Dino Dicember #19: Super Mario Bros The Movie (1993)

I could have waited until that animated Super Mario movie Nintendo commissioned Illumination (urgh) released… but sure as shit it isn’t coming out this year (not like it was gonna, it was slated for a 2022 release before the COVID-19 pandemic anyway), and i’m doing Dino Dicember… well, in Dicember, so it’s a pretty good “excuse” for me to watch and review the infamous Super Mario Bros live-action movie. And i do enjoy the challenge, it’s not like it’s this obscure adaptation nobody on the internet talked about, but let’s give the movie a fair shake with almost 2 decades of hindsight.

And yes, it totally counts, since it’s about a dinosaur dimension that originated from the meteor that hit Earth 65 millions years ago, which actually created two parallel dimensions of Earth, one inhabited by reptile people descending from dinosaurs, and ours of “human people” descending from primates. As the resources have dried up on the “dino end”, the leader of the dino-people, Koopa, sends minions in our dimension to search for a fragment of the meteor that split the dimensions to begin with, so he can unite the two and rule them under his scaly thumb.

Continua a leggere

About that redesigned Sonic The Hedgehog…

Sonic The Hedgehog 2020 new design.png

So yes, as announced after the huge (and in retrospect, highly predictable) backlash the original design shown in the first trailer, they scrapped that eldritch thing, and came back today with a new trailer, which shows some new scenes, and a new redesigned Sonic that’s a fuckton more pleasing to look at.

As i said before, i was kinda against this, for two reasons. Continua a leggere “About that redesigned Sonic The Hedgehog…”

So, about that Sonic The Hedgehog movie trailer…

Don’t worry, i’m not gonna go into a tirade about the recently revealed trailer about the Sonic The Hedgehog live-action film.

But let me say, i’m honestly kinda intrigued, this looks like a more than fitting candidate for the “so bad it’s good” category, it looks like a mess, one made in the 90s alongside the Super Mario Bros live-action movie (back when they really didn’t had any precedent or clue of how to make a videogame-to-movie adaptation), almost intentionally so, “a cult movie in the making”, which seems like the case, it doesn’t look like it’s done on purpose to be a cult hit (it doesn’t work that way).

I don’t particulary care about Sonic as a franchise or a character, and i’m honestly ready to close this apparently unending “nostalgia for the 90s” trend and move on (good lord, we let Busby resurrect with not one, but TWO games, yeah, there’s another coming), but Jim Carrey as Eggman/Robotnik is a fun choice, and i’m eagerly awaiting it, this has all the elements of a potential disaster on all fronts, a supreme bad movie that becomes legendary, a gift, in a way.

Not that we needed/wanted it, at all, but since it’s coming out anyway…

Also, kudos to the director Jeff Fowler (at it’s first feature length film) for at least taking the criticism (well deserved, i mean, just look at it and try to tell me it’s a good design) on the chin and promising to fix Sonic’s design. Which is already been fixed in edits by random people on twitter (and i doubt it will be actually done, i don’t want crunch to happen because of this), but still, i respect the willingness to address this and not just ignore it.

Which would be quite understandable, given how people on social media react to anything.

**Also, a refresher, this was also a thing.**

I’ll be back with a couple of reviews soon enough!

[EXPRESSO] Blood: The Last Vampire (2009) | Live Action Mehstruction

Blood The Last Vampire 2009 poster.png

Live-action adaptations of animated works are quite the oddity.

Fans are usually against it because “it’s pointless”, but even so it’s hard to fully repress any curiosity, and it’s a way to stir up some interest in an IP.

In this case, it’s adapted from the omonymous 2000 Production IG film, a coproduction between french company Pathè and Hong Kong company Edko, directed by Chris Nahon.

The basic plot is mostly the same: Saya is an half vampire half human that hunts down “proper vampires” for a shadowy organization, that helps her by providing supplies for the killings. It’s still set in an American army base, but there’s also this whole backstory of shape shifting “demons” that in the 16th centhury took human shape to live between us (using the bloodshed of that period to their advantage), and Saya being the daughter of a legendary demon hunter, slain by the vile demon Onigen.

Also, she has to basically babysit Alice, the daughter of an american army general, after she saves her from vampires monsters disguised as school bullies. Yeah, while some scenes from the anime film are replicated, the plot changes and add things just to fill time between the decent action scenes, definitely the best parts of the movie, despite being very clearly made by a Hong Kong company, not very japanese.

It honestly feels like the plot was written for a tv series or a videogame based on Blood The Last Vampire, and then reused here, it has that cheap feeling to it. Apart from that, the movie is watchable, but it’s kinda shit, with laughably bad and clichè as hell dialogue, some stupid scenes, mediocre acting, inconsistent quality of the special effects, and a really anti-climatic final confrontation.

Oh, and the title is a lie. It is.

americano-icona