John Scalzi on Worst SF Film of Past 12 Months

Over at the AMCtv website, SF author extraordinaire John Scalzi gives his opinion regarding the worst SF film of the past 12 months. His choice of AVP: Requiem is what some might call a "gimme," but Scalzi's analysis of the film is full of the insight and humor that Scalzi fans know and love.

Two of his comments stuck in my minds eye as particularly noteworthy. The first is his statement, "there's bad, from which campy enjoyment can still be wrung (see: Speed Racer), and there's joyless, depressing bad, which this movie oozes." Never mind that I actually believe that Speed Racer is not merely entertaining, but also good. Leave that aside and the sentence manages to convey just how awful Scalzi found AVP:Requiem to be. He "shows rather than tells" as our English professors continually pounded into our heads. The thought of joyless and depressing ooze has a nice Lovecraftian feel to it. It's almost as if Scalzi is saying that the act of watching AVP:Requiem can provide viewers with full knowledge of true cosmic horror. Good meaty stuff this.

The second striking comment, more a set of comments, was "Paul W.S. Anderson, [is] a director of such general hackery that I've actually instructed my film agent to demand I get an extra $2 million if he's attached to direct a movie based on one of my books." Now I would love for Scalzi to receive an extra $2 million for having any of his books made into films. I don't need there to be a reason except for Scalzi's authorship. But it strikes me that he's being slightly unfair to Paul W.S. Anderson's actual ability to make an entertaining film.

Before you jump through the screen and choke me to death, let me assure you that I am not some kind of Anderson fanatic. Cinerati didn't exactly fawn over Deathrace, though we did find it entertaining. I just think that the director of Event Horizon and Soldier might be a good fit for The Ghost Brigades. We just have to bring the Haitian from Heroes in to remove things like AVP, Mortal Kombat, and the various Resident Evil films from Anderson's mind before production begins.

DEATH RACE (2008): How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Watching a Commercial for a Video Game

When I entered the theater on Saturday to watch DEATH RACE (2008), starring Jason Statham, I had a huge chip on my shoulder. I fully expected the film to be as bad, if not worse, than Uwe Boll's IN THE NAME OF THE KING -- which also starred Jason Statham. What I forgot was that DEATH RACE is directed by "geek-media to film" über-director Paul W.S. Anderson (MORTAL COMBAT) -- who should in no way be confused with arthouse über-director Paul T. Anderson -- and in my mind having Anderson as a director is a positive thing.

One might ask why that is a positive thing. To answer, I will say that Anderson has in the past done what I thought was a complete impossibility. He directed an entertaining movie based upon a video game intellectual property, the aforementioned MORTAL COMBAT. He thankfully had nothing to do with the abomination that is MORTAL COMBAT 2. Anderson's ability to translate property from one geek medium to another isn't a one time fluke either. His 2002 screen adaptation of RESIDENT EVIL, starring his fiancé Milla Jovovich, was as entertaining an adaptation of a video game as has yet been made. I also believe that his Kurt Russell vehicle SOLDIER and his Gothic SF film EVENT HORIZON are highly underrated. Anderson's films are by no stretch of the imagination classics to be cherished, but they tend to be fun popcorn fare -- and to be honest that is what I hoped for in my heart of hearts when I went to see the new DEATH RACE.

I should have kept this in mind when I walked into the theater on Saturday afternoon, because I left the theater entertained.

Anderson's DEATH RACE begins with an opening scroll reminiscent of ROAD WARRIOR's description of how the world changes from the modern day -- a description seemingly based almost word for word on the future history described in Steve Jackson Games CAR WARS DELUXE EDITION. Essentially, the US economy collapses in 2012 (Corman's classic had the world's economy collapse), unemployment is ridiculously high, crime soars, corporations take over the prison system, the world watches its first "prison death match," eventually they become bored with fights to the death, and finally the DEATH RACE is born to satisfy their bloodlust.

Whew! That was quite a sentence. Needless to say, the script by Anderson attempts -- though ultimately fails -- to address one of my concerns regarding the remake. He also ties this film to the original by using David Carradine to do the voice over for Frankenstein in the film's opening race. I wanted some social commentary about our society's long history of bloodlust and Anderson hinted he would give that commentary to me. In the end though, he skipped over that part of the narrative to focus on the story of the racer, which brings me to the actual narrative of the film.

Anderson's script views like a bizarre combination of THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, THE LONGEST YARD (the Burt Reynold's version), and the original DEATH RACE 2000. Jensen Ames (Jason Statham) is a down on his luck blue collar worker who loses his job at the local steel mill when that mill closes down -- as an aside, I knew I was watching fiction when the film depicted a working steel mill within the US. Ames returns home, his family is murdered, he gets framed for the murder and sentenced to life in prison. Shortly after his arrival at the prison, he is made an offer by the warden (Joan Allen). She needs him, you see. The fans love Frankenstein, but Frankenstein died at the end of the last race -- a race that he won according to the pay-per-view telecast. As incentive to participate in the race, Ames is offered his freedom. Frankenstein has already won four races, if he wins a fifth then he gets to go free and return to society. Ames, as the new Frankenstein, would only have to win one race to be reunited with his daughter.

