Analog-Theater 2.0

Okay, so you cast Arnold Swartzeneger, Uma Thurman, George Clooney, Chris O’Donnell, and Alicia Silverstone in a further installment of a very successful movie based on a successful franchise. You have Joel Schumacher direct it and give Elle Macpherson a bit part. What do you get? You would assume a blockbuster since you have an all start cast, a solid franchise, and a good director, but instead we get Batman and Robin, the movie that killed the series.

Val Kilmer, who played Batman in the previous movie, did not come back for Batman and Robin. Instead, he went to play Simon Templar in the Saint where he earned three times what Warner Bros was offering him for Batman and Robin. Kilmer apparently felt much like Michael Keaton did when he retired from playing Batman, that Batman was being marginalized in favor of other characters.

So, here is the plot. The film opens with Batman and Robin (Clooney and O’Donnell) in the batcave getting ready to go and stop Mr. Freeze (the Governator) who is robbing stealing diamonds from a museum. Batman and Robin face off against Freeze’s henchmen on an ice rink. Lucky for them, they have retractable ice skates in their boots, I mean doesn’t everyone have them? Batman and Mr. Freeze fight in a rocket, which Freeze naturally brings with him on heists. Freeze also reveals that he’s addicted to bad, cold related puns. Freeze bails out, leaving Batman trapped in the rocket. Robin saves the day and they go after Freeze to get the diamonds back. Freeze freezes Robin and says that Batman has only eleven minutes to thaw him or he’ll die. Batman chooses to save Robin instead of catching the crook.

Meanwhile in South America, we are introduced to the unattractive Pamela Isley (Thurman), a botanist working for an insane boss played by John Glover. Pamela discovers that her boss is using her research in plant/animal hybrids to develop a supersoldier. They brought in a scrawny soldier and put him in a machine where they pumped him full of the serum. When the soldier came out, he had grown a foot and gained over two hundred pounds of muscle. The insane scientist named his creation Bane.

Now here is the worst portrayal of a comic book character. In the comics, Bane was the ultimate villain. He was as cunning as he was strong. He broke all the criminals out of Arkham Asylum and only after Batman was exhausted from hunting them down did he come out of the shadows and broke Batman’s back. In the movie, Bane is a mindless brute who his almost incapable of speech and works as Poison Ivy’s sidekick.

Back to the movie, Pamela’s spying does not go undetected. The insane guy, I don’t remember his name nor do I care enough to look it up, chases after her when she runs. When he catches her, he pours a bunch of toxins and chemicals on her and she melts into the ground.

A week later she comes back as Poison Ivy and she reveals that her kisses are poisonous when she gives her boss a kiss. The chemicals also changed her from an unattractive scientist into a supposedly hot, red haired psychopath. Parents, this is why all those chemicals should be kept out of reach of children. Ivy and Bane decided to kill off all the human life on Earth so that the plants can take over.

Meanwhile, back at Freeze’s secret hideout, Freeze’s henchmen are forced to endure extreme air conditioning. Freeze’s thermostat goes to subzero temperatures. And that’s not all, they are forced to sing along with old claymation Christmas specials. Okay all you supreme evil overlords out there, if your henchmen are willing to put up with this type of abuse, it’s a sign that you should find new henchmen. In one room in Freeze’s hideout, Freeze has his wife in cryogenic stasis. He reveals that he is only stealing diamonds to find a cure for his wife’s fatal illness.

Barbara, Alfred’s niece, shows up at Wayne Manor for a surprise visit. Bruce invites her to stay until she has to return to college. We also find out that Alfred has been hiding the fact that he is dying from everyone. He coincidentally enough has the same illness that Freeze’s wife has.

Bruce and his currently girlfriend, Julia (Macpherson), attend a press conference where Bruce unveils his new telescope that uses satellites to give them a view of the sky everywhere around the Earth. Pamela shows up and asks why Bruce doesn’t use his money to protect the ecosystems instead of building telescopes. The reporter there says that Batman and Robin protect them, even from crumbling ecosystems. Time to go see Batman 15: Batman vs Deforestation.

Later that evening there is a ball where they are having a bachelorette auction. The lady with the highest bid will win the Wayne diamonds. Batman and Robin are making an appearance at the auction. Someone in a gorilla suit shows up and it turns out to be none other then Poison Ivy. She blows some pink dust on everyone so that they fall in love with her, even Batman and Robin. They she does her best Mae West impression and invites everyone to bid on her. Both Batman and Robin get involved in the bidding and Batman wins.

Just then, Mr. Freeze shows up at the ball and steals the diamonds. Batman and Robin chase after him. Robin is on his motorcycle driving across the hand of a giant statue about to make a jump to catch Mr. Freeze with Batman in the batmoble right behind him. Now where do you get statues that big where you can have a car and a motorcycle drive across the hand and gain enough speed to make a jump? Batman shuts down Robin’s bike and makes the jump himself and catches Mr. Freeze.

