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Dragon of Life
dragonoflife
31 July 2008 @ 10:24 am
After the Lord of the Rings trilogy ended, I pretty much gave up on Hollywood for a while. Aside from the occasional gem (Batman Begins) and the Harry Potter movies, I'd written off most hopes of seeing anything worth seeing on the big screen again.

Man, did they take that as a challenge this summer? Between films I saw (Iron Man, Kung Fu Panda), films I didn't see but would've liked to if I had more time and money (Crystal Skull, WALL-E), films I'm going to see (Dark Knight), and films I want to see (Mummy: Dragon Emperor, Clone Wars), I seem to have been handed more films I actually approve of than in the past five years or so. Well, cool. I enjoy seeing films in theaters.

And yes, I enjoy the Mummy movies. I don't claim they're *great* movies, but they're *fun* movies to me, and I can appreciate a film that, when confronting the protagonists with a zombie(fied) horde blocking their escape, has them shun the tired cliche of abandoning their vehicle to hole up somewhere in favor of stomping the gas and plowing on through. And Scorpion King was awful, but enjoyably so.
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[identity profile] elf-fu.livejournal.com on July 31st, 2008 03:16 pm (UTC)
I agree, they are fun. When I go see a movie, I expect to be entertained--not much else. I leave the educational programming and brain stimulation for at home time!
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[identity profile] dragonoflife.livejournal.com on July 31st, 2008 04:59 pm (UTC)
I think the difference between an entertainingly but kinda bad movie and an outright bad one is that the entertaining one never makes such a deal of the stuff it's cheerfully butchering. Armageddon and The Core, for example, while suitably full of explosions and DRAMA!, for example, shove such woefully inaccurate science in my face so often that I can't help but ignore the blowings-up in favor of shouting, Morbo-like, "_____s DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!" at the film.

Mummy, conversely, while posing the question of "Why did they give the evil priest GODLIKE POWER?!", at least answers it with, "Well, getting it DID suck," and cheerfully makes no bones about the fact that it's purest movie-logic of "what should never have come to pass does, as it obviously would have!" I can accept a winking handwave much more than I can a longer explanation that doesn't work.
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[identity profile] ehzoterik.livejournal.com on July 31st, 2008 05:39 pm (UTC)
The Mummy movies are a thousand times full of win!
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[identity profile] dragonoflife.livejournal.com on July 31st, 2008 06:10 pm (UTC)
Average movie protagonist: Bumbles into disaster unprepared, despite all warning signs, and then must fight desperate battle against uphill odds.
Mummy protagonist: Loads up a hell of a lot of guns. "There's something there. Something not right!"
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