The script is all pretty standard stuff and doesn't offer any of the criticism I had hoped for, but it does serve as a skeleton (even though a weak one) for what turns out to be an entertaining film.

What makes the film entertaining is the fact that it unabashedly acknowledges the fact that there will be a video game based on the film. The best example of this occurs during the first race, and all subsequent races, when the audience is shown how the various offensive and defensive devices on the vehicles are activated. In order to activate their weapons, the drivers must drive over lit up sword icons on the track. Shield icons activate the defensive items on the vehicles, and skulls activate death traps which destroy the vehicle that activated the skull. As the film portrays it, the DEATH RACE is a kind of bloody and fatal version of MARIO CART -- silly laughter and all. One might say the DEATH RACE is live action WARIO CART. I could almost hear Machine Gun Joe (Tyrese Gibson) shouting, "I'ma Machina Guna Joe-a...I'ma Gonna Weeen."

Though the premise might seem cartoony, the action is anything but. Anderson brings his signature style of quick cuts and hyperkinetic action to the screen. The action sequences run the gamut from fast cars with guns blazing to Ames opening up a can of whoop ass on those who annoy him.

One only wishes he had taken things a little bit further. It's one thing to acknowledge as a part of your film that a video game will be made about it. It is another thing to use that as an opportunity to criticize overly violent video games. I'm not one that is overly worried about the influence of violent games on society, but I enjoy a good SF criticism as much as anyone. Anderson drops the ball with regard to the video game criticism by both choosing MARIO CART style games as the basis for his action and by not taking the violence far enough...or at least not showing how much the fans love and obsess about the violence. It isn't enough to hear that the DEATH RACE has 70 million subscribers, I want to hear some obsessed fans talk about the race. Better yet, have those same hard working steel workers at the beginning of the film talk about their favorite racers. Both the original story and the first movie showed us the world outside the race, or at least gave glimpses. Anderson's DEATH RACE seems to take place outside the surrounding world and its fans are only those who order the streaming video on the internet.

It isn't only in the area of social criticism where Anderson drops the ball. Most disappointing to me was the fact that Robin Shou, who plays the character 14K, is never allowed to showcase his significant movie martial arts skills. Shou was one of the highlights of Anderson's MORTAL COMBAT, and it is nice to see him on the screen, but one laments that the film spends so much time focused on Statham that Shou never gets his time in the spotlight.

I could continue with a long list of places where Anderson failed to deliver on the promise of the film's potential, especially aggravating since Anderson has been wanting to do this project for more than a decade, but such a list would undermine my actual feelings regarding the film.

I have written, and said, many times that sometimes the only important thing about a film is whether or not it entertains you. Not all film is meant to be high art and DEATH RACE certainly falls into that category of film.

To play around a little with something I wrote above, "Anderson has done something I never would have never thought possible. He has made an entertaining movie that seems to have as its sole purpose the promotion of an affiliated video game." If the video game can live up to its big screen commercial, it should be a heck of a fun time.

RATING: 2.5/5 STARS

My Apprehensions Regarding DEATH RACE (2008)

In his 1973 book THE PRIMAL SCREEN, Andrew Sarris describes a "complication unique to cinema in the curiously uneasy relationship between critic and audience." A part of this uneasy relationship is that audiences want critics to like what they like, and critics want audiences to appreciate films that should be appreciated. This is why we see so many stories about the disconnect, particularly acute in the current era of film, that exists between audiences and critics. Many a successful film has been panned by the critics. But this relationship isn't the whole of what makes the interaction between the critic and the audience in film so complicated. There is an additional complication called the "Primal Screen." The Primal Screen is "that factor of childhood reverie which forms a barrier between what we think about movies and what we feel about them."

THE PRIMAL SCREEN's foreword is a discussion of how, and why, critics themselves are never fully able to extricate the Primal Screen from their viewing habits. Sure, they may adopt the language of criticism and art -- though that is certainly rarer today than it was for Sarris in the 70s -- but there is some part of their criticism that is either informed by, or in reaction to, their Primal Screen. One critic may get carried away with praise regarding a particular film and fawn unceasingly, my attempt to avoid such pandering is why my TROPIC THUNDER review has yet to be posted. Another critic may enjoy a film on a primal level, but "know" that the film isn't "good" and thus draft a diatribe against a film that is otherwise enjoyable. It is this tendency I believe leads to the current disconnect between critics and audiences. Critics too often seem to be saying, "I'm supposed to be above enjoying panem et circenses aren't I?" When, like the rest of us, they really do like spectacle.

