Ever watched one movie and thought of a completely different one, just because a little tiny bit of a character in one movie was like a character in the other? I have, so let’s look at fiction’s distant cousins.
James Bond and Maxwell Smart
They’re both spies at work for the government. Only one has a licence to kill, while the other has a licence to blunder. Where Bond is suave, Smart is bumbling. Yet somehow, just like Bond, Smart usually manages to save the day (not a few times thanks to agent 99 – Moneypenny is somehow not as convincing). And, as far as gadgets go, the shoe phone will always trump whatever Aston Martin with rockets Bond might be driving.
Bumblebee and Herbie
One is a Volkswagen Beetle and the other used to be one, but now is a 2009 Camaro(at least in the movies). talk about forgetting your origins. One loves to get into trouble, while the other always ends up in it. Herbie has a thing for lady cars and lately soon to be washed up child stars, while Bumblebee frequently enjoys battling other cars turned into robots to save the planet.
E.T. and Alien
Well, they’re both alien, and they both interact (nicely?!?) with humans. While the big eye cute alien just wants to go home, the big teeth acid dripping alien just wants to eat you. Guess which one makes a bike fly in front of a full moon? While one may appear to be a great pet for kids, I wouldn’t try that with the other, no matter how many cats you can feed him.
The Na’vi and the Smurfs
The Na’vi are a peaceful race, in touch with their planet and nature, who just so happen to have warriors eager to take on the humans in battle. The Smurfs are an environmental group that relies on everyone’s talents, thus communists. Also, both are blue and have tails, though the Na’vi have longer and snappier tails and can do freaky things with their hair.
The Terminator and Johnny 5
So one is a robot built for Cold War use that comes to life once lightning strikes it, the other is a killing machine with the sole purpose of killing (or saving, depending on the movie) John Connor. Their both pretty metallic, at least once you remove the fleshy exoskeleton from one, but I’m pretty sure The Terminator weighs more than Number 5 and never got hit by lightning.
Posted on September 1st, 2010 by MrWiseguy
Filed under: Movies | No Comments »
A space smuggler with a lot of charm and a thing for princesses. Along the three original Star Wars movies, Mr. Solo(wittily played by Harrison Ford) escapes Death Stars, space worms and Imperial Destroyers in his hamburger shaped spacecraft, has a couple of shootouts with Storm Troopers, rescues Luke from a frozen death, and gets the girl in the end. Bonus points for a capable, memorable sidekick in Chewbacca (who wouldn’t like a Wookie as a partner?), less so for treacherous old friends (even though Lando eventually joined the rebels).
The ultimate boxer, the Italian Stallion (Stallone that is) comes out of nowhere and manages to last all 15 round with the champion, and defeats him in the rematch. Couple of movies later and he’s fighting Mr. T, the rock that was Ivan Drago (I honestly believe in an honest match between Stallone and Lundgren at their best would end up with Lundgren over Stallone beaten to a pulp) and his protege in a street match. The man gets a bonus for unorthodox training methods(punching meat in a slaughterhouse? check, using terrain and training in the snowy mountains? check) and stubbornness.
I honestly would’ve placed McClane(Bruce Willis is one of the ultimate action actors) higher, if not for the fact that he’s had a lot of luck over the years (right place, right time? check, arrogant villains? check, help from sidekicks? check). The character that started all the “Die Hard in a…” trend (of which Seagal took advantage to its fullest), his favorite type of villain is always intelligent and overconfident (preferably from Europe). He defeats a gang of bank robbers by himself (with a little help from a cop named Al), and jumps from an exploding building, stops terrorists who’ve taken over an airport, stops another high-profile robbery planned by the brother of his first villain, and finally takes down a hacker, while driving a car into a helicopter and escaping an F-16. Bonus points for witty deliveries and for the Yipee-kay-yay.
