Fixing The Phantom Menace

Here we are. After a thirty-two year wait, finally, her eon December 17th, 2015, the world will finally be able to watch the sequel to Return of the Jedi. What a glorious day. The last thing anyone needs to do on a day like today is dredge up old wounds and talk about the last Star Wars movie that opened to massive, massive hype following a long break between films. You know, The Phantom Menace. 
No, nobody wants that.

But let's do it anyway.

Now I am not doing this to take another crap on the prequels. But, they are fresh in my mind, as I geared up for the new film by rewatching all 6. In doing so, I was struck by a surprising thought--The Phantom Menace isn't that bad. No, really. There are far worse movies out there. Believe me.

But it isn't that good, either. Now that I've written a book or two, and made some mistakes along the way, I've discovered a couple of things. One, I am more forgiving when things go wrong. Creating plots and characters that entertain and make sense is hard. Really hard. Two, when things do go wrong, I like to brainstorm on how these plots and characters could be fixed. I have to do it with my own stories all the time, so it's only natural that the urge would strike me while viewing others. 

Which brings me to Episode One. How would I make it better? Can it be fixed? Could it have gone from mediocre to good, maybe even great? We'll never know. besides, my proposed changes probably suck, too. Even if they don't, George Lucas wasn't exactly going to call me up to serve as a script doctor.  I was like a freshman in college.

Nonetheless, here are five changes that I believe very well may have rescued The Phantom Menace from mediocrity. In the interest of fair play, I tried to hue close to what we were presented with. I don't think it'd be realistic to completely change the plot or remove characters. My hypothetical changes should be looked at as adjustments to the nearly-final draft, not the first.

The Voices
The first change I prose is a simple one--change the voices. Every single voice from a non-human character is horrid. The only exceptions would be Darth Maul--his voice isn't great but it works--it's used sparingly regardless--and holdovers from the original films like Jabba the Hutt, C3PO, etc. Those voices were locked in, whether they worked or not (they all do, though).

Review of Spectre aka Bond 24

James Bond has returned! This time it's in Spectre, a James Bond movie that functions almost as sort of a greatest hits set of the 23 prior films. Of course, there are plenty of references to the prior films starring Daniel Craig, and this movie does a good job of tying them all together. But the allusions go much deeper than that, with references to older Bonds. Some references are implicit (the skeleton imagery of Live and Let Die, a fight on a train out of From Russia With Love, battles up in the mountains akin to On Her Majesty's Secret Service) , others are more explicit, such as the return of Ernst Blofeld and the ejection seat.  

I enjoyed the film. It's entertaining. It's Bond. There's tons of what makes James Bond James Bond. But the truth is, while greatest hits sets have their place, I've always preferred listening to the original albums, with the songs slotted in their proper place rather than the haphazard running order in which those collections are often assembled. Ultimately, I feel somewhat the same with this film, with the parts never quite reaching a fully satisfying whole. Still, Craig continues to play the part well, and there's enough going on for most to find something to enjoy, and likely a lot more than that.

DVD Bargain Bin Report

I love DVDs. But more than that, I love cheap DVDs. So naturally I'm drawn to Big Lots like a moth to flame, or anywhere else that stocks cheap DVDs for that matter - with the exception of Wal-Mart. The less time I spend at Wally World, the better off and happier I am.

Anyway, digging through used DVDs is always fun, because you often find movies you meant to see when they came out and missed, or movies you've heard about but never seen. Sometimes you find a treasure, and other times you find yet another copy of Wild, Wild West, but you don't know until you look, and that's the fun. So for no particular reason, I thought I would go through and summarize some of my recent thoughts on a few cheap DVDs I've recently watched to see if I found some winners.

Mean Streets: Found at Big Lots for $3. Anyone with a passing interest in mob films has probably heard of this one, but I had never seen it - the first entry of the DeNiro-Scorsese canon. Honestly, it was not what I expected. This is a very non-traditional film - there's not really an arc, and there's no character to get behind - these are scumbags and we're getting a fly on the wall type look at them. Something like should be right up my alley, but for whatever reason it just didn't click for me. I was enraptured throughout the opening but at some point it kind of lost me and it never found me. I'll have to watch it again sometime.

