Do you realize that whenever a nominally unpenetrable wall shows up in a movie, its perimeter is breached at some point during the movie? It’s so predictable I don’t know why they bother, though the siege drama that occurs after is usually extremely juicy.
Speaking of which, you know the Wall on the north border of the Seven Kingdoms in A Song of Ice and Fire? You totally know that it’s going down soon.
World War Z (2013)
Loosely based on Max Brook’s book of the same name, a zombie pandemic sweeps the globe. These ghouls are strong, fast, and smart. Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt), a former UN employee, is pressed into searching for the cure so that the American army will shelter his family.
First of all, the movie is nothing like the book. The thrill of the book was in sampling the heroics of a multitude of nations and relating their reactions to the zombie apocalypse to real-life global politics. However, the movie is a straight-up Brad Pitt vehicle, in which we get too much Brad Pitt as the designated messiah and too little of global events. Secondly, Gerry Lane’s kids are the stupidest children in a disaster movie ever. They cry, they refuse to get out of condemned vehicles, they’re useless.
World War Z is, at least, an entertaining zombie movie, albeit with bigger sets than the norm. This is best illustrated by a striking image from the trailer: zombies swarming over the massive anti-zombie wall of Jerusalem. If you delight in watching cities laid to waste, this is the movie for you.
Pacific Rim (2013)
Somewhere beneath the ocean, a transdimensional portal opens and colassal Kaijus come swarming out to attack coastal cities. Humanity unites to build mechas – Jaegers – to fight them. One Jaeger pilot, Raleigh (Charlie Beckett) is traumatized and quits the Jaeger program after the loss of his brother on a routine mission. But then the program is cancelled in favour of building walls to keep the Kaiju at bay, and he is called back by his former commander (Idris Elba) for a final stand against the Kaiju.
This movie is Godzilla meets Rocky with mechas. It was adorable. I enjoyed the development of Raleigh and Mako Mori’s (Rinko Kikuchi) friendship, which, for a Hollywood blockbuster, refreshingly devoid of romantic overtones. Of course this was all overshadowed by the Jaeger-Kaiju battles themselves: equally surprisingly, they were not repetitive because each new Kaiju brought a new fighting style and skillset into the ring, which the Jaeger pilots would have to slowly discover how to beat.
Troy (2004)
Loosely based on the epic poem by Homer, Troy compresses the 10-year Siege of Troy into a matter of weeks. A lot of people are killed and there is romantic drama. Brad Pitt plays Achilles, Orlando Bloom plays that foppish prince of Troy Paris, and Sean Bean plays Odysseus in one of the few roles where he is not evil or slated for death.
I just couldn’t get into this mopey adaptation of Troy. Sure, the ancient Greek heroes did sulk, and throw tantrums, and exact disproportionate revenge. But they didn’t mope about it so much! How can I believe that Achilles is the greatest warrior of his time when Brad Pitt quietly introspects at his sandals in every other shot? Am I really to believe that Helen of Troy (Diane Kruger), she of the face that launched a thousand ships, left her husband for Paris of all people because she wanted a regular ol’ joe to settle down with? Troy fails to balance the epic and emotional components of the Trojan War, though it is full of attractive people and well-composed battle sequences.
Logan’s Run (1976)
In the future, humanity lives in a domed city because the outside world is supposedly a polluted wreck. Overpopulation is prevented in the domed by killing everyone off when they turn thirty, though until then residents enjoy a life of unparalleled hedonism. Not everyone accepts their death with grace, though, and Logan 5 (Michael York) is charged with hunting down those who avoid their fate. However, a fateful encounter with a strange artifact and a strange woman (Jenny Agutter) forces Logan 5 to reevaluate the only life he’s ever known.
As a sci-fi movie made pre-Star Wars, Logan’s Run really shows its age. However that only adds to its entertainment value, and it sometimes ventures into a “so bad it’s good” movie as it rifles through the relevant post-apocalyptic tropes and imagery. Except that unlike most trashy movies, Logan’s Run is pretty good: there is actual humour, particularly in watching the hedonistic lifestyles of the domed city’s inhabitants, and the idea of everyone dying at age 30 is somewhat unique amongst science fiction movies.
Final Fantasy (2001)
In yet another dystopian future, humanity lives in domed cities and is constantly under attack by alien “Phantoms.” Scientist girl Aki (Ming-Na Wen) searches for eight spirit signatures, that when brought together, could defeat the phantoms.
I think that Final Fantasy was unjustly criticized after its release for computer-generated characters that ventured too deeply into “uncanny valley”: the mysterious zone between the realistic and cartoonish where everything just looks wrong. I thought everyone looked fine: it’s no different from a video game cutscene.
Graphics aside, Final Fantasy has nothing to do with any of the existing video games, and the plot, though rife with standard grizzled space marines, was decent. I particularly liked the way that the Phantoms were rendered and handled by plot, though their “life essence” mechanics were kind of cheesy.
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