keeps tricking their members into doing this task. There is talent in this movie but it just doesn’t come out. The writing in this movie is so bad nobody gets to shine.
There is ONE joke in the movie and it goes a little something like this.Krotchy is going to be revealed in a place called little Germany so Postal Dude and his uncle’s cult .. mostly some bikini models who walk in bikinis for the entire movie.. have to dress up as Nazi’s not to stand out. So they all get a hitler Moustache and a Swastika added to their outfit and everyone thinks they belong.. but that is not the joke ..because who else is in Little Germany but Uwe Boll.. who is being interviewed as a celebrity why all his movies suck! He makes a joke about stealing money and mysterious funds.. which was a serious case against him and Krotchy suddenly rips off it’s head.. revealing.. the lead developer of the Postal Game.. blaming Uwe Boll for ruining his game with this movie. He begins shooting at Uwe and Boll kills the man.. but not before they killed about 20 children who were all there to get their own Krotchy doll.. as no one can see the mascotte is a crotch.. or balls and a penis. Uwe Boll gets shot in the crotch and dies as well.. also he wears a Bavarian outfit..because it’s funny cause he is German. A journalist piles up all the dead children to make it look worse and the Postal Dude is blamed for this.. causing everyone in the world to want to kill him now.
The way the action is shot is terrible. In a movie about shooting and killing everyone, you’d think there be a few good shootouts but this is just a series of guns being shot and random people falling down.. even if they weren’t really in the shot. It again looks like a cartoon.. but that is not being sold because it is still live action. If special effects are used they are very underwhelming OR super exaggerated.. they never get it right and I mean never. The Cat silencer was semi.. funny but in the world established so far it made not sense physics wise.. nothing else functions fantastically. The cat doesn’t explode right away in Postal games but after a few uses it still does.. having the cat be unharmed felt like a whimper. A bit of a funny whimper but a whimper still. The Uncle gets betrayed by his attendant and in an order to convince him not to kill him the guy says he has become gay and a chubby chaser.. and he agrees to have Verne Raped by the 1000 monkeys mentioned earlier but is shot anyway. A weird twist further and we end up with everybody firing on Postal Dude in the trailer Park.. he is hiding behind a car and killing them by the bushes. Not a single person thinks about walking around again demonstrating no one is sentient here.. it’s just unfunny movie characters.
Osama asks George Bush for help and Postal Dude and his girlfriend get away. While he tricks the Attendant guy to blow himself.. plus the fat wife and the two cops.. who also did her for no specific reason up. However Bush pissed of some people and now America is being Nuked. While Postal Dude ride off into the sunset with his new flame.. ..his fifth one in this movie Bush and Osama hold hands and skip through a field while all across them Nukes impact. Destroying America and any hope left we had off at least a single funny scene. It is all filmed with very cheap angles, never is a a set properly used and all the locations are boring and bland as hell. I was so glad I could turn of this movie and it made me reconsider my watching all Video game movies idea. Before I thought Uwe Boll was just a bad director..now I think he is a horrible person, who has zero understanding of film and less understanding of comedy.How bad he is was always a joke.. but seeing him attempt comedy.. made it more than a joke.. at least a joke would have been funny..
There are a few things that are okay with the movie. The filming angels are very boring but never bad. The fights are extremely boring and do not convey the game at all but I’ve seen worse, the cast is passable except for the barely understandable Boll and the very poorly acting Lead Director of the game. It’s just that it is so painful and unfunny. Characters have been written just to offend, and woman are only good if they are bikini bimbo’s once again. Eye candy and nothing else. There are no jokes because Uwe Boll thinks being offensive is funny on it’s own and this is the result.. a movie that has less flaws than many that will be on this list.. but is so empty that it easily is the one I hate the most. And I don’t mean of my movie viewings.. this is the movie I hated seeing most…EVER.
If I were to compare it with something it’s a screaming Monkey. We all know monkey’s can be funny when they do monkey things.. but Uwe Boll things.. just having a monkey on the screen is enough..well he also makes it scream so we KNOW there is a monkey on the screen.. but never does it hop around or toss a nut or do anything it just screams and rages and smells like monkey! One of those monkey’s you are scared off or annoyed by rather than entertained.. but Uwe Boll says we are wrong because it’s a monkey.. that is what funny is. This movie is like putting bread on your cat and seeing it distress.. but you think it’s funny because of the memes. As such I am giving this movie one grade lower than my lowest grade! This movie is unwatchable. And I used this pun in his last movie! Now Uwe Boll has made me so angry … he gets a grade below my lowest named after him!
Next week’s movie will undoubtedly be better and I do not know yet what that movies is going to be. This thing was awful but if you think being offensive is funny this might be a movie for you! If you are a Movie Maschoist like me.. the movie is on YouTube and no one bothered to take it down for well over 6 years! So I will share that link with you!.. Because I am nice like that!
Pinkie's Paradise 