Opened 40 Years Ago: RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (6/12/1981)

 

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK opening 
in Toledo, OH on 6/12/1981

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK 1982 re-release

In Theaters: BLADE RUNNER 2049 (2017)

BLADE RUNNER 2049
(US - 2017)

Directed by Denis Villeneuve. Written by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green. Cast: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Jared Leto, Robin Wright, Dave Bautista, Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Mackenzie Davis, Carla Juri, Lennie James, Barkhad Abdi, Edward James Olmos, Wood Harris, Hiam Abbass, David Dastmalchian, Tomas Lemarquis, Sean Young. (R, 164 mins)

Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER, based on Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, is so highly and rightfully regarded as an influential sci-fi masterpiece to this day that it's easy to forget that it only did middling business in theaters in the summer of 1982 and the reviews weren't all that great. Over time, thanks to incessant cable and TV airings and the reconstruction of the "director's cut" in 1992 (assembled from the workprint and Scott's notes; he was busy working on 1492: CONQUEST OF PARADISE at the time and wasn't directly involved in it other than being consulted) and later with Scott's official "final cut" in 2007, the film's reputation and significance grew. The compromised theatrical version was a thorn in the side of both Scott and star Harrison Ford, who wasn't pleased about adding hard-boiled voiceover narration and made every effort to ensure that it sounded as if it was doing it at gunpoint. The director's cut removed the narration and added the much-debated unicorn scene, meant to ambiguously convey that perhaps Deckard (Ford), the titular blade runner, was himself a replicant just like those he was assigned to pursue and "retire." In the unlikely event you haven't seen BLADE RUNNER since it was in theaters and all you know is the now-obsolete theatrical version, then you're going to be completely baffled as to what's going in BLADE RUNNER 2049, which uses the director's cut as its springboard. With Scott onboard as executive producer, the original film's co-writer Hampton Fancher (his first credit since 1999's THE MINUS MAN) contributing to the script, and acclaimed filmmaker Denis Villeneuve (PRISONERS, SICARIO, ARRIVAL) at the helm, BLADE RUNNER 2049 established its bona fides before filming even began. Villeneuve promised to remain true to the beloved original and he more or less does. It in no way insults or diminishes the memory of the 1982 classic, and it throws in plenty of winking callbacks, but at the end of the day, it's still a 35-years-later sequel that doesn't succeed in justifying its existence.

Set 30 years after the first film, BLADE RUNNER 2049 opens in an even more dystopian California. Due to repeated replicant rebellions like the one led by Rutger Hauer's Roy Batty, the Tyrell Corporation went bankrupt. Replicant production began once more when what was left of Tyrell's operation was purchased by billionaire industrialist Niander Wallace (Jared Leto). Blade runner K (Ryan Gosling) arrives at the isolated desert farm of Sapper Morton (Dave Bautista), an old-school Nexus 8 replicant with an indeterminate lifespan. After a violent confrontation, K does his job and takes him out before reporting back to LAPD headquarters for a "baseline" debriefing required of replicants. Yes, that's right. BLADE RUNNER 2049 immediately answers the million dollar question: blade runners are replicants, and they're now integrated into society, even though they're regarded as second-class citizens, or "skinjobs" and "skinners." Investigation of Morton's property reveals a box of human skeletal remains near a tree. Examination of the remains indicate that it was a woman who died giving birth, and further analysis of the DNA shows proof that the skeleton is that of a replicant, thus blowing the doors off everything known about the bioengineered "skinjobs," who can apparently sexually reproduce, one last experiment pulled off by the Tyrell Corporation before it imploded. K's investigation into the whereabouts of the woman's child leads him to numerous places--very slowly--and also involves his hologram love interest Joi (Ana de Armas); a "memory designer" (Carla Juri) who knows about a specific real or imagined event that's been planted into K's memory; Wallace's ruthless enforcer Luv (Sylvia Hoeks as Milla Jovovich) who's also out to find the now-adult child; and even a visit to a retirement home with Gaff (Edward James Olmos), who's still passing the time and busies his hands by making tiny origami animals.

Eventually, K ends up in the radioactive ruins of Las Vegas, where Deckard has been in hiding for 30 years after running off with now-deceased  replicant Rachael (Sean Young) at the end of the first film. To say anymore would involve too many spoilers, but let's begin with the positives: it's just as visually stunning as you'd expect, thanks in large part to the work of the great cinematographer Roger Deakins, the Susan Lucci of D.P.s who's been nominated for 13 Oscars and has yet to win. The world of BLADE RUNNER 2049 is just as vividly dystopian as its predecessor in its own ways, this time mixing its neon-drenched cityscapes with dusty wastelands and the almost Overlook Hotel-esque appearance of the abandoned casino resort Deckard calls home. Ford's appearance here is not unlike Charlton Heston's extended cameo in BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES: BLADE RUNNER 2049 runs an ass-numbing 164 minutes, and in one of the most delayed entrances this side of Marlon Brando in APOCALYPSE NOW, Ford's first appearance doesn't even happen until nearly two hours in. Atmospheric slow-burn is one thing, but the ponderous and relentlessly gabby BLADE RUNNER 2049 is oppressively overlong, with scenes going on much longer than necessary and too many instances of characters introduced making overly verbose expository proclamations from the shadows only to slowly emerge in the light (Leto only has two scenes, and he enters both of them in this fashion). Everyone in this movie is a slow talker, and it probably adds 30 minutes to the running time.

Knowing now that Deckard is a replicant doesn't change the events of the first film since the director's cut more or less said as much, but Ford still managed to create a compelling and complex character. Here, Deckard just looks befuddled and grouchy. In other words, he looks like Harrison Ford, reliving his Han Solo and Indiana Jones glory days in present-day nostalgia trips that don't quite measure up to the classics that came before (STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS was fun, but have you ever met an INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL fan?).  K is a character that, on paper, plays to the strengths of Gosling's moody persona as seen in DRIVE and ONLY GOD FORGIVES, but Nicolas Winding Refn made those enigmatic Gosling characters a lot more interesting in those films than Villeneuve does here. K's love for Joi is an interesting concept that never really feels developed, but then, nor do any of the characters. BLADE RUNNER is a hypnotic experience that feels new and compelling and fresh with each revisit. It's timeless. But for all the talk of replicants finding their humanity in BLADE RUNNER 2049, there's nothing here even remotely as memorable or gut-wrenching as Rutger Hauer's "Tears in Rain" monologue before his final, resigned declaration of "Time to die." And while Vangelis' synth score is one of the 1982 film's most memorable components, the score here by Hans Zimmer is so aggressively, overbearingly bombastic that it almost qualifies as self-parody. Vangelis enhanced the mood and the vision and contributed to the hypnotic nature. Zimmer's score stampedes and bulldozes over everything to the point where it's an overwhelming, suffocating distraction that actually detracts from the effectiveness of numerous scenes. I gave BLADE RUNNER 2049 time, fidgeting through its laborious first hour and legitimately intrigued by a major plot reveal that finally seems to set things in motion, but it resumed dragging ass shortly thereafter and Zimmer's score got even more obnoxious, and no matter how captivating the visuals were, I finally had to accept the fact that it was well past two hours into this thing, its contrivances and developments were getting more half-baked and nonsensical (I'm still not sure what's going on with the replicant "revolution" that gets brought up near the end and is instantly dropped) and the point had passed where I ran out of excuses and had to admit to myself that I wasn't connecting with it at all. BLADE RUNNER was slow in a methodical way that was never boring. BLADE RUNNER 2049 is so concerned with replicating that feeling that it never finds its footing and never gets any momentum going. Maybe I'll look at it again in a year.

