 Double Headers |
You ever wonder why Hollywood tends to spring pairs of similarly-themed movies on us at the same time? Yeah, we do too. Our best guess is that Murphy, the Superintelligent Canadian Moose, is at it again. He likes to control the world. In any case, we lay the evidence before you -- movies with nearly identical themes that come out within a year of each other! Next week, Bat Boy discovers Murphy's hideout, but stays due to hedonistic lifestyle!
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The Play: In 1998, everyone obviously had a death wish for the world. Thus, two back-to-back "killer comet/asteroid" movies wherein a big outer space chunk of rock threatens to kill us all, everyone gets all weepy, and a brave crew blast off into space to attempt to stop the boulder with a few well-placed nukes.
The Analysis: It turns out that Armageddon was from Mars, and Deep Impact from Venus. What? Whatttt? Deep Impact went for the female tear duct, racking up sobs as the story focused more on personal relationships and sad goodbyes. It did decently, being the biggest hit that the Dreamworks studio had to date. However, the much more male-oriented Armageddon -- with its hyper kinetic fast cutting, blaring soundtrack, and overemphasis on machismo and hardware -- creamed DI at the box office.
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The Play: Disaster movies always cycle back into popularity sooner or later, and in 1997, volcanos were nature’s disaster du jour. Volcano focused on a bubbling threat emerging from underneath Las Angeles, while Dante’s Peak pits an established volcano against an unsuspecting town below.
The Analysis: Neither of these films did very well or were liked by more than the teeniest of fractions of society. At first glance, Volcano looked to have the edge, with a better leading man (Tommy Lee Jones) and a very catchy tagline ("The Coast Is Toast"). However, it turned out that, as Mike Nelson said, Volcano should’ve been called "Lava", because all they showed for two hours was a stream of lava gradually creeping along at the same rate as Speed 2. Dante’s Peak fared better in the reviews, but, seriously, do you know anyone who’s seen this flick? Yeah. Okay.
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The Play: Arriving suspiciously on scene about the same year that the TV reality craze took off, both of these movies played on the theme of a person who has their entire life broadcast for the enjoyment of others.
The Analysis: You couldn’t have asked for a fiercer match between stranger topics. Both The Truman Show and EDtv diddled in the comedy vein and had fairly big-name directors attached (Peter Wier and Ron Howard, respectively). The major difference between the flicks was that Truman was unaware that his life was a massive TV show and Ed went into it willingly; both ended up at the same place, however, trying to escape the ever-present media. But by virtue of being the first of the two films released, and by honestly being a much better movie with a more interesting plot, The Truman Show all but stomped little EDtv into oblivion.
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The Play: The Western resurgeance in the 90s was limited to just a handful of films (including the award-winning Unforgiven), which makes it completely odd that two of these few Westerns "happened" to feature the story and struggle of Wyatt Earp, the infamous peacekeeper of the Old West.
The Analysis: Showdown at the hokey corral -- similar subject matter, wildly different flicks. Tombstone sported a much better cast (Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, Bill Paxton, Michael Biehn), and just had more fun with the material, keeping the action flowing and the awesome quotes coming ("I’m your Huckleberry"). By the time Wyatt Earp rolled around, nobody was in the mood for a wooden Kevin Costner and a drawn-out biography of his character. Besides, Kilmer’s Doc Holliday far outshone Dennis Quaid’s version.
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The Play: World War II came back for an encore in the nineties, as two major studio pieces with star-studded casts and bigwig directors duked it out over the landscape of the War To End All Wars.
The Analysis: While they were set on locations almost directly across the world from each other, the public and critic comparisons between these films were inevitable nonetheless. Saving Private Ryan had Tom Hanks and company storming the beaches of Normandy, stomping through the war-torn land of France, and defending a bridge from enemy onslaught. The Thin Red Line covered the Guadalcanal campaign instead, spreading its action across a number of muddled conflicts. Despite having a truly impressive cast (Sean Penn, George Clooney, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, Nick Nolte, John Travolta), The Thin Red Line came off as long and plodding, confusing to most moviegoers. With or without the competition, Saving Private Ryan was destined to crush all under the genius of Stephen Spielburg and the jackboots of those wacky Nazis.
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The Play: Dino power! Everyone likes ravenous lizards run amuck, and the summer event movie to end all summer event movies felt the peck-peck-peck of a scrappy upstart at its heels.
The Analysis: So… you’ve never heard of Carnosaur? I swear it’s a real movie, and it really was released. Sure, some might say that it’s a mere rip-off riding the coattails of Jurassic Park’s fame, but there’s more to it than that. The dinos in Carnosaur have a much better backstory, as they come about due to chicken eggs being infected with a plague of some sort. Dino-Chickens! Chickenosaurs! Poultry Rex! How can that not be genius?
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The Play: Where there’s a popular movie genre, a parody can’t be far behind. Both Scary Movie and Shriek satire the once-again-popular killer-stalker horror genre brought about by Scream and its ilk.
The Analysis: In possibly the most unfair, unjust movie event EVER, the horribly unfunny Scary Movie shot to the top of the box office (spawning two sequels of its own), while the much funnier Shriek was rudely shelved to debut on cable TV. The wrong must be righted, and MRFH has devoted an entire office (which used to be Kyle’s, but he’s always at a cosplay bar of some sort) to swaying the public opinion.
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The Play: Everyone loves a good crime robbery film, yet no one specifically asked for two of these to be dumped in our laps in a relatively short time span.
