Category Archives: Movies

Movies

Extinction (2015) a (mildly) belated review

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Extinction, apart from the casting of two popular TV actors in the lead roles, is the fact it is a movie that uses a by now perhaps too common trope, that of a “zombie apocalypse,” to instead tell the tale of friendship gone very sour and the possibility of its redemption.

The relationship between the two leads, played by Lost’s Matthew Fox and Burn Notice’s Jeffrey Donovan, is never really explained.  Are they good friends?  Brothers?  Brothers-In-Law?  We never really know, though the film hints that their relationship existed a very long time, to when they were kids.

The movie begins with the two of them on a bus filled with other people.  Two heavily armed soldiers watch over the group as the bus, and another in front of it, head to some kind of safe ground. Perhaps they’re being moved to a military base or perhaps an airport to transport survivors somewhere else.

The two accompany Emma, an attractive young woman carrying a very young baby.  Tension rises as the child cries, and rises still more when the bus in front of them stops and doesn’t move.  Through the darkness the group cannot see what’s going on in the bus in front of them.

And then a gunshot is heard and soon all hell breaks loose.

In the ensuing chaos we discover our leads care deeply for Emma and her baby, and when a zombie-ish (they may be zombies, they may be people stricken with some kind of rage virus) attack hits their bus and, eventually, results in Emma getting bitten, we abruptly transition to nine years later.

We find that humanity may well be gone while Earth has entered a new Ice age.  Our two leads live literally right across from each other in barricaded homes but no longer speak to each other.

Jack (Jeffrey Donovan) cares for Lu, the now older baby we saw in the movie’s opening act.  He is well groomed and cares deeply for the child while across the way Patrick (Matthew Fox) has allowed his hair and beard to grow and lives in a house littered with dirt.  Patrick also drinks too much and appears to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  He looks like a mountain man and, apart from his dog companion, doesn’t interact with either Jack or Lu.

Not that Jack would allow him to.

We quickly realize something big happened between the two men since we were first introduced to them.  Over the course of the movie, we discover where that break occurred while also finding that the zombie threat, thought long gone after the cold weather took over the world, may not be quite over after all.

As mentioned before, this is a movie that is more focused on the relationship between these characters rather than feeding audiences horror chills.  In fact, there are exactly three big action scenes in the film, the first in its opening act, the second toward the middle, and at final one at the very end.  In between, we witness how Jack cares for the young Lu, a girl who feels herself being overly protected.  She’s also curious about Patrick and his dog, though anytime she approaches him Jack becomes unhinged.

For modern audiences, the movie’s languid pace might be a little too slow, especially if you’re used to the thrill-a-minute Walking Dead.  Worse, when we do finally discover what drove these two men apart, the revelation doesn’t feel as big/terrible as it might have been.

Still, the movie for the most part delivers regarding these character moments.  When Jack finally allows Patrick into his house for a meal and a truce, the scene makes your heart pound with both tension and the hope these two will finally resolve their differences.  It is here, in the movie’s very best scene, that the characters offer hints at their common past in front of the innocent Lu.  However, like in real life, old wounds aren’t healed so quickly or completely.

I don’t want to give away too much more but suffice to say that if you get into the characters, you will enjoy this film.  Unfortunately, where Extinction doesn’t work quite as well is when delivering its action/horror.  The opening zombie attack isn’t anything you haven’t seen plenty of times before.  The middle action scene suffers from some shoddy effects (alas, this is a low budget film and while they did well with creating a snowy apocalypse, its still a low budget affair).  The final attack works the best though it does involve another well-worn zombie trope done many times before and better: the siege.

The bottom line is that if you come into Extinction hoping to see tension filled horror/action film along the lines of a 28 Days Later or Dawn of the Dead (original or remake) or Walking Dead you will probably walk away disappointed.  However, because of the very good characterization presented and, especially, that dinner scene, I can’t entirely dismiss this film.

If I had to rate it on a four star scale, I’d give Extinction two to two and a half stars.  Make of this what you will.