In Theaters: STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS (2015)

STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS
(US - 2015)

Directed by J.J. Abrams. Written by Lawrence Kasdan, J.J. Abrams and Michael Arndt. Cast: Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Max von Sydow, Lupita Nyong'o, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, Gwendoline Christie, Joonas Suotamo, Simon Pegg, Pip Torrens, Kiran Shah, Greg Grunberg, Kenny Baker, Warwick Davis, Ken Leung, Iko Uwais, Harriet Walter, Thomas Brodie-Sangster. (PG-13, 135 mins)

Picking up the STAR WARS saga a decade after the mixed-bag prequel trilogy, fan expectations were high with franchise overlord George Lucas removing himself from the equation and Episode VII being handed to polarizing director and lens flare enthusiast J.J. Abrams. Abrams himself is coming off a career nadir with the abysmal STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS, a film that everyone loved until they actually saw it. Taking place 30 or so years after the events of RETURN OF THE JEDI, STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS brings together two protagonists--lone warrior/scavenger Rey (Daisy Ridley), from the desert planet Jakku, and morally-conflicted Stormtrooper FN-2187, or "Finn" (ATTACK THE BLOCK's John Boyega)--and a rolling droid called BB-8, who has an important piece of a map in his possession, placed there by Resistance pilot Poe Dameron (EX MACHINA's Oscar Isaac). The Empire may have fallen after the destruction of the second Death Star, but The First Order has risen in its place, overseen by the nefarious, masked Kylo Ren (GIRLS' Adam Driver) and ambitious General Hux (Isaac's EX MACHINA co-star Domnhall Gleeson, channeling Peter Cushing's Grand Moff Tarkin), who work at the behest of Supreme Leader Snoke (motion-captured Andy Serkis). The map contains the key to the whereabouts of the long-missing Luke Skywalker, and with Kylo Ren's Stormtroopers in pursuit, Rey, Finn, and BB-8 commandeer a junked Millennium Falcon and cross paths with none other than Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew in some closeups, but played mostly by stuntman Joonas Suotamo due to 71-year-old Mayhew's disabling knee issues), who are surprised to find their old ship. As the hunt for BB-8 intensifies, the heroes end up joining the Resistance, led by General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher), who's desperately searching for the whereabouts of her lost brother, Luke.

It's simply impossible to replicate the groundbreaking, game-changing phenomenon that was the original STAR WARS trilogy, which still stand among the most influential films ever made. It's clear that Abrams and co-scripters Michael Arndt (LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE) and EMPIRE STRIKES BACK/RETURN OF THE JEDI co-writer Lawrence Kasdan (THE BIG CHILL) have molded THE FORCE AWAKENS as the "give the fans what they want" nostalgia trip. There's nothing wrong with that, but one must keep their expectations in check. It's filled with exciting action, fun performances, and lots of trips down Memory Lane to get a good sentimental streak going, but that's really all it does. It works for the most part, and you'd almost have to be a total dick to not get a big, stupid grin on your face over Han's and Chewbacca's first appearance 40 minutes in when they discover the Millennium Falcon ("Chewie...we're home!"). The same goes for the eventual appearances of Fisher's Leia (she and Han still harboring feelings for one another, and both feeling a sense of responsibility for the rise of The First Order), Anthony Daniels' C-3PO, and an offline R2-D2 (81-year-old Kenny Baker now credited as "R2-D2 Consultant"), who comes back to life late in the film to provide an important piece of the puzzle involving Luke's location. Mark Hamill returns as Luke--obviously to help set up what must be a larger role in Episode VIII--but don't be fooled by his second billing: there are Hitchcock cameos that last longer than Hamill's appearance in THE FORCE AWAKENS.

There's also a trip to a bar run by 1000-year-old pirate Maz Kanata (motion-captured by 12 YEARS A SLAVE's Lupita Nyong'o) that looks very similar to the legendary Mos Eisley Cantina, and there's numerous callbacks and parallels to previous saga plotlines, from Rey living in the hollowed remnants of an AT-AT Walker to a father-son confrontation that looks very similar to the Cloud City showdown between Luke and Darth Vader in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. The set-up itself is very similar to STAR WARS, with BB-8 carrying a crucial piece of information and teaming up with Rey, much like the circumstances that brought R2-D2 and Luke together. Franchise newcomers Boyega and Ridley acquit themselves well, particularly Ridley, whose fierce energy makes her an inspiring heroine worthy of becoming a next-gen Luke Skywalker. Once he removes the helmet, Driver is seriously miscast as the sulking, pouting Kylo Ren, and regardless of that being the intent with the character, it turns Kylo Ren into little more than a millennial Darth Vader with daddy issues. For those who saw the original trilogy when it was new, the real fun of STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS is seeing the old-school icons back in action. Even though only Han and Chewbacca get any significant screen time, it's great fun seeing them still doing what they do and bickering like an old married couple. Ford gets by on his legend alone, often delivering his dialogue with a "Look, Abrams...how much longer do I have to be here?" tone that sort-of works considering he's playing an older and even more cynical Han that gels rather well with the actor's grouchy persona. He gets a huge laugh out of fans when Rey says "You're the Han Solo?!  You made the Kessel Run in 14 parsecs!" to which Han angrily snaps "12 parsecs!" then, shaking his head and harumphing in incredulous disgust under his breath, "14..." Abrams and the writers lean heavily on that sense of established goodwill and unlike the prequel trilogy, it moves quickly, gets pretty much all of the exposition out of the way in the traditional opening crawl, and doesn't dawdle around with political machinations and trade federation debates or get bogged down with George Lucas' complete post-JEDI inability to grasp human interaction. There have been some analogies made comparing this to a long-floundering classic rock band getting a few original members back together for a new album and going on a tour to play one song from it while the rest of the set is all the beloved hits from the past. That perfectly describes STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS: it's the real thing, it's got enough of the key components, it's fun while you're watching it and maybe you love it now because you really don't like the prequels and this gives you everything you want. But when the dust on Jakku settles, is it really going to hold up against the original trilogy?