This one may be surprising, but there’s no putting down Indy(Harrison Ford’s second appearance on the list). Give him a whip, a fedora and a gun in a sword fight and he’s all set. Mostly gets in trouble over artifacts that almost never get to a museum of any sort. Defeats Nazis in Egypt, a religious cult in India, defeats the Nazis again and finds The Holy Grail (the one King Arthur and his knights couldn’t find), survives a nuclear explosion locked in a fridge, defeats the Russians and escapes alien wrath. Bonus points for having James Bond, I mean Sean Connery for a father.
So, need I say this? Survives aliens (“the” aliens) encounters throughout 4 movies. Starts out by blasting one into space while wearing tiny underwear, outlasts marines to kill an alien queen in a exoskeleton, kills herself so as not to become experiment fodder (thus denying the alien in her survival and victory), gets resurrected with a bit of alien DNA mixed into her own (yes, she gets super powers), kills off a human alien hybrid by getting it sucked into space through a tiny hole. Bonus for a killer line delivery – “Get away from her, you bitch!” while manning a mech suit.
“Mad” Max Rockatansky(as played by Mel Gibson). Now that’s a name. Due to his family getting brutally killed (always a good origin story), he picks off the gang responsible one by one in his supercharged Pursuit Special (1973 Ford Falcon XB GT coupe), then becomes a wanderer. That doesn’t last for long, as he gets sucked into helping an outpost of humans against raiders lead by Lord Humungus , defeats half of Master Blaster (namely Blaster) in the Thunderdome and clashes with Tina Turner.
Now here’s a man’s man. This is not only Dirty Harry, it’s Clint Eastwood (also though of including his “Man with no name” on the list) at his best. Inspector Harry Callahan is a hard man, a tough cop and a gun-toting lunatic at times (” “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk?”). With his .44 Magnum, “the most powerful handgun in the world”, he’s the archetype for the lawful cop, held back by bureaucracy, he gets stuck with “every dirty job that comes along.”. He gets extra points for the big gun, and tough guy attitude, enough to get the villains to surrender on its own.
So you’ve got an ex US Special Forces soldier, with 2 Purple Hearts, who turned to a life of crime, being disillusioned by the government. When you’ve got only one eye (double points for the eye patch and for Kurt Russell’s raspy voice), get sent into no win situations in inescapable(popular belief) locations on a daily basis (at least in every movie you make), and you survive, it’s no wonder people keep telling you they thought you were dead. He fights off lunatics, mad doctors, evil terrorists, soldiers, you name it. He survives where no one else would and manages to stay cool and walk away laughing (as a figure of speach).
The ultimate killing machine? Almost, that’s reserved for number 1 on our list, but Rambo is as effective as he is tough. According to dialog in the movies, the Green Beret received a Medal of Honor, 2 Silver Stars, 4 Bronze Stars of Valor, 4 Purple Hearts and 1 Distinguished Service Cross – that’s enough for 3 or 4 action hero backgrounds. Fighting off an entire town’s police force (and recruited hillbillies) returning from the war he ends up back in Vietnam, where he rescues a bunch of POWs while gunning down, and hacking off anyone that stands in his way (and there’s plenty of those). After this he retreats to a monastery in Thailand, where he often meditates and participates in violent stick matches, donating his winnings. When his old friend, Col. Trautman gets captured in Afghanistan, he embarks in a mission to save him, while killing Soviets left and right, and driving a tank into a helicopter (take that, McClane!). In the 4th movie, he defeats a whole lot of Burmese soldiers while battling arthritis.
Here you have it. Though not exactly a hero if you count the 1st movie, this is the true killing machine, built for that purpose only. It helps that he’s mostly metal and that he’s Arnold Schwarzenegger. Blasting away an entire police force, or defeating a superior model (not once, but twice), The Terminator is very much unkillable. It helps that there’s more than one model, and John Connor is always happy to reprogram them. Oh, there’s also a cool motorcycle/truck chase, fending off an entire SWAT team without killing them and while carrying a huge coffin, and also the cool sunglasses.
