I Can't Believe I Rented It: I Am Legend

Never let it be said that I'm not open minded.

Having seen one too many of my favorite properties get completely mangled in the translation to film, I can completely understand the anger fans directed at Will Smith's I Am Legend "remake."

Imagine that you are a fan of something and it's very near and dear to your heart. In some way, you're constantly referring back to it; it has left an indelible mark on your life. It is an inspiration to you as well as a source of entertainment. You know it inside and out and debate the finer points of it with other fans. It's your favorite or if not your favorite, it's somewhere close to the top of the list.

Then, some Hollywood director says that he wants to make a movie of it, whatever it is. He promises that he'll stay true to the spirit of the original and even says, "I'll have some special nods to the fans in there." A couple of years pass and you go see this movie. And while it passes for a movie, there's nothing about it that could be confused for the original. For the sake of argument, we'll give this movie a name: How about, "I Am Legend?"

For the record, "I Am Legend" is the second butchering of Richard Matheson's book, "I Am Legend." I haven't seen "The Omega Man," the first butchering, but I have read Matheson's book, and I can say this: They would have been better off calling this movie "Will Smith is the Last Negro on Earth." It would have been a way more accurate description.

I envision the brainstorming phase for this movie going a little something like this: 12 movie executives, a director, and two screenwriters are sitting around a conference table discussing how to approach their "I Am Legend" project. One of them says, "Perhaps we should refer to the book. You know, take the movie back to its roots." Everyone agreed, so they each pulled out their copies of the book, read the back cover, and wrote down "Robert Neville," "Last man on Earth," "vampires!" and decide to take a three-hour lunch. The books are thrown in the incinerator by the cleaning crew, never to be referred to again.

It's not like "Jurassic Park," where they pretty much just changed the ending for their movie so they could make it family-friendly, or like comic book movies, where they change the details, but the major beats stay the same. "I Am Legend" is a completely different beast in every way. It's like if someone made a movie about the crucifixion of Jesus, only Jesus is white, the entire deal happens in Nazi Germany, and he gets crucified by Attila the Hun after a dramatic space battle at the bottom of the sea.

Having said all of that, though, I liked "I Am Legend," even if it was described by many as "just three hours of Will Smith and his dog." Kevin Smith once said that he liked to watch Ben Affleck just run around, doing stuff, and if that's how you feel about Will Smith, then that's pretty much what you're going to get. It's a movie about Will Smith being Will Smith. There are some emotional moments and I thought it did a good job of being entertaining. It's probably how most people would react to being the last man alive...assuming they were also an emotionally stunted, man-child, super-genius.

It's more or less just a different take on the same concept, but it's enough to make true fans of the book want to find the director and smash a series of cinder blocks over his head until he's unable to destroy anymore fond memories. Believe me, "I Am Legend" fans, I can relate. I had to sit through the "X-Men" movies.

I give this movie four out of five jiggling fat kids.

"Yogi Bear," "Partridge Family" return; End of world at hand

Entertainment executives are obviously huge fans of TV Land and Boomerang, because it seems like everything they put into production these days comes from those channels.

"Yogi Bear" has been put into production, and will probably be released in time to ruin the holiday season in 2009. It's being planned as a CGI/live-action nightmare, much in the same vein as "Alvin and the Chipmunks," and "Garfield." I don't plan on ever seeing it, because blah blah blah fuck this movie.

I can't even really get mad at this, because it's not like the cartoons were any good. I know, because I've watched them. We all know Yogi Bear, but it's not like there was any well-ingrained continuity for them to ruin or any classic moments for them the screw up. If I asked anyone I know to name their top three Yogi Bear moments, they probably all involve Yogi stealing a pic-a-nic basket, because that was as far as Hanna-Barbera thought this one out. There weren't any branching storylines or special episodes involving drugs and child molestors, since the show was made in 1961, and back then, it was widely believed that creativity and smart writing was of the Devil.

So, I can't imagine anyone really being too broken up over this one. At first glance, I started to get upset until I realized that this show affected my life in much the same way that Tila Tequila affects my balls: No reaction whatsoever, out of fear of contracting exploding genital warts.

And just when I thought that all I was going to talk about was "Yogi Bear," I stumbled across the stool-loosening news that NBC was bringing back the "Partridge Family." Before you start thinking that supervillains have released a gas that makes you imagine the most ridiculous possible ideas on your computer screen, yes, your dumbfounded brain processed that correctly, although the gas might be real and in the hands of NBC executives for recreational use.

