The Rules of Attraction - James Van Der Beek Tribute

The Rules of Attraction was a very important movie for me back in 2002. To date, it is the only movie I have ever watched in a theater on back to back nights. This nihilistic look at young relationships at a fictional college spoke to me. (I was an eighteen-year-old college freshman at the time.) As someone who was perpetually miserable when it came to romance until I met my wife years later, I identified with Sean Bateman (James Van Der Beek) and (idiotically) fancied myself the dark, “emotional vampire” that he claimed to be. Of course, the big difference was that both the character and actor had a natural charm that I lack, and the character was far more fucked up than I ever dreamed of being. This guy was a coke dealer with a serial killer older brother; I hadn’t even developed a taste for beer at that time and was still almost exclusively drinking screwdrivers made with Kamchatka vodka and Sunny Delight (not that I want to, but to this day I can’t drink Sunny D without getting grossed out, but perhaps that’s for the best). But I realized all this years later. At the time, this film felt like it was made just for me.

If this ever gets a good 4K release, I’ll devote way too many words about every aspect of the film: the music that I still love, the camera work, the cast of TV stars trying to break bad, the unreleased Glitterati film that would have gotten Kip Pardue canceled back in 2002 instead of 2019 (which also would have been for the best), the Casper Van Dien as Patrick Bateman deleted scene, Roger Avary’s unfortunate career since this film, etc. I still love it all, even though I don’t identify with it any longer. Instead, it’s a nostalgic snapshot of the time, and a reminder of who I thought I was back then. But that’s for another time, hopefully. Instead, I wanted to focus on James Van Der Beek in light of his recent death, as this is by far my favorite performance of his career. 

I never watched a single episode of Dawson’s Creek, and I never saw his later TV work, but James Van Der Beek made a huge impact on me with just two film roles: Mox in Varsity Blues and Sean Bateman in The Rules of Attraction. I rewatched Varsity Blues right after I heard the news of his passing, but, with all due respect, I like that performance ironically (you know, the “I don’t want YOUR life!” of it all). But with Sean Bateman, Van Der Beek was perfectly cast.

You might not immediately think of James Van Der Beek when you hear “emotional vampire,” but thankfully Roger Avary did (after initially wanting James Franco for the role and then deeming him wrong for the part). Van Der Beek has plenty of fun with the role, seeming to enjoy getting to play a dick with a couple catchphrases (“Rock ‘n’ Roll” and “Typical”).

He’s a scumbag drug dealer, but since it’s Van Der Beek, he’s still likeable. There aren’t many actors who could make a suicide attempt funny (especially when said scene takes place just minutes after a serious and disturbing suicide scene), but Van Der Beek could. It’s the way he portrays frustration and anger. He spends a lot of the film pissed off, and it’s funny because of his facial performance. 

Van Der Beek, much like Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, makes an amazing disgusted face. You can tell that most moments and people sicken him, and it adds to the dark comedy of the film. He has no right to be mad at anyone but himself, but it doesn’t matter because you can tell that he believes he is in the right. This is something Van Der Beek confirms in an interview from a few years ago as he claims he sees Sean more tragic than irredeemable. 

Because of this, it’s easy to still be on his side even though he punches Jessica Biel in the face and says shit like, “Since when does fucking someone else mean that I’m not faithful to you?” It takes a truly charismatic actor to portray that kind of dick and remain at least partially likeable. 

It’s sad that James Van Der Beek died so young, and it’s unfortunate that he wasn’t given more dark roles like Sean Bateman after The Rules of Attraction. But at least Roger Avary saw the potential, and we were blessed with this one. I might not identify with this character any more (thank Christ), but I can still enjoy him, and that’s thanks to Van Der Beek’s great performance.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die - "It's Going to Be Okay. Or It's Not. I Don't Know."

AI has been an inevitable enemy in science-fiction for decades now. As it became more and more prevalent in recent years we could all make nervous jokes about Skynet, quietly hoping something or someone would step in and slow it down. And now that it's rearing its awkward head into our everyday life with weird-ass social media profile pics, slightly wrong search results, and somehow worse customer service chatbots than ever before, it’s time to get serious. Or is it?

Before, with film franchises like The Terminator, the AI revolution was treated with apocalyptic dread. But now that it might be real, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (hereafter simply referred to as Good Luck) presents it with apocalyptic humor. AI is inevitable, so why not have a little twisted fun while the world ends?

