An Open Letter to Hollywood: Part 2

Dear Hollywood,

I know, it's weird that I would write you a letter in two parts. I thought I could retain your attention better by breaking them up. It also makes me look like a more prodigious letter-writer.

Resident Evil: Afterlife

Actual Tagline: “She's back...And she's bringing a few of her friends.”
Implied Tagline: “Milla Jovovich would star in your home birthing video if you paid her enough.”
To be fair, the main reason I passed on reviewing this was because I’d promised to see it with my friend Dani who’s a big fan of all of the Resident Evil movies. That said, if Dani didn’t love Resident Evil so much, I would have never even considered seeing this movie at all. Because I saw Resident Evil: Extinction.

Working title Resident Evil: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

For some reason, the Resident Evil movie series aged really poorly. The first movie was a passable adaptation of the first game, but if it hadn’t had a video game license attached to it, it would have just been another competent but common zombie/haunted house movie. Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez and James Purefoy all turned in good perfomances, but two out of three of their characters were dead by the credits. Luckily, Michelle Rodriguez would return to play the same character…in every movie she’s ever been in.

ACTING!

Resident Evil: Apocalypse began the tradition of adding ": Hyperbolic Subtitle” to each sequel. It also replaced the first movie’s useless imposter cop/environmentalist with a useless creepy ginger girl and Michelle Rodriguez’s wise-cracking security commando with Mike Epps’ wise-cracking pimp.

Shouldn’t Foxy Brown be interrogating you somewhere right now?

Then came Resident Evil: Extinction. In the time since the last movie zombies had overrun the Earth…somehow. If you were hoping for explanations to major plot points you’re several movies too late. Also, everything is covered in dust for reasons that are unclear.

Apparently an active gambling economy was the only thing keeping Vegas from turning into the Sahara.

Extinction dropped all pretense of an overall narrative and just barely strung together various action scenes and set pieces. It was relieving when the film ground to an end by just killing all the characters with less and less explanation, until I realized that the screenwriters were just cleaning up loose ends in preparation for yet another sequel, this time starring nothing but Milla Jovovich and a thousand Milla Jovovich clones. It’ll be just like that scene in The Matrix Reloaded where all the Agent Smith Clones fought Neo! You remember how totally awesome and not at all a tedious mess of CGI-abuse that was?

Oh…right.

The real question is why does Milla Jovovich continue to appear in these films? Sure, she isn’t exactly an art house actress, but she has enough name and face recognition that she can turn down roles that are beneath her. It’s almost as if she’s…I don’t know… married to the franchise somehow…

Ah. Well then…

Easy A

Actual Tagline: “Let's not and say we did.”
Implied Tagline: “It’s Juno meets The Scarlet Letter! No, wait, come back!”

This is a tough one. I’ve since heard from friends that this is actually a pretty good movie, and it features Thomas Hayden Church and Malcolm McDowell.

As the world’s most terrifying high school principal.

So I can’t really say that this is a definitively bad movie, but I can absolutely say that everything else seems to indicate this is a bad movie. Just to refresh, here’s the imdb.com synopsis of the film:

“A clean-cut high school student relies on the school's rumor mill to advance her social and financial standing.”

Remember to read “clean-cut“ as “nerdy girl who you know is nerdy because the other characters say she is, but she actually looks like a model.”

A nerdy girl according to Hollywood.

Also, I’m not sure how having sex is supposed to improve a girl’s “financial standing,” and considering the character in question is supposed to be in high school, I think the less time spent considering the possible answers to that question, the better.

Which brings up my second reason for not reviewing this movie: the entire plot is about the sex lives of high school students. There’s no way for an adult male to talk about this movie without coming off as creepy. Roger Ebert valiantly tried, but was shot in the foot by whoever chose this picture to accompany his review:

Oh, Roger, your words may say “underrated actress” but your picture choice says “MMM, TITTIES!”

Oh, and just in case the concept of an out-of-touch portrayal of a hot nerd participating in implied prostitution wasn’t enough to entice you, don’t forget, according to Wikipedia Easy A was “partially inspired the novel The Scarlet Letter.”

“Finally, someone got what I was going for!”

Exactly how “partially”? Well, The Scarlet Letter was about a woman living in Puritan New England who was institutionally ostracized and forced to wear a red letter “A” for the rest of her life because she fell in love and had sex with the local Reverend years after her husband had disappeared and was presumed dead. This social stigma psychologically tortures her, mentally warps her bastard child, and drives her lover to such depths of guilt that it eventually kills him.

Easy A, meanwhile, is best surmised thusly:

Oh, wait, Juno actually had sex. Nevermind, then.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Actual Tagline: Umm…”Money Never Sleeps”?
Implied Tagline: “So Help Us God, We Will Not Rest Until Shia LeBeouf Ruins Every Film and Television Show You Have Ever Loved.”

Wall Street 2: Wall Street Harder is not something I'm willing to sit through, free or not, for three reasons:

1) It's a sequel to Wall Street.
2) It is not 1989, when a sequel to Wall Street might have been a good idea.
3) Do you remember the last good movie Shia LaBeouf was in? Neither does he. Although, to be fair, he also doesn't remember the original Wall Street…because he was 18 months old when it was released.

Wall Street 2: Electric Boogaloo typifies the modern trend of appropriating successful entertainment properties of the past and revamping them for modern times. This is annoying whenever it happens, but it’s even worse when the creators of the original property are involved in the update.

Again, the inclusion of Shia LaBeouf never helps.

The original Wall Street was released in 1987 and its themes of individual and corporate ruthlessness and greed neatly encapsulated the spirit of the times. Michael Douglas was the essence of immoral financial practices in a character that became archetypal, while oily yuppie Charlie Sheen portrayed exactly who audiences imagined as the cause of the savings and loan crisis.

While Ronald Reagan portrayed the actual cause of the savings and loan crisis.

Wall Street spoke to the public’s anger and frustration over the country’s economic ruin by presenting a morality tale where the players behind that ruin were shown as amoral villains who would eventually receive punishment for their actions.

Eventually.

Once again America is facing a financial crisis, so maybe it is time for a sequel. Maybe we need a movie to address the people and practices that got us into our current mess… oh, wait, we already have that movie. It’s called Wall Street.

A film for our times.

The causes of the current financial crisis are essentially the same as the causes of the financial crisis of the 1980s. The people whose job it was to make decisions with massive amounts of money turned out to actually be pretty bad at making decisions with massive amounts of money and the government paid to cover the cost. Oliver Stone parlaying this into a sequel to Wall Street is like him making a sequel to Scarface that shows the gradual rise, massive success and eventual poetic downfall of a psychotically violent kingpin meth dealer.

Starring Shia Labeouf!

Thanks for your time, Hollywood. I hope this has helped give you some perspective on why you suck so hard. So very, very hard.
Your Friend,
Thaddeus “Handsome Paddy” McGillicuddy