But they're not just bringing it back, they're updating it for the 90s. I understand that it's really a year and some change away from 2010, but the concept is thus: Instead of the kids begging the mom to front the band, the new show involves "a struggling, sort of well-meaning mom pimping her kids in order to create a wholesome-slash-sexy cash cow." Sounds like an unnecessary 90s, update to me. Like "Knight Rider 2000." I'm shocked that they're not calling it "Partridge Family 2010," or "Partridge Family X." I wonder if they'll show the part where the obsessed, half-drunk mom tells all of the kids that she should have swallowed instead when they can't get their songs right.

Again, I don't care, because the name always made me think that I wouldn't like this show and in all the years that I've been aware of this shows existence, I've never cared to find out if I was wrong. A show called "The Partridge Family" sounds like some punk shit, and the "Brady Bunch" and "Gilligan's Island" taught me valuable lessons when it came to avoiding the bad television minefield. I will not be fooled again. Basically, if they couldn't put enough thought into the show to give it name that can be put on a t-shirt that won't get the wearer stuffed into their own bookbag at school, then I'm not going to watch it. It's why I never told anyone that I watched "Will & Grace."

I don't know what's worse about these two remakes, though: The fact that they're remaking "Yogi Bear" and "The Partridge Family," or the fact that they're so devoid of ideas that they're literally scraping the bottom of the television barrel to do it. Last I checked, there was no large "Yogi Bear" following, and I'm pretty sure VH-1 killed any "Partridge Family" following by continuing to show Danny Bonaduce in any form or fashion. If anyone reading this decides to watch either of these remakes, you probably don't have any taste in anything and may God have mercy on your soul. If I remember correctly, there's a Bible verse condemning remaking Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

Next up: Will Jonathan Taylor Thomas return for the "Home Improvement" movie? After reading this, you have no idea if I'm kidding or not.

It's Official: Dragon Ball Will Suck

The Spider-Man teaser poster back in 2001 was a picture of Spider-Man climbing up the side of a skyscraper. The X-Men teaser poster was a picture of the X-Men logo. Every time Superman has had a teaser poster, it's simply the "S" shield. You'd think that it would be a pretty hard to screw that up, right? All you have to do is show something iconic that's related to the upcoming movie. Fans of whatever it is will take one look at it and instantly have to change pants. Generally, the it should be the cheapest poster you have to produce, because you usually only need a symbol of some sort. It's purpose is to excite the fan base, kinda of like having unknown minor-league politicians trash Barack Obama at the Republican National Convention. You're only speaking a language that the die-hards understand.

This is the "Dragon Ball" teaser poster and any fan of "Dragon Ball" can tell you that it evokes more memories of "The Avengers" remake than "Dragon Ball." Allegedly, that's supposed to be Bulma. I guess her trademark blue hair didn't test well with the focus groups.

Believe it or not, I don't go into these things with an instantly negative attitude, but when the first details I get don't even come close to what the original was, it's hard to stay positive. When my first peek at Optimus Prime in "Transformers" only made me believe that a robot could have an eating disorder, I knew then that it wasn't going to end well. When the first word I heard about the script for "Alien vs. Predator" was that it would take place on present day Earth and focus on a bunch of humans, I knew that a disaster was about to take place. The only time I was ever fooled with when "The Hulk" came out. I should have known something was wrong when the producers talked about the movie being a psychological examination of the character, when all they needed to say was how much federal funding the movie's world would need to recover when they finally get the Hulk to change back into Bruce.

And now, with "Dragon Ball," the first look at the movie is a generic photo of a woman who I wouldn't have been able to identify if she hadn't already been labeled by the website i stole the photo from. I swear, it's like the first photos I saw of "Street Fighter" in that issue of GamePro back in 1994. It's like Jean-Claude Van Damme calling himself "Commander Guile" all over again, so I expect this movie to make Vegeta a wisdom dispensing, traveling photographer from the Australia. I'd rather they didn't make a "Dragon Ball" movie at all and they're not exactly striking while the iron's hot. They stopped showing new Dragon Ball Z episodes in, what? 2002? Really, Fox, you don't have to do this for our benefit. We're not looking forward to this at all.

