Predators and Machete (2010) a (mildly belated) Robert Rodriguez double feature review!

A few days back, when reviewing Haywire, I noted the director of that film, Steven Soderbergh, was some kind of speed demon in the movie industry, releasing a tremendous amount of material since his first movie credits.

There is another movie director/producer speed demon out there, and this one’s output, at least given his fewer years in the industry, is nonetheless running neck and neck with Mr. Soderbergh’s: Robert Rodriguez.  While Mr. Soderbergh’s films tend to be more “artistic”, there is little doubt Mr. Rodriguez’s focus is on more crowd pleasing action/adventure films.

In 2010, Mr. Rodriguez’s Toublemaker Studios released two films.  In the past couple of days I finally got a chance to see both of them.

First up is Predators, a sequel to the popular alien hunter/killer films.  The original 1987 Predator is considered among actor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s best films.  The subsequent sequel and “Aliens vs.” versions were considered quite a come down.  I read that when Mr. Rodriguez was first becoming a hot commodity in Hollywood, he was tasked with writing a sequel to the original Predator.  He did, but the film was never made.

Until now.

Predators, like Haywire, winds up being a pretty terrific film…until you get to the end.  Director Nimrod Antal keeps the level of tension going quite well, beginning the movie with a white knuckle sky dive sequence that immediately brought me into the film.  As we quickly find, several unsavory people were kidnapped from whatever it was they were doing.  When they awoke, the were in freefall and landed in a strange jungle.  As they would soon find, they are no longer on Earth.  They have been brought here by the Predator creatures as prey.

The movie stars Adrien Brody, on paper a seemingly unlikely choice for action star, as a silent but deadly mercenary who becomes the leader of this group of fellow kidnapped killers.  He is intent on survival but is reluctant to care for anyone in this motley group.

As I mentioned before, this film is quite terrific in the early going.  The action sequences are damn good and the interactions among the characters are reasonably strong.  Unfortunately, by the time we reach a certain “scavenger” character (I’m trying not to be too spoilery here), the movie starts to lose its steam.  Worse, the three Predator creatures our protagonists fight are gone for very long stretches of cinematic time.  Two of them wind up being dispatched waaaaaay too easily, especially considering what it took to get rid of only ONE of them in the original film.

In the end, I would cautiously recommend the film to those interested in the whole Predator genre.  This is a decent enough film that would have benefited from a stronger conclusion.

The trailer for the film, presented below, was the source of some controversy among movie goers.  At the 2:03 second mark, note how Adrien Brody’s character is “targeted” by several Predator lasers, implying that an army of those deadly beings have targeted him.  In the movie itself, there wound up being one laser targeting him.  While I don’t subscribe to the notion that theatrical trailers should give away movie plots, this particular change in what was presented in the film is quite a cheat.  Watching this trailer, you get a sense of a far bigger threat to our hero than was actually presented, and it does diminish that scene in the film.

Also released in 2010 was Robert Rodriguez’s “grindhouse” tribute Machete.  Appropriately enough, this movie began life as one of the faux movie trailers presented during the intermission of the Grindhouse double feature. A cynical person might say those trailers, and particularly the Machete trailer, were better than either Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror or Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, the actual films presented in Grindhouse.

I suppose I’m just that cynic, for while both actual films had their moments, to me the most memorable material was indeed in the faux trailers, and the one I found the most humorous of them all was Machete. When the actual film version was announced, I was therefore quite curious to see it.  Thanks to home video, I finally did have the chance to do just that.

So, did Machete the movie live up to Machete the faux trailer?

Yes. And no.

The Machete trailer was filled with grindhouse-styled mayhem. There was a great mix of way-over-the-top violence, gratuitous nudity, and a tongue firmly stuck in cheek. The movie tries to stick with this formula while adhering -perhaps a little too closely- with all the scenes present in the original trailer (everything in that trailer winds up appearing in the movie, for better or worse).

What the movie adds are several famous actors, including the likes of Robert DeNiro (!), Michelle Rodriguez, Lindsay Lohan, Steven Segal, and Jessica Alba.  There is a definite “wow” factor to seeing so many familiar faces in a movie that gleefully revels in this grindhouse atmosphere…

But what is lacking, in my opinion, is more overt humor.

Let’s face it:  Machete borders (no pun intended) on the ridiculous.  While we have plenty of bloody action and gratuitous nudity, we have a lot of tongue in cheek stuff but not nearly enough actual gags.  In fact, the movie presented only two really, really funny jokes:  The “Introducing Don Johnson” movie credit and the line delivered by Machete himself, stony faced Danny Trejo: “Machete don’t text.”

How I wish there were more examples to give!

Further, and most astonishingly, Robert DeNiro hardly registers as corrupt Senator McLaughlin.  He is given too little to do and winds up reading his lines and hitting his marks without ever rising above the material.  Steven Segal, as the movie’s big bad, is also curiously flat.  His big confrontation with Machete at the end of the film is quite ludicrous, but not for the right reasons:  We are told Mr. Segal is some expert swordsman, but during that last confrontation his level of swordplay is that of a kid playing ninja in a playground.

Having said all this, Machete is not without it’s bloody charms. To those who enjoy raunchy R-rated blood and guts, you will enjoy Machete for what it is. Others beware.