Movies

How it was shot…

10 Most Iconic Movie Scenes, at least according to the folks at Screen Rant:

Not to sound too snotty but I was aware of most of the examples included (the problems with Bruce, the name given the animatronic shark from Jaws are quite legendary!).

Perhaps the most interesting one was The Exorcist’s spider walk down the stairs.  I knew the scene was cut but as I haven’t looked at the bonus material on my expanded edition of the movie I didn’t realize the reason for not using that particular scene was because when it was filmed, and before the advent of CGI, they were unable to “hide” the strings holding the contortionist up as she moved down the stairs.

It makes perfect sense that now with the use of computers the wires can be digitally removed and therefore the scene re-inserted into the film, though I wonder if it was, in the end, necessary.  I’m ambivalent about its inclusion in the expanded director’s cut but there have been plenty of people who felt the scene should have remained on the cutting room floor.

Returning to Jaws for a moment, it is also well known that because of all the problems the animatronic shark had director Steven Spielberg was forced to hold off on showing the shark much longer than he originally intended to in the film.  In lieu of this, he created scenes where we adopt the perspective of the shark and/or the shark attacks and we barely see it.

The problems with the shark turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  By not revealing the “villain” of the piece fully until the last acts, Mr. Spielberg created a film whose suspense grew with each new attack/victim.  I distinctly recall having my breath taken away when the shark was finally revealed in all its terrifying glory toward the later stages of the film.

Which just goes to show that sometimes as much as a movie benefits from good acting or directing or script, etc. etc., sometimes you have to also be lucky.

I’ve made it known before how much I like the theatrical version of Walter Hill’s cult classic The Warriors.  That version of the film is one of, in my opinion, Walter Hill’s all time best movies.

And yet because of budget and time he was unable to show “his” vision of the film.  Years later he released an “ultimate director’s cut” of the movie which included new material, mostly in the from of comic book frames, as well as some different cuts of several of the film’s classic scenes…and the end result was, in my opinion, terrible.

While I can appreciate the man who created the film wanted to see it released closer to the way he originally envisioned it, sometimes when the pressure is on and a creative person is forced to make something within rigorous time/budgetary/logistical constraints, the results can be all the better.

Movies

Cop Car (2015) a (mildly) belated review

To create a successful action/suspense film, one has to make something that viewers wind up submerging themselves into.  In the best of all circumstances the viewer is no longer watching actors acting, they’re witnessing real life play out before them.  We root for the good guys/gals and hiss at the bad guys/gals and, as the action/suspense torque up, we fearfully wonder how and whether our hero(es) will make it out of their predicament alive.

This is, of course, easier said than done.  There are plenty of films out there, some very well made, which simply don’t engage the viewers in spite of the best attempts of the actors and directors.  A few years back I felt that way about the Tom Cruise film Jack Reacher.  As I noted in my review of it (you can read the full review here):

…the main problem with Jack Reacher and what keeps it from rising from being a good action film to being a truly great one is that there is never a point you don’t feel like you’re watching a movie.

Which brings us, inevitably, to Cop Car.

Cop Car is a low budget film which aims, as the trailer I’m about to present below points out, to fit into an odd niche.  It attempts to be a modern day Huckleberry Finn-type story merged with a bloody No Country For Old Men-type Coen Brothers feature.  See for yourself…

While the attempt is interesting, perhaps even unique, the movie itself, unfortunately, doesn’t deliver and what we have is a suspense film that is never all that suspenseful.  We also have a movie that, like Jack Reacher, never felt like something that would happen in “real life”.

Part of the problem is the setup itself.  The movie starts with our protagonists, two 10 year old boys who may (or may not, it is never made totally clear) be running away from home.  They walk a flat field and obviously live out in the middle of nowhere.

They walk on, talking childish things, until they spot a (ta-da!) cop car parked in a ravine and under some trees.  At first they think the cops are after them (again, they may have run away from home) but when they realize the car is empty, they approach it and, after playing inside it for a while, discover the car’s owner left the keys behind.  They start the car and, soon enough, drive off with it.

