Post by loverofbeers on Jan 5, 2013 16:29:20 GMT -5
Has anybody seen this movie? What did you think?
Warning, non-stop SPOILERS from here on. Proceed if you want to be talked out of wasting your time and cash.
Here is why I didn't like this movie:
"Massacre" was dropped from the title, the first sign of failure for me.
The original writer's script was re-written by a group of four or five other writers, nearly always this is a sign that a lackluster movie will emerge with inconsistencies. Boy howdy to quote Double A.
CGI blood is used. In one scene blood doesn't splatter, it flies in seemingly chunks. Or possibly because this particular effect was so bad (in fairness to this movie, the rest of the gore did look more than passable, I'm trying to say at least ONE nice thing), this might have been viscera flying. I dunno.
This movie has a SAW series reference I didn't get because I don't watch those movies aside from having seen the first SAW once. And from what I have read, most SAW fanboys were letdown by this scene, which now considering was the one "That was so Awesome!" scene attempt by the director. Another failure. Shit, SAW should be referencing TTCM, not the other way around (I wouldn't know if this already has occurred, to be fair, so my apologies if necessary). This now shows me that the production team, the writers, and the hack director were bigger fanboys of modern torture porn, which is about a decade old sub-genre, than Horror classics that paved the road for an audience for all these type of movies to even exist today. No one involved behind the camera seemed to understand the history of our beloved genre.
Leatherface is not referenced to even once as "Leatherface". He is now "Jed" or Jedediah Sawyer, the freaky little kid from the Platinum Dune remake of 2002. How's that for ignoring the other films?
I truly feel the creative team was more concerned with the youngest fan base possible, so casting decisions in selecting actors to portray the antagonists, who weren't antagonists but a crew of selfish, back-stabbing "friends", was made accordingly. This is the biggest problem with this film and has been universally panned by reviewers and fans. These characters are supposed to be in their late thirties but are in their mid-twenties at the same time. Likewise this move takes place in the 1990s but it takes place somehow in the fall of 2012. To stick with this theme of inconsistencies, the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre occurs in 1973-74 and at the same time the year is concealed from the audience repeatedly ad nauseam in this movie, somehow suggesting that it occurred in the 1990s. I know this is very confusing. Don't blame me. The creative crew were hacks.
This version of Leatherface looks like YOU could kick his tired, fat, slouchy, bald ass.
The heroine's best friend fucks her boyfriend behind her back as a hobby. This would be swell in following the character arc that leads the heroine by the end to side with her flesh and blood, Leatherface, and turn her back on the rest of the "evil" world. The HUGE problem here is that the heroine never finds out about her boyfriend's infidelity and her best friends very dirty legs (Tobe Hooper reference from The Toolbox Murders). All this plot development suddenly became completely unimportant and just time filler. You don't do this when making a quality movie. The ONLY reason this could be seen as a good idea is to try to do what the director thinks he has done, turned the audience sympathetic only to the heroine and her long lost cousin Leatherface. Sorry, I didn't bite. Leatherface is a butcher of teenagers after all, and the director isn't quality enough to emulate Rob Zombie's completely lifted, and in my opinion, successful attempt to do the same thing in The Devil's Rejects. More on The Devil's Rejects coming up, and how this manipulation of the audience is attempted in failure.
Leatherface's home is shown, but except for the quick shot of dresses and women's makeup, the creepy transvestite aspect of his character from 1974 is totally ignored. Another golden opportunity lost.
Nipples are teased, not shown to the audience. Damn!
