praetax
Joined Jun 2000
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praetax's rating
This film while it has some good points is a fine example of what happens when Canadian's get their hands on high octane 80's action shows. They did it to Airwolf and the tried to do it to Knight Rider.
This was obviously a pilot episode for a show that never was and the reasons it never was are obvious. The idea was fine but the execution left a lot to be desired. The flaws are even more apparent after watching the first season episodes and the original pilot in the same DVD set.
The original show had the right idea and concept behind it. The car is the star of the show, it is indestructible, and has an arrogant personality to match. Combine that with the music that keeps you pumped into the action, a bunch of gratuitous explosions, death defying stunts and a pre-Baywatch David Hasselhoff and you have a certifiable 80's hit.
The first misfire in this project was taking the car out of the equation for 60% of it. I can understand that the Knight 4000 Pontiac Banshee was a little more expensive and one of a kind then the Knight 2000 Firebird but they didn't even present us with a single stunt that couldn't have been performed by an '84 Dodge Omni with fake wood paneling. On a positive note the new car itself had the potential of being really cool. The Banshee concept car is a sleek and cool update of the Firebird from the original series and seems to fit what we'd like to see as the KITT of the future. I think they should have painted it black, as a bright Red car tends to stand out almost as much as Starsky and Hutch's striped tomato. I understand they didn't have the budget to make several Banshee's to do the terrific stunts the original show had, but they could have tried a little harder to up the action with the car.
The second big problem was the music. The original score was exactly that, original. You could identify the show by its theme alone; it is almost as famous as the car. Knight Rider 2000 seemed to emphasize the kind of synthesizer music that the worst fare on the sci-fi channel usually gets. It's very soft, it's very soothing and it sounds like it should be on a relaxation tape and not an action show.
Third. I hate the way that shows like this exploit the future or at least how shows used to exploit that great year 2000. It was as if they felt that they could slap the year 2000 on a show and make it seem like is somewhere in the 24th century. They tend to present a time where Utopian societies formed almost overnight and replaced years of humanities attempts to prevent anything of the sort. I'm not holding this critique of this show alone, they did it throughout the 90's almost up to y2k when they realized, you know what it's nearly the year 2000 and society hasn't suddenly and magically morphed into an idealistic utopia like in star trek, nor has it been taken over by rampaging robots or evil computers. So why is it that they, in 1991, would assume for some reason that we would suddenly invent a cryogenic prison system, amazing brain transfer devices, sonic stun guns and the complete outlaw of all handguns by the year 2000. Now if I'm not mistaken things like this usually take about ten to twenty years to perfect and put into real practice, yet they felt that nine years later all of these magical changes would take place. Combine that with their jokes about President Dan Quayle, as if a gun ban would pass under that kind of administration.
The Fourth major issue is once again we find ourselves in an unnamed American city that looks suspiciously like Vancouver. It's like Stargate SG-1 "See the Universe of Vancouver" cause to quote the great Buckaroo Banzai "No mater where you go, there you are." I suppose it's no worse then in the 70's and 80's when every unnamed American city was LA. But it seems to me that when you have an action show against criminals you set it in some place like LA. Not to knock Vancouver's own criminal element, especially in the Utopian future of the year 2000, but Canadian shows always come off as somewhat stale, dry cleaned and pressed in a such a way that seems to brush away the gritty nature of classic American TV.
What is Knight Rider without KITT? I'll tell you what it is; it's David Hasselhoff and his partner running around with a sonic stun gun in a shopping mall. It was the action and the car that made the original show what it was, and by trying to up the science fiction angle to cover for the lack of anything going on in the plot or on the screen it made for a very long hour and a half. Unlike the producers of KR2k Hasselhoff figured out the right way to present this kind of mundane action, and while that show is not remembered for it's plots or it action, it is remembered for all the hot women running around in Bikini's. The failure of this to take off is the same as the failure of Baywatch Nights. David Hasselhoff - hot women in swim suits and - action stunt talking car = something that will be popular in Germany but leave the rest of the world scratching its head.
This was obviously a pilot episode for a show that never was and the reasons it never was are obvious. The idea was fine but the execution left a lot to be desired. The flaws are even more apparent after watching the first season episodes and the original pilot in the same DVD set.
The original show had the right idea and concept behind it. The car is the star of the show, it is indestructible, and has an arrogant personality to match. Combine that with the music that keeps you pumped into the action, a bunch of gratuitous explosions, death defying stunts and a pre-Baywatch David Hasselhoff and you have a certifiable 80's hit.