In Theaters: THE EXPENDABLES 3 (2014)

THE EXPENDABLES 3

(US - 2014)

Directed by Patrick Hughes. Written by Sylvester Stallone, Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt. Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Wesley Snipes, Antonio Banderas, Dolph Lundgren, Kelsey Grammer, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, Jet Li, Kellan Lutz, Ronda Rousey, Glen Powell, Victor Ortiz, Robert Davi. (PG-13, 127 mins)

The third installment of Sylvester Stallone's throwback-to-'80s-action franchise is decidedly the weakest for a variety of reasons, starting with the PG-13 rating. One of the most enjoyable things about the previous two films was its absurdly over-the-top violence, even if the splatter was unconvincingly digital (though an effort was made to wetten things up in THE EXPENDABLES 2), something Stallone has seemed to embrace since turning 2008's RAMBO into the goriest jungle actioner that Ruggero Deodato never made. Both prior EXPENDABLES films were huge hits domestically and internationally, so it's a mystery why distributor Lionsgate and Cannon cover band Millennium/NuImage insist on watering things down to appeal to younger audiences. If the paltry box office of THE LAST STAND, BULLET TO THE HEAD, ESCAPE PLAN, GRUDGE MATCH, and SABOTAGE prove anything, it's that today's teenagers aren't going to see '80s action dinosaurs in theaters. Liken it to a washed-up '80s hair metal band going on tour: if they go out solo, they're playing shitty dive bars with 20 people in the crowd. Send them out on a four or five-band nostalgia package tour, they can book arenas all summer long. Casual moviegoers no longer care about new solo efforts from Stallone or Arnold Schwarzengger or Dolph Lundgren or Jean-Claude Van Damme, but throw them on the same bill, and you've got a hit.

Nearly bloodless action and a PG-13 rating aren't going to bring in the kids, nor is the presence of Kellan Lutz, whose tip-frosted turn in the unwatchable THE LEGEND OF HERCULES should've clued Millennium chief Avi Lerner in to the fact that Kellan Lutz isn't happening. But they attempt it here anyway as the aging Expendables are sidelined for the entire middle of the film after Hale Caesar (Terry Crews) is nearly killed and head honcho Barney Ross (Stallone) breaks up the band to bring in new blood in his vengeance-fueled pursuit of international arms dealer Conrad Stonebanks (Mel Gibson). With the help of wisecracking government operative Bonaparte ('80s action icon Kelsey Grammer), Ross puts together a younger, fresher, high-tech team that includes Smilee (Lutz), Luna (MMA fighter Ronda Rousey), Mars (boxer Victor Ortiz), and Thorn (Glen Powell). It's personal for Ross--when isn't it?--since Stonebanks, long presumed dead, is an original Expendable who turned against his brothers and went rogue for the money. They apprehend Stonebanks at the behest of CIA chief Drummer (Harrison Ford, looking constipated), who orders Ross to bring him in alive because he's set to be tried for war crimes at The Hague. Of course, Stonebanks' goons manage to rescue him since no one bothered to see if he had a GPS tracker on his person, and Ross is left for dead as The Expendables: The Next Generation are kidnapped by Stonebanks. Of course, this means he reluctantly puts the band back together to rescue the newbies, being held at Stonebanks' secret stronghold in "Izmenistan."

Stallone co-wrote the screenplay with the team of Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt, whose lone previous credit is scripting another Millennium production, OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN (2013). It hardly matters that Australian director Patrick Hughes (RED HILL) is at the helm, since every Millennium/NuImage joint looks the same, regardless of the cost. They all have dubious-looking greenscreen and amateurish CGI courtesy of the Bulgarian clown crew at Worldwide FX. Other than attracting bigger stars with bigger salaries--which is really where the money goes--there's little difference between an EXPENDABLES movie and any random straight-to-video NuImage title from the 1990s. The explosions are all distractingly phony, and shots of Powell parachuting off a cliff and Stallone running along the top of a building as it collapses look like haphazardly-executed cartoon effects. Plainly visible Bulgarian license plates in scenes set in Arizona and Las Vegas exhibit a carelessness more suited to a 20-year-old Frank Zagarino cheapie than a $90 million summer action movie. The heavy lifting has been farmed out to various FX crews and everyone involved is mostly doing the bare minimum.

That's not to say there aren't things to appreciate throughout. It's nice to see Wesley Snipes on the big screen again, as an imprisoned ex-Expendable known as "Doctor Death," broken out of an off-the-grid Russian prison in a prologue that essentially functions as a Welcome Back party for Stallone's formerly-incarcerated DEMOLITION MAN co-star ("What were you in for?" he's asked. The reply--of course--"tax evasion"). Stallone manages some legitimately heartfelt observations about staying relevant with the onset of age that surprisingly don't rely on quips and one-liners. Ford has an amusing running gag about not being able to understand Statham's accent. There's so many players in the game that almost everyone ends up standing around with little to do. Antonio Banderas is initially amusing as motor-mouthed mercenary Galgo, who desperately wants to be an Expendable (or, as Gibson's Stonebanks calls them, "The Deleteables"), but he overdoes it and a little of him goes a long way. An embalmed-looking Schwarzenegger returns as Trench, but was obviously only around for a few days, since he pops in and out of the story and sits out most of the action, usually waiting with the plane while everyone else goes off for action.  Did you ever think you'd see the day where Arnold Schwarzenegger was chauffeuring other action stars around their movie?  He still has more to do than Jet Li, who turns up very late in the film and doesn't even seem to know his dialogue. Gibson probably comes off the best as Stonebanks, taking the role far more seriously than is necessary. Banderas tries too hard, but where everyone else is awkwardly delivering one-liners that clang to the ground more often than not, Gibson brings some gravitas and a legitimate sense of menace, even though he had a similar megalomaniacal villain role in last year's MACHETE KILLS. Say what you will about Gibson the man--yeah, he's a racist, an anti-Semite, has anger management issues, and is probably an all-around asshole, and several instances of very public and very ugly meltdowns have all but guaranteed these are the only types of roles he's going to get--but there's no denying he's a star and he's still got it.

