Mongo Nation

Kicking a dead horse as an art form in 2008

By Jeremy Azevedo

More remakes? If this is the best stuff they could come up with prior to the writer’s strike, I don’t see what the writers could possibly hope to gain by continuing the charade that they are capable of doing something that some nameless hack couldn’t do equally as well. A cursory glance at the movie lineup for 2008 is essentially a laundry list of sequels, retreads and recycled TV shows.

Perhaps the most disturbing trend, however, has got to be the alarming number of long dead franchises being dug up and dragged into the light by greedy producers looking for a sure thing. Case in point: Rocky and Rambo come back after 10-15 years in the grave and do pretty well. Instead of calling it a day and fondly remembering the series that thrilled us in our youth with a perfectly good send off, the studio has to go ahead and green light yet another sequel to both films. All of the bitter-sweet finality and closure those movies provided will certainly be raped on film in order to make a quick buck.

Machine gun: Check. Knife: Check. Depends undergarments: Check.

It doesn’t stop there, either. Other deceased franchises being defiled this year are a reportedly Robert Englund-free “Nightmare on Elm Street” (despite an earlier failed relaunch with 1994’s “Wes Craven’s A New Nightmare”), “Star Trek”, “The X-Files”, “Indiana Jones”, “Sex and the City”, “Night of the Living Dead”, “Friday the 13th” and even 1941’s “Wolfman”. Yes, someone out there actually thinks it’s time to start bringing back 70 year old Universal monsters. “Creature From the Black Lagoon”, anyone? Even the long rumored “Mad Max” relaunch is expected to begin production any day now.
Apparently, no horse is too dead to beat some more. If you’re tired of watching the same movies you watched as a kid only re-shot with all the actors aged 20 years and shot up with a king’s ransom worth of HGH, you’re pretty much shit out of luck. Your only other options really are unnecessary sequels to movies like “The Mummy” (why?) and “Harold and Kumar”, or remakes of perfectly good old movies that will probably suck. Have we learned nothing from the trash that was “War of the Worlds” or “I Am Legend”?

“The Day No One Watched a Remake of a Kinda Dumb Old Movie”

Check out this list of remakes coming soon to a theater near you: “Death Race 2000”, “Journey to the Center of the Earth”, “A Christmas Carol” (with Jim Carrey again, barf), and “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. And that’s not even taking into account remakes of TV shows, such as “Get Smart”, “Land of the Lost” and “G.I. Joe” (which I’m actually secretly excited about no matter what). Even comic book movie stinkers “The Punisher” and “The Incredible Hulk” are being remade for a second chance at life.

What was once old is now new, right guys?

If the whiny, striking writers think they deserve some special treatment for re-writing someone else’s work for the theaters and inflicting an endless parade of scripted reality shows upon us via television, I say they can suck it. It’s time for them to shut the f**k up and start figuring out how they’re going to actually earn the support and respect of the public by actually producing something new for a change. But until that happens, don’t be surprised if your local theater marquee looks like the program listing for “Nick at Night”.

Great action film or greatest action film?

By Jeremy Azevedo

Something many people forget about the first Rambo film was that there were serious undertones behind the comically extreme violence and frequent explosions.

This may not have been quite as prevalent in later films, but the fourth and final Rambo film, soon to hit theaters, is somewhat of a return to form. The new Rambo is a natural evolution of the action film as required by a new audience that is both more sophisticated and also more bloodthirsty than audiences were 20 years ago.

Rambo tearing out some guy’s throat for stealing his Hot Pocket out of the freezer.

Obviously it’s very difficult to revisit a character as iconic as Rambo after a nearly twenty-year absence. Some people will want straightforward action and others will expect a more mature handling of the subject matter. The new Rambo does a little of both. It offered the requisite thrills from start to finish while at the same time raising awareness of the civil war and child soldiering problems that are occurring in Burma, and that do, in fact, go largely unreported.