You would perhaps assume that Vin Diesel doesn't really need to work any longer. Obviously without having access to his financial records, that's a fairly grand assumption but we're not here for accurate fiduciary reporting and on the balance of probability I don't think it's completely outlandish. Fast and the Furious seems to make all the money ever with each new installment, which I used to find odd until I actually watched one; then it became completely unfathomable. I've seen my fair amount of horrible toss masquerading as blockbuster but I can safely say I wasn't prepared for Fast and the Furious 7: The MOT of Doom or whatever that shit got taglined with. More to the point, I wasn't prepared for the sheer and blatant lack of respect being shown for the laws of physics. Yes, yes I know it's a movie, but when the central tenet of an 8 movie franchise is that if in doubt (or it you wrote yourself into a corner) you can literally use a car for ANYTHING, you have issues. Need to launch your hero 200 through the air with split second timing so he can save his amnesiac crush who only realised she was on the wrong side when she's steaming down the highway in a tank taking potshots at people? Get him on the bonnet, deliberately smash him into the central reservation and bingo! Automotive springboard. Need to cushion their fall after said high velocity shenanigans? Why not use a car? Windshields are nice and soft right? Still, these movies make money by the fistful and consequently so presumably does our Vin.
Which makes it really odd that he would choose to make some of the movies he has. The Riddick Trilogy are equal parts cult awesome and overblown Sci-Fi bullshittery and for that we salute them; pure vanity project from day one and although they had a ton of potential they never quite lived up to, were really enjoyable and I managed to snag the extended cut of the second one for £2 because the woman in WHSmiths had the wrong sticker on it and thought it meant she had to sell it at that price rather than the £17 it said on the till. Classic rookie error. I don't think anyone needs to question why he took on Groot for Guardians of the Galaxy. He might only have had two lines to say (or if you prefer, one with a heartstring yanking variation. No you're crying, I just have all the feels stuck in my eye). Honestly, who knew how much gravitas a man erstwhile known for using a serving tray as a makeshift snowboard could get into the words "I/We are Groot"? At least he got to do the motion capture for Vol. 2, which apparently had such a surplus of The Feels that I ended up with an entire face full of them. Hell I expect people are probably writing Marvel blank cheques to be part of the MCU nowadays. So those choices I get.
The Last Witch Hunter is a spectacularly stupid piece of cinema.
Curiosity is undoubtedly a double edged blade; discovery (despite what Dr. Ian Malcolm might think about it ) is a good thing and you can uncover some hidden gems with a few well considered clicks on Netflix. You also occasionally, joyfully, metaphorically kick into the pile of autumn leaves and smash your favourite trainers through a freshly laid turd. Without a fan in site, you can only imagine where that leads. So it was the other night as I remembered the trailer being not bad. Curiosity then, forced my hand. Thankfully no cats were harmed in the production of this blog.
So in a nutshell, Vin Diesel is a viking, who strangely looks quite cool doing his best Ragnar-meets-Gandalf impression at complete odds to his usual angry peanut thing. Maybe that's not fair; I like Vin Diesel, but he really does remind me of a peanut. Anyway, him and his Viking buddies traipse off through picturesque Iceland to find the witch queen's tree house and poke holes in her with their impressive collection of sharp and pointy things. Obviously things go tits up almost immediately, everything ends up on fire (including our hero's favourite sword) and sure enough just as the witch queen is dispatched, she curses our Vinny to an eternity of starring in preposterous action movies based loosely on the premise that cars+explosions is actual modern day alchemy.
Fast forward however many hundred years and Caulder's transformation to the eponymous peanut-headed protagonist is complete. Except it's clear he's a bit of a tool and heavily implied he had quite a lot to do with Salem and that unpleasantness. So I'm not 100% sure I ought to really be rooting for him even though he totally lets a witch off for accidentally killing everyone (with a foreshadowing plot device) with not much more than a ruffle of the hair and a finger wag. After that we just get a hastily strung together daisy chain of cliché: retiring handler? Check. Green New rookie handler who has to prove himself? Check. Old handler meets mysterious fate immediately after retiring? Check. Old ways clashing with new ways? Check. Witch hunter has to make uneasy alliance with a witch? Check. Cross, double cross, triple X? Check. The list goes on.
It's part Highlander, part Constantine but sadly not as good as either. Caulder dipping into his own memories is conceptually so similar to Constantine dropping into Hell using the ancient combination of electricity, water and a fairly perturbed looking cat it should probably file suit. They even mention in the dialogue how pointless it is getting into a fight with Caulder because he's completely invincible, but then some of the dialogue is brutally cringe inducing. That's Michael Caine you're assaulting with your shoddily-crafted sentences you hacks, have some respect. Thankfully he spends a majority of his time as a pseudo corpse, so that's value for money right there. Elijah Wood could do with growing a beard or something otherwise I'm going to keep confusing him with Harry Potter, but again, he barely gets any decent screen time considering his character is fairly pivotal (which we discover in a one line plot expo right at the end). They have at least tried to give the character some weight but only in that they all become deus ex machina. Run out of memory potion and can't get that vital clue? Good job the witch who made the potion for you is a dream walker and can help you do it without potions at all. Which he claims to just know, so why not ask her straight in the first place? I guess we wouldn't have got the sweet flaming bar set piece then; seriously what's with setting fire to everything? And why does she appear to have no insurance? Poor show.
So overall, can't say I was impressed. There's very little peril or threat or danger of not succeeding really. We know the Witch Queen will return and we know Vin's shiny bonce will go unsullied by the heavy crown of defeat, at least not for long. I can only assume someone dug up his breakdancing instructional video from back in the day; when he had enough hair to warrant the use of a sweatband to keep it from getting stuck in the laces of his Adidas Superstars mid-Spinnerooni, or alternatively repeating the words 'I am Groot' ad nauseam doesn't pay as much as we thought. At least you know there are at least another 12 Fast/Furious/Whatever movies waiting to be pooped out of somebody's drivel hole.
Can't wait.
No comments:
Post a Comment