The new big thing is films made completely in computer, actors existing at best on green screen. It was used in Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow, the upcoming Sin City and in super-bore Japanese yawn-fest Casshern.
Did I say that Casshern was rubbish?
Apparently Casshern is based on a long running (for which read potentially interminable) Japanese animated series from the seventies. Dystopian future – blah blah – dead hero brought back to life – blah blah – no heroes, we are all villains. Apparently the original also had a cute dog for comic relief, who unsurprisingly barely turns up in the 150 minutes of hell that this film is. This film could not be more po-faced unless it
a) had a real actual face that
b) was made of porcelain and kept under a Victorian bed and
c) someone shat in it.
I have a degree in Philosophy (not worth the paper it isn’t written on but…) and when people say a film is philosophical I tend to sigh. Usually because the level of enquiry presented is that of two fourteen year olds having their first joint. And for all the superpowers, explosions and the giant robots, Casshern is just a couple of dopeheads musing on mans inhumanities to man. Surely the point is that it is mans very humanity to man that makes it keep starting wars, killing innocent victims and MAKING FILMS AS TERRIBLE AS THIS.
Green screen computer movies are a great technology for the visionary. So far it appears that vision has been solely to produce films full of giant robots. At least Sky Captain did it for the fun of it. Casshern goes on and on and even the giant robots stop being fun (the strange claymation bringer of death equally pales). Every time I talk about this film its individual elements make it sound like the best thing ever. IT IS NOT. The moral of the film is apparently that the human race needs hope. Ironic because everyone in the cinema had easily lost all hope by the time its final expensively pointless effects sequence finished.