In talking with Terri about Splice yesterday, I eventually figured out what I disliked so much about the movie.

The trailers made it look like some kind of sci-fi monster movie.  Lots of running, lots of screaming, Dren looking very frightening and aggressive.  I was expecting something more-or-less along the lines of Species – a monster movie featuring a monster that was the product of genetic tinkering.

But that is not what Splice is.

Splice is actually a movie about a couple who make a bad (immoral?) decision, and slowly slide down the slope to ruin.  Their relationship suffers.  Their jobs are in jeopardy.  They can’t trust anyone anymore.  Elsa’s mental health declines, and she starts acting like her abusive mother used to.  There’s tension between Clive and his brother as they try to keep the secret buried.  There’s incest, of a sort…  And child abuse, of a sort…  And rape, of a sort…

Splice, it seems to me, belongs on Lifetime more than on SyFy.

Just like Signs wasn’t actually about aliens, Splice isn’t actually about genetic tampering.  It doesn’t matter that Dren is a genetic chimera until the last 10 minutes of the movie.  Until that point Dren is treated basically like a human child.  It could easily have been a story about child abuse, rather than genetic tampering.  But it isn’t even really about Dren being abused…  It could have been virtually any deep, dark secret they were trying to keep.

It could have been a movie about infidelity of some sort.  Or alcoholism.  Or drug addiction.

The movie was about a couple playing for their mistakes – not the mistake itself.

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that kind of movie.  I know there are plenty of people out there who enjoy that kind of thing.  And that’s fine.

But I’m not one of them.  I don’t watch Lifetime.  I don’t like V. C. Andrews.  If I had known what Splice was actually about, I wouldn’t have gone to see it.

And I think that deception was intentional.  I think they intentionally crafted the trailers and commercials to make the movie look like something it wasn’t.  To draw in folks who wouldn’t go watch it otherwise – folks like me.

Last night, Princess of Mars was on SyFy.  PZ Myers sums up my reaction quite well:

I had to watch a few minutes to discover that it was a heretical abomination which must be burned and its television creators hunted down and punished. I saw enough to notice that:

• The green Martians were made up with some cheesy lumpy appliance over their heads; their tusks wobbled like rubber every time they talked.
• The green Martians had only two arms. Two! They were also runts, far short of 12 feet tall. I tuned out before I could see how amputated the banths or calots were.
• Dejah Thoris was not naked. Nor red. And she was played by Traci Lords, who looked exhausted beyond her years.

It was bad. Really, really bad.

I kind of figured the acting would be a bit cheezy, since it was obviously a low-budget film.  And the dialogue would be corny, since the book was a bit on the corny side too.  But I really hoped for a reasonably accurate translation of the book.

Instead we got tiny little green martians with only two arms…  And more gunfights than swordfights…  And two Earthlings on Mars, instead of just the one…  But it wasn’t really Mars…  And there were no calots…  Nor white apes…  But there were “spiderlings”…  And no planet-shaking love between John Carter and Dejah Thoris…

They took the first third of the book, butchered it up, and then stretched it out into a movie.  They left out at least half the content of the book.  Big, important, climactic elements were just plain gone.

I was really disappointed.  I thoroughly enjoyed the book and have been raving about it to my wife for a good couple of months.  I hoped the movie would interest her enough to go read the story…  Now I’ll be lucky if I can ever convince her to check it out.

Then, today, we went to see Splice.

It looked like a decent movie…  Some kind of sci-fi thing about splicing human genes with an animals, and things going horribly awry.  The trailers reminded me a bit of Species.  And it was directed by the same guy who did Cube and Nothing – both of which I thoroughly enjoyed.  So I figured it ought to be relatively decent.

It wasn’t.

Sure, the acting and special effects were good.  They definitely made good use of their budget.  But the movie itself just wasn’t terribly enjoyable.

The story itself reminds me more of Frankenstein than Species.  It wasn’t about aliens using our curiosity to invade…  Or even science gone wrong.  It was about humans crossing lines that shouldn’t be crossed and paying the penalty for it.

Having blurred the lines between good and evil when they blurred the lines between human and animal, morality goes right out the window.

We see Elsa start making some very questionable decisions.  She shifts from treating the experiment like a pet, to a child, and back to a pet again.  Her relationship with Clive starts to crumble.  Their jobs are suddenly in jeopardy.  Her sanity seems to be eroding.

