Spoilers herein.
There has never been so much attention to genres as now. Young moviegoers are ever so much more self-aware than their predecessors and a good part of that self-awareness goes toward genre-busting. Theorists call this subversion, but I think is a result of greater attention to the manner of art than the matter. So we have slasher films about slasher films.
Now we have a scifi monster film about a slasher film. The scifi effects are ultracheesy. The slasher character prances and poses, knowing he is on camera. And that is all as it is intended to be, because we are supposed to be watching a film that knows it is a film, or rather two films.
What interests me here is one decision that was made: the creation of the female android Kay. At one point many decades ago, there was a battle for our imagination between mechanistic-type robots (Robby) and humanoids (deriving from `Metropolis'). The mechanoids are completely absent from the scene now, the only remnant being weapons (usually animal-like) operated my humans or human-like aliens.
It's a matter of sex. `Bladerunner' was a turning point, with the whole story turning on how deep passion can be with a created woman (and in the twist, the man as well). Well, here we have the latest, the real star of this cobbled mess of self-reference. Kay Em has sex, we are sure to be told. And as the bad guy gets more super, so does she in a carefully designed meld of spandex and leather. Her `powers' are a combination of acrobatics and big guns. Makes no sense at all except to exploit the archetype.
There are other demographic and archetypical touchstones -- the gruff but endearing marine, here black; the tenacious, wirey `scientist' girl; the equivalent of sexy dental technicians, and of course the oblivious but powerful scientists. And that brings us to the one truly clever thing in this project.
David Cronenberg is little watched by the public but is influential among film visionaries. He pioneered this notion of mining for archetypical pressure points and them blowing them up with visual cues. Those visual cues are often machined organic parts, often merged with bodies. His influence here is clear, especially in the uberJason. And he plays a role! As the guy who starts it all by letting him loose. The filmmakers know what they were about, and trusted at goodly part of their audience to play along.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 4: Has some interesting elements.
There has never been so much attention to genres as now. Young moviegoers are ever so much more self-aware than their predecessors and a good part of that self-awareness goes toward genre-busting. Theorists call this subversion, but I think is a result of greater attention to the manner of art than the matter. So we have slasher films about slasher films.
Now we have a scifi monster film about a slasher film. The scifi effects are ultracheesy. The slasher character prances and poses, knowing he is on camera. And that is all as it is intended to be, because we are supposed to be watching a film that knows it is a film, or rather two films.
What interests me here is one decision that was made: the creation of the female android Kay. At one point many decades ago, there was a battle for our imagination between mechanistic-type robots (Robby) and humanoids (deriving from `Metropolis'). The mechanoids are completely absent from the scene now, the only remnant being weapons (usually animal-like) operated my humans or human-like aliens.
It's a matter of sex. `Bladerunner' was a turning point, with the whole story turning on how deep passion can be with a created woman (and in the twist, the man as well). Well, here we have the latest, the real star of this cobbled mess of self-reference. Kay Em has sex, we are sure to be told. And as the bad guy gets more super, so does she in a carefully designed meld of spandex and leather. Her `powers' are a combination of acrobatics and big guns. Makes no sense at all except to exploit the archetype.
There are other demographic and archetypical touchstones -- the gruff but endearing marine, here black; the tenacious, wirey `scientist' girl; the equivalent of sexy dental technicians, and of course the oblivious but powerful scientists. And that brings us to the one truly clever thing in this project.
David Cronenberg is little watched by the public but is influential among film visionaries. He pioneered this notion of mining for archetypical pressure points and them blowing them up with visual cues. Those visual cues are often machined organic parts, often merged with bodies. His influence here is clear, especially in the uberJason. And he plays a role! As the guy who starts it all by letting him loose. The filmmakers know what they were about, and trusted at goodly part of their audience to play along.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 4: Has some interesting elements.