The first misfire in this project was taking the car out of the equation for 60% of it. I can understand that the Knight 4000 Pontiac Banshee was a little more expensive and one of a kind then the Knight 2000 Firebird but they didn't even present us with a single stunt that couldn't have been performed by an '84 Dodge Omni with fake wood paneling. On a positive note the new car itself had the potential of being really cool. The Banshee concept car is a sleek and cool update of the Firebird from the original series and seems to fit what we'd like to see as the KITT of the future. I think they should have painted it black, as a bright Red car tends to stand out almost as much as Starsky and Hutch's striped tomato. I understand they didn't have the budget to make several Banshee's to do the terrific stunts the original show had, but they could have tried a little harder to up the action with the car.
The second big problem was the music. The original score was exactly that, original. You could identify the show by its theme alone; it is almost as famous as the car. Knight Rider 2000 seemed to emphasize the kind of synthesizer music that the worst fare on the sci-fi channel usually gets. It's very soft, it's very soothing and it sounds like it should be on a relaxation tape and not an action show.
Third. I hate the way that shows like this exploit the future or at least how shows used to exploit that great year 2000. It was as if they felt that they could slap the year 2000 on a show and make it seem like is somewhere in the 24th century. They tend to present a time where Utopian societies formed almost overnight and replaced years of humanities attempts to prevent anything of the sort. I'm not holding this critique of this show alone, they did it throughout the 90's almost up to y2k when they realized, you know what it's nearly the year 2000 and society hasn't suddenly and magically morphed into an idealistic utopia like in star trek, nor has it been taken over by rampaging robots or evil computers. So why is it that they, in 1991, would assume for some reason that we would suddenly invent a cryogenic prison system, amazing brain transfer devices, sonic stun guns and the complete outlaw of all handguns by the year 2000. Now if I'm not mistaken things like this usually take about ten to twenty years to perfect and put into real practice, yet they felt that nine years later all of these magical changes would take place. Combine that with their jokes about President Dan Quayle, as if a gun ban would pass under that kind of administration.
The Fourth major issue is once again we find ourselves in an unnamed American city that looks suspiciously like Vancouver. It's like Stargate SG-1 "See the Universe of Vancouver" cause to quote the great Buckaroo Banzai "No mater where you go, there you are." I suppose it's no worse then in the 70's and 80's when every unnamed American city was LA. But it seems to me that when you have an action show against criminals you set it in some place like LA. Not to knock Vancouver's own criminal element, especially in the Utopian future of the year 2000, but Canadian shows always come off as somewhat stale, dry cleaned and pressed in a such a way that seems to brush away the gritty nature of classic American TV.
What is Knight Rider without KITT? I'll tell you what it is; it's David Hasselhoff and his partner running around with a sonic stun gun in a shopping mall. It was the action and the car that made the original show what it was, and by trying to up the science fiction angle to cover for the lack of anything going on in the plot or on the screen it made for a very long hour and a half. Unlike the producers of KR2k Hasselhoff figured out the right way to present this kind of mundane action, and while that show is not remembered for it's plots or it action, it is remembered for all the hot women running around in Bikini's. The failure of this to take off is the same as the failure of Baywatch Nights. David Hasselhoff - hot women in swim suits and - action stunt talking car = something that will be popular in Germany but leave the rest of the world scratching its head.
This movie is an abomination. Recently I decided to waste five bucks on E-Bay to get the non MST3k version of this film so I could answer definitively if it really does belong on the bottom 100 or if they just creatively cut it for MST3k in such a way that it made it completely incoherent. The answer is it is every bit as terrible as they make it out to be in MST3k and then some.
Mitchell is the most unappealing character in film history. MST3k showed us his unlikablitity and the end all be all worst and most disturbing sex seen ever captured on film, but what they cut out made him out to be even worse. There is another sex scene with Mrs. Yanni where she explains in no uncertain terms to our beefy boy that she is a hooker sent by someone as a Christmas present. Does that make him more unappealing that he just doesn't care why she is there, probably a little but the other things he does also make him worse. They cut out a long sequence where Mitchell kills a guy by smashing his head in with a stone, that's the one from the opening credits where he looks like the Wrathful Buddha, and then chases John Saxon around in the dune buggy until by some freak chance Saxon's fuel tank explodes. Now I can see why he's such a great guy. Then at the end he shoots Martin Balsam in the head without so much as a second thought about justice and all that crap that cops are supposed to be about. I agree with Crow in the end, there is a point in every killing spree where you have to turn the gun on yourself, and Mitchell missed his opportunity the second he first appeared on screen.
