- Release date: January 24th, 2014 (U.S.)
Director:
Stuart Beattie- Writer: Stuart Beattie (adapted from
the graphic novel by Kevin Grevioux)
- Score Composers: Johnny Klimek and
Reinhold Heil
- Budget: $65 million (estimated)
- Domestic gross: $8,275,000 (current, estimated)
- World gross: Currently unavailable (for me, anyhow)
- Material: Digital (converted to 3D in post)
- Aspect ratio: 2.35 : 1
- Running time: 95 minutes
- Current Tomato Meter: 5%
Oops.
It’s not my intention to spend much
time ripping this movie a new fire hole.
It has plenty of fire holes.
This movie loves fire holes.
Besides, you knew I, Frankenstein
was a steamy pile of incompetence from the moment you heard the title. Who needs a trailer? They could have advertised this film
with the promise of a complimentary steak dinner and oral sex, and still only
about 100 people in the world would think, “Ooo! ‘From the makers of Underworld!’” That’s the problem with January. Hollywood, the insatiable greed-beast,
spends all year gobbling up them dollars, and after some quality time spent
sniffing out a place to finally take a dump, it chooses January. Doesn’t January suck enough? Christmas has ended, and the season
says, “Haha, bitches! Not such a
winter wonderland now, IS IT!?”
All the good holidays are over and we can’t even look forward to some
good movies to provide escape.
It’s a big, dumb waste of time; much like the film I saw on Friday. We’ll get into the cause, and my
concept for an alternative practice in the many January’s to come, but first, we
do need to devote ourselves to a prime example of the cinematic goings-on in
this putrid time of year.
I,
Frankenstein, a film based on the eponymous graphic novel, tells the story of…
Frankenstein’s MONSTER (Aaron Eckhart), who accidentally kills a couple of
demons after burying Dr. Frankenstein, which catches the attention of a group
of angelic demon-fighting gargoyles (don’t bother reading that again. It won’t make more sense), who take him
to their “queen”. She names him
Adam, and fails to persuade him to join their cause in order to stay his
capture by Naberius (Bill Nighy), apparently the queen of the above mentioned
demons. He tells these turkeys
they be speakin’ jive, absconds with some awesome weapons from the Angelic
Gargoyle Awesome Weapons Room and dedicates his every waking moment to finding
and killing this Naberius character.
He is apparently terrible at finding Naberius, because 200 years pass,
and it still hasn’t happened for him while hiding in the mountainy
wilderness.
Why would Naberius be in the
mountainy wilderness, Adam?
Upon re-entry to civilzation, our hero tells us via
inner-monologue the world of man is no longer familiar to him. Yeah, it’s so unfamiliar that he has a
modern haircut, perfectly tailored, perfectly weather-beaten, perfectly hip
blue jeans, and a clearly treasured gym membership. That’s an awfully accurate concept of what an attractive man
of 2014 looks like. This guy picks
up fast.
That’s only one of the big problems
in this cacophonic, ugly, and boring piece of drivel. Adam would be a character worth exploring, if only he were
affected by any of his experiences.
He is super human physically and mentally. What would 200 years in solitude, save for the occasional
encounter with soon-to-be-destroyed demons, do to someone… or something? Who is this guy? Did no one think to give him a
personality? Over the course a
generous and tedious 95 minutes, all we learn about him is that he is lonely
and kind of feels bad about killing his dad’s girlfriend. Oh, he also likes to kill him some
demons. Much like the rest of
cast, Mr. Eckhart (boasting a fine talent in previous projects), has been given
one note to play. It’s sort of a
quiet, angry note, and he plays it… grunts it, actually, scene after scene and
couldn’t care less. Can he be
blamed? There is so little
material in this film, it resembles a black hole. In fact, the most complex
facet of nearly any cast member is the manner in which they explode. But, that’s only fun for the first
seven, in about 500, times you are witness to it.
Virtually the only upside in a film
this dimwitted trying to take itself this seriously is that we wind up with
actors TOTALLY SELLING lines like, “You go talk to the gargoyle queen.” Even these “so bad it’s good” qualities
are few and far between, however, and the most irritating thing about this mess
may be in how they justify the title.
“Aren’t we all our father’s sons?” drools Bill Nighy, after calling Adam
“Frankenstein”. Following this line of logic, the film ends with Eckhart’s
voice-over cheese-whizzing out something like this: “I, descender of the demon
horde. I, protector of the night,
I… FRANKENSTEIN.”