Then we have Clive engaging in some kind of bestiality/incest thing with Dren…  And then Dren winds up raping Elsa…  And Elsa sells her child…

It seems as if the movie is some kind of roughly-crafted morality play.  Some kind of warning that if we play god there’ll be hell to pay.  And there’s really nothing wrong with a morality play, but it comes across as very heavy-handed and awkward.

So, instead of a swashbuckling sci-fi romance, I got a horrifying bad adaptation of one of my favorite books.  And instead of a scary sci-fi thriller, I got an overbearing lesson on morality.

What I need now is a stiff drink and a good zombie apocalypse to scrub my brain clean.

Went to see Iron Man 2 over the weekend…

Received a couple free comics at the theater.  Enjoyed the movie.  Looks like They’re coming out with a Thor movie.  Saw a trailer for Super 8.

The trailer for Super 8 reminds me a lot of the trailer for Cloverfield – dramatic and vague.  It reveals basically nothing about the movie.  Nor does the official website.

And it is being directed by J.J. Abrams.

All of which leads me to believe that I’m probably going to wind up disliking the movie.

I was really not very impressed with Cloverfield.  It looked cool…  Plenty of running and screaming…  Good special effects…  But it was more like one long action sequence than an actual movie.

The characters were introduced before the movie ever came out, via FaceBook and MySpace and YouTube.  There was no exposition or development within the confines of the movie itself.

There was no exploration of what the monster was, or where it came from, or what it wanted.  No exploration of the characters – who they were, what they wanted, why we should care about them.  No arc to any of it.  Just a monster smashing things.

And, judging from the fans that crawled out of the woodwork to incinerate my opinion, this kind of crap is typical of Abrams.

We went to see Clash of the Titans yesterday…  I’ve always been a big fan of the 1980 movie, and Greek mythology in general…  And this one looked to be a special-effects extravaganza, so we had to see it in the theater.

Our theater was not carrying the 3D version, which was initially a disappointment…  But the reviews I’m seeing afterward indicate that I didn’t miss out on much.

I’ve got very mixed feelings about the movie…

All sorts of plot elements were re-arranged…  Characters were changed…  The whole basic storyline was altered…  The end result barely resembles the original movie at all.

The basic storyline of the original has the Kraken released and sacrifice demanded because Queen Cassiopeia compares Andromeda’s beauty to that of the Goddess Thetis…  But in the remake we’ve got Hades scheming to overthrow Zeus, and mankind is in open rebellion against the gods, and Queen Cassiopeia’s words are just an excuse after Hades has already been given permission to release the Kraken.

It isn’t really that I’m such a huge fan of the original movie…  So much as the fact that it’s based on Greek mythology.  It seems downright weird to have so many key elements of that mythology go missing or be altered.

According to the mythology – Perseus was given a sword, shield, and a helmet to help him along his quest.  He slew Medusa, rescued Andromeda from a sea monster, and married her.

According to the 1980 movie – Perseus was given a sword, shield, and a helmet to help him along his quest.  He slew Medusa, rescued Andromeda from a sea monster, and married her.

According to the 2010 movie – Perseus was only given a sword to help him along his quest, and he spent most of the movie refusing to use that gift.  The slew Medusa, rescued Andromeda from a sea monster, sent Hades back to the underworld, then turned down Andromeda’s invitation and rode off into the sunset with Io instead.

But…  I didn’t really go to see Clash of the Titans to revel in complex storylines and deep characters.  I went to see monsters and mayhem.  And in that respect the movie most certainly delivers.

The gods are genuinely impressive in their gleaming armor atop Mount Olympus.  Hades looks genuinely malicious.  The three witches don’t exactly look like witches…  But they’re creepy none-the-less.  The scorpions, and Calibos (or is it Acrisius?), and Medusa are plenty monstrous.   And the Kraken is downright terrifying.

Lots of action, lots of fun fights, lots of noise and movement and special effects – much like I was hoping for.

So…  I’m not really sure what to say in the end.

It was certainly an entertaining movie.  I don’t regret spending my money to go see it.

But, at the same time, it feels like the movie was missing something.  I was, at least somewhat, looking for a remake of the 1980 movie – and this is most certainly not it.