Three quick mini-reviews of upcoming sci-fi projects. Enjoy!
Writer: DW Harper (based on novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka)
About: This is the big spec that sold a few weeks ago for a million dollars. It is based off the graphic novel of the same name.
Synopsis: Private Cage is 20 years old, a bit of a coward, and minutes away from the biggest battle in earth’s history. It’s some time in the far off future and an alien army has decided to dispose of mankind. And these aliens are badasses, grown for battle, able to dispatch humans as easily as you or I would flick away a mosquito. So when our not-so-courageous hero, Cage, lands on this futuristic battleground, he gets slaughtered in under a minute…Only to wake up 24 hours ago. Yes, Cage is stuck in some kind of loop, being forced to relive the same bloody hopeless battle over and over again. Cage also has an object of affection. Her name is Rita, better known as “the full metal bitch.” Whereas everyone else, within seconds of meeting one of these aliens, dies a gruesome death, Rita can kill a couple dozen of these things in under 30 seconds. She is mankind’s only hope. Oh, and while everyone else fights with guns, Rita fights with a battle axe the size of a man. Over the course of reliving the day over and over again, however, Cage realizes that cowardice is pointless. He begins to study Rita and her moves, slowly learning how to become a great warrior. He will also figure out why he’s being looped repeatedly back into this battle, and how he can stop it, a revelation that will force a choice of epic consequences.
Is it any good?: I ain’t gonna lie. I hated this script at first. It was all sugar and no substance. It felt like two 14 year old video game addicts having just played 100 hours of Halo, Modern Warfare, Gears of War, Resistance, God of War, and any other video game with the word ‘war’ in it, smoked a bowl and said, “Dude, we should, like, make a movie that combines ALL of this shit.” But as I kept reading, I found that there was a method to the madness, and that this was a sort of love letter to the video game generation. It is, essentially, a video game in itself. A guy keeps dying, but keeps getting extra chances, and gets better and better each time through. But what surprised me was, without overtly trying, they created a couple of really great characters in Cage and Rita. You really cared about these two by the end of the screenplay. When you combine that emotional component with all the crazy anime style jumping and floating and slow motion and fast motion and impossible game-style killing, you have that rarest of commodities – the GOOD sci-fi/fantasy film. This totally surprised me and I really liked it.
Writers: Alfred Gough & and Miles Millar (based on novel by Pittacus Lore)
About: This property was recently purchased with Michael Bay to produce. Sharlto Copley (District 9) is rumored to star, though I don’t know what part he’d be playing.
Synopsis: Whoa. Where to start with this one. “I Am Number Four” is about an alien teenager and his alien father who have escaped from their war-ravaged home planet to hide out on earth. But the baddie alien race finds them and sends a group of aliens down to kill them and the rest of the good aliens. Lucky for our teenager, the aliens will only kill each of them in order. Each refugee knows when one of the others have been killed because a special pendant necklace lights up. So when the third refugee gets slaughtered by the bad guys in some Brazilian jungle, our teenager’s pendant lights up. He is “Number 4,” and that means he’s next. So he and his daddy-o hightail it to the most obscure place they can find, some hick town in the middle of nowhere, then settle down and hope the aliens don’t find them. He enlists in high school, makes friends with the popular girl, and pisses off the bully. Occasionally, when he gets really mad, he uses his alien powers to fight back. And that’s pretty much it.
Was it any good?: In a word, no. I mean, granted, this isn’t geared towards me. It’s geared towards the 12-16 demographic, but still, this was just way too cheesy on way too many levels. It felt like a group of producers got together and tried to figure out how they could replicate the Twilight craze with teen boys, which is why it feels so familiar (a new kid comes into town, goes to school, alien powers instead of vampire powers, etc.) But if I’m being honest, that’s not the main thing that bothered me. I just don’t like stories where a protagonist goes and waits somewhere for something bad to happen to them. There’s nothing dramatically compelling about a character who waits around. So that’s what did this in for me. But just to fair, this movie is not being made for my demo.
Writer: David Twohy
About: This will be the third film in the Riddick franchise. Diesel has been public about his disappointment in the franchise’s death. But it appears that after much campaigning and the surprise success of The Fast and The Furious 8, he and Twohy were able to convince the studios to give them one more shot, this time, going back to the low-budget roots of the first film.
Synopsis: I still don’t know what the hell happened in the last Riddick movie. I remember a big city, some sort of ship, some mean guy, a female Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Riddick becoming king of the Universe or something. In other words, the opposite of everything that made Pitch Black cool. Well, it turns out Twohy realized this as well, as he’s going back to basics here. In the third Riddick film, it turns out poor Riddick’s turn as a king has gone sour. He had new assassins trying to take him down by the hour, and at some point, though I’m a little unclear on the details, some bigwig ends up kidnapping him, beating him to within an inch of his life, and leaving him for dead on some desert plan. Eventually, the broken-down Riddick finds an outpost with a beacon callout. Riddick presses the button, with the intent of waiting for someone to arrive, killing them, and stealing their ship. But things get complicated when instead of a rosy crew showing up, two merc ships appear, here for the express purpose of picking up the bounty on the most wanted man in the galaxy. As should be expected, none of these morons have any idea just how dangerous Riddick is, and must endure a slow meticulous attack by Riddick as he kills the mercs one by one, in order to eventually steal one of the ships. Things get particularly interesting when a former character from the Riddick universe appears, someone who DOES know how dangerous Riddick is, and the only one of the group prepared to take down Riddick, once and for all.
Is it any good?: Well, once we get through with all of the exposition, segueing from the last movie into this one, which takes a good 15 pages, the script picks up quite a bit. And the character callback from a previous film was a nice surprise. There’s no question that the low key simple plot structure is better suited for the Riddick world. My question is, is it too simple? I mean, this is basically an extended version of the sequence from the second film where the mercs were trying to catch Riddick on that Rogue planet. I think I was looking for something a little more…more-y. But overall, an enjoyable read, and a nice return to what made Riddick cool.