THE EXPENDABLES 3 has its enjoyable moments, but it's a letdown after the highly entertaining second film, which was really the only one to explore the dinosaur action star notion to its fullest potential. A PG-13 EXPENDABLES with much of the focus on younger additions is tantamount to willful ignorance on the part of Lionsgate, an example of pointlessly fixing what isn't broken. It's defeating the very purpose of the franchise's existence, which was a sort-of winking, self-referential victory lap for aging '80s and '90s action icons. No one's going to see THE EXPENDABLES 3 to watch Stallone pass the torch to Kellan Lutz. If anything, he should be passing it to Scott Adkins--who did appear as a villainous Van Damme's henchman in EXPENDABLES 2--and it should be in a film directed by Isaac Florentine. Not terrible, but way overlong and easily the least of the series, THE EXPENDABLES 3 has taken this fun franchise one film past its sell-by date and made its name a self-fulfilling prophecy.

On DVD/Blu-ray: Special "Late Summer Box-Office Bombs" Edition: GETAWAY (2013) and PARANOIA (2013)

GETAWAY
(US/UK/Switzerland/China - 2013)

It took four countries, location work in a fifth, and 25 credited producers to shit out this borderline-unwatchable car crash porno that leaves no stale cliché unutilized while wasting some death-defying work by an apparently insane Bulgarian stunt crew.  Director Courtney Solomon (DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, AN AMERICAN HAUNTING) hyped the film's "real" car chases and crashes and the absence of CGI.  I'm calling bullshit on the "no CGI," but yeah, most of the crash stuff is real.  The problem is that it's shot and edited in the most anti-entertaining, headache-inducing way imaginable, using multiple cameras with varying image quality (don't worry, that's written into the plot), and it's such a garbled, noisy blur that it's impossible to get a feel for any of it.  Solomon wanted the crash and stunt work to be real, but I suggest he take a look at John Frankenheimer's RONIN.  I've seen John Frankenheimer films.  I've studied John Frankenheimer films.  Courtney Solomon--you're no John Frankenheimer.

Acting as if he arrived on set and never shook the jetlag, Ethan Hawke is the improbably-named Brent Magna, a former racing wunderkind who bombed out on the circuit and fled to Europe to become a wheelman-for-hire.  He's looking to settle down with his Bulgarian wife Leanne (Rebecca Budig), but he arrives home to find she's been...taken.  Faster than you can say "Liam Neeson," Magna is being harangued on his cell phone by a mystery man (a mostly-unseen but heard-too-much Jon Voight, who sounds like he's doing an Armin Mueller-Stahl impression), who orders him to steal a tricked-out Shelby Super Snake and go around Sofia following his instructions (leading cops on chases, driving the car through crowded parks, etc) or Leanne will be killed, all the while taunting Magna and boring the audience with such hackneyed bad-guy zingers as "We're just getting started, my boy," and "You're running out of time...tick tock, tick tock."  Magna is soon joined by The Kid (Selena Gomez), who actually owns the car and is the key to the mystery man's plot:  Magna and The Kid are pawns in his plan to steal computer files from an investment bank whose CEO is The Kid's dad.  With a dozen cameras in and out of the Shelby, the mystery man is constantly watching them, but The Kid manages to hack into the mystery man's server through her tablet and fool him with the old "same footage looped" trick, crossing her fingers and hoping he's never seen SPEED.  In a truly magical happenstance, The Kid is whatever the story needs her to be at any given moment:  whiny rich kid, gearhead, ace hacker, and expert in international investment law.  Bravo, screenwriters!  I guess if you like crashes, shattering glass, screeching tires, a complete void of logic and suspense, and zoom-ins to Ethan Hawke making constipated faces as he pretends to drive a car, GETAWAY might be entertaining.  But for everyone else, it's an incoherent jumble with a dumb twist ending, and for all the work that went into the car chases, you can't make heads or tails of what's going on.  Also with Paul Freeman and PASSENGER 57 villain Bruce Payne in tiny roles, GETAWAY opened Labor Day Weekend and tanked in ninth place.  Offering nothing worthwhile and looking cheaper than any Bulgaria-shot DTV NuImage production, it's amazing that this actually made it to theaters at all.  (PG-13, 90 mins)


PARANOIA
(US/France - 2013)

Can we just admit that no one gives a shit about the Hemsworth brothers despite Hollywood doing its damnedest to make them happen?  Sure, Chris is a decent-enough actor who lucked into THOR and THE AVENGERS and got to co-star in THE CABIN IN THE WOODS (made long before THOR, but released after), but elsewhere, audiences haven't really warmed up to him:  no one cared about the RED DAWN remake and Ron Howard's racing drama RUSH flopped.  But Chris is a mega-star next to little brother Liam, who's in the HUNGER GAMES franchise, co-starred in a Miley Cyrus vehicle, and got killed early in THE EXPENDABLES 2--all films that don't depend on him--but has been met with crickets and tumbleweed everywhere else:  LOVE AND HONOR and EMPIRE STATE barely got released, and his big summer headlining splash with PARANOIA fizzled badly, opening in 13th place to become one of the biggest DOA duds of the summer.  The franchise gigs are good for them now, but does anybody really care otherwise?  When's the last time you heard anyone say "Man, I gotta see that new Chris Hemsworth flick!"?  PARANOIA is bad, but it's not all Liam's fault.  Sure, he's got no presence as a leading man and is really out of his league sharing scenes with three legends in the "just pay me and I'll ham" phase of their careers, but it's just a dumb, predictable, clichéd thriller that's so bored with itself that it never really tries to be anything more than a time-killer.  If ever a movie was made to fold laundry and balance your checkbook by, it's PARANOIA, and as such, it fits right in with auteur Robert "Still coasting on LEGALLY BLONDE" Luketic's other triumphs, like 21 and two Katherine Heigl rom-coms (THE UGLY TRUTH and KILLERS).

