rex,
Quote:
|
I was merely querying as to why some people commenting here were (seemingly) perpetually satisfied with that.
|
i can't believe that with all of your "dramatic verisimiltudes" and "metacommentaries" and "statements of correlation rather than causation", you do not know the answer to this question.
you say this at one point:
Quote:
|
The ol' genre mishmash, as I've been saying. And that's the problem. See, werewolves, vampires, reänimated corpses, and such are 'sposed to be creatures of horror, not amusement-park "thrillride" icons. That's what I've been complainin' about.
|
and this:
Quote:
|
Blade is about vampires. No matter how you slice it [ahem], as far as I can see, it is a supernatural film
|
well, who says that werewolves and vampires and zombies (oh my!) are "supposed" to be creatures of horror?
and, as far as
i can see, the vampires in
Blade are decidedly (non-super)
natural, since the movie goes to some lengths to rationalize vampirism as a function of some facet of as-yet poorly-understood human biology. in other words, it makes vampires
a part of the natural world rather than
apart from it..
Quote:
|
I just want a few---a small, but noticeable percentage of---films that are on the same general topics, but that give me something to think about long after the movie's over. We aren't getting that now.
|
howabout thinking about expanding the anemic criteria of eligibility for your narrow categories - consider, perhaps, that there are more things on earth, rex, than are dreamt of in your philosophy (of film).
but then, why not go a step further and consider that something is interesting only and precisely to the degree that someone is interested in it, and that just because
you aren't interested in thinking about certain aspects of certain movies doesn't mean
no one is.
i would like hollywood only to make movies that cater to
my particular preference-set also...but, come on. seriously.
case in point:
Quote:
|
When a species is already adapted for certain abilities and to certain environments, it becomes a question of whether any new "adaptation", whether cultural or natural, is an outgrowth of necessity. I'll reserve final judgment in this case until I get to see the actual film---and that outcome will depend on how the film's producers explain the world that they have created---, but, just from the scenes in the trailer, all I see are "people" shooting in the same fashion as ordinary humans would. Hardly, inventive, that just shows the laziness of the writers in falling back on what the audience knows and is comfortable with. The writers seem to be doing what they almost always do: what's easiest for them.
|
are you suggesting, as you seem to be, that unless the vampires in underworld are (consistently and
[ahem] interestingly) explained as having adopted the use of putatively "human" weaponry in their fight against the werewolves
out of necessity, that vampires-with-guns will be just another hackneyed hollywood excursion down the path of least resistance?
if so, you make an egregiously dubious assumption about the nature of necessity and its role in both cultural and natural environments. maybe you could spend time thinking about
that.
i mean, on the level of the most facially rudimentary logic, if humans have always and effectively used guns with silver bullets to kill werewolves, then those same guns would presumably prove many orders of magnitude more lethal in the hands of beings who also possess the characteristics necessary for successful gun-wielding, but to a superhuman degree.
but there are other, perhaps even
more (dare i say) interesting rationales that i can imagine being presented by the movie in order to account for the vampires' apparent love of human ordnance.
Quote:
|
(And still audiences seem to want more of the same old "same-old".)
|
well, it would seem that you do, too - only it's more of
your same old "same-old".
Quote:
|
Are the creatures' powers so attenuated by modern technology that they need to take up the enemy's tools to win and survive? Is there a "balance of power" among the supernaturals, such that one side or the other, or both, must resort to human methods? (If so, I'd like to see the explanation of that one.
|
like i said, "need" may have nothing to do with it; there are many ways to skin a cat as well as dispose of a werewolf or vampire...
besides, who's to say that the vampires in underworld will be gifted with powers that outstrip the efficiency of a silver bullet and thus make the use of (human) munitions otiose?
Quote:
|
The "creatures" will probably have lost all interest as supernatural beings, by such a turn of events.)
|
which would only matter if you are solely interested in vampires or werewolves as supernatural.
Quote:
|
Thus, these hooks get placed into all kinds of stories, even ones where they might not be organic to the story at hand. (Hence, genre mishmash.)
|
what difference does
why a movie was made the way it was made, or why
any piece of art was made, make to the enjoyment of that movie or book or poem or painting or photograph or song or....?
i mean,
even if we were (and we're typically not) antecedently aware that the (artistic) intent behind the screenplay of a movie was, for instance, the (dubious) one of producing a work that was likely to provide the largest box-office gross to the studio,
that only matters to the artistic character of the work based on
one, but certainly not the
only theory of aesthetic value.
for instance, what if you were to discover that welles wrote
citizen kane as what he considered a shallowly and emptily pretentious film solely out of contempt for a cadre of movie critics he despised and who he knew would give the film rave reviews? or what if bolt penned
a man for all seasons in a drunken haze, guided only by the direction of the studio to compose a screenplay about st. thomas more?
but what's more, if you believe that the purpose or point of the movie (
whose point? director? screenwriter? cinematograher?) is critical to a (proper) evaluation of the film's merits, then how do you value any film in the absence of a sure knowledge of its point?
and who (besides you and yours) cares about "genre mishmash"? why
should anyone else care? what difference does it make how easily and clearly a film can be slotted into different genres and sub-genres?
an engaging movie by any other name....
.
And too true.