Gunnar Hansen and Bill Moseley portray two members of the cannibal clan (there is no cannibalism in this movie, a first for this series). They portray Boss Sawyer and the Cook, now known as "Drayton Sawyer", thus acknowledging the character's name from Tobe Hooper's 1986 sequel and giving the unnamed clan a last name (names from a sequel which I thought this movie had now replaced, but oh yeah.... inconsistencies). Boss is one of many new members living in the house from the original at the beginning of this movie, and another golden opportunity was lost by having Mosley not reprise his classic role of "Shoptop" Sawyer. Instead he delivers an unmemorable portrayal of the Cook whom he did not look like. He was wearing ZERO makeup and his hair was so well manicured. It was as if Moseley flew in to town, went straight to the set and was immediately put to work for an afternoon and a quick check. Boss also felt that way to me. Back to the plot: these moments occur within two or so hours of Sally Hardesty's escape from Leatherface. It is still very early morning. So I ask, where were all these family members, including a baby (our future heroine in twenty to forty years) hiding during the original and especially when it was time for the family's nefarious dinner scene?
It doesn't matter (my next point) because the whole clan is killed during the first ten minutes of this movie by the "evil" judgmental townsfolk who are apparently a bit aware of what this family has been up to for years. Sally Hardesty's assault is apparently the final straw in the town of Newt, Texas. Going back to the original, the town folk have no idea who has been digging up graves in the local cemetery of their ancestors. Somehow this mob of vigilante justice is unfair towards the Sawyers in wanting bloody revenge. The director was trying to make the killers sympathetic not their young victims. Bullshit. I don't know you, but if you did that to my family's graves or ate passerbys and kill four teens and completely fubar the lone survivor, vengeance will be dealt in the most violent way. Fast. Even this early the director tries to make the clan sympathetic and the mob to be overreacting monsters. This is the director's primary purpose and the meat of the story's arc, as that of our flawed heroine.
Now to return to The Devil's Rejects. Like The Devil's Rejects, the opening scene starts with law enforcement (this time the mob with the local Sheriff standing by helplessly wanting to PROTECT the Sawyer clan) torching and blasting away at the house with their arsenal. The director seemed more inspired by Rob Zombie than Tobe Hooper, which would be fine, but this movie has "Texas" and "Chainsaw" in it's title. And this is what I believe the director was trying to emulate, sloppily: the way that Rob Zombie masterfully changed his audience's support of sides during a movie with substantial character development and plot movement. That would have been too much effort for this hack team of movie makers.
Leatherface has no supporting cast of "quirky" family members, seeing as they were killed off in the first ten minutes. In the past, the use of these type of characters, Leatherface's kin, have made this series so much more interesting to the fanbase than just having a lone maniac with a power tool. One reason this Leatherface comes off as the most uninteresting version of this character in the annals of film history. Leatherface was a very boring character.
This movie was boring and predictable from the first act.
The heroine feels betrayed because she was adopted. She begins her turn to a "Sawyer" immediately. When Leatherface kills her friends she is saddened not that that is portrayed much, and I don't blame the actress here (she did a fine job with a terrible script). Again, the writers were hacks. When she later learns that her family was butchered and WHY, she turns against the wicked townies and the movie shifts to Leatherface and her protecting each other as family, because as often was repeated from the beginning, blood is thicker than water. If I just met my long-lost cousin after he butchered all my friends, I wouldn't hang with, as she calls him, "Cuz". Cuz! The writers should be barred from film making for life. "Do your thang, Cuz". Wow. The worst line of the movie.
I would compare this movie, in a certain point of view, to the effect that Star Wars, A Phantom Menace had on the original "Star Wars Generation" of fans from the seventies and eighties, but I would be wrong. George Lucas was at least trying, even though he had lost his spark and the magic of his youth a long, long time ago, and had forgotten how to pull off great story-telling. That sparkly-eyed young director grew to be the wrong man to continue at the helm of his own series. This team did worst to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre's loyal life-long fans and were never talented at a point in their careers.
Just money grubbing, lazy hacks. Vote with your wallets, folks. I wish this movie had never been bankrolled by Hollywood or supported by me.
Shit, I just had to open up a Sierra Nevada Ruthless Rye IPA. This Cheers! is quite obviously not for Texas Chainsaw 3D.