Hemsworth is Adam Cassidy, an ambitious cubicle drone at tech giant WyattCorp.  Driven for success and saddled with medical bills that insurance won't cover for his sick father (Richard Dreyfuss), Adam is convinced he's designed the next big thing in social networking.  When he bombs the presentation to sneering CEO Nicholas Wyatt (Gary Oldman) and he and his team lose their jobs, Adam treats them all to a $16,000 night at the club on his still-active corporate credit card.  An irate Wyatt then threatens to press charges unless Adam agrees to partake in some corporate espionage and infiltrate Eikon, another tech megapower owned by Wyatt's rival and former mentor Jock Goddard (Harrison Ford), to steal trade secrets so Wyatt can run Goddard out of business for good.  You know you're in for some cutting insight when Adam and Wyatt are shown playing chess (SYMBOLISM!) and Wyatt snottily declares "Checkmate!" (See! Adam's a pawn!  Get it?).  Of course, Adam becomes pupil to the master Goddard and falls for his top marketing exec Emma (Amber Heard), and they have no idea he's Wyatt's plant.  Or do they?   Hemsworth is bland enough on his own, but he and Heard are one of the most chemistry-impaired screen couples you'll ever see.  The film only really comes alive in the two instances where Oldman and Ford are onscreen together, but it's hardly the highlight of either actor's career.  If anything, it may well prompt you to watch AIR FORCE ONE again.  Oldman plays the pompous ass to the hilt in a performance that sounds like a tribute to Vinnie Jones ("Yaw ay-out when oy sigh yaw ay-out!  Oy eewn you!"), while Ford is indifferent and seems vaguely annoyed that he was talked into being in this.  For all the shit Robert De Niro takes about phoning in his performances and coasting on his past accomplishments, it seems we've let Ford off the hook.  There's a younger generation of moviegoers who see Ford as the guy who used to play Han Solo and Indiana Jones but is now just a grumpy old fart with an earring on talk shows.  Ford hasn't challenged himself in years (and this is his second bad tech flick, after 2006's absurd FIREWALL), though he does seem to relish the moment when he tells Hemsworth's Adam "Shut up...you're nothing but a convenient tool, an empty vessel."  Scripted line or Ford ad-lib?  Discuss.  (PG-13, 106 mins)

In Theaters: ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES (2013)

ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES
(US - 2013)

Directed by Adam McKay.  Written by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay.  Cast: Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner, Christina Applegate, Kristen Wiig, James Marsden, Dylan Baker, Meagan Good, Harrison Ford, Greg Kinnear, Josh Lawson, Judah Nelson,  Fred Willard, Chris Parnell, June Diane Raphael. (PG-13, 120 mins)

Back in 2004, the $25 million ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY made more than triple its budget but never topped the box office and dropped out of the top five after two weeks.  The film became a modern comedy classic on DVD and cable, where it amassed a devoted cult following when people discovered how consistently hilarious and quotable it is.  Star/co-writer Will Ferrell left SNL two years earlier and had the hits OLD SCHOOL and ELF, but it was ANCHORMAN that would become the defining work of his big-screen career and his partnership with director/co-writer Adam McKay, though I contend that 2010's THE OTHER GUYS is their masterpiece.   It's nearly a decade later, and after what must be the longest, most aggressive, and all-encompassing marketing campaigns in cinema history, ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES arrives just before Ferrell resorted to going door-to-door across America in his Ron Burgundy wardrobe.  With double the budget, probably to accommodate the increased star power and salary requirements of Ferrell and Steve Carell, it's obviously a bigger movie.  And a louder movie.  It's also bombastically self-indulgent as Ferrell and McKay seem to be making it up as they go along.  Nine years ago, they had enough outtakes and abandoned subplots from the first film to assemble the straight-to-DVD spinoff film WAKE UP, RON BURGUNDY.  There's no such restraint here.  Running nearly 30 minutes longer than the first film, Ferrell and McKay gather up seemingly every discarded comedy idea they concocted since the first entry and throw everything against the wall to see what sticks.  Its rapid fire assault of gags might sound ambitious but it comes off as sloppy and desperate, almost like they could be working on a higher level than we're expecting but more likely they're just punking us with an almost Sandlerian level of audience contempt.  There's no doubt the coming weeks will find passionate defenses of the film and you'll see terms like "anarchic," "absurdist," "subversive," "Dadaist", and maybe even, and I can't believe I'm writing this, "Bunuel-ian" tossed about with wild, pretentious abandon as if there's some deeper shit going on, but even as a fan of Ferrell, the first film, and absurdist humor, I found ANCHORMAN 2 to be jaw-droppingly unfunny and a dumpster fire of a movie, the kind of catastrophically awful train wreck where it's not hyperbolic to suggest that it's Ferrell and McKay's GIGLI or THE ADVENTURES OF PLUTO NASH. 

Opening in 1980 to the sounds of Christopher Cross' "Ride Like the Wind," the first of countless soft-rock tunes used where simply hearing them is supposed to be the joke, ANCHORMAN 2 finds news anchor Ron Burgundy (Ferrell) and wife/co-anchor Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) relocated to NYC from San Diego, with their six-year-old son Walter (Judah Nelson).  When Veronica is called up to the network by boss Mack Harken (Harrison Ford), who subsequently fires Ron, their marriage falls apart.  After a botched suicide attempt, Ron is contacted by Freddie Shapp (Dylan Baker), who's scouting for news personalities for Global News Network, a new 24-hour cable news network bankrolled by Australian billionaire Kench Allenby (Josh Lawson).  Lured by the promise of stardom and seeing it as another chance to do what he was born to do, Ron decides to reassemble his news team: reporter Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), weatherman Brick Tamland (Carell), and sportscaster Champ Kind (David Koechner).  Saddled with the 2:00-5:00 am graveyard slot, Ron finds a rival in prime-time anchor Jack Lime (James Marsden), and comes up with an idea to give the audience the news they want instead of the news they need.  With his focus on vacuous entertainment stories, cute animals, high-speed chases, debates devolving into shouting matches, and smoking crack on-air, Ron becomes the country's biggest news star and inadvertently brings about the downfall of television news standards.

Those digs at today's cable news--which are obvious and don't really threaten to erase memories of Paddy Chayefsky and NETWORK--are about as thoughtful as ANCHORMAN 2 gets.  Aside from the use of early '80s radio staples, the film constantly utilizes future debacles and scandals as a source of easy, lazy humor ("Sponsored by BP:  Nature's Best Friend," and Brian cites O.J. Simpson, Phil Spector, and Robert Blake as his posse who call themselves "The Ladykillers"), and it's funny once or twice, but by the 20th time, it's a little stale.  There's a certain expectation of callbacks and references when you're dealing with a comedy as revered as ANCHORMAN, and that film's first invocations of "Great Odin's Raven!" or "By the beard of Zeus!" were hilarious.  Not so much here, when Ferrell is bellowing nonsense like "By the hymen of Olivia Newton-John!"  What?  And I haven't even gotten into an extended subplot where Ron goes blind after a head injury and spends his days in seclusion at a lighthouse and bottle-feeding a shark before freeing it into the open water.  Ron Burgundy was always a pompous chauvinist, but here's he's just a bleating, tone-deaf asshole.  Sometimes, it's as if he's not even playing the same Ron Burgundy from the first film, but rather, an even more cartoonish parody of Ron Burgundy.  Indeed, ANCHORMAN 2 is so scattershot, random, and over-the-top that it makes the comparatively sophisticated ANCHORMAN look like BROADCAST NEWS.  When Ron gets involved with African-American, female boss Linda Jackson (Meagan Good)--this is after he first meets her and can't stop the Tourette's-styled barking of "Black!" at her--he has dinner with her family, where he steers the conversation to the level of her "stank" during sex and throwing out a "Say what?" to her mother.  Has Ferrell even seen the first ANCHORMAN recently?  Does he remember making it?

