As a child of the video age, I grew up watching Mad Max 2, Escape From New York and Aliens. I looked for the films with cool covers and great sounding titles and ran home to find some fantastic titles. But I also found other amazing looking video covers, films that promised more of the action seen in the above classics. They also seemed to have been 'influenced', a great deal, by these film makers and all had Italian directors! The 1970's to the early 1990's saw a great deal of 'influenced' remakes, copies, unofficial sequels to some of the now great Sci-Fi films. The Italians ran wild with the whole post-apocalyptic, zombie, bleak future genre. My friends and I even made our own short 8mm movies that were 'influenced' by John Carpenter, George Miller, James Cameron, George A. Romero etc.. but were we kids, fanboys, didn't know better, just wondering what it would be like to make the perfect Sci-FI movie.
So I'm sure Neil Marshall was also a child like me who also had a dream of one day creating the ultimate movie, with all the best bits we loved. But all we get to sit through is a 100mins of just complete rip offs of these amazing titles. Now I'm a fan of Neil Marshall's films and he is great to listen too, but he needs to hang his head in shame. You could, in a day, make this movie by editing all the bits he's taken from other movies. The prologue and graphics from the start of Escape From NY, the failed entry of the troops and their vehicles from Aliens, the capture of the hero (twice) who escapes, fights and kills their best warrior, which again is from Escape From NY, it just goes on and on like this. But how do you get Mad Max 2 into the picture, well how cares what works, even if its just stupid, just put it in any way! So we get a big car chase/battle that is so like Mad Max 2 George Miller could real have grounds ask for royalties. And the finally, well it just keeps on taking!
I know that if I had been given a ton of money when I was 15, I would have made the same stupid mistakes, thinking, hay I love these movies and so do my friends, so they'll love it if I do it again and do all the best bits, but were not kids and we can see what you have done Mr Marshall, your 'influenced' movie is nothing but a lazy attempt to recreate these terrific movies. At best you may push some teenagers to go watch the originals, but you have done so much harm you have gained nothing. And just for the record, if a car just hits metal it doesn't mean it has to blow up or if a large van hits a motorcycle it will fly into the air and explode like it just ran into a bomb!
What gets me is that next year they were/are planning to remake Escape from New York, too late. Lets hope this film has done one thing good and puts an end to it, that and it has no star and no director.
This gets 3 stars for replacing Donald Pleasence with the brilliant Malcolm McDowell and Tom Atkins with Bob Hoskins.
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