Not all bad movies are made alike and for me the sea of
duds divides into two categories: artistic failures and commercial failures.
Since cinema is as much a business as it is an art form, all movies must
straddle this line. A.O. Scott summarizes the point nicely. “No filmmaker
sets out to make a bad movie,” he says, “and no producer or studio executive
sets out to lose money.”
Of course, bad movies still get made. Loads of them. And I
find that a clunker’s failings can usually be attributed to choices made on one
side or the other of the aforementioned balancing act.
The first example in this case study is Zack Snyder’s Sucker
Punch, a truly awful bomb from earlier this
year that I chalk up as an artistic failure. True, this orgy of computer
animation could not have happened without major studio backing, but it was also
the first opportunity Mr. Snyder had to develop an original story rather than
work from previous source material. After making a series of hits within the
studio system (Dawn of the Dead, 300 and, to a lesser degree, Watchmen), he was given creative license to direct another,
this time from the ground up.
The result is a bombastic blast of misogyny that pitifully
vies for fanboy love by emulating every known geek-approved genre and blending
them into a self-absorbed mess. It is Kill Bill with none of Quentin Tarantino’s levity or reverence for his female
leads. Still, Sucker Punch is the
kind of disaster that can only come from someone with a bold, if perhaps
misguided, vision, and it is endlessly more watchable than the alternative.
Enter Exhibit #2: Green Lantern, a movie that, on first glance, appears to have all
the necessary components of a successful superhero origin story. Beneath the
surface, however, the film is empty and hollow; it has no heart, no humor. The
same may be said of its star, Ryan Reynolds, whose good looks are a shell that
hides an utter vacancy of charm. There is no drive, or purpose, or love of the
character behind the production.
The movie is the result of a green-lighting frenzy that
occurred in the years following Spider-Man’s $100M+ opening box office weekend nearly a decade ago. Every studio had
to have a superhero franchise they could bank on for huge profit. Five or six,
if possible. Green Lantern is a
product designed to sell Burger King onion rings as much as tickets. I would happily
rewatch Sucker Punch, the badness
of which has a kind of operatic grandeur to it, than endure the stale
lifelessness of Green Lantern
again.
My point is, both films suck, but one had the potential to
not, while the other was doomed to fail. You can feel Mr. Snyder’s enthusiasm
brimming from every over-stylized, color-saturated shot of Sucker Punch. This is part of the reason why, when it stumbles,
it doesn’t do so gracefully. It smacks hard, face-first on the pavement. But no
one can accuse Mr. Snyder of not making bold choices, something the
by-the-numbers Green Lantern
lacks. His choices are, for the most part, bad choices but he took a chance, a
tactic that can lead to great success in a way that playing it safe never can.
I’ll leave open the possibility that Zack Snyder may yet make
a great film or, at least, a few very good ones. Even taking into account a
hunk of junk like Sucker Punch, he is on
the right track. On the other hand, the only good that can come of Green
Lantern 2, should it ever get made, will be
the return of avocado paste at Subway. (I’m a big guacamole fan.)
- Steve Avigliano, 1/13/12
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