What I would like to see is the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to be released in 3D. The first five minutes of this movie made me want much more of that! A Cheers! to that.
Warning, non-stop SPOILERS from here on. Proceed if you want to be talked out of wasting your time and cash.
Here is why I didn't like this movie:
"Massacre" was dropped from the title, the first sign of failure for me.
The original writer's script was re-written by a group of four or five other writers, nearly always this is a sign that a lackluster movie will emerge with inconsistencies. Boy howdy to quote Double A.
CGI blood is used. In one scene blood doesn't splatter, it flies in seemingly chunks. Or possibly because this particular effect was so bad (in fairness to this movie, the rest of the gore did look more than passable, I'm trying to say at least ONE nice thing), this might have been viscera flying. I dunno.
This movie has a SAW series reference I didn't get because I don't watch those movies aside from having seen the first SAW once. And from what I have read, most SAW fanboys were letdown by this scene, which now considering was the one "That was so Awesome!" scene attempt by the director. Another failure. Shit, SAW should be referencing TTCM, not the other way around (I wouldn't know if this already has occurred, to be fair, so my apologies if necessary). This now shows me that the production team, the writers, and the hack director were bigger fanboys of modern torture porn, which is about a decade old sub-genre, than Horror classics that paved the road for an audience for all these type of movies to even exist today. No one involved behind the camera seemed to understand the history of our beloved genre.
Leatherface is not referenced to even once as "Leatherface". He is now "Jed" or Jedediah Sawyer, the freaky little kid from the Platinum Dune remake of 2002. How's that for ignoring the other films?
I truly feel the creative team was more concerned with the youngest fan base possible, so casting decisions in selecting actors to portray the antagonists, who weren't antagonists but a crew of selfish, back-stabbing "friends", was made accordingly. This is the biggest problem with this film and has been universally panned by reviewers and fans. These characters are supposed to be in their late thirties but are in their mid-twenties at the same time. Likewise this move takes place in the 1990s but it takes place somehow in the fall of 2012. To stick with this theme of inconsistencies, the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre occurs in 1973-74 and at the same time the year is concealed from the audience repeatedly ad nauseam in this movie, somehow suggesting that it occurred in the 1990s. I know this is very confusing. Don't blame me. The creative crew were hacks.
This version of Leatherface looks like YOU could kick his tired, fat, slouchy, bald ass.
The heroine's best friend fucks her boyfriend behind her back as a hobby. This would be swell in following the character arc that leads the heroine by the end to side with her flesh and blood, Leatherface, and turn her back on the rest of the "evil" world. The HUGE problem here is that the heroine never finds out about her boyfriend's infidelity and her best friends very dirty legs (Tobe Hooper reference from The Toolbox Murders). All this plot development suddenly became completely unimportant and just time filler. You don't do this when making a quality movie. The ONLY reason this could be seen as a good idea is to try to do what the director thinks he has done, turned the audience sympathetic only to the heroine and her long lost cousin Leatherface. Sorry, I didn't bite. Leatherface is a butcher of teenagers after all, and the director isn't quality enough to emulate Rob Zombie's completely lifted, and in my opinion, successful attempt to do the same thing in The Devil's Rejects. More on The Devil's Rejects coming up, and how this manipulation of the audience is attempted in failure.
Leatherface's home is shown, but except for the quick shot of dresses and women's makeup, the creepy transvestite aspect of his character from 1974 is totally ignored. Another golden opportunity lost.
Nipples are teased, not shown to the audience. Damn!