Raging Bull: Found at the Imaginarium for $2.50. This was a great deal - it was the two-disc special edition so there's a bunch of extras to delve into at some point. Unlike Mean Streets, I enjoyed this DeNiro-Scorsese team-up quite a bit. I absolutely love the Rocky films, but while this is the anti-Rocky, I still enjoyed it. Similar to Mean Streets in that there are no heroes, the more direct narrative makes this one easier to get into. Joe Pesci stole the show for me as the main character's brother. That said, Rocky remains my favorite fight film. But now I'm prepared to see the Rocky-Raging Bull square off in the upcoming Grudge Match.

Die Hard, Die Hard, Die Hard

"Looks like we're going to need some more FBI guys."

If you told me that Die Hard was the greatest action movie ever made, depending on the day, I might not argue with you. It really is that freaking good. Recently, my wife and I sat down and re-watched the entire series, but in reverse order since part five was recently released and I hadn't seen it yet. So I started there and worked my way backwards, and in the interest of keeping our marriage strong, Abby did not watch A Good Day to Die Hard. I watched it first before I would allowed her beautiful eyes to gaze upon it, and thank goodness for that.

It really is that freaking bad.

Anyway, for no particular reason, here is how I rank the five Die Hard films, best to last.

1. Die Hard. Well, duh.

2. Die Hard with a Vengeance. Opinions are mixed on this one, but I like it quite a bit. It's actually the most believable of the sequels: instead of finding himself in the "wrong place at the wrong time," John McClane is deliberately targeted this time due to his actions in a prior film. Samuel Jackson is a lot of fun in this one as McClane's partner.

3. Die Hard 2. It's been some time since I've seen this one, and truth be told, it was much better than I remember.

If you had the misfortune of seeing The Hangover 2, you probably remember when Bradley Cooper's character says something like "We f'ed up. Again." And then they proceeded to basically rehash the first movie, only in a way that managed to remove any possible urge to laugh.

Well, Die Hard 2 has a few moments like that, with McClane wondering out loud "How can the same (bleep) happen to the same guy twice?" Except Die Hard 2 at least had the dignity to not stage the exact same movie. It's not a masterpiece, but it is entertaining.

4. Live Free or Die Hard. You know, it's not bad, and probably better than it should have been. It does start to kind of creak and groan at the end, with McClane's stunts stretching all credibility, and the movie is at least twenty minutes too long, but overall, it's pretty good. I was happy with it when I saw it in theaters and I still am. Watch the uncut version for the full "Yippie Ki Yay" catchphrase.

5. Watching other people watch Die Hard. Yes, I would rather watch another person watch Die Hard than watch Die Hard 5.

6. Watching Youtube videos of people playing Die Hard video games.  Yes, really.

7. A Good Day to Die Hard. Just horrible on every level. I could say more but I won't waste my time, as this review from DVD Talk already said it all. A major disappointment. On the other hand, Rocky V looks a hell of a lot better now. Just for an example of how bad this was, they fly McClane over from Russia and don't even bother to show him on the plane to riff off of the classic original opening of Die Hard. The only part I enjoyed was the car chase, but even that was filled with a sleepy Bruce Willis performance. If you do insist on watching this, make sure you watch the theatrical. For unexplainable reasons, Lucy McClane's two-part cameo was excised for the director's cut.

Oddly, Die Hard 5 is the only one where the story was actually created to be a Die Hard film. The first Die Hard began as a novel called Nothing Lasts Forever and was later pegged to be a sequel to Commando (wrap your mind around that for a bit). Die Hard 2 was adapted from a novel called 58 Minutes. Die Hard 3 was actually pegged as both a film called Simon Says and then Lethal Weapon 4 (Sam Jack is clearly in the Danny Glover role). Die Hard 4 was to be a stand-alone film about cyber-terrorists. Here's hoping they create the promised Die Hard 6 from an idea pegged for another film.

Coming soon: A definitive list of the other "Die Hard" movies, i.e. Speed is considered Die Hard on a bus. Someone needs to catalog those, and it might as well be me.