Just like The Terminator, Good Luck (Gore Verbinski’s first film in nearly a decade) starts with time travel. A crazed Sam Rockwell, dressed in apocalyptic future-chic plastic and electronics, walks into a diner at 10:10 P.M. and tries to start a revolution. He claims to be from the future. A future in which our addiction to our screens has turned the human race into full-on technology addicts unable to take off our VR headsets as we choose a manufactured reality over the actual one. Of course, Rockwell just seems insane, and he pretty much is. According to him, he’s already tried this nearly two hundred times, trying and failing to pick the right combination of unwilling diners to save the world by making it to the house of the child who created the AI program that dooms the world and installing software from the future that will alter it enough to allow humanity to come back to reality. 

This isn’t a mission to destroy AI. AI is inevitable, but with the right safeguards the world can continue to exist. None of this sounds very fun on paper, but Rockwell’s future man is fed up after so many attempts, so while he tries to recruit the unbelieving diners he also gets to point out how terrible some of them have been on past missions, telling certain diners how many times they have died in previous attempts. He’s like a video game player at the end of his rope attempting an impossible level. 

Rockwell isn’t the only player in this particular video game. Through flashbacks scattered throughout the mission, we learn about his ragtag group of world-savers. There’s Mark (Michael Peña) and Janet (Zazie Beetz), teachers who live in constant fear of their phone-addicted zombie students. Susan (Juno Temple) is a mom who recently lost her son in a school-shooting, which is such a common occurrence that a company has now begun cloning victims (and the shooters), allowing grieving parents to tweak their new children by picking their personality, hobbies, and beliefs. And there’s Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson), a birthday party princess who is so allergic to wi-fi and phones that it causes nosebleeds, who recently lost her boyfriend to AI (he left to go to a facility that will take care of his body while he stays plugged into the VR world that he finds better than the real one). There are a few others, but just like in video games, they’re just there to be bodies as the core group advances.

This still doesn’t sound very funny, I know, and the school-shooting element is sure to ruffle plenty of feathers. It’s satirical, but people have a harder time accepting satire when it seems like something that could really happen in our lifetimes. Satire is easier to laugh at when it takes place hundreds of years in the future like Idiocracy. But when a movie acknowledges that school shootings are so commonplace that we don’t even treat them as major events anymore, then suddenly that satire becomes more scary than funny to some. 

And that’s the balance that will tip people one way or the other with Good Luck. How funny do you find our current path to dystopia? Beyond the school shooting aspect, many people might not find the humor in the film’s commentary on technology and AI, especially with AI starting to take jobs away (they’re even giving away free tickets to the film to anyone who has lost their job to AI). 

Some people, like myself, will find the humor in Matthew Robinson's lively script acceptable and welcome in a genre that is often too serious. Others will either find the film too accurate for comfort or too exaggerated to laugh at. It might be a generational issue, though I can’t stand lumping people into individual generations that all agree on things. I’ll put it this way: if you look around at people, especially younger people, glued to their phones and think the world was better before phones and the internet, then this might be frighteningly on point. Or: if you grew up with social media and phones and everything, this might come across as “old man yells at cloud,” and it could be distractingly alarmist. People like me (millennials, if a generational tag is necessary), who grew up as phones and the internet became more prevalent and adapted along the way, might be able to see the current world with equal parts amusement and fear. And that’s the sweet spot to enjoy this film.

Rockwell is another key to enjoying Good Luck. He keeps the film going even if you don’t find the subject matter comedic. He’s perfect at playing a crazed asshole who seems to be annoyed that he has to save the world. The film is at its best when he’s talking to shit to his reluctant team. Aside from that, the pure chaos of the film is fun if you’re just willing to go with it. Once you accept that insane shit is going to keep happening, it’s a fun ride. It’s a long ride, though. There’s no reason for this to be over two hours long. I complain about this too often, but if a film has a character constantly checking a timer on his wrist, it’s going to make the viewer check the time, too. It doesn’t ruin it, but a film with this tone and pace should keep things as brief as possible, especially when the main character seems to be in such a hurry from the get-go. All of these aspects don’t matter one way or the other, though, depending on your fear of technology.

I think we’re all, young and old, on our screens too much, but I also don’t think it’s the end of the world. Every generation hates advancing technology because it’s just another example of our impending deaths. But death is inevitable, and if AI is going to end the world, that’s probably inevitable, too. So why worry so much? The film’s title says it all. In the film it’s a saying used in the VR world that will eventually end life as we know it. But it works for the real world, too. What can we do but hope for some luck, try to have fun, and put off dying as long as we can? 

