digging an old post out of drafts at the last second…
Rather than look forward to (this predated my doomerism policy)the apocalyptic corporate fascist world war three the orange ballsack is trying to start, let us look back upon the wasted potential in the recent Space Shooters films. There were warning signs that J’brahms was too superficial and glossy to stick the landing. I even clocked some of that stuff along the way, but chose to not dwell on it, hoping for a bright future.
Well, it’s time to dwell. Or at least tarry for a moment. What a wild ten years it’s been.
2009 Space Shooters, dir: J’Brahms. This was less of a soft reboot and more of a chubby reboot of the series. Turgid? If this reboot lasts more than two hours, seek medical attention. But it had an emotional through-line that was visceral, and big visuals that spoke to the giant scale of apocalyptic content in my dreams. It felt legit. Hokey, overblown, but legit. I especially liked when they retconned Quinoa Djinn to play up his conflicted half-human heritage angle. That part at the Fulcan Science Academy when he turned them down to join Space Fleet – badass. The lens flare was a bad sign. Maybe it was the poison at the heart of the whole proceedings.
2013 Space Shooters: Into Batchness, dir: J’Brahms. This movie took a part originated by a rich corinthian adonis and gave it to a member of an underprivileged race – one of the cantina aliens from episode 4. It was a radical move to appease us SJWs, and I don’t want to come off problematic here, but he just didn’t have the charisma to carry it off. I swear it’s not because of his compound eyes!
2015 Space Shooters: The Fuck Actually, dir: J’Brahms. This was an interesting one. The first two movies in the stiff reboot were both squarely focused on the crew of the Starship Galactica – Captain Kenobi, Quinoa Djinn, Lieutenant Neytiri, and the rest. This one introduced a whole new cast of characters, as if maybe he was trying to walk back from the heat generated by the casting choices in Into Batchness.
It also played up scientology and the cool powers it gives you, which was an interesting choice. Dark scientologist Kyle Ron wants to give everybody body thetans or something. Ray Palpable and Finn the Human form the heart of the movie – new friends on a big adventure.
It was a return to form – a strong emotional momentum and big apocalyptic visuals, tailor made for me. The actors made all the difference, because the script was actually very flimsy. They told the story with their faces and the guy at the lens helped make that happen.
The warning signs here: When Finn ended the film in a coma, it felt like an insurance policy that would allow them to write him out of the sequel if the racist backlash to the trailers proved dangerous at the box office. I was extremely fucking leery of that.
Plus the lack of time spent with character development – even compared to the first one – was maybe a hint the director might be a soulless scumbag who was good at playing heartstrings with visuals due to experience directing hallmark commercials.
2016 Space Shooters: Tokyo Drift, dir: Justin Lin. This one returned to the characters Space Shooters had started with so memorably, but something about the commercials put me off and I never got around to watching it. Nobody I know suggested I’d missed anything. It had Idris “Heimdall” Elba and motorcycles, which were a setup for the spinoff series “Hobbs and Shaw.”
2017 Space Shooters: TemporoMandibular Joint, dir: Jack Ryan. Abbey recently pointed out that this movie caught a lot more flak from squalling fascist baby boys than the previous scientology-oriented entry in the series, and that it was a bit mysterious. My own feeling is that they were already primed for revolt by their previous casting-based tantrums and something about the moment in US politics made it feel like go-time. I seem to recall some billionaire rapist emboldening a lot of domestic terrorists at the moment.
Anyhoo, Jack Ryan turned in a weird but interesting movie. I loved a lot of things about it. But again it had a new character who had sparked controversy with nazi bitch boys landing in a security coma at the end of the film. And I felt like the main characters – Ray Palpable and Finn the Human – were weirdly lacking in agency through almost the whole run time. At least there were strong hints they could come to dominate the plot in the coming sequel / grand finale. This was two questionable things that loomed as possible issues in the last movie, but could have been easily moved past.
2019 Space Shooters: Rule of Rose, dir: J’Brahms. It didn’t happen. They used the security coma to separate out our girl Rosie from the main cast and bury her in the background. Finn’s character never developed beyond the first movie when he went to rescue Rey from the big laser death planet. Ray just got shuffled through the expected paces and landed alone with no found family, just an orphan like at the beginning of her movies.
Her scientology powers were given a dramatically uninteresting excuse lifted from early fan theories. A beloved villain from an earlier iteration of the franchise showed up with zero fanfare and couldn’t help but fail to elevate the proceedings. I didn’t see it myself, but I have all of this on good authority. I’m not even going to pirate it. It’s just sad.
Live long and prosperity be with you, Space Shooter fans. I’m sorry J’Brahms turned out to be another false messiah like Josh Weedlin before him. It just doesn’t pay to like celebrities that much, but even for non-fanatical types, this was a sad one to watch playing out. I feel you, kids. I feel you.
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not even a polite chuckle? perhaps this one was not ready for prime time.
I live under a rock with my old fairytales and extinct languages. I don’t know anything about Jbrahms.
it sounds like a very nice rock
I had to look them up. It turns out that I’ve seen a few of JJ’s movies, and even recognized your references once I was reminded of them. But six years ago was a long time ago, emotionally speaking, and I’ve disengaged a lot from the present century. I don’t think my wife and I have been to a movie theater since before COVID.
The last movie I watched was Karl Zeman’s 1962 animated movie, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. But that’s part of my preparation for visiting the Czech Republic later this year, not because of any faux intellectualism.
wow that movie looks dope. i wonder how it compares to gilliam’s thing.
i have not been in a theater in a while that i can recall either. pitiful if i have seen something since covid i remember it so little.
man srsly that movie is fucking brilliant example of methods to make a fantastic movie cheaply, so you can tell your story without being beholden to the crapitalist system! i want poor artists to see shit like that and take notes. the things that were difficult to do when that movie came out have become so much cheaper now!
I have also not been to a cinema since the start of COVID.
It seems likely to be the single worst possible place you could go if you want to avoid it like, well, like exactly what it is, aside maybe from a multi-hour airplane flight. Crowded, indoor, often poorly ventilated, likely packed in with other people like sardines for 2+ hours: a perfect environment for a respiratory virus outbreak.
Along with the DVD of the movie there was a 2016 documentary on Zeman. I think there were two points of interest related to your comments at #5 and #6.
First, Gilliam’s film is very different, but that’s because Gilliam actually stuck closer to the original text than Zeman did. Zeman begins the film with a cosmonaut landing on the moon and finding a number of enlightenment historical figures there, dining. Cyrano declaims about how modern man lacks imagination and Baron Munchausen volunteers to educate the cosmonaut about the limitless possibilities of imagination and how it should direct science rather than the other way around.
What follows in the film is more traditional Munchausen, but with the cosmonaut as a companion. They rescue a princess from the sultan, they get swallowed by a whale, etc. It is filled with sight gags, as well as other absurdities.
But was Gilliam influenced by Zeman? I think it’s pretty clear that he was. A lot of Gilliam’s work, including from Monty Python and the Flying Circus is similar if not identical to Zeman’s. Further, the documentary interviewed a few modern directors, but the most discussion and screen time of any directors was Gilliam, who admitted that he was influenced by Zeman but hadn’t looked at Zeman’s work in awhile so he couldn’t judge exactly how much.
Another part of the documentary was a group of modern film students being taught how Zeman made his effects. In a lot of ways that was even more interesting. The students themselves, when they screened their work, were amazed at how well the effects worked.
beks – real shit
flex – so cool