Building up franchises is nothing new to the world of cinema. It has been going on since the early days (William Powell and Myrna Loy enjoyed three movies in the Thin Man series starting 1934, I don’t have to mention Bond, but I do, and even Sergio Leone did his Dollars trilogy). Now, taking the blockbuster and horror movie sequels off the table, we’re left with a few peculiar types of sequels. There’s the TV to film sequels (as in Firefly went Serenity), the sequels that follow book series (see the Bridget Jones’ Diary series, Twilight, Lord of the rings, the Jason Bourne movies), the actual trilogies (not counting anything that wasn’t thought out as a trilogy from the start, so The Godfather, Star Wars), and then there are the recently popular sequel/reboots. Instead of going for something like J.J. Abrams did with Star Trek, or 
On one hand, you’ve got 
Tron: Legacy has a solid cast and a link to the past, just like Mad Max, in none other than Jeff Bridges(I’m sure I’m not the only one that would watch anything as long as he’s in it). That’s enough to get the inner geek cheering, but the director, Joseph Kosinski, is pretty much an unknown, with little to no previous experience. This is pretty much geek territory and those, as you know, are pretty hard to please. So, while the trailer looked good, and the movie also stars Olivia Wilde (about time she was in something more high-profile) and Michael Sheen (you have to love a talented serious actor that loves to do entertainment), I’m pretty apprehensive about this one.
Then there’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, a.k.a. Wall Street 2 (I don’t really know when studios started applying the Bond naming technique to sequels), Why they think it’s a good idea to do a sequel to a classic so long after the original, I don’t know, but as with the others, there are callbacks to the first movie, namely Oliver Stone returning as director, and Charlie Sheen and Michael Douglas back to being Bud Fox, and Gordon Gekko. While the timing is somewhat right for economy themed movie, the writers attached aren’t exactly attuned to the field of economics, neither are they big names. Then there’s the issue of Shia LaBeouf. While I have nothing against him and consider he’s a decent actor, taking this role means he’ll be in yet another (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull being the other) movie that will fail to please die hard fans, and he has the same task of picking up the reins, which didn’t go so well for Mutt the last time. On the other hand, Susan Sarandon, Eli Wallach and Josh Brolin are on board so it may turn out to be an OK movie.
Pretty much 90% of the movies done after the time and set in the ’1960s are about the war, the hippie movement, the racial discrimination still going on or biopics of political prominent figures. Mad Men doesn’t discard those issues, but rather incorporates them in what is the story of an ad agency, and most importantly one upper-class man and those around him. You’ll get a whole episode set during the events following Kennedy’s assassination, but it’s all through the eyes of the main characters. If there is one thing they do not side-step(and that’s thanks to the importance of the characters) is the status of women in the era. And it’s all told through the eyes of several women, all with different approaches to life. 
If there’s one thing missing on the tube these days, it’s intelligent writing. Sure, you have a couple of shows that offer constant clever episodes, like Breaking Bad, Dexter and the likes, but for each of those there’s a couple of formulaic police procedurals or reality shows. If there’s one thing Mad Men doesn’t shy away from is churning out double entendres, scenes full of symbolism and a deeper meaning in whatever the characters do or say. And there’s little to no loose ends, not to mention a tightly knit plot that manages to juggle multiple characters and devote plenty of time to each and every single one.
I doubt there is a single show out there capable of churning out so many fun one-liners (most of them uttered to perfection by one John Slattery). Let’s get it straight, this is a drama, but there’s plenty of humor (if sometimes dark, as evidenced by one scene involving a British man’s foot and one lawnmower). Here’s a couple of memorable ones:
Well, I shouldn’t have to explain this. Mad Men has a lot of attractive women walk in and out (Julie McNiven, Alison Brie, Peyton List to name a few), but the reigning queen is Joan Holloway as played by Christina Hendricks. To keep to the era of the time, she’s the Marylin Monroe of the ad agency. Unlike Peggy Olson’s character she doesn’t want success, but adheres more to the standards of the era (as we’ve seen her try and be a housewife), while still being a strong woman that knows what she wants and how to get it. Plus, her red hair and curvy figure are plenty to look at.