If that sounds too nihilistic, then Good Luck probably isn’t for you. But if you’re willing to laugh a little at our possible impending doom (because what else can you do) then this overlong, chaotic film can be a good time. 

Random Thoughts (SPOILERS)

Since this is the rare movie I had a chance to watch and write about before wide release, I tried to keep my review as spoiler-free as possible. But there’s a lot I want to get into in spoiler-territory, so here goes.

This film is dark, but I think the darkest element is that the whole film takes place in the VR world, meaning no matter what happens, the humans lose. The film doesn’t acknowledge this, though, as the ending seems almost hopeful with Rockwell seemingly having things figured out because of his mom’s allergy to technology. But the film clearly doesn’t take place in reality. Ignoring the time travel, there are the zombie teenagers and the school shooting clones. Okay, maybe this is an alternate reality. But what about the giant centaur cat that pisses glitter? And the impossibly large room the AI-creating kid is in? That shit means everyone is in a video game. And there’s a reason the title of the film comes from the VR game: they’re in the VR game.

When you think about this as a video game film, a lot of it falls into place. Rockwell talks shit to the diners so much because he’s the main character, and they don’t realize that they are NPCs, to use a gamer term. For the record, I believe everyone in the diner is an actual person with a VR headset on somewhere; but, like in life, some people don’t know that they’re unimportant.

“AI’s gonna try and give you everything you ever wanted: constant distraction, memorable characters, challenges and obstacles to overcome, exciting stakes that matter, and a satisfying ending. But in the end, it will all be a lie. And you’ll live in a cage.” 

This quote is repeated as Ingrid realizes they didn’t complete the mission. I took it to also mean they’re all in the VR world. Once again, the film makes it seem like there’s still a chance they can beat the AI at the end. But that’s not possible within the VR world. Or maybe it is? The ending really has me torn. I just wish there was an acknowledgement that they are in the VR world, but now they’re looking for a way out of it. 

More evidence that they’re in the VR world: the existence of time travel, the clientele of the diner at 10:10 at night (especially the boy scouts), the stuffed animals in the claw game foreshadow future issues (a robot, a rat, etc.), the police response, and the general otherworldliness of it all.

This is not the best movie to watch right after you got your kid a VR headset for Christmas, and he’s pretty obsessed with it. The battery life is shit, though, so I’m sure it’ll all be fine. 

Rockwell’s character is fun because he’s equal parts grizzled vet who knows everything and clueless bystander who doesn’t know what’s going on half the time. And Rockwell is so good at both sides.

Rockwell punching the kid really got me. Best surprise kid punch since Due Date.

John Carpenter vibes, mainly during the school segment. The score is an obvious homage, but I also found the zombie-like teenagers to be reminiscent of the homeless in Prince of Darkness. 

I bitch about movie length a lot, but in this one it just felt like things dragged on a bit too long near the end. Case in point (thanks to getting a digital screener I could check the time stamps because I’m fucking crazy), when Rockwell checks his timer near the end, it reads 5:20. This happens at 1:42:12, but instead of it reaching zero at 1:47:12, it gets to its final seconds at 1:52:12, and then time slows to a crawl as Ingrid is sucked into the machine to talk to the evil AI boy. By the time she comes out and the clock actually reaches zero, it is 1:57:32. Five minutes takes fifteen minutes in this movie. 

By the way, it’s just a nitpick. I had a lot of fun with this one.

Knock Off - MVD Rewind

Knock Off, available for pre-order from MVD Rewind (releasing February 17) has evolved for me over the years. When I first watched this frenetic piece of Hong Kong cinema, literally filmed during the transfer of power back to China, I was very disappointed. I wanted classic Kickboxer / Bloodsport Van Damme, and I ended up with a silly film with rickshaw races and exploding baby dolls. To make matters worse, this was one of the last theatrical releases for Van Damme. I wrote this off as a late career misstep. Even when I re-visited it years later for this site, I was more negative than positive. Now, with MVD Rewind’s awesome 4K / Blu-ray upgrade, I finally get it.

A large part of my enjoyment of this film is the practical action of it compared to modern action movies. The stunts in this film are great and clearly practical aside from some explosions here and there. And the fight scenes, though chaotic, are also a lot of fun. When coupled with director Tsui Hark’s “go anywhere” camerawork (an early moment has the camera follow Van Damme’s foot into a knock off running shoe), Knock Off looks more impressive with each passing year.