Before Watchmen controversy…

Noah Berlatsky offers this essay, published on Slate magazine, regarding the upcoming release of Before Watchmen, a prequel to perhaps one of the most famous comic book series ever created and how author/creator of Watchmen Alan Moore is right to detest the whole concept:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2012/05/before_watchmen_controversy_alan_moore_is_right_.single.html

Mr. Berlatsky offers a pretty good run-down of how Watchmen, the original series, came to be such a sore spot for Alan Moore.  The fact is that the contract Mr. Moore signed for the book made certain assumptions on his part, specifically the idea that the property of the book, once out of print, would revert to Mr. Moore.  But because the book was so popular, DC Comics used that to keep the book printed in (so far) perpetuity and the characters in their clutches (so to speak).  Now, some twenty five years later, going ahead with “new” material based on the original story, much to Mr. Moore’s chagrin.

Let me say this:  I was a BIG fan of Mr. Moore’s writing almost from the very, very beginning.  Indeed, I was one of the very few people actually buying the original Saga of the Swamp Thing issues as they arrived on newstands that first introduced America to the talents of Alan Moore.  This was, by the way, pure luck as a friend of mine at the time suggested I give the book another try when issue #16 came out.  I was a fan of the original Len Wein/Berni Wrightson incarnation of the character but gave up this new series after a handful of the original issues.  When Mr. Moore took over with issue #20, things got real interesting real fast.

Mr. Moore did a fantastic job.  His writing blew me away, and I sought out whatever old material of his there was to be had.  I purchased every copy of the old Warrior Magazine I could find and found, to my delight, the first appearances of Alan Moore’s Marvel Man (later retitled Miracle Man) and the equally incredible V for Vendetta.  Anything by Alan Moore was worth buying, in my opinion, and I was rarely disappointed.

Mr. Moore, an unknown when his first couple of issues of Swamp Thing hit newstands, became a well known and much admired writer.  By the time Watchmen was released, I most certainly wasn’t one of the lone fans of his work.  Not anymore.  Everyone was eager to see what he was up to and the series was a big success.

Soon after, however, Alan Moore soured on his relationship with DC Comics and left them, vowing never to return.  As a fan of Mr. Moore, it was a really tough thing to take.  I was eager to see Mr. Moore take on other characters in the DC stable, from Superman to Batman to whomever he fancied.  I most certainly would have been there to read the works, but it was not to be.

From that point on, Mr. Moore started working for Image comics and wrote issues of Supreme, a thinly veiled “homage” to Superman (that’s what they said, but I would say the character was an out and out rip off of the character).  I found it curious that Mr. Moore, who at the time was complaining in interviews about the fact that he didn’t “own” his DC creations would have no difficulties working on rip-off versions of other well established characters.

This made me realize that Mr. Moore, as great a writer as he was, was not one to create original characters/stories, but was at his very best when putting his own unique spin on other established characters.  The fact was that Marvel Man was not his creation, but a thinly veiled rip off of the Shazam! version of Captain Marvel that was originally published in England.  Swamp Thing, as mentioned before, had already gained quite a bit of success in its original incarnation by Len Wein and Berni Wrightson.  V For Vendetta, while certainly not based on any established comic books, was a comic book version of 1984 and other anti-totalitarian works.  And Watchmen, as great of a series as it was, was originally intended to feature the then acquired by DC characters of Charlton Comics.  Watchmen’s Dr. Manhattan, for example, was Charlton Comic’s Captain Atom.  Rorschach was The Question.  The Comedian was a thinly veiled version of The Peacemaker.  And so on.

Even to my younger fanboy self, there was more than a little wiff of hypocrisy in the protestations coming from Mr. Moore.  This was further exacerbated when he would go on to write his “America’s Best Comics” series which featured such characters as Promethea (his version of a Wonder Woman-like character) and Tom Strong (his version of a Doc Savage/Tarzan-like character).  This use of other author’s ideas drifted from homage to outright use with the release of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  The characters within this series included, among others, The Invisible Man, Captain Nemo, Dr. Jekyl, etc.  Mr. Moore could use them without worry because the characters, by that time, had lost their copyright status and were available.

And that’s not all!  Mr. Moore would go on to create Lost Girls, a graphic novel featuring the following trio of characters:  Alice from Alice in Wonderland, Wendy from Peter Pan, and Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz.  You get all those characters together in…a pornographic story?!  One wonders what the original authors of those particular works, which have also lapsed out of copyright, would think about the use of their characters by Mr. Moore in a pornographic story.

Let me emphasize this once again:  We’re talking about a man who bemoans the fact that others have control over characters and concepts he created…yet has no apparent problem appropriating and doing what he wants with characters others have created, whether in thinly veiled “homages” or in the outright use of copyright expired characters.

As a fan of much of Mr. Moore’s works, it pains me to say this, but I just don’t get him.  I can certainly sympathize with someone whose prized works are not under his control and being used in ways he’s not happy with.  But on the other hand, how is it different for DC Comics to use his creations for the Before Watchmen series versus Mr. Moore using others’ creations for his own League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Lost Girls?

How is this not hypocrisy on his part?