When they get back to the Batcave, Bruce and Dick have an argument. Dick says that the partnership won’t work because Bruce doesn’t trust him.

Dick follows Barbara to a motorcycle race where she’s been racing. He joins the race and saves Barbara when she fall off the edge. She reveals that she’s been racing to earn enough money to save Alfred from having to work for Bruce and him and that he’s dying.

Poison Ivy and Bane break Mr. Freeze out of prison and they decide to team up. Batman and Robin go to Mr. Freeze’s hideout and find Poison Ivy there. She uses her dust on them again and they start fighting each other while she and Bane escape, but not before unplugging the machine that’s keeping Freeze’s wife alive.

Ivy and Bane steal the batsignal and uses it to lure Batman and Robin into a trap. Robin goes in alone and Ivy reveals Mr. Freeze’s plan to use Wayne’s satellites to freeze Gotham City. Ivy kisses Robin, but it turns out that Robin is wearing rubber lips to protect him from the poison. She traps Robin in her vines and then traps Batman when he shows up. Then Batgirl shows up and saves them.

The Dynamic Trio go after Mr. Freeze who is trying to hack Wayne’s satellite telescope to freeze Gotham as an act of revenge for Batman killing his wife (which is what Poison Ivy told him). Batgirl and Robin defeat Bane and Batman defeats Mr. Freeze and plays back a recording of what Poison Ivy said when he revealed that she killed Freeze’s wife.

Batgirl uses her computer skills to unfreeze Gotham and almost everyone lives happily ever after. Alfred is cured, since Mr. Freeze gave Batman his research on the disease. Batgirl joins the caped crusaders. And Mr. Freeze becomes Poison Ivy’s new cellmate. Coed prisons?

The End, thank goodness. Now let’s pray that the new Batman series doesn’t become this bad.

Aside from the anatomically correct costumes, the bad puns, the complete disregard for the characters there are two things that killed this movie. First is that Tim Burton, the originally directer left the crew, well he didn’t direct the previous one either and it was lame, too. Tim Burton was the one that directed the first two movies (which were good). The second was pointed out by Joel Schumacher when they put the movie out on DVD. He said that the producers forced him to add gadgets that they could market in the toy line and to make the movie more “kid friendly”. I guess that explains the giant statues and neon face paint. It doesn’t explain the bad script, though. The plot was convoluted and the dialog was campy. The casting didn’t help much. I think that Arnold was not a good choice for Mr. Freeze. I like Arnold. He’s a good actor. I loved him in the Terminator movies. But he just didn’t do a good Mr. Freeze. I’m glad they didn’t cast the other two actors they were considering (Patrick Stewart and Robin Williams). I’m trying to think of a good choice they could have considered and the best I can come up with right now are Johnny Depp and the guy who played Q on Star Trek. But they would still need a better script writer.

I give this movie zero bananas.

Last night I decided to punish myself by watching Star Wars Episode 1. Now I like Star Wars, the original three. I like some of the novels that are out there. Bounty Hunter Wars, Crimson Empire and Shadow of the Empire are my favorites. What surprises me is that they can take a great established universe and ruin it.

My torment started a few minutes into the movie when Jar Jar Binks first opened his mouth. It was a sign that the election process does work (at least when Bush isn’t involved) when he was voted the most annoying film character of all time. Too make things worse, you can’t kill him because he would probably do the Obi Wan trick and come back as a ghost.

Aside from Jar Jar, they decided that the force was no longer some mystical force that flows through the universe like Obi Wan told Luke in A New Hope, now it was a bacteria that was in your body called metaclorians.

Something that continues to amaze me everytime I see the film is when Qui Gon says that Anakin Skywalker has all that metaclorian and then he ask his mom who his father was and she says there was no father. They think that he is something even more special. Where did those metaclorians come from? If they came from Anakin then there is something wrong with that since wasn’t even around before his mother got pregnant. Maybe his mom has so much metaclorian that she get get pregnant by herself? I give up. I’m not even going to try to apply logic to this.

I was surprised that they didn’t try to force Han Solo and Chewi into the film. Especially after Anakin conveniently built C3P0. The character served no purpose in the film except to show that he was there.

The only thing I liked about this movie was Queen Amidala. I like Natalie Portman. I would give up being a jedi for her, too.

For those of you who don’t know the plot for the movie, let me save you the trouble of watching it.

The Trade Federation has decided to attack the planet Naboo. Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi Wan go to conduct peace talks with them. As soon as they are onboard, the Trade Federation decides to do something extremely stupid. They try to kill them. Qui-Gon and Obi Wan escape to Naboo and meet Jar Jar.