MILD SPOILERS FOLLOW!

We then backtrack a little in time to find that the man who drives the car, Sheriff Kretzer (Kevin Bacon playing a very oddball character), parked the car in this out of the way place to get rid of a corpse.  He had taken the body out of the trunk of his car and dragged it to a hole in the ground where he tossed it in.  When he returned to his car, he discovers it is gone and, of course, “hilarity” ensues.

As a viewer, I found all this set up so damn hard to swallow.

Our dirty cop leaves his car behind and goes somewhere so far away on foot -and dragging behind him a very heavy corpse- that he doesn’t hear his car start up?  Considering most of the land around them is flat, wouldn’t there have been some way for our evil cop to park his car much, much closer to where he intends to dump that corpse?

If not super-near, at least near enough to hear when the car is started?

That’s ignoring, by the way, the whole rather large coincidence of two runaway boys just happening to stumble upon a cop car in the middle of nowhere with the keys inside it and an evil cop doing evil things while just out of sight.

If you can get past that, there’s also this: The two 10 year old children who swipe the car are shown to not know how to drive.  When they start the cop car, it is clearly the very first time they’ve ever started any car.  In short order they’re driving off, though they don’t even know (yet) what the “P’ or the “R” stands for on the automatic shift (they state this later in the film).

Not only do they drive off with the car, they’re soon on the road and moving about without all that much trouble.  Granted, we are in the middle of the boonies but still, this is yet another hard fact the audience is expected to simply accept.  What makes the whole thing all that much worse is that there was an easy way to explain at least this part of the movie away: Just have one of the children say their older sister/brother or mother/father/uncle has allowed them to drive their car a couple of times.  They don’t have a great skill at driving, but at least they have enough to get the car moving.

But even if such a line of dialogue existed, it still doesn’t explain our Sheriff leaving the car alone with the keys inside, especially when he’s up to no good.

What follows is essentially a chase where the Sheriff searches for his car which, it turns out, has another surprise in its trunk.  Unfortunately, the movie’s languid pace and almost comical presentation of the Sheriff (as I said above, Kevin Bacon’s character is pretty odd and reminded me at times -by his look as well as some actions- of Lieutenant Jim Dangle from Reno 911!) further dilute the suspense we’re meant to feel.

When we reach the bloody climax, our heroes, the two children, are reduced to trapped witnesses as the bodies fall around them.  Afterwards, a final car chase feels hard to swallow given (again) our heroes just started driving that day.

I feel bad knocking Cop Car like I am.  As with Jack Reacher, the film was made by people who were attempting to deliver a solid, even unique, piece of entertainment.  Unfortunately the end result simply wasn’t all that good.

Too bad.

Movies

Yet more Star Wars musings…or, Is Luke evil (part deux)

A few days back Disney released the first full trailer for the new Star Wars film.  Notably absent from it was Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker.

At the time, I wrote that his absence made me wonder whether the movie’s big surprise would be that Luke Skywalker is evil. (You can read the full post here)

Since then and a few days ago, I linked up to another article, this one arguing that Luke Skywalker is not evil and offering as evidence his clothing (or at least the clothing we’ve seen him in in a couple of leaked photographs…you can read that post here).

Now comes this article, by Rob Conery and for Huffington Post, which goes into great, great detail on why my original thought, that Luke was going to be revealed as “evil” is indeed what we’re getting in the new Star Wars film:

This Luke Skywalker Theory Destroys Everything You Think You Knew About Star Wars

So much reading about a movie I’m at best only mildly interested in…

Which means I’ve gotta give the folks behind it a hell of a lot of credit: They’ve managed to get people talking about this new Star Wars film and it would not surprise me at all that whatever is revealed vis a vis Luke Skywalker, the one’s who will benefit the most from this speculation are the studios.

Movies

Is Luke evil…?

1 Comment

So my hunch following seeing the full trailer for the new Star Wars film that Luke Skywalker might be evil was (shock of shocks) not a terribly original idea (you can read those mutterings here).