But that's nothing compared to what's happened to Carell's Brick Tamland.  Carell wasn't a star back in 2004 and was primarily known as a DAILY SHOW correspondent.  In the ensuing decade, he's had considerable success with THE OFFICE and several movies. Brick was a minor character with some funny bits in ANCHORMAN, but now that Carell is arguably as big a star as Ferrell, they probably had to give Brick stuff to do to entice Carell back.  What transpires is nightmarish.  Carell plays Brick not as a low-IQ, amiably naive man-child, but instead like a thousand-yard-staring psychopath prone to shrieking and screaming for no reason.  He gets an endurance test of a subplot where he falls in love with an eccentric, incompetent GNN secretary named Chani (Kristen Wiig), and their endless, laughless scenes play out like bad improv or an exceptionally awful 12:55 am SNL skit where you can almost hear crickets chirping in Studio 8H.  No one's having a good day here--it doesn't help that Rudd and Koechner have almost nothing to do, so they at least emerge from the wreckage largely unscathed--but there's simply too much of this reconceived Brick Tamland in this and Carell turns in what may very well be the worst performance you'll see in a major movie in 2013.

Even by the standards of a Judd Apatow production, there's too much of everything here--except comedy.  I get the "anarchic" spirit the filmmakers might be going for, but when I hear that term, I think of the action in BLAZING SADDLES crashing over into Buddy Bizarre's musical at the end.  Every rambling, overlong sequence in ANCHORMAN 2 plays like something that only the actors think is funny.  You can actually see Carell and Wiig almost breaking during some of their conversations, and I'm sure there's plenty of bloopers with the two of them losing it.  But what's onscreen is just not funny.  It's not even "weird" or "offbeat" funny.  Joke after joke after joke lands with a dead thud.  Did anyone at Paramount actually watch this, or did they just figure they'll get the $50 million back before the toxic word-of-mouth spreads?   Even the expected rival news crews Battle Royale--one of the original film's best scenes--is restaged here with a ridiculous amount of cameos and other out-of-nowhere additions (Brick hoisting a sci-fi ray gun?), but that's it.  Once you see the famous faces and all of Ferrell's buddies who showed up to hang out, there's not really anything else there.  So why not have John C. Reilly play the soul-sucking ghost of Stonewall Jackson or Harrison Ford sprouting fur and turning into a "were-hyena" for no reason?  Sure, it's insane but is it funny?  Ranking somewhere between CADDYSHACK II and SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT PART 3 on the comedy sequel scale, ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES is an excruciating Will Ferrell home movie where the legend of Ron Burgundy has gone to die. 

Summer of 1982: (July 16, 1982)

July 16, 1982 was one of those packed weekends where there's so many new movies released that some are bound for box-office failure, especially with the unstoppable juggernaut that was E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL.  Capitalizing on Steven Spielberg's huge success with E.T., Paramount chose this weekend to re-release 1981's RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and it ended up being the top "new" offering of the weekend, adding to the director's incredible success over the summer of 1982.

The medical soap opera spoof YOUNG DOCTORS IN LOVE opened as well, to generally decent if unenthusiastic reviews, but became a surprise sleeper hit, grossing around $30 million.  A stab at AIRPLANE!-style humor in the ZAZ mold, YOUNG DOCTORS IN LOVE was directed by TV icon Garry Marshall (HAPPY DAYS, LAVERNE & SHIRLEY) and starred familiar TV faces like Michael McKean, Ed Begley, Jr., and Ted McGinley, as well as perpetual Marshall regular Hector Elizondo, BLADE RUNNER's Sean Young, Harry Dean Stanton, Patrick Macnee, George Furth, Taylor Negron, and Dabney Coleman.  It was also an early hit for future mega-producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who would crack the big time a year later when he partnered with Don Simpson to produce FLASHDANCE.

Woody Allen's A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S SEX COMEDY is an homage to Ingmar Bergman's SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT, set in the early 1900s at a weekend cottage getaway for three couples (Allen and Mary Steenburgen, Jose Ferrer and Mia Farrow, Tony Roberts and Julie Hagerty).  Being that this is a Woody Allen film, neuroses and comic bedhopping occur, or as much as the PG rating will allow.  Far from Allen's best film, but nor is it his worst, the occasionally-amusing MIDSUMMER falls pretty squarely in the pleasant-but-forgettable camp.  Allen did this between the Fellini-inspired STARDUST MEMORIES and the experimental ZELIG, and was probably more concerned with continuing to establish his auteur bona fides than making people laugh.

SIX PACK was the big screen debut of beloved country music star and future botched cosmetic surgery case study Kenny Rogers, who had recently turned his hit song "The Gambler" into a popular and oddly-titled made-for-TV western KENNY ROGERS AS THE GAMBLER.  The idea of a family comedy with Rogers as race car driver Brewster Baker, befriending and taking care of a ragtag group of six orphaned miscreants seemed like a great idea, and SIX PACK was a modest success in theaters.  It hovered around 10th to 12th place for several weeks, very quietly grossing $20 million, and found a bigger audience during its endless cable airings throughout the '80s.  Rogers had a likable enough screen presence, and the film does have a solid supporting turn by 17-year-old Diane Lane as the oldest of the kids (a young Anthony Michael Hall is also in it).  BUCK ROGERS' co-star Erin Gray has one of her rare big-screen leading roles, and the great character actor Barry Corbin is a crooked sheriff.  SIX PACK spawned a huge hit single for Rogers with "Love Will Turn You Around," which was far more successful than the movie, in addition to a 1983 pilot for a proposed NBC series that never happened, with a pre-MIAMI VICE Don Johnson as Brewster Baker and Leaf (later Joaquin) Phoenix as one of the Six Pack.