The Analysis: While neither did gangbusters, both of these flicks enjoyed some positive reviews and public support. Heist, directed by David Mamet and starring Gene Hackman, ended up with the slightly shorter end of the straw. The long end was drawn by The Score, whose bigger star power (Robert De Niro and Edward Norton) enjoyed more box office pull.
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The Play: The first major showdown between computer animated movies, both of these freakishly centered around tiny insects doing big adventures in a huge world.
The Analysis: Okay, despite its very strange spelling, Antz isn’t a horrible movie. But, come on, some one was budget shopping for voice talent here -- Woody Allen and Sly Stallone take charge of the biggest roles, and that’s just sort of wrong. Buoyed by the massive success of Toy Story, A Bug’s Life continued Pixar’s streak of brilliantly addictive kids flicks. At the end of the day, a variety of bugs trumped one boring race of ants, and A Bug’s Life roared to victory.
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The Play: Would you rather be stranded on a boat with a nasty undersea tentacle monster, or stranded on a boat with an alien intelligence that replicates through nasty machines? That’s the question moviegoers were forced to ponder at the turn of the millennium.
The Analysis: The "Stranded On A Boat With Something Horrible" genre boosted its ranks with these two similar films. Making a choice between the two strained the average soul: both movies were purely B-movie filler, both were full of B-stars (Deep Rising had Treat Williams while Virus did marginally better with Jamie Lee Curtis), and both were borderline ridiculous. In a way, this signaled a refreshing change from the too-self-serious late nineties horror stock, and both films became appreciated as minor cult classics to a small portion of audiences.
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The Play: Cop buddy movies are nothing new, and neither are the strange pairings that cinematic history has contrived. However, it became the height of fashion in 1989 to see a human police officer share screen credit with an animal fascinated with its own vomit.
The Analysis: It’s been said that when an actor does a film with a small child or an animal, it’s usually the kiss of death for said actor. Such was not the case with Tom Hanks, who did the whole Odd Couple thing with a dog so vastly ugly that the comedy was assured. Turner and Hooch became one of the last major comedy roles that Hanks would play before his more serious, Oscar-grubbing phase. On the other hand, the lame K-9 did very few favors for John Belushi’s brother James. While a capable B-actor, James has never been anywhere near as funny as John, and K-9 just floundered without a serious plot or inspired comedy. Sadly enough, K-9 sported two sequels in the late nineties, both with Belushi.
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The Play: Quick! What planet haven’t we grossly exploited in films yet? To two major studios in 2000, the answer was Mars. And thus, back-to-back Mars exploration flicks were born.
The Analysis: Instead of realizing that Mars isn’t that interesting of a planet and thus jazzing it up for the audience (a la Total Recall), both M2M and Red Planet suffered grossly from being too sciencey and realistic. While the plots are a bit different (M2M focuses on a singular mission to visit and explore Mars, while Red Planet is about a second mission to rescue a failed first one), both films rely on "exploration" and "surprise, here be aliens" as major selling points. Since no one came away raving about either one, the winner is subjective: either you like the more realistic Mission To Mars, or the more action-packed Red Planet. Your call this time.
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The Play: A triple header this time, as three movies, all released in the same year, deal with the subject of mysteries in a virtual reality world.
The Analysis: While the winner is blatantly obvious -- The Matrix was an instant classic when released, as much brainy as it was action-packed -- no one knew early that year which would be the winner. Virtual reality is never the strongest pull, even for science fiction geeks, and as all three promised cool gadgets and alternate worlds galore, it looked like a saturated field. Between the two lesser films, eXistenZ came away with more street cred (David Cronenberg really did try to envision a possible video gaming future), while The 13th Floor wallowed in oblivion.
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The Play: Why the sudden fascination with Scottish warriors? Who knows… the airy whims of filmmakers are as incomprehensible as the weather channel. In any case, all of the sudden filmgoers got twin films about scrappy Scottish fighters rebelling against an evil government.
The Analysis: While on the surface they appear sort of similar, any direct comparison is doomed to failure. Braveheart took on an epic, grand story with the tale of William Wallace, a man who led a massive Scottish revolt against the British in the 13th century. It featured large-scale battles, corny Irish counterparts, and gobs of blue paint. Alternatively, Rob Roy is the much smaller tale of a clan member in the 18th century who becomes a Robin Hood outlaw fighting corrupt nobles. While Braveheart came away the triumphant titan in both box office and awards, Rob Roy gathered a nice share of respect, partially due to a very memorable sword fight toward the end of the film. (Odd fact: Brian Cox had roles in both of these films.)
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The Play: Spurned on by the 500th year celebration of Christopher Columbus’ voyages to the New World, 1992 saw a doublet of flicks attempting to recapture the spirit of discovery.
The Analysis: Geez, who cares? I mean, I respect Columbus, even in the face of the modern PC brigade, but neither of these movies made much of a lasting impression on the public. 1492 was helmed by Ridley Scott and had the bigger stars… but that’s like saying that your salad buffet has bigger and more juicier brussel sprouts. Ick. The only thing that sticks in my mind is that both movies continue the myth that most of the "ignorant" Europeans considered the world to be flat -- this has been firmly proven to be a falsehood (sailors in that era knew about the curvature of the earth), but movies like these choose to market the lie, because it‘s more theatrical.
Written By:
Justin
Posted On:
2.11.04
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