Forrest Wickman for browbeat has also heard the fan musings and offers a strong rebuttal against the idea that Luke Skywalker is evil in the upcoming film.

Incredibly, he bases his idea on… Luke’s clothing?!?

I kid you not…read for yourselves:

Sorry, Star Wars fans, Luke Probably Isn’t Evil in The Force Awakens.  Here’s How We Know

While on the surface the idea that we can assume Luke isn’t evil in the new Star Wars film based on his clothing -more specifically clothing color– may seem a silly thing, I have to give Mr. Wickman all the credit in the world for his forceful (pardon the pun) argument.

For the color of clothing plays a strong role in the Star Wars films.  It allows viewers to instantly identify evil and good characters not unlike the westerns of yesteryear, where characters in black were evil while those in lighter colors were good.

Mr. Wickman’s strongest argument, to me, in that respect revolves around this leaked picture of Mark Hamill as the older Luke Skywalker:

Screen Shot 2015-08-13 at 5.49.25 PM

As Mr. Wickman states: Have you ever seen a Star Wars villain wear a robe like that?

Kudos, Mr. Wickman.  I say this without tongue in cheek: I believe you are on to something!

Movies

Taken 3 (2014) a (mildly) belated review

Back when it was released, someone said of Taken 3, the (obviously) third film in the surprisingly popular (at least until this point) Taken series:

Taken 3 makes Taken 2 look like Taken.

In other words, as bad as Taken 2 was, and many thought it was a big step down from the original, this one was far worse.

As for me, I agree with the sentiment that the first Taken was the best of the (so far) three made.  However, as much of a step down as the second film was, it did have its pluses.  I wouldn’t rank it among the best action films I’ve ever seen, but neither would I put it among the worst (my full review of Taken 2 can be read here).

And then there’s Taken 3…

If you were to see the film in a vacuum without comparing and/or thinking about the previous Taken films, you might find it a passable time-killer and not much else.  As I wasn’t too invested (or, frankly, could remember) all that many details of the previous Taken films other than general plotlines, I was able to watch this movie in that frame of mind and found it an ok time killer and nothing more.

The plot goes like this (some SPOILERS follow, though they are from the start of the film):

Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) continues living his life.  We find he’s still dealing with his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace), whom he cares deeply about even while he stumbles about on dealing with the fact that she is no longer a child but a woman.  In the movie’s opening act we find she is pregnant and, while Mills isn’t aware of this, it doesn’t figure too much into the movie’s story.  Mills also finds time to be a shoulder to lean on for his beautiful ex-wife, Leonore St. Cloud (Famke Janssen).  In those opening minutes we also find that something preoccupies her, and it may relate to her current husband and the souring of their relationship.

When Mills receives a text to come see his ex-wife at his apartment, Mills buys some bagels (this turns out to be ridiculously important to the movie’s plot), heads home, and finds his wife on his bed…dead.  Her throat has been slashed.

Mere seconds after arriving and finding her dead, a pair of police officers bust into the apartment and Mills, right away, is their main suspect in his ex-wife’s murder.

Mills gets away and a Fugitive-like storyline plays out with Mills searching for whodunnit while the cops, including one allegedly super intelligent cop named Franck Dotzler (Forrest Whitaker) nip at his heels.

As I said before, if you were to enter this film without any predispositions or memories for the previous films -along with a willingness to ignore a storyline lifted almost whole from so many other films/TV shows/books, etc- you’ll find Taken 3 is at best a mildly diverting action/adventure film.  It moves along at a fair clip though one gets the feeling the people behind the scenes involved in it didn’t quite give it their all.

Mind you, I’m not knocking the work of Liam Neeson, Forrest Whitaker, Maggie Grace, and Famke Janssen (in what amounted to a cameo).  They deliver their characterizations well.  Unfortunately, the people who produced/directed the film, I suspect, were more interested in making a quick and cheap work, one that would hit the theaters fast and make them some profit.  The storyline, as I mentioned before, is hardly anything new or original.  The action sequences are decent but nothing extraordinary.  The special effects, on the other hand, are mostly cheap.  Two in particular, involving a container rolling along a highway and a car smashing into an aircraft, are almost laughable.