Lastly, the other major opening on this busy weekend was SUMMER LOVERS, directed by Randal Kleiser (GREASE).  SUMMER LOVERS wasn't a success at all, grossing only $5 million, but it enjoyed a long life on VHS and cable, where it introduced an untold number of impressionable, hormonally-overcharged boys to the concept of the menage-a-trois.  The film starred Peter Gallagher, Daryl Hannah, and CONAN THE BARBARIAN's Valerie Quennessen, and while surely not on the erotica level of, say, a Laura Gemser EMANUELLE flick, anything gets the job done when you're 11 and the possibility of nudity exists.  Gallagher and Hannah, both relative newcomers at the time, went on to long and busy careers and are still active today, while French actress Quennessen only made a few more movies before putting her career on hold for marriage and motherhood.  She was just 31 years old when she was tragically killed in a car accident in 1989.  SUMMER LOVERS also produced a pair of radio hits with Chicago's "Hard to Say I'm Sorry," and the Pointer Sisters' "I'm So Excited," which is in the film but didn't really take off until 1984.

TOP 10 FILMS FOR THE WEEKEND OF JULY 16, 1982 (from www.boxofficemojo.com)

1.   E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL

2.   RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (re-release)

3.   YOUNG DOCTORS IN LOVE

4.   TRON

5.   ROCKY III

6.   FIREFOX

7.   POLTERGEIST

8.   A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S SEX COMEDY

9.   ANNIE

10. STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN

Summer of 1982: BLADE RUNNER and THE THING (June 25, 1982)

When I first noticed online chatter about the 30th anniversary of the Summer of 1982 and all the classic genre fare that rolled out during that eventful season, I noticed that a lot of it was centered around this weekend.  Yes, there was already CONAN THE BARBARIAN and THE ROAD WARRIOR and STAR TREK II and POLTERGEIST and E.T., but really the weekend of June 25, 1982 is what was generating the most enthusiasm as the 30th anniversary approached.  Moviegoers had no way of knowing it at the time, but they wouldn't realize the impact of this weekend for quite some time.  Years, in fact.  On Friday, June 25, 1982, two of the most important, groundbreaking, influential, and universally respected genre films of the last 30 years were unveiled:  Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER and John Carpenter's THE THING.

But it was certainly a different story in 1982.  BLADE RUNNER, heavily hyped as not only Ridley Scott's follow-up to ALIEN (1979), but also Harrison Ford's first film since 1981's blockbuster RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, opened well but nosedived its second weekend and fell short of recouping its budget.  Considering Ford's recent track record of STAR WARS, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, and RAIDERS, audiences didn't want a slow, bleak, philosophical, meditative film noir-inspired science fiction film that didn't offer much in the way of action.  Not helping matters was that the released film, as we would find out in the coming years, was not Scott's preferred version, but a compromised one with a changed ending and voiceover narration added after the fact by Ford, who wasn't enthused about this decision and sounds like he's doing it at gunpoint.  Nevertheless, the film, based on Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, almost instantly developed a fervent cult following despite disappearing from theaters rather quickly.  It's easy to see why: even if you don't like the story or find it too ponderous and slow, there's no denying that it looks and feels like no other film.  From Lawrence G. Paull's production design to Douglas Trumbull's photographic effects to the contributions of "visual futurist" Syd Mead to its rainy Los Angeles of 2019 to the hypnotic electronic score by Vangelis, then riding high on his CHARIOTS OF FIRE theme, BLADE RUNNER was a wholly unique cinematic vision that had never been seen before.

The incredible opening scene of BLADE RUNNER:

Harrison Ford as Deckard

The film had to have a few moments of violence trimmed to avoid an X rating, but an unrated version eventually appeared on VHS.  A somewhat mislabeled "director's cut" was released in 1992, done without Scott's involvement but assembled based on his original cut.  It removed Ford's narration and reinstated the original ending and the important dream sequence with the unicorn.  This quickly became the new "official" version of BLADE RUNNER until 2007 when Scott issued BLADE RUNNER: THE FINAL CUT, his first fully-approved director's cut with the previous 1992 changes (or reinstatements), along with some different shots, improved visual effects, corrected gaffes (like the digital removal of the visible wires on the flying police spinners), and a more smoothly-done chase sequence between blade runner Deckard (Ford) and replicant Zohra (Joanna Cassidy), a scene that was bungled a bit in past versions by Cassidy's curly-haired stunt double being all too obvious.

Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) delivering one of cinema's great speeches

No less than five versions of BLADE RUNNER exist--the 1982 R-rated theatrical, the unrated version of the 1982 cut, the 1992 "Director's Cut," the 2007 Final Cut, and, exclusively on the Blu-ray set, a pre-release workprint version--though the 2007 Final Cut is now considered by Scott to be official.  Nevertheless, there are a small number of folks who prefer the 1982 theatrical.  It gives you the proper visual impact, but it's not the film Scott wanted to make (which, all the way up to the just-released PROMETHEUS, seems to be the story of his career), has a happy ending (Deckard escapes with Sean Young's Rachel) and makes clear the many plot elements that co-writer Hampton Fancher preferred to remain ambiguous, though Scott has been pretty clear in his own interpretation of the "Deckard is really a replicant" ending.  It took 25 years for Scott's intended version--really a fine-tuning of the 1992 cut--to finally see the light of day, and it works because its technical changes are not overwhelming.  Scott uses 2007 technological advancements on a 1982 film but does it in subtle ways.  He doesn't put the changes front and center in a way that takes BLADE RUNNER out of its proper era and context.  I generally don't agree with filmmakers going back and enhancing or "fixing" a film with technology that didn't exist when that film was made, but if there is indeed a right way to do it, then that's what Scott has done with BLADE RUNNER: THE FINAL CUT.

John Carpenter's THE THING, like the 1951 sci-fi classic THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, is based on John W. Campbell, Jr's classic short story "Who Goes There?"  The 1951 film had an Antarctica outpost attacked by an alien being (James Arness).  Carpenter's film follows the story more faithfully:  an alien life form infiltrates an Antarctica research facility and starts killing, absorbing, and imitating the protagonists.  It's an exercise in nail-biting, sweat-inducing paranoia and Carpenter and screenwriter Bill Lancaster (son of Hollywood legend Burt) milk it for all it's worth.  But what really set THE THING apart from everything else in the summer of 1982 was its shocking, inventive special effects by Rob Bottin.  These gory effects were a major gripe for film critics of the old guard, who probably saw Carpenter as a symbol of all that was wrong with horror films in the early 1980s.  His HALLOWEEN was instrumental in starting the slasher craze that was flooding theaters and presumably warping the minds of impressionable children.  Horror fans who saw THE THING thought very highly of it, but it was a box-office disappointment at the time.  It found a strong fan base once it hit video and then became a fixture on pay cable for the rest of the decade.

Kurt Russell as R.J. "Hey, Sweden!" MacReady.

