Finally saw Prometheus, the kinda-sorta prequel to Alien. Yeah, I know. I'm the kind of guy who waits for a long time to see anything new. I only just this month saw The Cabin in the Woods, after all. Anyway, so, what did I think of it? I don't get why it's so reviled. It wasn't terrible. It wasn't good, either, but it wasn't so horrible as to justify many fans' pissed-off reactions to it. If anything, it suffers from the same problem Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull suffered from; it was neither good nor bad, and was instead "so mediocre it was okay." It had some good acting, great special effects, some very beautiful visuals and also a great score, but overall just felt rushed and disjointed. That's really the most I can say about the film either way. Well, that and I did genuinely enjoy myself watching it, and in the end, that's all I care about.
Another thin I did, and which took me even longer to do than to watch Prometheus, was to read George Gipe's novelization of Gremlins. And all I have to say is... wow. Gipe's effort to explain the origins of the Mogwai are hilariously so out of left field it somehow works for me. And the sequences told from Gizmo and Stripe's point of view, while certainly necessary in a written work, are made rather bizarre, rivaling the similar scenes from William Kotzwinkle's E.T. novelization. Gizmo comes off as an emo super-genius, whereas Stripe, both as a Mogwai and as a Gremlin, is a diabolical criminal mastermind who has way more in common with the Brain Gremlin in the sequel than with the candy-craving spontaneous lunatic of the film. Seriously, there's scenes where he and Gizmo have verbal sparring matches and I forgot I was reading Gremlins.
Other WTF moments are the fates of Frank Kelly (whose surname is "Reilly" in the book) and Brent Frye. In the movie, they appear to have died after their police cruiser overturns, with one Gremlin even wearing Frank's sheriff hat later on in the bar and movie theater. In Gipe's book, not only do Frank and Brent not crash, but they survive the Gremlin attack on the town, and in a bit Gipe seems to have intended as irony, given their cowardice and sucky job performance, get a meritorious service award at the end on the news!
Contrast this to the fate of Murray Futterman. As any Gremlins fan worth their salt ought to know, a brief bit on the news in the movie mentions that the Futtermans are in the hospital after the dreaded Gremlin-assisted Kentucky Harvester Uprising of '84, explaining how they can come back in the second movie. Here, Gipe flat-out kills off Murray, no ifs, ands or buts. He's run over with his precious Kentucky Harvester and the news report is his about how Sheila identified the body. Damn, man! This makes me wonder how in the world David Bischoff will handle Murray's return in his novelization of Gremlins 2: The New Batch; I'm told he also uses the backstory for the Mogwai that Gipe did, so apparently he takes Gipe's book as canon, up to and including Murray's apparent death, so I'm anxious to see what knots Bischoff will tie himself into explaining Murray's survival.
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11 years, 3 months ago
16 Jan 2013 07:59 CET
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