I think that it is too rare that critics share their Primal Screen biases with audiences, and I want to do so before I review DEATH RACE which was released in theaters today. My review will be posted on Monday. Having shared my Primal Screen expectations with you now, I won't feel overly compelled to moderate them later. You will know them, and be able to read the DEATH RACE review with those perceptions in mind. So without further ado, here are my prejudices regarding the most recent DEATH RACE film -- a film I will see tomorrow evening.

"I wanted to tell you," he said, "to tell you -- I -- I am not a butcher!"

The girl looked at him for a long moment. Then she leaned down and whispered to him:

"Nor a Racer!"

Ib Melchior's story "The Racer," published in the October 1956 issue of Escapade, ends with those wonderfully ambiguous lines. At the beginning of the tale, Willie "The Bull" Connors is a confident driver who is willing to commit "Tragi-Accs" and who is ruthlessly in pursuit of the $100,000 prize for winning a cross country race where a combination of quick Time and accumulated Points (earned through causing casualties) is the way to win. Being an "anti-racer" is a crime, but when Willie is confronted by the young woman Muriel his world view begins to change. First Muriel calls Willie a butcher, and then she stands in the road holding a baby -- daring Willie to run her over for the valuable points. An act, that if performed, would have given Willie the world record for most points scored in a race.

Melchior's tale is sharp and straight to the point. In the end, the woman who gave our "hero" the heart to stop killing is the first to vilify him. It is an indictment of our love for violent spectator sports. There is not satire in Melchior's piece, only disdain for our bloodlust.

... and the most popular spectator sports of the latter half of the 20th Century were such mildly exciting pursuits as boxing and wrestling. Of course the spectators enjoyed seeing the combatants trying to maim each other, and there was always the chance of the hoped-for fatal accident.

Motor Racing, however, gave a much greater opportunity for the Tragic Accidents so exciting to the spectator. One of the most famed old speedways, Indianapolis, where many drivers and spectators alike ended in bloody Tragi-Accs, is today the nation's racing shrine.

With those words, Melchior makes it clear that our society has a propensity for bloodlust and that with motor racing we finally found our ultimate sport. Well, almost -- it only became perfect after making Tragi-Accs intentional. Melchior's critique of the bloodthirsty nature of motor sports fans was also displayed in the excellent John Frankenheimer film GRAND PRIX (1966) starring James Garner. One wonders what Melchior and Frankenheimer would think about today's safety obsessed racing -- especially Formula One, but it goes without saying that even with racing having been partially sanitized mixed martial arts fighting seems to hint that our lust for blood hasn't subsided in the past 50 years.

"The Racer" was the inspiration behind Roger Corman's New World Studios classic 1975 B-Movie DEATH RACE 2000, starring David Carradine (and Sylvester Stallone) and directed by Paul Bartel. The Robert Thom and Charles Griffith screenplay drips with satire regarding America's obsession with power. It is an indictment of political imperialism, of Bolshevik revolution, and of blood sport. America is a totalitarian state and the rebels who seek to return a more just America are torn between revolutionaries inspired by our Founding Fathers and those who look like they stepped of the set of BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN. Bartel's direction perfectly captures the tone intended and his representations of the way sports media panders to celebrity are some of the most enjoyable parts of the film. Add to this the addition of B-movie starlets, and you get a magical combination. As Joe Bob Briggs put it, "This is the best cross-country road- race movie--and the most violent, and the funniest--despite the efforts of many crash-and-burn specialists to come up with a better one. It is also one of the most successful pictures ever produced by New World Pictures, Roger Corman's studio."

I worry that the current release of DEATH RACE doesn't get it. It has taken a story about sport, and society, that transform together -- becoming increasingly bloodthirsty -- and turned it into an adaptation of THE RUNNING MAN, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and THE FUGITIVE. Instead of professional athletes who are participating in a legitimate and well accepted form of entertainment, remember being an "anti-racer" was a crime in Melchior's tale, we now have the framed man wrongfully imprisoned and forced to participate in a race to the death. While it may contain some underlying criticism of the penal system, and to some extent our bloodlust, it seems to lack the completely scathing rebuke against all of society. The style of the film is more reminiscent of the post-apocalyptic imagery of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK that the advertising riddled paddocks one can see at any Formula One race.

My fear is that the directors and screenwriters spent too much time trying to remake the wheel in order to "bring it up to date," when they should have been looking at how the sport being criticized has evolved and used that as a jumping point. I seem to remember another movie in the recent past that made a similar mistake. It was called ROLLERBALL, and it not only paled in comparison to the original -- it never should have been made.