Monday, April 20, 2009

Bullshinema


Hollywood has awards for everything, from Best-Actor to Best Sound-Editing. They even have Razzies awarded for the worst movies. It’s like the Special Olympics, where everyone gets an award for any accomplishment, no matter how small and insignificant, but what about awards for sheer bullshitery? Moments that make audiences want to stand up and declare loudly to the screen, “That’s bullshit!”
Here are my nominees:
Fast and Furious:
The scene:
Riddick is racing down a hidden tunnel along the Mexican/American border that was somehow constructed in complete secrecy despite the fact that the only way to reach it is at night, in complete darkness, while racing along a desert plain as fast as a souped-up muscle car will carry you before a border camera pans back and detects you, and the slightest sign of a disturbance will launch a helicopter after you. He being chased by dozens of cars down this treacherous, narrow path, and there’s another car beside him. There’s a wall up ahead, and he can’t pull away. So he reaches out the door of his car to the car next to him and pulls open it’s passenger door. Then, while traveling at ludicrous speeds, he jumps from car to car, pushes out the driver of the second car, and proceeds to take the wheel. His old car explodes as it hits the wall, triggering a cave-in/car-pileup. The guy he pushed out is run over. He explodes out of the tunnel, and revs the car so it rears back on it’s rear wheels. While he’s doing this, he’s being shot at by a guy without enough sense to get out of the way. XXX crushes him to death between his car and a wreck.
The Matrix Reloaded:
The scene:
Trinity is falling backwards out of a skyscraper window, in slow-motion bullet-time with glass shards raining down all around her. An Agent has jumped out after her, and he’s shooting down at her as she shoots up. One of his bullets actually hits. This is all part of premonition in Neo’s dream of something that happens in a virtual world. He later alters the scene by flying like Superman at speeds so fantastic they rip cars up off of the ground in his jetstream. He snatches her away before she hits a car and proceeds to remove a bullet from her chest by phasing his hand into her chest. This brings her back to life in the real world.
Also nominated: Everything else in the Matrix.
AVP:
The scene:
The Predator and the Woman escape a nuclear blast on a rocket-sled flying up a tunnel bored through hundred of meters of ice leading from an Egyptian pyramid buried in the Artic Circle. They’re flung from the sled at speeds that would easily kill a normal human being upon impact with the frozen tundra above, but they roll away unscathed and proceed to run on foot from the blast, jumping not once, not twice, but three times from the nuclear explosion as it tears apart the ground underneath them.
Also: I’d like to create the category for Worst Post-Credits Surprise-Twist Scene.
Nominated:
Every Marvel Comics movie in recent memory, such as the scene at the end of X-Men: Last Stand, where Professor X comes back to life by psychically controlling a comatose boy, but as for the worst?
The upcoming Wolverine movie apparently. Wolverine’s in Japan, drinking, and talking to the hostess. Nothing happens aside from a little bit of dialogue, making the scene a waste of time.
Also: the scene at the end of Max Payne, as if any human being could make it through the entire movie. It basically sets up the sequel which, God willing, will never happen.

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