But then something funny happened:  years and years later, THE THING started being regularly name-checked by serious film critics as a great horror film.  It's not uncommon for John Carpenter films to get belated accolades years after they're released and instantly dismissed (in recent years, critics have finally started coming around to 1987's ambitious, physics-heavy PRINCE OF DARKNESS and 1988's more-relevant-than-ever THEY LIVE), but there's almost nothing but nice things said about THE THING today.  Sure, some of the critics of the early '80s have changed their tune, but it's also indicative of a new generation of film critics and historians and the films that mean something to them.  In his essential 1985 study Nightmare Movies, Kim Newman was one of the first critics to praise the merits of slasher films, zombie films, and splatter films by people like Carpenter, Wes Craven, and Lucio Fulci, and to say they were just as important as the classics cherished by old-guard stalwarts like William K. Everson, who blasted new films like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and THE EXORCIST in his mid-1970s book Classics of the Horror Film, a survey of horror films going back to the silents.  Everson lamented the rise of excessive violence and sex, while Newman essentially said "Times have changed, these are the new classics."  One of the best lines in Newman's book is when he hopes some kid reading his book writes another decades down the road that contradicts everything he's just written.

The Norris defibrillation scene:

The point is, there were still a lot of older critics who didn't take a shine to Carpenter and HALLOWEEN and his gore effects and thought the new THING was an insult to the black & white classic from 1951.  That is, if they deemed horror a real genre at all, which many highbrow critics didn't.  The decades have altered that sentiment, even if Leonard Maltin's book still rates it a mere *½.  Aside from Palmer's (David Clennon) top-loading VCR, Nauls' (T.K. Carter) Stevie Wonder-blaring ghetto blaster, and R.J. MacReady's (Kurt Russell) J&B-doused battle with the Chess Wizard, THE THING has aged better than arguably any horror film of its day.  As a horror film, it's incredibly intense, and as a study in paranoia, it's top-notch.  The characters are believable and they use their heads, and the film establishes ground rules and sticks to them, never cheating.  Maybe one reason the film didn't catch on at the time or didn't initally seem appealing to audiences is because horror was fast-becoming a teen genre, and this was filled with cranky-looking character actors like Wilford Brimley, Donald Moffat, and Richard Dysart, with Russell (fresh from Carpenter's ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK), Carter (a comedian who was just in Walter Hill's SOUTHERN COMFORT), and Thomas G. Waites (Fox in Hill's THE WARRIORS) the closest thing to "youth appeal."  Maybe everyone was still going to see E.T. and if that was sold out, they opted for BLADE RUNNER because of Harrison Ford.  Regardless of the whys, THE THING's day eventually arrived (last year saw the release of a passable but pointless prequel--also titled THE THING--about the events that led up to the 1982 film).  Carpenter's THE THING is cherished by fans, and Carpenter, lambasted by film snobs for so many years, is finally held in high regard and lauded as a great filmmaker.  I can't recall meeting anyone--in person or online--who doesn't think THE THING is one of the great horror films not just of the last 30 years, but ever.  It's a classic, period.  And the DVD commentary with Carpenter and Russell is almost as entertaining as the film itself.

BLADE RUNNER and THE THING proved to be films that were years ahead of their time, and both have not only stood the test of time, but they get better with each passing year. Not many 30-year-old films can make that boast, and two of them, so neglected and underappreciated in 1982, were released on the same day.

And then there's MEGAFORCE.

Hal Needham's MEGAFORCE also hit theaters this same weekend.  Budgeted at $20 million (quite a bit by 1982 standards), it grossed about a quarter of that and was one of the biggest bombs of the early 1980s, even with a tie-in Hot Wheels playset and an Atari 2600 game. MEGAFORCE is pretty hard to see these days:  it was released on VHS and aired on cable, but it's never been released on DVD (though there are bootlegs, and it periodically turns up on YouTube before being taken down), despite it accruing a bit of a following over the last 30 years.  Used VHS copies start at $34 on Amazon.  The action-packed story centers on Ace Hunter (Barry Bostwick), the leader of Megaforce, a freelance organization of international mercenaries.  Megaforce is hired to help the fictional nation of Sardun defeat an invasion by neighboring country Gamibia--an invasion led by Ace's former friend Duke Gurerra (Henry Silva).  Filled with flying motorcycles and laser-shooting megacruiser dune buggies, MEGAFORCE is a total comic book fantasy, and Needham (director of numerous Burt Reynolds car chase comedies, starting with SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT) was said to be very discouraged by its horrible reception.  Being released the same weekend as BLADE RUNNER and during the summer of E.T. probably didn't help.  It wasn't exactly the big break to the A-list that TV star Bostwick was hoping for, either.  Bostwick co-starred in THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975), but was primarily a TV actor by 1982, and after MEGAFORCE mega-bombed, he licked his wounds and went right back to TV, where he's enjoyed a busy career to this day with only occasional supporting roles on the big screen. 

Also starring in MEGAFORCE were Michael Beck and Persis Khambatta.  The engaging Beck established himself as an actor to watch as Swan in 1979's THE WARRIORS, but just couldn't catch a break after that (he once said--I think on the WARRIORS DVD, perhaps?--that "THE WARRIORS opened a ton of doors...that XANADU immediately closed").  After Razzie nominations for both XANADU and MEGAFORCE, Beck moved on to the Roger Corman-released WARLORDS OF THE 21ST CENTURY (aka BATTLETRUCK) and co-starred with Richard Harris in the barely-released TRIUMPHS OF A MAN CALLED HORSE, and then it was pretty much TV guest spots and made-for-TV movies after that.  Beck hasn't acted since 2004 but has found a lucrative career as an in-demand voice for TV commercials and audiobook readings.  MEGAFORCE did nothing to help anyone's career, but Khambatta seemed to fare worse than her co-stars.  After the Indian actress' breakthrough as the bald Ilia in 1979's STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE and as a sultry international terrorist in 1981's NIGHTHAWKS, MEGAFORCE was essentially her last shot at Hollywood fame.  Within a year, she was co-starring in the Italian post-nuke WARRIOR OF THE LOST WORLD and did a few TV roles and straight-to-video titles before essentially retiring from acting in the late '80s.  She had a couple of bit parts on TV in the '90s and was only 49 when she died of a heart attack in 1998.

With the increased popularity of studios doing manufactured-on-demand DVD releases, it seems unlikely that MEGAFORCE will never see the light of day on DVD or Blu-ray, but there's no sign of it happening in the immediate future.**

**UPDATE: Actually, it appears Hen's Tooth is releasing it on DVD on September 4, 2012.