Sunday, August 3, 2003

How to Kill a Franchise We made the mistake of watching James Bond: Die Another Day last night. We also watched Jackass after the Bond flick. It was as if the director(s) and writer(s) purposefully set out to kill the Bond franchise. The dialogue was brutal; either the writers just plain sucked or their assumption was that the audience had the intelligence of a rabid possum. The constant attempts to deliver biting "double entendre" might have made for a passing grade in remedial english; imagine trying to be subtle about sex and affairs when your vocabulary is limited to about seven four letter euphanisms for "banging like crazed weasels". Pathetic. The special effects were good as long as they weren't actually a moving part of the scene. The ice castle was neat, but the bond-vs.-laser scene was just stupid. If it weren't just for the bad story, the bad dialog, the bad acting, the completely unbelievable (as in crap) effects, and the we-will-just-rip-off-the-Matrix-but-do-it-poorly editing, the movie briefly had potential. In particular, Bond starts out in a different light than usual. There was the potential that we would actually see character development for the Bond character that showed a bit of the nasty reality of the fictional spy business. Nope. Didn't happen. If the above were the only crimes, the franchise could survive. There have been crappy Bond flicks in the past. However, the director also saw fit to effectively destroy Ms Moneypenny's character by having some stupid virtualized sex fantasy scene. And the film featured the worst Bond theme song ever. Madonna's Die Another Day is nothing but minimalist vocoder crap. Sad, too, because Madonna has otherwise done some tremendous work. Jackass was a much better flick. Question: is Gigli worse than the Brown Bunny? 1:29:25 PM  pontificate