Sun Aug 28, 2005 1:51 pm by Jason
I agree about Brazil, although I've never seen the director's cut. Even with the hack job done on the original release, I knew it would be great from the amount of time Terry Gilliam put into it. He does tremendous work on production design just like Ridley Scott. I'm waiting for an anamorphic widescreen version to come out because a non-anamorphic widescreen picture looks lousy on a 10 foot diagonal screen.
A lot of the time I'll like a film just from the production design regardless of the merits of the story. Event Horizon had fantastic production design but crap story (it seemed to me like someone had edited the storyline heavily, althought the director stated that it wasn't), same with Highlander 2 (which the director acknowledged and rectified later on with a new edition). Pitch Black had great production design and story. The Matrix movies had some great production design although the story got kind of muddled near the end.
Alien had amazing production design (I'm planning to have a home theater room with a design like parts of the ship), as did a lot of the first Star Wars films. The newer Star Wars films don't seem to have the same overall feel as the first ones. Saturn 13 also had great production design (same designer as Star Wars, I believe).
Back to the theme of the thread, BR is one of the very few films I can stand to watch several times. The mood created with production design, music, lighting, theme (a very deep theme about memory, identity, pollution, rights of sentient beings, etc.) The Abyss is another, and Dark City explores some of the same themes as BR, as does the original Ghost in a Shell anime movie. There was a tv series a few years ago called Total Recall 2070 (there is one DVD available) that explored many of the themes of machine consciousness and intelligence that had several good episodes. I got some of the same feelings of depth watching Lord of the Rings:Fellowship of the Ring about protection of the environment and war as I was watching in the theater (resonant with the time it was seen, as the Iraq war II had newly begun, and environmental protection laws had been dismantled by dictator George the II).
Even some of the story arcs on the cartoon Justice League has started to deal with the military industrial complex and reponsibility of power on a fairly adult level that is very chilling if one is aware of what is going on behind the scenes in the black budget world.
The strength shown by the replicants in BR is easily possible, and science has started to be aware of a few people with none of the chemical in the body that keeps massive amounts of muscle from growing like a Brahma bull. Certainly stories about everyday people in stress situations exhibiting extreme strength proves that even non-body-building normal humans can exhibit that strength, even if just for a short time and at the expense of structural damage if extended. I was just last night reading reports of children being born who are apparently immune to every disease and disorder that was tested on thier blood, and babies born with AIDs who showed no sign of it 6 months later with no treatment having been provided. Dark City also deals with mankind awakening to new kinds of power and ability, as Neo did at the end of the first Matrix move (althought the power was within the illusion of reality generated by the Matrix).
I personally believe on a certain level that some works of art such as films, books and music is sent from a higher level to us to try to make us aware of important issues that need to be present in our consciouness. Blade Runner is one of those works of art to me. The final recent Star Wars movie in places resonated with me as a warning about the end of another republic that might be taking place at this very time.
Terminator 2 came out at a time where there was great fear about nuclear weapons being used in war, and could have played a part in reducing the danger. I remember very well seeing Sarah Connor's dream about the nuclear explosion for the first time in the theater and being raised to a new level of consciousness about the destruction possible during that scene. There was a distinct feeling that I got from the other people in the theater during the scene that this was a lot more than they had been expecting from the evening's entertainment. It was easy to recognize that everyone had had their breath taken away by the graphic portrayal.
I just wish there were more movies or tv series with this level of craft and depth available. It could only benefit the race of humanity. The Stargate SG-1 tv series and spinoff Stargate Atlantis very often has deep themes. In a non-SF genre, The Shawshank Redemption always affects me.
There are a few directors that could probably meet the challenge of continuing the story of BR if Ridley Scott passed on doing it:Terry Gilliam would be a good choice, Bryan Singer of the XMen movies (working on the Superman film), Peter Jackson of course, Stanley Kubrick would have been great. Not likely any one them (especially Stanley) will get around to it. Speilberg is capable of it if he wanted. Maybe Frank Darabont from Shawshank Redemption. The director of Pitch Black could be a contender. Sadly, most SF movie direction today is of the MTV zero attention span variety.
Last edited by
Jason on Sun Aug 28, 2005 3:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