Gunnar Hansen and Bill Moseley portray two members of the cannibal clan (there is no cannibalism in this movie, a first for this series). They portray Boss Sawyer and the Cook, now known as "Drayton Sawyer", thus acknowledging the character's name from Tobe Hooper's 1986 sequel and giving the unnamed clan a last name (names from a sequel which I thought this movie had now replaced, but oh yeah.... inconsistencies). Boss is one of many new members living in the house from the original at the beginning of this movie, and another golden opportunity was lost by having Mosley not reprise his classic role of "Shoptop" Sawyer. Instead he delivers an unmemorable portrayal of the Cook whom he did not look like. He was wearing ZERO makeup and his hair was so well manicured. It was as if Moseley flew in to town, went straight to the set and was immediately put to work for an afternoon and a quick check. Boss also felt that way to me. Back to the plot: these moments occur within two or so hours of Sally Hardesty's escape from Leatherface. It is still very early morning. So I ask, where were all these family members, including a baby (our future heroine in twenty to forty years) hiding during the original and especially when it was time for the family's nefarious dinner scene?
It doesn't matter (my next point) because the whole clan is killed during the first ten minutes of this movie by the "evil" judgmental townsfolk who are apparently a bit aware of what this family has been up to for years. Sally Hardesty's assault is apparently the final straw in the town of Newt, Texas. Going back to the original, the town folk have no idea who has been digging up graves in the local cemetery of their ancestors. Somehow this mob of vigilante justice is unfair towards the Sawyers in wanting bloody revenge. The director was trying to make the killers sympathetic not their young victims. Bullshit. I don't know you, but if you did that to my family's graves or ate passerbys and kill four teens and completely fubar the lone survivor, vengeance will be dealt in the most violent way. Fast. Even this early the director tries to make the clan sympathetic and the mob to be overreacting monsters. This is the director's primary purpose and the meat of the story's arc, as that of our flawed heroine.
Now to return to The Devil's Rejects. Like The Devil's Rejects, the opening scene starts with law enforcement (this time the mob with the local Sheriff standing by helplessly wanting to PROTECT the Sawyer clan) torching and blasting away at the house with their arsenal. The director seemed more inspired by Rob Zombie than Tobe Hooper, which would be fine, but this movie has "Texas" and "Chainsaw" in it's title. And this is what I believe the director was trying to emulate, sloppily: the way that Rob Zombie masterfully changed his audience's support of sides during a movie with substantial character development and plot movement. That would have been too much effort for this hack team of movie makers.
Leatherface has no supporting cast of "quirky" family members, seeing as they were killed off in the first ten minutes. In the past, the use of these type of characters, Leatherface's kin, have made this series so much more interesting to the fanbase than just having a lone maniac with a power tool. One reason this Leatherface comes off as the most uninteresting version of this character in the annals of film history. Leatherface was a very boring character.
This movie was boring and predictable from the first act.
The heroine feels betrayed because she was adopted. She begins her turn to a "Sawyer" immediately. When Leatherface kills her friends she is saddened not that that is portrayed much, and I don't blame the actress here (she did a fine job with a terrible script). Again, the writers were hacks. When she later learns that her family was butchered and WHY, she turns against the wicked townies and the movie shifts to Leatherface and her protecting each other as family, because as often was repeated from the beginning, blood is thicker than water. If I just met my long-lost cousin after he butchered all my friends, I wouldn't hang with, as she calls him, "Cuz". Cuz! The writers should be barred from film making for life. "Do your thang, Cuz". Wow. The worst line of the movie.
I would compare this movie, in a certain point of view, to the effect that Star Wars, A Phantom Menace had on the original "Star Wars Generation" of fans from the seventies and eighties, but I would be wrong. George Lucas was at least trying, even though he had lost his spark and the magic of his youth a long, long time ago, and had forgotten how to pull off great story-telling. That sparkly-eyed young director grew to be the wrong man to continue at the helm of his own series. This team did worst to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre's loyal life-long fans and were never talented at a point in their careers.
Just money grubbing, lazy hacks. Vote with your wallets, folks. I wish this movie had never been bankrolled by Hollywood or supported by me.
Shit, I just had to open up a Sierra Nevada Ruthless Rye IPA. This Cheers! is quite obviously not for Texas Chainsaw 3D.
What I would like to see is the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to be released in 3D. The first five minutes of this movie made me want much more of that! A Cheers! to that.