MORTAL KOMBAT: Soul Sucked

Director: Simon McQuoid
Writers: Greg Russo, Dave Callaham, Oren Uziel
Cast: Lewis Tan, Jessica McNamee, Josh Lawson, Joe Taslim, Mehcad Brooks, Matilda Kimber, Laura Brent, Tadanobu Asano, Hiroyuki Sanada, Chin Han, Ludi Lin, Max Huang, Sisi Stringer, Mel Jarnson, Nathan Jones, Daniel Nelson
Runtime: 110 mins.
2021

In the course of researching this movie I stumbled upon this hilarious little article about fan-favorite four-armed monstrosity Goro and how expensive he was to create. Here's the crux--

"He's extremely integral to the plot," [producer] Garner said. "He is a beloved character. He's awesome. He's obviously somebody that I would love to have in every movie. He's also really expensive. Not going to lie. He's really expensive. So again, if somebody wants to give me a billion dollars to go make a Goro movie, I'll make a Goro movie. I'll love that. Every second of him is a lot of money. Every second was like my house. So you got to use him sparingly, you got to be smart about how you use him. It's not that we don't love him, it's not that he's not hugely important. It's just practically, he's so damn expensive."

This quote provides a uniquely forthcoming depiction of the deranged way in which some producers approach filmmaking. The commodification mindset evident here penetrates every aspect of the production: the characters, the visuals, the story. Mortal Kombat is the sallow progeny of a deranged, unfocused video game series and an entirely cynical production process. It shows.

TRANSCENDENCE: Turding Test

Director: Wally Pfister
Writer: Jack Paglen
Cast: Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, Paul Bettany, Cillian Murphy, Kate Mara, Cole Hauser, Morgan Freeman
Runtime: 119 mins.
2014

Transcendence was clearly positioned as a buoyancy project for frequent Christopher Nolan cinematographer Wally Pfister to break into directing with some high concept philosophical sci-fi. Transcendence was also clearly positioned as a solvency project for decomposing megastar Johnny Depp to remain in the public imagination without putting too much effort in. I doubt either of them got much of what they wanted out of this project.

Will Caster (Johnny Depp) is a famous scientist who gets poisoned by an anti-tech terrorist movement, so his wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) and friend Max (Paul Bettany) attempt to graft his consciousness to their burgeoning Artificial Intelligence project. It works, but as digi-Will starts to amass power, many folks become slightly irked by the idea of an AI overlord. This is all so much less interesting than it sounds.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly where Transcendence goes wrong, which often indicates bad direction. The film seems committed to only exploring its ideas with the most facile surface probings. IIf a movie doesn't thrive on its ideas, you have the meat and potatoes of human drama to fall back on, another aspect that Transcendence fumbles. How are we to care about how human digi-Will is or isn't if the original human Will was basically a walking corpse already? Most of Depp's work in this movie is as a monotonous floating head, which is perhaps a blessing because the actor doesn't seem invested at all. The character is theoretically charismatic, but Depp can barely muster a sickly smirk through his wine hangover. Pfister lacks the grace to mask any of this, or maybe he doesn't care. One thing that can be said about this film is that there are some somewhat lovely visuals, which probably indicates that the director's former line of work was his correct one.

If you want a deeper dive into the dumb as a doorstop world of Transcendence, I guested on a podcast with Jenna Kuerzi to talk about the film in great detail. Check out our episode of Depp Impact here.

0.5 / 5  BLOBS

GODZILLA VS. KONG: Darwin Some Darlose Some

Director: Adam Wingard
Writers: Terry Rossio, Michael Dougherty, Zach Shields, Eric Pearson, Max Borenstein
Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Shun Oguri, Eiza González, Julian Dennison, Lance Reddick, Kyle Chandler, Demián Bichir, Kaylee Hottle
Runtime: 113 mins.
2021

Godzilla vs. Kong is the capper to Legendary Entertainment's 'MonsterVerse' quadrilogy that began in 2014 with Gareth Edwards' Godzilla. That film, imperfect as it was, had a real artistic vision guiding it. Godzilla uses impressive CGI, restrained pacing, and painstakingly careful cinematography to capture the sublime terror of a godlike creature. The opening minutes of Godzilla vs. Kong unwittingly demonstrate the folly of jamming this iconography into a shared universe model. Kong casually lumbers around the jungle with no sense of suspense, reveal, or scale. It gets immediately worse once the first lines of dialogue kick in. Bored actors immediately inform us that they need to protect Kong because Godzilla is coming and, wouldn't you know it, two Alpha Predators (tm) are bound to fight.

This is one of the worst, most dully written movies I have seen in a while, stacked to the brim with talented actors pumping out insipid exposition while standing awkwardly around neutral spaces. These shambling bodies can barely be called characters-- everyone is given between zero and one piece of characterization that ranges from 'cares about Kong' to 'used to have a wife.' This is partially owing to the caked up shared universe mythology being ported in from previous lazy films. The result is a slate of new and recurring characters doing absolutely nothing.