I know I'm not alone when it comes to having guilty pleasures in the realm of movies. That is to say, watching terrible movies and still having a good time because the movie in question is so bad ... it's good.
By that definition, I imagine you have a couple favorites yourself. And I feel especially qualified in this department because my favorite movie of all time is Twister. Yeah, that's right. No Oscars here. Just a movie demonstrating the early power of 1990s special effects and a 90-minute long Dodge pickup truck commercial. And before you question my dedication, I've driven to the Twister museum in Wakita, Okla. I have pictures.
But it's important for me to clarify that I don't consider Twister a "so bad it's good" movie. I legitimately enjoy it as a great film. I mean, the script was written by Michael Crichton, my favorite author. How could it not be good?
So why am I bringing up bad movies? Paramount Pictures dropped the first trailer for the long-awaited horror Sonic the Hedgehog film about 10 days ago. Yes, that same blue hedgehog from the Sega Genesis game you might remember playing in the '90s.
Paramount has been releasing little still images here and there over the last few weeks preparing for this trailer, and Sonic ... well he looks horrible. He did not translate well from the 16-bit sprite on my tube television to an HD animated movie. And I don't know why he looks so bad. It's his face that looks the worst. We had several great cartoons with different art styles that show Sonic can be translated from video game to television show.
From 1993's Sonic the Hedgehog that ran on ABC to 2003's Sonic X, which aired on Fox, we have good iterations of this character in a broadcast medium (I'm, of course, not including the abysmal production that was 1993's Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, what a terrible cartoon). Why was it so difficult to translate Sonic to film?
The rest of the trailer looks funny. And by "the rest," I mean Jim Carrey. He plays the ridiculous mustache villain from the video game, Dr. Robotnik, and this looks like a return to form of silliness for the man who starred in The Mask. I laughed every time he was on screen in the trailer. He's the main reason I'll be watching this movie (well, that and the fact I can see all the movies I want with AMC's Stubbs A-List for $20 a month).
Perhaps video game movies are just designed to fail. They need a Marvel Studios to come along and turn them into success. Most video game adaptations range from terrible to ... well, back to so bad it's good. Remember 1995's Mortal Kombat movie? It had a great opening credits song, and the rest was history. Director Paul W.S. Anderson also gave us the adaptation for zombie horror game Resident Evil and turned that into a series that had six movies from 2002-2016. These are also all so bad they're good, in my humble opinion.
Rampage, 1993's Super Mario Bros. movie, any of the Tomb Raider flicks, they're all movies that were (sadly) adapted from video games and gave us more so bad it's good films than I cared to watch. Even I have a limit to guilty pleasures.
I've only seen one good video game adaptation in my long 28 years of life, and it was 2006's Silent Hill. Director Christophe Gans really translated the horrifying atmosphere that is Silent Hill to film. The story was great, the acting was B-actor level (but hey, it's a horror movie), and it remains the only good video game adaptation I've seen. Most directors just don't understand how to translate a story from one art form to another (video games to film), but in this rare nugget, they did. With all that said, I have high hopes for Detective Pikachu. They might just get Pokemon right on the big screen.
But leaving good films and getting back to those terrible movies I love? High on my list is Highlander 2. The first Highlander flick is a great movie. The sequel is terrible, but it's laughably terrible, and Sean Connery hams it up magnificently in a series where they hired a French actor to play a Scottish man, then cast the Scottish man as an Egyptian who pretends to be a Spaniard. The real treasure in Highlander 2 is the end credits song, Lou Gramm's "One Dream." Now that is some great rock. Go look it up on YouTube if you've never heard it.
Honorable mentions on my guilty pleasures list include Terminator 4, Jurassic Park 3, Jumper (love the book series) and Justice League. These are movies that if I see them on a screen I'll just sit and mindlessly watch because they're the equivalent of Cheetos for my brain. I know it's not healthy, but once in a while I crave it.
If you've got some guilty pleasures, I'd love to hear about them. You can drop me a line at clanning@arkansasonline.com. And before you send it, yes I have seen The Room. That's a special breed of masochism. If bad movies were a wine, that one would be the most expensive of them all. You kiss your fingers when you're done watching it.
MovieStyle on 05/10/2019