I’ve also watched more Hong Kong cinema over the years, and knowing a little more what to expect from a Hong Kong film makes this easier to enjoy. With Hong Kong in mind, I know this is going to move quickly, literally and figuratively, and I might not know what the hell is going on from scene to scene, but it’s going to be entertaining. 

So while the plot involving nano-bombs, knock off jeans, Rob Schneider as a CIA agent, etc. might make little sense, it really doesn’t matter. This is a wild ride from start to finish, and you’re better off shutting your brain off for it and enjoying the inventive camerawork and stuntwork. 

This is not to say Knock Off is a classic. This will always be lesser Van Damme, but it certainly deserves another look if, like me, you dismissed it originally. Of course, the MVD Rewind treatment makes it all go down much smoother.

The Transfer

If you catch this movie on a free streamer like Pluto, it’s a tough watch. The sound mix is abysmal, and it just looks okay. The new restoration makes this a no-brainer in terms of quality. If you like this movie at all, this will be the definitive release to own.

Special Features

MVD Rewind is a dream company for Van Damme fans. They’ve already made the best versions of Double Impact and Lionheart (and I’m assuming Black Eagle, though I haven’t checked out that release yet), and they treat Knock Off with equal reverence. 

The slip-covers are nice, with the Blu-ray release getting the vintage VHS look, and the 4K getting a more traditional cover-art release. 

Each version also includes a mini-poster, which I hope to someday convince my son to hang up in his room. 

Beyond the great physical media aesthetics, the regular special features are nice, as well.

The archival making of is decent since it features plenty of on-set interviews. It's oddly promotional while also giving away almost all of the plot. But it gives a nice glimpse of what filming was like during the historic transition.

The 2020 interview with de Souza claims they were originally going to be able to film the transfer of power in Hong Kong with Prince Charles, and it would have implied that the explosions at the end would have threatened that. But the budget changed and they couldn't, so now you just get the TV coverage, and it doesn’t seem like anything happening in the movie has much to do with the transfer ceremony aside from being on the same day. To be fair, there is the moment when the boat gets too close and the gunships go to intercept, but the boat turns away and they stand down.

The interview with producer Moshe Diamant also brings up the transfer of power missed opportunity.

The new de Souza interview is half a career retrospective and half about Knock Off. He praises the stunts, and rightfully so. As action movies get more and more digital, the insane practical stunts of a movie like this make it better with each passing year. And de Souza is simply an entertaining storyteller, so going through his career leading up to Knock Off is interesting, as well.

Diamant and de Souza both seem a little too proud that nano-bombs kind of came true (mainly with the Hezbollah pager bombing thing from a few years ago).

Random Thoughts 

This has to be the first JCVD foot cam moment.

Also the first time he's been whipped in the ass with an eel by Rob Schneider…on film, at least.

“Thankness, god.” Clearly Van Damme was meant to say, “Thank goodness,” or “Thank god,” and, “Thankness, god,” is what came out. The fact that they just kept that in instead of doing another take is a perfect example of the tone of this film.

Rob Schneider is much more convincing as a sleazy jeans counterfeiter than as a CIA agent.

Sure, the very first time I watched this and there was a prolonged rickshaw race ten minutes in that featured an exploding shoe and Rob Schneider whipping Van Damme with an eel, I thought, “What the fuck is this shit?” But after nearly thirty years and at least five re-watches, I dig it now.

It’s worth upgrading for the sound mix alone. It makes it almost unwatchable on Pluto. I haven’t checked the sound on other streamers.

The stunt with the car landing on the water bottles is nuts. It looks like one stunt dude on the ground misses getting hit by inches.

After watching this three times in as many days, I think I finally understand the plot.

I think the giant Buddha blowing up would be a bigger deal, especially with the handoff going on. But no one even makes a comment about it.

The final set piece on the boat is too frenetic. There’s some good shit in there that gets lost in the editing. 

Paul Sorvino inexplicably survives two nuclear-level explosions, but I think he’s really dead with the third one. 

Schneider is still talking about the jeans at the end, saying “our jeans.” Was his role in the jeans company not a CIA front? Did the movie forget he was an agent? Did he forget?

The film ends with what has to be drunken ad-libs from Schneider, talking about forming the lingerie football league. And the film closes with him saying, “No action movie would be complete without sweat.” This is fourth-wall breaking, and what is he even referencing? That’s why I think it was a candid moment that Tsui Hark just left in.

Dracula - Now with Gargoyles!

