Pacific Rim gets a suitably large-scale teaser...

Between this and Man of Steel (along with The Hangover part III), Warner Bros. is going to have a very nice summer. I don't know whether or not Guillermo Del Toro's Pacific Rim is going to be anything more than basically a straight version of Monsters Vs. Aliens, but I've remarked before that I wish the 2009 Dreamworks animated feature was willing to take its 50's sci-fi throwback more seriously.  The scale of this picture is obviously huge, although these days commenting on the scale is about as useful as saying "Wow, great special effects!" about pretty much any major film past 1994. *Big* is the new normal for stuff like this, and I hope that either the film is more than just Robots Vs. Monsters or at least that it's a really really exciting version of said template.  Del Toro doesn't generally do soulless blockbusters, so one can presume that the picture has some substance.  If the film really hits big, expect Idris Elba's (in his natural accent it appears) rallying cry: "Today we are cancelling the apocalypse!" to become a catchphrase of sorts.  Anyway, this looks pretty terrific so we'll know more when we know more.  Pacific Rim opens July 12, 2013.  Any thoughts?

Scott Mendelson      

Catch 22: The ironic failure of Alex Cross.

As I wrote two summers ago, there was a great irony in the idea of Super 8 being sold as the great summer original in a sea of mediocre sequels and reboots.  The J.J. Abrams sci-fi drama sold itself as a diamond in the rough only to find itself facing off against one of the strongest mainstream summers in recent memory.  So it is the case with Lionsgate's seemingly failed Alex Cross.  I've long written about how the inexplicable death of the James Patterson film franchise signaled a sea change in Hollywood.  Despite earning $74 million in America on a mere $30 million budget, Along Came A Spider was the second and last of the Morgan Freeman-starring Alex Cross thrillers.  That Paramount, which once counted on pulpy, star-driven, adult-skewing (and often R-rated) thrillers as their bread-and-butter, would forsake what seemed to be a profit machine signaled that something was changing.  As I've written before, 2001 was a game-changer for mainstream Hollywood in a number of major ways.  One of the major wind changes we saw was the slow death of the adult-driven mid-budget genre film in favor of 'all tentpoles-all the time'.  As I discussed earlier this year, the last two years has seen a real resurgence in just the kind of film that Kiss the Girls represented.  Irony of ironies, when Alex Cross did return, the movie-going world didn't need him anymore.

Review: Prometheus (2012) has stunning visuals, but with a generic story, old ideas, and thin characters.

Prometheus

2012
124 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Come what may, Prometheus is a mid-level version of what it is.  By that, I mean it is, in the end, a somewhat generic Alien/The Thing-type horror film.  It is mostly science-fiction only in that it takes place in the future and involves inter-stellar travel.  Its 'big ideas' can be summed up in two sentences, and they are not only not-revolutionary but recognizable to probably 90% of the viewing audience.  It has some truly wonderful visuals and it's arguably worth seeing once purely for some of the images it creates.  But as a full-blown movie it doesn't quite work. Like Super 8, it gets tied up with horror elements in its last half that its filmmakers don't truly care about and feel like a commercial concession.  Like last summer's botched 80s-Spielberg homage, Prometheus takes advantage of a genre audience so worn down by threatened reboots and remakes that it seems almost groundbreaking that this film is merely a glorified rip-off of earlier genre entries of this nature.  While advertised as an original science-fiction epic with tangential ties to the existing Alien franchise, it really is a bigger budgeted and better cast variation of that specific template.  Despite must-see production values and some genuinely compelling imagery, it's somewhat closer in quality to The Thing 2011 than The Thing 1982.

Alien prequel/spin-off Prometheus gets two very Alien-like trailers.