But as with most underperforming movies, the main fault always lies in the story/script.  The movie’s worst offense is turning the Bryan Mills’ character into a standard action hero.  What made him unique and interesting in the first Taken film, in my opinion, was the startling lengths he was willing to go to get his daughter.  At one point in the film he visits an old police friend in France who welcomes him into his house with open arms.  During the course of what appeared to be an amicable visit, Mills shows his teeth.  He knows his friend has knowledge of who the bad guys are that he’s looking for and when his police friend is unwilling to give him that information, Mills brutally threatens the man’s wife to get what he wants.

This, to me, was what made Mills such a unique action hero.  He’s a shark and he’ll do whatever the hell he has to, including not just burning but nuking bridges to get to his goal.

In Taken 3, though, he’s become an ordinary hero, one who even has time for some levity/one liners.  While the use of one-liners can be groan inducing, I have to give the filmmakers credit for at least one thing here: The moment I enjoyed most in the film, the one that made me laugh out loud, was when you have a police officer delivering your typical cliched “You have no hope/we will hunt you down/you should give up right now” speech and Mills replying with something along the lines of “don’t be so pessimistic”.

So, in sum, Taken 3 is, at best, an OK time killer that feels like a lazy effort by those who made it, if not those who acted in it.  I suppose the original adage is correct.  Taken 3 is easily the least of the three Taken films and, based on the critical reaction, perhaps the series will die with it.

In that case, it might be a merciful end.

And now for something completely different…Liam Neeson is absolutely hilarious here:

Movies

…and I thought the trailer looked kinda funny…

This, from Will Leitch from The Concourse:

Rock The Kasbah Might Be Bill Murray’s Worst Movie Ever

Ouch.

Read the article.  It offers its very strong opinion and backs it up with plenty of facts.

As I said in the header, I thought the trailer for the film (there are several and the one below looks like the one I recall originally seeing) made it look like the movie could be funny but after reading this review, it sounds like its nothing short of a train wreck.

And, by the way, not only does it have a strong cast, Barry Levinson directed it.  While he’s certainly had his ups and downs, he’s made some very strong films.

Over at RottenTomatoes.com, Rock the Kasbah thus far is suffering the same critical fate, though there aren’t enough critical reactions for the folks behind the site to offer a definitive overview.  Still, of the 25 critics thus far weighing in, the film has a miserable 8% approval.

We’re still early regarding critical/audience reaction and the ratings may change but it would appear this might be a case where the trailer is funnier than the movie it is trying to sell…

Movies, TV

Back to the Future…!

On Jimmy Kimmel and on Back to the Future day (ie, the day Marty and Doc traveled to the future, according to the movies)…

Very amusing.  Thought the best overall joke was “Marty McFly’s” reaction to being told, at the end of the skit, that Micheal J. Fox would be a guest on the show.

Pardon the pun, but how time flies!  I remember going to the theaters to see the original Back to the Future in 1985 and being blown away by it.  Wasn’t as impressed with the two sequels (BTFII had some very funny scenes taking place within the context of the first movie but the ending was so clearly “to be continued” that it annoyed me.  BTFIII closed out the series well but the characters went back in time so far, to the wild west, that it lost the sense of immediacy the original had.  What made the original so cool was to see Marty meeting up with his parents when they were his age.  He knew them, but he didn’t really know them.  In BTFIII, while we see distant relatives of some original characters, we never felt the same closeness to them as the original movie’s plot had).

Nonetheless, if nothing else, this makes me want to watch the movies again.