Okay…
I get it. Frankenstein, being the surname of Victor, and Adam if we can consider Adam his son, then I... sort of understand the concept. But that's not an excuse to perpetuate the confusion over Frankenstein vs. Frankenstein's monster. It is important to understand these are different characters! Frankenstein is such a well-known character, that his surname may as well be his first name.. or his ONLY name. Look, I am definitely MY father’s
son. I look just like him. We share common interests. But, nobody calls me Mike just for the
sake of a catchy movie title. I
wouldn’t end the movie of my life like: I, purchaser of movie soundtracks on
vinyl. I, eater of chili in bread
bowls. I, Mike Lewellen. MIKE LEWELLEN IS NOT MY NAME. I am just the product of his seed, you
ding-dongs.
So, you spend most of your precious
time in the dark, dark theater asking the universe questions as to how this
could possibly have been made. How
did they attract talent like Eckhart and Nighy? How could the finished product have been released in
theaters when the producers realized their creation was as monstrous and
terrible as Victor Frankenstein’s?
Why is digital technology involved in the very un-technological
enterprise of attempting to fill a soulless body with a demon spirit (I won’t
bother getting into THAT scene.
It’s no more or less knuckle-headed than the rest of the never-ending
bat-shit craziness, but you do need to know that if you only have a certain
percentage of a demon spirit in a corpse, that is just not enough demon
spirit. Yes, it operates like
downloading mp3’s.)? These
questions aside, we can know the answer to how this worm wriggled its way into
theatres in January.
I am not trying to claim poor films
are only released in during this month’s 31 days. From good, to mediocre, to
turd-farm, movies of any quality can show up at any time, and they do. The
SUPER turd-farm variety, however, mostly show up at the beginning of the year
due to “Oscar season”. By January,
of course, Oscar season has ended.
Any film a studio has released with the intention of being considered
for award nomination is already out.
So, somehow, nearly every major studio spends more distribution money
expanding the release of their Oscar contenders. What does that have to do with movies of the I, Frankenstein ilk? Well, this film was most likely
completed and ready for release during a finer time of year, put through test
screenings, given some thought, and put on the proverbial back burner. Maybe it didn’t test well, maybe they
knew what they had and knew it couldn’t contend opening against Star Trek II,
maybe they temporarily lost the reels in a fight between angelic gargoyles and
demons, who knows?
Still, one does not spend $65
million on a film potentially worth $20 per ticket (3D IMAX in L.A., for
instance), and not at least attempt a theatrical run. So, like Swallows to Capistrano, crap films come to populate
the month of January every year.
It’s sort of a vicious circle.
No studio releases a major film during this month, so there are few
films with which to contend. Any
studio with such a crummy film needs to try to earn back some cash, so it shows
its ugly face at the most opportune moment. It’s easier to open a film about explosions against the
likes of Devil’s Due, Gimme Shelter (The
Vanessa Hudgeons after-school-special, not the famous documentary about The
Rolling Stones), The Nut Job, or
nothing at all, than against the third installment in an incredibly popular
film franchise, or the next big movie from Martin Scorsese.
Films of this indefensible quality
are produced every year (Remember Legion?),
and for what purpose? To each
project, millions of dollars are contributed to very little profit, if
any. Why bother taking a risk on a
project that sounds this ludicrous in the first place? I understand it is a comic book
premise, but when you pitch a familiar character… say, an indestructible guy
who flies through the air and shoots lasers from his eyes… he still has an established audience to
welcome him at the box office.
Nobody knows the source material here, so the High Concept approach
doesn’t work. What if $65 million
was split between 3 projects by unknown filmmakers? What if that much cash was set aside to invest in new talent
every year for a small festival?
What if the people behind these works held a screenwriting contest? Wouldn’t that be a more significant
application to film history? So
far, I, Frankenstein has returned
about $8 million (domestically, that is, and it could possibly turn a profit
internationally). With the right
people producing and promoting a selection of films with super turd-farm
distribution width, that much could easily be achieved. Wouldn’t that be a less wasteful use of
all that power and money? What if
January kicked off each cinematic New Year with fresh talent, instead of old
waste? Just think, it’s possible
that sort of thing could become as much a yearly tradition as watching the Oscars,
the very event responsible for this thriftless practice.