After seeing the real version I can honestly say the only thing in this convoluted plot that was cleared up for me was who that guy Mitchell shot on the golf course was and why those guys in the car showed up to kick his ass after Martin Balsam had him over for soup. By the time I was done I wished I could get my hands on some of the Heroine that they kept talking about throughout the movie to numb the pain of the hour and a half of my life I'll never get back.
Mitchell is the most unappealing character in film history. MST3k showed us his unlikablitity and the end all be all worst and most disturbing sex seen ever captured on film, but what they cut out made him out to be even worse. There is another sex scene with Mrs. Yanni where she explains in no uncertain terms to our beefy boy that she is a hooker sent by someone as a Christmas present. Does that make him more unappealing that he just doesn't care why she is there, probably a little but the other things he does also make him worse. They cut out a long sequence where Mitchell kills a guy by smashing his head in with a stone, that's the one from the opening credits where he looks like the Wrathful Buddha, and then chases John Saxon around in the dune buggy until by some freak chance Saxon's fuel tank explodes. Now I can see why he's such a great guy. Then at the end he shoots Martin Balsam in the head without so much as a second thought about justice and all that crap that cops are supposed to be about. I agree with Crow in the end, there is a point in every killing spree where you have to turn the gun on yourself, and Mitchell missed his opportunity the second he first appeared on screen.
After seeing the real version I can honestly say the only thing in this convoluted plot that was cleared up for me was who that guy Mitchell shot on the golf course was and why those guys in the car showed up to kick his ass after Martin Balsam had him over for soup. By the time I was done I wished I could get my hands on some of the Heroine that they kept talking about throughout the movie to numb the pain of the hour and a half of my life I'll never get back.
While not the finest in the long line of high quality plot driven Godzilla films (Insert Sarcasm Here) Godzilla 2000 showed that Godzilla while 40 years old still the man (If the man could be a forty story Green lizard that belches plasma rays).
Obviously disappointed by the poor efforts of our favorite Independence Day producers efforts to make an over budget American Godzilla that lets face it looked like a giant computer generated Iguana. Throughout the film they place small and subtle jabs at the film work of Roland and Dean. For Example the Alien when just prior to turning into Orga looked just like the aliens that were kept in Area 51 in Independence Day. They also placed in a gratutous scene of Godzilla swimming in the exact way the Iguana did, and when the Alien ship arrived in Tokyo they pulled the same ID4 Shadow coming over the shocked crowd, you'd think with all their Godzilla experience they'd look up and say "Huh...Whatever." The Buildings did also explode like they did in ID4.
One major disappointment in this film was the lack of all the pointless and unnecessary Godzilla fighting equipment. No Mazers were seen and I was really hoping they'd show us the new Super X 3, or what ever number they are up to with the cool reflective mirror and Fuzzy Dice.
Despite a few slow parts in the middle, IE Godzilla didn't appear for about forty minutes, the ending was most satisfying. Not only does it have one of the lamest wrap-ups in history, the line delivered was reminiscent of Doogie Houser's line in Starship Troopers when he said it's afraid. I love the fact that after he delivers the line and they are left in quiet contemplation about how Godzilla isn't that bad because he defeated the alien, G-Man goes off and continues to smash Shinjuku. But hey, he's only doing it because he loves us...
Obviously disappointed by the poor efforts of our favorite Independence Day producers efforts to make an over budget American Godzilla that lets face it looked like a giant computer generated Iguana. Throughout the film they place small and subtle jabs at the film work of Roland and Dean. For Example the Alien when just prior to turning into Orga looked just like the aliens that were kept in Area 51 in Independence Day. They also placed in a gratutous scene of Godzilla swimming in the exact way the Iguana did, and when the Alien ship arrived in Tokyo they pulled the same ID4 Shadow coming over the shocked crowd, you'd think with all their Godzilla experience they'd look up and say "Huh...Whatever." The Buildings did also explode like they did in ID4.
One major disappointment in this film was the lack of all the pointless and unnecessary Godzilla fighting equipment. No Mazers were seen and I was really hoping they'd show us the new Super X 3, or what ever number they are up to with the cool reflective mirror and Fuzzy Dice.
Despite a few slow parts in the middle, IE Godzilla didn't appear for about forty minutes, the ending was most satisfying. Not only does it have one of the lamest wrap-ups in history, the line delivered was reminiscent of Doogie Houser's line in Starship Troopers when he said it's afraid. I love the fact that after he delivers the line and they are left in quiet contemplation about how Godzilla isn't that bad because he defeated the alien, G-Man goes off and continues to smash Shinjuku. But hey, he's only doing it because he loves us...