Queen Amidala is captured by the Trade Federatio and the two jedi rescue her. They decided to go to Coruscant to see the Senate. On they way they are forced to land on Tatooine because their hyperdrive breaks. They try to buy a new one, but they don’t have any money. That’s when they meet Anakin. They decide to bet on Anakin in a pod race, which of course Anakin wins. Since he has so much metaclorin that logic no longer applies, they take him with them to train as a jedi.

Before they can leave Tatooine, they are attacked by Darth Maul, a sith. Qui-Gon fights him and then escapes. Once they reach Coruscont, they tell the council all about it and Yoda and Mace are worried.

Amidala goes to the Senate and under the advice of Palpatine, she moves for a vote of no confidence against the current Chancellor. This move makes it possible for Palpatine to try to take over.

Fed up with politics, Amidala and the gang go back to Naboo to fight the Trade Federation. They enlist the help of the Gungans (Jar Jar’s race) to battle the Trade Federation’s dollar store droid army.

The battle takes place, The gungans throw water balloons at the droids and hold them off for a while. Meanwhile Amidala and gang break into the palace and hunt for the viceroy, the leader of the Federation. During the fighting, Qui-Gon tells Anakin to hide somewhere safe. Now that’s good parenting for you. Lets take the 9 year old boy with us when we attack the palace. And what safe place does this boy find? Why the cockpit of a fighter. The ships autopilot takes him the battle in orbit where he naturally takes out the command ship and saves the day.

Meanwhile, Qui-Gon and Obi Wan bump into Darth Maul again. He kills Qui-Gon only to be killed by Obi Wan.

Amidala and her men manage to defeat the viceroy and save her people.

During the funeral for Qui-Gon, Yoda and Mace talk about the Sith. Yoda says that there are always two, a master and an apprentice. If I was a sith I’d wouldn’t limit my army to just two people. I’d start serious recruiting.

The one thing I forgot to mention was about Anakin supposed to bring balance to the force. Okay, the force is nice and all and the jedi are supposed to be good. What does bring balance mean? To balance it out? To balance out all the good? To balance something you need to put something on the other side of the scale. And whats the opposite of good? How about evil? And these supposedly wise men never thought of that.

I give this movie zero bananas.

As promised and better late then never, here is the first post of the lamest movies you don’t need to watch.

This weeks movie was Vampirella, a 1996 film starring Talisa Soto (from such movies as Spy Hard, Mortal Kombat, and Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever) in the title role. Robert Daltrey played the antagonist Vlad aka Johnny Blood (an later went on to play in Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula) and Richard Joseph Paul played the Adam Van Helsing.

The movie starts out on the planet Drakulon where criminal Vlad kills Ella’s father and escapes with his assistants. At five minutes into the movie, it was so painful to watch I needed aspirin. Robert Daltrey was overacting while his costars didn’t have a clue how to act.

Ella follows them to Earth, but she ends up missing Earth and landing on Mars where she waits for centuries until a shuttle from Earth to go there and she sneaks aboard. Meanwhile Vlad and his gang have had centuries on Earth to prepare. Vlad takes the only disguise that makes sense and becomes rock and roll singer Johnny Blood. Why does this sound familiar?

Lestat, I mean Vlad, is also the head of a secret organization of vampires that have launched several satellites into space that will simulate a nuclear winter.

Ella, now called Vampirella, is hunting down Vlad and his men. One of them, Demos, has left the group and is now a college professor with a family. After visiting him, she learns about Vlad’s new identity.

Vampirella is not the only person hunting Vlad, Adam Van Helsing, agent of PURGE, is also on his tail. He mistakes Vampirella for one of Vlad’s group. Vlad thinks that she is with PURGE. Vlad escapes PURGE and Adam realizes that Vampirella wants the same thing PURGE does.

The two of them team up and go after Vlad. Vlad captures them and like any aspiring supreme evil overlord, he locks them in a cell together. He also steals Vampirella’s blood serum so that she will have no choice but to feed on Adam. Adam gives her just enough blood to survive and the two of them break out and stop Vlad before his army of vampires take over the world. In the end Vampirella fights Vlad and impales him with a metal rod which attracts a lightning bolt that kills him.

The movie itself is based off of a series of comic books. Like most movies based on comics, it was nowhere near as good.

One of the few changes that surprised me was the costume. Her outfit in the movie is different from the one she wears in the comics. The one in the comics is also the same one that the models wear at the conventions and for the photo covers they used to do, so I know that there is a real vampirella costume. I just don’t know why they didn’t use it.

Over all the acting was pathetic, the plot was cliche, and the special effects were mediocre. I give this movie 1 banana which will now be my new rating system for movies.