This looks entertaining, it's well-cast, and yes there are moments that suggest a pretty large scale, but at the end of the day, it still looks like an Alien-type horror film.  Which means it will seemingly follow a certain template and hit specific plot beats along the way.  That's okay, but I have to wonder if this film weren't actually directed by Ridley Scott if all the hyperventilating geeks wouldn't be screaming 'Dude, it's an Alien rip-off!'.  Anyway, feel free to disagree, but I'm certainly hoping it will be a winner come June 8th.  Moreover, the first teaser played much better on a big screen (which partially inspired by rant about that last two weeks ago), so I'll presume the same is true about this IMAX-specific teaser.  This one drops in 2D, 3D, and IMAX 3D.  As always, we'll see...

Scott Mendelson

Ridley Scott's 'not an Alien prequel' Prometheus gets a trailer that looks an awful lot like an Alien prequel, or an Alien rip-off.

If I seem a little less excited about this project than others, it's because A) I'm not an Alien junkie (I love Aliens, like Alien and Alien: Ressurection, and respect the comprised vision that is Fincher's extended cut of Alien 3) and B) Ridley Scott is just as likely to make Robin Hood or Hannibal as he is to Kingdom Of Heaven or Blade Runner.  Actually, as I scroll down the list of Scott's movies over the last 20 years, I actually find far more I didn't like (1492, American Gangster, GI Jane, Black Hawk Down, etc) than ones I did enjoy (Gladiator which I still think is vastly overrated, Matchstick Men which is underrated, Thelma and Louise, etc).  Aside from that, the project feels a whiff desperate, as if Scott just decided to return to the franchise that made him a name after a few costly flops.  Now having said all of that, the footage on display does look quite impressive. The scale is pretty large and the cast is aces, but I could have said the same thing about Body of Lies.  And the preview is certainly selling the movie like either an unofficial Alien prequel or a big-budget variation on the template that Alien established (think Event Horizon or Virus).  But for now, there is no reason not to give everyone involved the benefit of the doubt.  This one drops on June 8th, 2012.  As always, we'll see.

Scott Mendelson

Yesterday's News Today: Idris Elba replaced as Alex Cross by Tyler Perry(!?)

See, this is another reason why it's so hard to write about real news. Even when something is absolutely confirmed as factual, it can still end up being wholly changed or retracted a few months later. I went into my whole spiel about the Alex Cross series back in August of 2010, so I'll try not to repeat myself. Short version: Idris Elba will make a great Alex Cross, and the James Patterson detective-superhero novels are the very kind of pulp fiction that should be made into a franchise. Oh, and the kind of star-driven mid-budget thrillers that the Morgan Freeman two-film franchise (Kiss the Girls and Along Came A Spider) represented the sort of adult-skewing genre picture that rarely gets made anymore now that so many studios are 'all tentpoles, all the time'. Well, the new story is that Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious, Dragonheart, XXX, etc) is directing, and Idris Elba has been replaced by none-other than Tyler Perry. Yes, THAT Tyler Perry.

It's about damn time: Alex Cross returns to the big screen as Idris Elba takes over from Morgan Freeman.

Whenever I blather on about the death of the mainstream, mid-budget, star-driven thriller, the prime example that comes to mind is the Alex Cross franchise. Paramount used to thrive on said pot-boilers, and two of the more successful entries were adaptations of two books in James Patterson's long-running Alex Cross series. I can't count the number of times my wife has casually asked me why Paramount didn't make more. Aside from whether or not star Morgan Freeman was interested, the best I could figure is that a regime change took hold at Paramount, and the new bosses wanted in on the mega-blockbuster game. After all, why spend $50 million and hope to gross $100 million worldwide, when you could spend $150 million, and hope to God that you made at least $300 million worldwide? Well, it appears that saner heads have prevailed, as psychologist/detective/federal agent/super hero Alex Cross is returning to the big screen. And taking over for Morgan Freeman is Idris Elba, a respected character actor from The Wire, The Office, and several film turns (Daddy's Little Girls, The Losers, 28 Weeks Later, etc) who is about to become a superstar.