The big story of the past week was that of an apparent upcoming remake of Big Trouble in Little China starring former WWE wrestler turned action movie superstar Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. All the usual fanboys that I know all started with the “but you can’t” type of logic, like if it was announced that Johnson was remaking The Godfather but with Samoans, but I couldn’t help be excited at the prospect of Johnson tackling a John Carpenter cult classic.
I was going to write on how it feels off that the new Jurassic Park sequel is now a CGI spectacle when the original film was about as perfect a combination of practical effects, animatronics and CGI as possible … but that’s not as interesting to me. It’s just a sign that another sequel to a franchise from the past has fallen into the same traps of modern Hollywood: reboot, reload and use a crap ton of CGI.
It’s why I was genuinely excited at the potential of Johnson tackling a project he has a great affinity for. At this point he’s the biggest genuine action star on the planet; he’s one of the few who can top line an action film now and bring in an audience on his own without it being a superhero film. He’s your franchise Viagra as well; both G.I Joe and the Fast and the Furious franchises have gotten bigger (and made a ton of money) because of his insertion. If there’s someone who’s red hot in Hollywood right now it’s the former pro wrestler.
The Rock remaking another of John Carpenter’s cult classics is actually a really good idea. And even if it was a direct sequel, ala something like Bigger Trouble in Little China and Johnson is Jack Burton Junior, it’s still a brilliant career move from Johnson. Considering he’s going to play a supervillain in the Shazam franchise, as well as bring a film version of The Fall Guy into theatres at some point, Johnson’s choices beyond reprising roles in familiar franchises have been nearly uniformly excellent. Thus if you’re going to put it in the hands of any actor he’s absolutely, positively beyond a DOUBT the best man for the job.
Listen to me now and believe me later.
The one thing Johnson does better than most is knowing what projects to make. His attempt at Hercules failed for any number of reasons but not because he was the wrong actor for the part. He’s not following the Schwarzenegger route and making lots of violent action films …. he’s picking and choosing the right parts in the same way Will Smith did for the bulk of his career. And you don’t pick to do a film like Big Trouble in Little China like Johnson is going to attempt without knowing that it’s going to be done properly.
It’s the one thing that has marked his career since The Tooth Fairy. Johnson wouldn’t take on something like this if it wasn’t for something grand he has in mind. Everything he’s done has been with a purpose: to make him a bigger star than before. It’s why he hasn’t taken any massive chances as an actor, like playing a gay actor/bodyguard in Be Cool, in a long time. Dwayne Johnson is minimizing any risks he could otherwise take as an actor and is now finding fairly guaranteed hits every time out.
It even explains why he’d be in a superhero film.
Look at the remake of Point Break, which might as well be called “This film sucks.” It’s essentially taken a film about an FBI agent taking down bank robbers into an FBI agent taking down radical left wing terrorists who snowboard. That’s usually what happens when you don’t have someone carefully managing their career for the right project.
Stuff for General George S. Pimpage, Esq
I reviewed Healing on DVD.
I also took a look at Entourage and Spy, recently into theatres.
And now on MMC … we learn to deadlift with Ed Coan.
If you want to pimp anything email it to me with a good reason why. It helps to bribe me with stuff, just saying ….
A Movie A Week – The Challenge
This week’s DVD Netflix Viewing – Hot Girls Wanted
The one downside to being an adult film star is that the industry chews its talent up and spits them out fairly quickly. No quicker does it do so than with the newest hot genre of adult film, “pro-am” porn. It’s basically the “barely legal” style that once populated adult magazines that has turned into a genre. Getting girls who are just turning 18, look young and ready/willing to do porn is a full time business for a lot of sleazy people. Hot Girls Wanted follows a handful from the Hussie Models group in Florida.
We essentially get a year in the life from a handful of wannabe starlets looking to become the next big thing in porn. We get a view into this world from “Stella May,” a cheerleader who gave up going to college (and being a cheerleader) for the glamorous world of adult films. Going in the odds are against her; the average girl in the genre lasts under three months and lasts maybe a year at most if they can’t make the transition from “barely legal” style porn actor to regular porn actor.
It’s one that almost all of these girls can’t make … and yet every year a new crop of high school graduates comes to make their name in a world that will leave them damaged. And that’s what the film shows. Stella May goes from a fairly well adjusted young woman with the world ahead of her to someone who, in the span of a year, has seemingly aged a decade with a good chunk of her soul dead by the end of it. She exits the industry to go work as a waitress in small town Texas, living with her boyfriend and looking very much like she’d been used up. The innocent teenager is long gone …. its an aging that leaves her looking like she smoked a carton of day in between making meth and a bottle of Jack Daniels for a year straight.
That’s the big thing about the film; it shows just how damaging being in that industry is. It’s also the one thing we’ve seen lately in documentaries lately. There’s a number of films about life after adult films, and how damaging the industry is to both men and women, and this one feels much worse than the others on an emotional basis because these aren’t fully formed adults making a decision to change their lives for potentially significantly worse. These are kids, nothing more, and it’s hard to think they have the emotional maturity to handle something like this.
It makes for interesting viewing because no matter what one thing keeps popping into your mind. No matter what these ladies do with their lives, up to and including curing cancer or run for President of the United States, for as long as the internet exists someone will be able to find a video of them with the title of them with word “facial abuse’ or “virgin gets it hard.”
I can’t imagine that any of these girls realize fully that their grandchildren will see that grandma got double stuffed for money, you know?
Strongly recommended.
What Looks Good This Weekend, and I Don’t Mean the $2 tall boys of Red Fox and community college co-eds with low standards at the Fox and Hound
Jurassic World – Chris Pratt saves the day from dinosaurs.
Skip it – So far this looks like a CGI nightmare of a film.
Scott “Kubryk” Sawitz brings his trademarked irreverence and offensive hilarity to Twitter in 140 characters or less. Follow him @ScottSawitz .
