Posted on October 3rd, 2009 in Doc, Miscellaneous by Doctor Detroit
Office Hours! Na! Nananana! Eddie Money!
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More under the cut.
It was a long summer, and a rough September, but I am here—again—to speak on dis! Whatever that means! A new year of Office Hours, and like my real office hours, this column is by appointment only—so I won’t be writing this regularly like I did last year, but that’s cool, that’s cool.
I was originally going to write this column about my summer conquests—rereading The Lord of the RIngs trilogy, getting back into comics, getting back into semi-serious gaming, and all around coming to terms with the fact that I am someone who gets excited about social theory and statistical research methods and so I have no business trying to act like inherently geeky things aren’t up my alley, so long as I keep doing that thing that I do—which is analyze the begeezus out of whatever I do, because intellectualism is freedom, and knowledge is power, and so on and so forth or some such.
This was actually a pretty intense identity crisis, but damn it, sorry, you’re going to have to wait for that thrill-a-minute column until a later date. Because today, I am suffering a Friday the 13th-induced hangover. After picking up the remake on DVD a few months ago, it just kind of sat in the pile for awhile—I tried to watch it once, it was bad, and then I forgot about it.
But it’s October now and the thing to do in October is watch a bunch of horror movies (Horror a Day 2: Morror is the wind beneath my wings), and so a couple of nights ago I decided to give Friday the 13th another try.
That was a bad movie.
That was a shockingly bad movie.
Look, I am all for the wave of reboots/remakes/reimagineering of films, in spite of whatever jokes I might make about it on the Podcast. If we’re honest with ourselves, a lot of stuff that is being remade was pretty crappy to begin with, or became crappy over time, and so if something can be updated and improved upon, I’m all for it. Sometimes this works brilliantly well (Batman Begins and The Dark Knight) and sometimes it doesn’t (Wolverine, I guess?). Most times it happens and then is immediately forgotten about (Land of the Lost).
I really wanted the Friday the 13th remake to fall into the good category. It just doesn’t. There are some cool enough scenes, and I liked that they went back to Jason being less of a superhuman monster and more of a calculating ordinary…monster, but still, that is not enough to make it a good movie. The entire cast is horrible and unlikeable. “Hey, dumbass,” you might say “that’s the entire point of the movie!”. Well, why? Isn’t that the entire point of remaking something?
We can look at about 40 years of James Bond movies and see distinct changes in both Bond, his villains, the stories told, and the overall presentation of the movies. The same can be said for Star Trek, Godzilla, Batman, Star Wars, The Terminator, and on down the line, with varying degrees of success and, well, variation. But it seems like horror movies refuse to even try to change, apart from making the events even more unbelievable.
My point is, the story about Jason lurking in the shadows and picking off incredibly stupid teenagers and/or the incredibly stupid parents/small-town cops included as filler has been done to, ah, death. Why is this entertaining? Oh, wow, tits and blood—huh huh huh huh. How is Jason even supposed to be scary? Sure, he brutally murders everyone in his path without rhyme or reason, but he is always bested by one or two of the stupid people he’s targeting. Is the message that no matter how painfully average and dumb you are, you still have a chance at succeeding in life, BECAUSE THIS IS AMERICA BABY?! Seriously, the sequel to this (which I assume is happening) should just be a 20 minute short at the beginning of the upcoming Nightmare on Elm Street where Jason walks into one of the camp meetings in broad daylight, slaughters everyone—without doing it in any clever way, and without any pornographic steady shots of the deceased—and walks out and goes about his business. That would have the same impact as every other slasher movie.
Why not try something new? Why not have the small-town cops call in the FBI (Because, I’m sorry, but when dozens if not hundreds of people from across the country go missing in the same area, the federal government is going to step in). Why not have the military requisition the abandoned Crystal Lake property for training exercises? Why not have someone open up a bed & breakfast in the area? Any scenario where Jason is matched against people who can fight back and/or outsmart him is substantially more appealing than Jason butchering a bunch of douchebags with stupid hair and women made from 50% post-consumer recycled plastic. Moreover, why not try and make a slasher movie that is also actually a good movie? Every other genre has done it, within the larger horror framework and in other more imaginative/geek genres.
Whew.
To try and end this column on a positive note, I do want to say a few things:
1) Dollhouse this season is awesome and has been a complete turnaround from last season, but the ratings still suck, unfortunately, but it’s a really well done show and I encourage you to watch it.
2) Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader is an excellent read, the artwork is phenomenal, and the theme of the story provides a good template for dealing with the larger world of pop culture.
3) MORROR IS HERE AND IT IS AWESOME.