but this one was just kind of lame. It picks up right after the first movie - with the crazy alien-predator hybrid bursting out of the chest of the last predator. The Alien-Predator (AP) goes all nutso and kills the remaining Predators and the ship crashes to Earth near some small town in middle America ('cause you know, America has such a gravitational pull that it can not only pull the Autobots and Decepticons from space but also Predator ships, ET's ship, basically anything that wants to be on a movie screen here will be pulled towards America...movie logic 101). Well, the aliens go on a bit of a rampage - men, women, children, and dogs are all killed so there's pretty much a no holds barred kind of logic here. Characters are introduced, you learn a little about them and then whammo, they're toast. The characters you spend the most time with however get little to no back story - you get more info on the characters on the sidelines than you do about our Main Guy and Main Girl. We know the Main Guy just got back into town from prison and the Main Girl is apparently home on some sort of military break...apparently this means that only outsiders will survive so know that if an alien outbreak happens, you're only chances of survival will happen in another town/city nearby. There are a couple of shocks and surprises here and there - one character unexpectedly bought it even though, in hindsight, I do recall seeing that scene in an early trailer for the film...but it was still kind of shocking. And then there's the sort of lame-ass attempt to tie it into the Alien's mythology...I didn't get the reference at all and it seemed tagged on and lame but KP explained it to me. You know how the first AvP had the guy who becomes the model for the robot guy in Aliens? No? Well, it did...anyway, apparently he had a business partner - some Asian woman - and at the end of the film she's given a weapon and so the dirty path to the future is all set to begin...or something. Whatever...I give it a C-I also got a chance to see I Am Legend this weekend and it, my friends, was amazing. It was a very quiet and thoughtful film for a majority of the time and then it took a crazy Hollywood ending twist at the end - heroic sacrifice, happy ending, blah blah blah. I remember reading back somewhere that Smith got in trouble for "giving away the ending" but...well, the ending wasn't shocking or surprising so I don't know what the big deal was.
Will Smith plays a virologist who is working on a cure for what was originally a cure for cancer. That virus started to mutate and turned pretty much everyone in the world into these pale and scary mutant freaks that scream and jump and attack everyone...The opening shots of an abandoned Manhattan (it was quarantined and the bridges in and out of the city were destroyed) are amazingly quiet and still. Nature is taking it back. Plants are bursting up out of the cement and sidewalks - deer are running wild, flocks of birds are here and there and, strangely, there are some lions...I guess they maybe escaped from the zoo? Smith is the only person in the city that he knows of but he's left a repeating message on all AM channels that states he'll be at the bridge at noon everyday..."if you're out there...you're not alone" he promises protection and food and shelter to anyone who hears the message. His only companion is Sam, his dog. Sam is, frankly, the most expressionistic dog I've ever seen...you'd think she understood everything Smith said. Smith is coping with being alone (for nearly a thousand days now) by setting up mannequins throughout town. I love that he returns movies to the Blockbuster before taking new ones. This is his new life and you get to watch him live it for a good portion of the film...you get to see him struggle with trying to find a cure (while working on rats), hunting for food, taking care of his dog, working out, etc, etc and you get flashbacks to see what happened when the outbreak happened and he had to let his family leave without him. You get to see all the tragedy that this man has already been through and you get to see him struggle to keep going towards finding a cure...he's not even sure that there are other survivors out there. It turns out that, like, 1 out of every 500 people might be immune - that's one out of every five hundred people on Earth - the population went down to, like, some million or such...there's a LOT of room on Earth now...if you can find other people, that is. When the unthinkable happens (both good and bad) and the end of the movie begins to come near you really get to see what a great actor Smith is...I've always written him off as a Summer Blockbuster idiot...I blame that opinion on the fact that he did a movie with Martin Lawrence...nobody can respect that kind of choice. I never saw Pursuit of Happyness but I've heard it's great... now I'm willing to check it out. Watching Smith deal with all the losses he's dealt and all the hope he's both given and is taken away from him...he's just great all around. He basically carries this film. I can't wait for the DVD to be released so I can see the "original ending" that didn't test well with audiences because it wasn't happy enough...it was probably more true to the film and will only add to my enjoyment of this surprising blockbuster.
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