I kicked the Year of Heroes off Saturday with "Doomsday" - Neil Marshall's "homage" to Escape from NY and Mad Max. I gave Adrienne a get-out-of-jail card by offering up the chance to see "Horton Hears a Who", which was playing at the same theaters, but the screaming throngs of children (it was 3pm) nudged her to pick Doomsday. It was about what I expected - incredibly dumb, but pretty fun. The first 3/4 of the movie was nearly a great Snake Plissken adventure - what Escape from LA should have been. Director Neil Marshall made no bones about modeling his heroine Eden Sinclair after Plissken - right down to similar attire and an eyepatch that she occasionally uncovered to reveal a cyber-eyeball cam. (Which sounds insanely dumb, but it suited the grindhouse vibe). The production quality and polish were much better than I expected - the post-apocalyptic Scotland was executed really well for the most part. But Marshall's spastic, rapid-fire editing gave me a headache during many of the action scenes, and the movie's finale landed with a thud - It was a silly Mad Max-ripoff road chase that was out of place even for the lowbrow spirit of the movie up to that point. Doomsday was also far and away the most violent movie I've seen. At one point, the post-apolalypic Scottish C.H.U.D.S barbeque a live captured soldier - in full frame from roasting to tearing him apart and eating, which was a bit much for my tastes (pun intended). Contrary to many of my peers' opinion, I actually avoid gory movies for the most part. Though I do love cheesy-gory movies like Evil Dead and Reanimator, I avoid torture-porn stuff like Saw or Hostel.
The trailer for the new Hulk movie ran before Doomsday, which looked marginally better than Ang Lee's awful attempt. I have high hopes for Iron Man, Hellboy 2, and Batman. And the pics for Zack Snyder's take on Watchmen have me giddy!