Movies

Star Wars musings…

2 Comments

Yesterday, during the Monday Night Football game, Disney released the official trailer for Star Wars Episode VII – The Force Awakens.  If you’re one of the very few out there who haven’t yet seen it, here it is…

Not too bad, right?  Some of the special effects shots are impressive although the story/character stuff, to my eyes, hints at a Star Wars for this particular generation, one that’s inspired more by The Hunger Games than the original Star Wars.  Then again, maybe I’m seeing more into this than there is.

I’ve noted before my curious feelings regarding Star Wars.  To know me, you would figure I’d be a fanatic of the series.  I was 11 years old when the original Star Wars was released way back in 1977.  Before -and after!- the movie’s release I was a big fan of all things sci-fi.  I loved the original Star Trek.  I caught every science fictional show or cartoon I could on TV or at the movies.  I loved reading science fictional stories both in novel and comic book form.

And when Star Wars was released, like so many others my age, I was dying to get into the theater to see it.  I did so, perhaps in the first week or so of its release and to this day I remember the energy within that filled-to-the-brim theater.  The theater was teeming with with boys (for the most part) not all that much older than me.  When the movie began, they screamed and clapped and loved every single second…

…while for the life of me I couldn’t –still can’t– understand what it was that appealed to them.

As Star Wars played out, I found myself curiously detached from the experience.  While others were going out of their minds, I was unimpressed.  Sure, the movie’s effects were quite stunning, but the story didn’t engage me.  In fact, I found the whole thing rather…dull.  Toward the end, when we see Darth Vader flying away in his crippled fighter, a scene designed to clearly set up a sequel, I finally had some emotions regarding the film: I was livid.

How could the film’s makers (George Lucas was yet to become a household name) have the balls to make a movie yet clearly set up a sequel?

Bear in mind, back in 1977 movie sequels were an incredible rarity.  Other than the James Bond movies, there were very, very few sequels or series of movies.  Therefore 11 year old me expected a movie to be self-contained and, at the very least -and again, this was in my mind- not make reference to a continuation that may never happen.

So I walked out of the theater feeling rather odd.  Everyone around me loved Star Wars just as clearly as I did not.  And, being a sci-fi fan, I just couldn’t understand what it was I missed.

I would go on to catch the film again a month or so later when I took my sister to see it.  That experience proved to be a repeat of my first experience.  Filled theater, high energy, audience love.

And then there was me, still not feeling it.

Now please, don’t take my feelings regarding Star Wars as some kind of put down of everyone else’s.  My personal opinions aren’t any more “right” than the vast majority of people out there who obviously loved the film,

The bottom line is that Star Wars simply wasn’t my cup of tea even though, perplexingly, by all rights it should have been.

So unimpressed with Star Wars was I that I skipped the sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, when it hit theaters.  The first time I saw it was when it aired on TV some time later.  As for Return of the Jedi, I caught that one in the theaters and found it to be a more entertaining experience though I felt Harrison Ford looked pained being in this film.  By that time he was quite the rising star and perhaps wanted to put these movies behind him.  Who knows.

I didn’t think all that much of the Star Wars prequels, none of which I saw in theaters, but in this respect my opinion probably falls in line with most others.

Which brings us back to Star Wars VII and its trailer.

Is it just me or does it seem obvious who the “big bad” is?

Used to be old time murder mystery films/TV shows would show us a hand holding a gun or some such to hide who the killer was.  In those instances the killer was obviously someone else in the film, someone we knew, and the shock of that realization was kept from us by showing a hand or feet or a back and not showing us the killer’s face until the very end.

So with this Star Wars VII trailer we see a villain who wears a mask (hiding his/her face) and also speaks with a distorted voice.  The voice thing is particularly intriguing: Here we have a villain we may know just by their non-distorted speech.

Add to the fact this villain carries around Darth Vader’s nearly melted mask and clearly has some kind of affinity for him.

By the way, which of the characters from the original trilogy don’t we see in this commercial?  Why…Luke Skywalker.

….Hmmmmm….

Is that the big reveal?

That Luke Skywalker is the movie’s villain?

Could these films, therefore, be something of a repeat of the original Star Wars trilogy but instead of a Darth Vader going from evil to, by the end, good, we have Luke Skywalker starting out as bad and, by the end, becoming good?  Following the path of his father?