I can only hope that the movie still manages to closely replicate the so-called storytelling method of having a character pose for an entire episode and have everyone stand around him and talk. Maybe I'm just not savvy enough to understand that this show blazed a new method of building tension or maybe it was a great sociological experiment that allowed the producers to see how little animation could be put into a cartoon and still have people continue to watch, much like "Cartoon Planet's" test pattern episode back in 1996. I've got so little faith in the movie now, that I expect them to keep this aspect of the show and discard the brutal fights that made the show famous to begin with.

"Dragon Ball" will be released in 2009, so they've got a little time left to try to make it stop looking like a sequel to "Double Dragon."

Dead Men Don't Sell Movie Tickets

Warner Bros. "The Dark Knight" has brought more money than was wasted making "Waterworld" and "Last Action Hero." It's critically acclaimed and popular, and didn't even need Oscar buzz and a Celine Dion song to get it over the top. But the common line of thinking seems to be that Heath Ledger's overdose is what made everyone go check out "The Dark Knight," which means that basically, for us to see a good movie in droves, we have to be prompted by the same instinct that made people watch "Jackass." And since I now have internet access again, let me shut that down right now. Let me list the REAL reasons why "The Dark Knight" brung in all this cash.

1. Ticket price inflation.
I paid $10 to go see the damn movie. Back in 1989 when I went to go see "Batman," I paid $1.25. I never was good at percentages, but that's like, a 1000% increase, which means the first Batman would have had to sell five times as many tickets just to reach the same level. I think I paid about $5 or $6 to go see "Titanic," the reigning box-office champ, back in 1997. In 11 years, ticket prices have doubled, so it's just a matter of time that a movie blows by that record, because unlike the music industry, they don't count tickets sold. They count the box office. That's why "The Dark Knight" only leads the original "Star Wars" by about $18 million, despite the fact that "Star Wars" came out 31 years ago. Back then, five bucks could get a seven-person family into the movies with change left over for snacks. So when we get to the inevitable point of paying $20 a ticket, probably sometime in 2010, judging by the current rate of inflation, even "Ghost Dad" will be able to top $600 million.

2. It was shown more times, on more screens, than any movie, ever.
It was shown on 4,366 screens, which means that they were counting art house theaters and the really big TVs at celebrities' houses. So even at reasonable ticket prices, if a movie is showing at least four times every three hours in almost 4,400 locations, I'd say it stands a good chance of breaking records. It's like Michael Phelps winning eight gold medals last week. Sure, he won all eight races, but he had eight chances to get eight gold medals. Everyone else only gets a shot at one gold, unless they're in synchronized diving, in which case, they stood no chance against the underage, Chinese man-machines.

3. There wasn't anything else playing.
"Iron Man" and "Indiana Jones" went on first, because they were smart. There wasn't another movie after "The Dark Knight" that stood a chance. I know there were a lot of people who thought that Brendan Fraser was up to the challenge, but there's a reason why no one listens to those people, and it's probably the Down's Syndrome they were afflicted with at birth. As a result, "The Dark Knight" stayed at the top of the charts for four weeks.

4. It wasn't his death, it was his well-received final performance that made people watch. There's a difference.
Because let's face it, I don't remember there being a media blitz for "The Crow" when Brandon Lee died. Or how many of you went to see the Aaliyah's tour de force, "Queen of the Damned?" Now that the three of you have put your hands down, it begins to come clear that it wasn't Heath Ledger's death that made everyone go to the theater. The hype around his performance was already starting before he died. There was a curiosity factor involved, because people wanted to see Heath Ledger completely disappear into this character, not because they thought, "Hey, maybe they'll accidentally leave some death footage in." To further prove my point, how many of you really believe that Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes' deaths are going to up the gross on "Soul Men?" Hey, two of them died...the gross should go up twice as much!

5. It was a good damn movie.
But that couldn't have been a factor, right? Not when the co-star of the movie died. Because a well timed death makes all the difference. It was only a comic book movie so good that calling it a "comic book movie" is really selling it short. It was a good movie, period.

At least the execs at Warner Bros. know that it wasn't Heath Ledger's death that caused the movie's success. Unfortunately for all of us, they believe it was the dark tone of the movie that made it so popular. And with these people being the copycats that they are, they want to apply this dark tone to all of their other comic book properties. Because nothing screams popular like a realistic, dark and brooding Superman. Only this time, when he's stalking Lois in the elevator, he'll have to do it with binoculars from behind the bushes like a real stalker. Here's hoping he gets arrested like a real stalker, too.