Played by Jon Hamm, Don Draper is at the center of the show. An enigmatic, complicated and less than perfect individual, men want to be him and women want to be with him (as painful as it were to write this cliched line). He’s a fascinating character to watch as he discovers himself, and we discover his secrets. He’s like Cary Grant met Christian Bale, charismatic yet silent, handsome yet troubled, modest yet proud (as big as an oxymoron that is). He gets so built up as a persona that the writers could make him a superhero and it wouldn’t be too weird (think about it, Don Draper fits the bill as far as secret identity names go, at least for Marvel).
Knowing (also a semi-serious movie starring Cage) he can’t only play action heroes or crazy individuals full time if he wants to maintain his career, Nicolas knows how to keep up interest in his acting chops by starring in more high-profile movies, like Lord of War, Knowing, Matchstick Men and Snake Eyes that give the critics a peek at his potential, while letting him do a little action, or crazy (don’t tell me he didn’t like his uber cool arms dealer scenes in Lord of War, or the phobic con man in Matchstick Men). At the same time he has the connections and the resume to get roles in such movies as Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation(also netting him an Oscar nomination), Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center or Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead. Considering there seems to be a consensus he can act that hasn’t been too hurt by his other endeavors had he stuck to only such roles he probably would’ve had more than one Oscar under his belt.
Though easily observed in the previously mentioned Matchstick Men and Adaptation, the intensity Nicolas Cage can bring to dementia is probably unparalleled. Give the man the role of a deranged individual and he’ll do wonders with it. The good natured oddball he played in Raising Arizona might have been the moment he realized he can do crazy like no one else and also scare the crap out of anyone while doing it. Look at his role in the fiasco that was Kiss of Death – I’d personally be scared of drug dealer Nick Cage with facial hair and that crazy look in his eyes. He was pretty much insane in Kick-Ass – and I’m just talking about a character that shot his daughter in the chest to teach her about bulletproof jacket pain. Which brings us to his most intense unscrupulous character yet – Terence McDonagh in The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans. The unscrupulous, drugged out, scared out of his mind enough to be despaired cop was one fun, full of thrills trip, and I don’t think that’s the peak of his crazy (personally I enjoy the mirror scene in Face/Off).
And here’s what the man loves most apparently: being the cool guy that doesn’t look at explosions. After winning his Oscar, he followed it with a trio of movies that left everyone surprised to see him in an action movies and also a bit stunned that he could do it (let’s face it, the first thing that comes to mind when looking at him isn’t “action star”). He started off slow, as the (always viable) untrained civilian thrown in the midst of a conflict in The Rock (though a much older Sean Connery kind of stole his thunder) then followed it up with the preposterous, yet extremely fun Con Air, where he kicks John Malkovich’s ass (and gets to do a redneck accent, which he also likes apparently). Last, but not least, he had personality disorder issues opposite John Travolta in Face/Off (which also played into Travolta’s growing need to play bed boys and villains). 
After that, he was a guy who liked cars more than Angelina Jolie in Gone in Thirty Seconds, a soldier in WW2 in John Woo’s Windtalkers, and a more fun, more American version of Robert Langdon in National treasure. And who can forget, he also played a flaming skull in Ghost Rider, which apparently will get a sequel. An assassin and a Las Vegas magician later and he’s playing a sorcerer and a 14th century knight.
If there’s one thing he can do, while in action movies or otherwise, is his stiff, brooding persona. Best observed in City of Angels (or any other romantic comedy he does), where he’s supposed to be an angel (the man has range what can I say) or Bangkok Dangerous – here he’s supposed to be the silent, experiences, cool assassin,
I just found him uninteresting. Which brings us to another Cage acting method: the running in the wind with long hair, or the flashlight intrigue repetition (aspiring actors take note), which have never let him down (as observed by one 