Dracula is one of those properties that never loses relevance. Just off the top of my head, I can name four versions from just the past two to three years: Renfield, Nosferatu (Nicholas Hoult is a fan!), The Last Voyage of the Demeter, and Rade Jude’s AI Dracula (which I haven’t seen yet, but I’m definitely interested in). And now Luc Besson has bloodied the waters with his version.

Ignoring the allegations and general creepy shit (dating and eventually marrying a fifteen-year-old) about Besson, I’m still not the biggest fan of his work. The Fifth Element is the only film of his I truly enjoy. That written, when I see his name attached to something, I know it’s going to be at least a little interesting. That’s what makes his version of Dracula so disappointing.

This feels like a shallow remake of Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula more than a new adaptation of the source material. It starts in the 1400s with Vlad going off to war, then he renounces God when his beloved Elisabeta dies. Four centuries later, he looks crazy old and has a ridiculous wig. He comes across the reincarnated Elisabeta, and he attempts to reunite with her. 

There are a few differences, of course. This time, it’s set in Paris instead of London (though everyone speaks English). Instead of just being supernaturally charismatic, Dracula has to make a magical perfume to charm women. And instead of a harem of brides, he has…CGI gargoyles. The Paris aspect is fine, but the perfume and gargoyles are silly at best, and distractingly stupid at worst. 

This would be forgivable if the rest of the film was interesting. But I didn’t care about any of the characters, even with a cast that includes Christoph Waltz (just sleepwalking through yet another eccentric professional role). The violence is basic, and the film is oddly light on blood and sex, despite the R-rating. I suppose the costumes were interesting, but that’s certainly not enough to save anything. 

Caleb Landy Jones is a unique choice for Dracula. Oddly, though, I only found him interesting when he was in old-man make-up. He seems like a bit of a doofus when he’s young-looking. (He’s way too impressed with a puppet show at one point. You’re over four hundred years old; puppets shouldn’t evoke any reaction from you at all, man.) But as an old man, he’s engaging. Easily my favorite segment of the film is when he’s dropping exposition on Harker. It should be a weak point in the film, but it held my interest the most thanks to Jones’s performance. 

It’s almost as if the script was altered to make up for Jones’s lack of charisma. It would be too unbelievable that he could drive an entire nunnery wild, so they had to add in a magical perfume to explain it. 

Perhaps I’m being too negative on the film, but because it’s Dracula I’m going to be harsher. First off, I’m a huge fan, and I try to watch every adaptation that comes out, even if there’s one or two every year, it seems. Second, and more importantly, since this is a property that has been adapted so many times, any new take needs to justify its existence, and this doesn’t. There is no reason for this to exist aside from Besson just feeling like making Bram Stoker’s Dracula but in Paris with a weaker script and visuals. Oh, and gargoyles. 

The silly gargoyles will most likely be this film’s legacy. I’m not sure there is a good way to do it, but the CGI here is a bit weak. Beyond that, it just doesn’t make sense. So Dracula needs to spend years developing his Spanish fly perfume, but he’s able to make gargoyles come to life? (SPOILER alert: they’re revealed to be children at the end after his death, which is definitely horrifying but no less baffling.) Is it some kind of dumbass commentary on pleasing women or something? It’s easier to bring a gargoyle to life than it is to impress a woman. There are odd elements of humor (like Dracula’s ridiculous laugh when confronting Harker), but I can’t imagine the gargoyles are intended solely for comedy. And since it’s rated R, it’s not like they’re there to keep younger audience members entertained. The gargoyles clearly served only as a distraction to me. 

This film might have worked if Besson had taken Dracula’s life story told to Harker and just made that the movie. I would’ve taken an entire movie about him trying to kill himself, and then deciding to make the world’s most effective perfume over yet another re-tread. But this forgettable adaptation is what we got. Oh well, I’ll just check out the next adaptation that will probably come out in the next year or so.

Red Planet - Arrow 4K

Back in 2000, one of those Armageddon / Deep Impact situations happened and we were blessed (?) with competing Mars movies with Brian De Palma’s Mission to Mars and Antony Hoffman’s Red Planet. I was certainly more excited about De Palma’s movie, but I came away very disappointed with the PG-rated organ-heavy debacle (though I now want to re-visit it and see how it’s aged). This soured me on Mars, and I waited for the DVD release of Red Planet, especially since it bombed both commercially and critically. When I finally checked it out, I remember being pleasantly surprised, but all I can truly remember is that, of the two Mars movies, Red Planet was better, but that wasn’t saying much. Now with the new Arrow 4K release, I thought it was time to check it out again.