It would be a gutsy thing to do, I suppose, given the way things were left in Return of the Jedi.

I suppose we’ll see in December.

UPDATE: I’ve read that Luke Skywalker’s role in this film is very limited and that the sequels to this film are meant to focus more on him.  Even if Luke isn’t the badguy presented in the trailers, he might still be the big bad of the series of movies that follows…or not.

For a movie/set of movies I’ve noted weren’t my cup of tea, its annoying how much I’m thinking about them!  Just goes to show: The power of advertising is mighty indeed!

Movies

Lockout vs. Escape From New York…

The movie Lockout, starring Guy Pearce and Maggie Gracce was released back in 2012.

When it reached home video, I reviewed it (you can read the full review here) and noted how the film appeared to be producer/writer Luc Besson’s updating/remake of another, very famous sci-fi film:

When I first saw the trailer for Lockout I was intrigued.  My younger, more strident self (as opposed to the more mellow person I’ve since become) might have been furious that Mr. Besson (who is also listed in the credits as having the “original idea” of this film!!!!) would so cavalierly rip off another person’s concept.

“Another person’s concept” referred to the fact that Lockout was essentially an outer space version of John Carpenter’s 1981 film Escape From New York.

Anyway, the film came and went and I thought, for the most part, was forgotten.

Not so.

It would appear someone involved/has right to Escape From New York sued the producers of Lockout for copyright infringement in a French court (Luc Besson and his production company hails from France)…and they won the case:

French Court Rules Luc Besson’s Lockout Ripped Off Escape From New York

What’s fascinating in today’s day and age is seeing the various comments below the above article.  Many, many people seem to acknowledge Lockout does indeed rip off Escape From New York’s (and its sequel, L.A., for that matter) yet do not feel the court ruling is appropriate because so many stories out there could be interpreted as being derivative of other stories.

To which I say yeah…but…

As a writer, I most certainly draw inspiration from the works of others and would never claim to create things “in a vacuum”.  The fourth novel in my Corrosive Knights series, Nox, has a plot that was inspired by my having watched, for the first time since seeing it in theaters, what I still consider one of the worst James Bond films ever made, Moonraker.

And yet, if you were to watch Moonraker and then read Nox (or vice-versa), I seriously doubt you’d see any major similarities between either works.  Indeed, had I not admitted I was inspired by the Moonraker movie, I seriously doubt anyone, even my most dedicated fans (you’re out there somewhere, right?!), would have ever linked the two works together.

But with Lockout vs. Escape From New York, there is very little doubt that one inspired (or, as the French court ruled, “ripped off”) the other.  Whatever you may think of Lockout, good or bad, if you’re familiar with John Carpenter’s film, you instantly see the similarities…and they are quite significant.

You have a rogue anti-hero who gets incarcerated and, at the same time, a high level official (in Escape From New York its the President of the United States, in Escape From L.A. it’s the President’s daughter.  In Lockout, its the President’s daughter) is trapped inside a highly fortified prison “city” (New York, L.A., and in Lockout’s case, a Prison satellite) where the inmates run the asylum (after a fashion they do so in Lockout) and our hero is forced to get inside this highly dangerous setting and rescue the high level official before time runs out.

Sure, individual elements are seen in many films/books/stories.  You have thousands of stories involving a rouge anti-hero.  You may have thousands of stories involving breaking someone out of a “impenetrable” prison.  You have thousands of stories involving tight deadlines and dangerous missions, where failure to fulfill the mission in time means death.

But what makes the case of Lockout vs. Escape From New York so obvious, to my eyes, is in the fact that all these individual elements were put together in virtually the same manner with one major exception: One movie took place in a space station while the other took place in a dystopic Manhattan.

Otherwise, you’ve got the same story.

The producers of Lockout were ordered to pay €80,000 for their infringement, but they are appealing the ruling.

Interesting stuff.  I’ll be curious to see how this all shakes out.