My initial response is very much the same. This is completely okay. It’s weird how okay it is. Normally a “mission to save the human race” movie has lofty ambitions, but this felt more like a character study of a small group of astronauts that got hijacked into being a big blockbuster. So there are glimpses of interesting character moments and bits of grand space opera stuff, but not enough of either to add up to much. Red Planet is a success simply because it doesn’t take big swings that it knows it can’t connect with. To keep the baseball metaphor going, it’s a walk. Cool, we’re on first base, but so what?

Doing a bit of research and checking out the interviews included in the special features sheds some light on the situation. Apparently, Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore grew to hate each other so much that they each had restraining orders filed, and they refused to film scenes together. This was a big problem since (SPOILER alert) the final third of the film finds the two as the sole survivors on Mars. Beyond that, Kilmer was difficult in general, showing up late and arguing about what his character would say and do. 

This would be commercial director Antony Hoffman’s sole feature, and it’s easy to see why. In the interviews (which Hoffman did not contribute to, unfortunately), it is implied that he thought he was making the character study in space, but it got turned into a Mars movie. That makes sense as it would have been nice to have another ten to fifteen minutes on the ship, but the film is in a hurry to get to Mars. This is understandable, but it does make for a more shallow film.

Despite the shortchanging of the characters (especially Carrie-Anne Moss, who is presented at first as the star, but is relegated to floating around away from the action for the whole movie), the cast still makes it work. There’s no evidence on screen of any feud between Sizemore and Kilmer, and they’re individual performances, while not career best, are still fine. Terence Stamp’s screen time was largely lost to deleted scenes (which are included on the Blu-ray), but even with his little screen time, he makes an impression. 

As for the story, it was actually kind of a relief that the mystery of failed previous missions didn’t end up being vicious alien creatures. Instead, it was vicious alien bugs. I don’t know why, but that worked more for me than some monster-type shit. And it’s not like the whole movie is about evil bugs. There’s a progression of issues. First, there’s the botched landing (which leads to an unintentionally hilarious moment with Benjamin Bratt refusing to admit fault like some kind of “pussy”), this leads to the prospect of the survivors dying from lack of oxygen, then the dog-like military-turned-scientific robot AMEE (think CASE and TARS from Interstellar) goes Predator on the team, and finally the evil bugs show up. Yes, it’s busy, but at least the movie never gets bogged down with repetition.

The fast pace of the film is what worked the best for me this go around. For example, as soon as they land on Mars, Stamp realizes he has internal bleeding and will only slow down the team if they have to carry him. He convinces them very quickly to leave him behind, and they do so with little argument. At first, I thought there should be a bigger emotional moment, and maybe there should. But if we’re looking at this from a scientific “every second counts” space movie, then it makes sense that the team would be that quick to carry on. 

None of this adds up to some unappreciated classic (even the people interviewed for the special features acknowledge it’s not great [hell, the costume guys admits he might not have ever watched the whole movie]). But it’s worth re-visiting, especially with the passing of Sizemore, Kilmer, and Stamp in recent years. And it still beats Mission to Mars…I think.

The Transfer

Restoring films like this to 4K glory is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the Mars segments look fantastic, and this is obviously the best this movie will ever look. On the other hand, the visual effects of the time look extra 2000-ish. In their defense, the visual effects were botched and a new crew came in very late in the game. But some of it is a bit distracting.

Special Features

The interview with the special effects guy (Jeffrey Okun) was enlightening. It does not surprise me that he was brought on late and was solving problems more than creating things.

Okun confirms the Kilmer/Sizemore rift. It turned into a visual effects issue since they refused to work together, and they had to figure out how to combine their performances on screen like it was a twin movie or something.

He claims Kilmer was a much bigger pain in the ass than Sizemore. In his words, “a billion times” more of a pain. And if a scene didn’t show Kilmer's face, odds are it's his stunt double.

The suit and helmet guy, Steve Johnson, is entertaining enough, but he ends up going on and on about how great AI is at the end. I mean, he's definitely right about how it's going to be more and more prevalent whether we like it or not, but he doesn’t have to be so fucking giddy about the prospect of never having to deal with humans again in visual effects.

Deleted scenes are Stamp-heavy, explaining why his role seemed so small. It was because most of his scenes were cut to get the film to Mars faster. 

Random Thoughts / Favorite Quotes

“By 2025, we knew we were in trouble.” Yup.

Totally believable that Kilmer and Sizemore would be the two astronauts making booze.

I like how they don't boo-hoo too much about leaving Stamp behind. 

“I don’t need forgiveness from a pussy like you.”