You do not need an incredibly magnetic blogger with great gams (hello) to tell you how bad everything is right now. COVID-19… or as I like to call it, The Dread Virus, because it makes all of this feel more cinematic, if not less terrifying… is impacting our world in a ridiculous number of ways. Small ways (harder to get a Bloomin’ Onion), medium ways (Mom’s using the word “Oriental” again), and ways that are so huge, we haven’t even begun to grasp the impact they will have upon our lives. Yes, I am talking about our Blockbuster Movies… a carnival of crap, DELAYED!!!
Sure, our nation’s movie theaters will eventually be turned into temporary shelters for a vast swath of laid-off bartenders and hair stylists (I don’t even know if that’s A JOKE), but until then… what of our sweet, sweet sequels, reboots, and franchises…? Will we never again see another rainbow? And by “rainbow,” I mean, “unasked-for Men In Black spin-off.”
Here now, a look at a few movies already affected by The Dread Virus:
No Time to Die
Original release date: April 2020
New release date: Nov. 12, 2020 (UK) / Nov. 25, 2020 (US)
The James Bond movies are too cool now, and I for one, do not care for them [shakes early-bird menu at Denny’s waitress; adjusts suspendered slacks until they rest juuust below nips]. Give me Roger Moore dressing up like a clown in Octopussy! Or Pierce Brosnan getting chased by a chainsaw helicopter with Denise Richards (playing a nuclear physicist named CHRISTMAS JONES)! Hell, even Timothy Dalton’s VERY DOUR James Bond sledded down a mountain in a cello case for some reason (80’s cocaine, most likely).
What I’m saying is that Bond movies used to be fun, and now they’re just really expensive ads for watches with a few karate kicks thrown in to keep everyone’s Uncles happy. Which, I KNOW HOW THE MACHINE WORKS, but come on. Snooze. One man’s opinion, let’s shove the entire franchise overboard and start only making movies about witches, demons, and/or axe-murdering psychopaths. THEY CAN BE SECRET AGENTS, that’s fine, whatever. Make them James Bondses for all I care. Just do something different with the franchise because the whole thing smells like a dusty crumpet.
Unrelated, I will be making my acting debut as Dusty Crumpet, sultry assassin, in the upcoming James Bond film No Time to Die, out in November! My tits are lasers!!!
A Quiet Place: Part 2
Original release date: March 2020
New release date: Unspecified date in 2020
First off, “A Quite Place 2: Quiet Harder.” THE PERFECT TITLE WAS RIGHT THERE, and they ignored it. What are they even DOING in Hollywood? John Krasinski, I’m fucking GUNNING for your career. Well, I’m criticizing your career on the internet. And also giving you money to see your movies. Goddamn you, John Krasinski.
ANYWAY, I liked A Quiet Place. It’s fun, and the silence gimmick is employed in a number of exciting ways. Granted, it REALLY doesn’t hold up to multiple viewings. Lotta plot holes in that bad boy. Instead of film stock, it’s like they used a niiiice Emmental Swiss. Folks, I worked in a deli for the last 9 years, you have no IDEA how much cheese-centric humor I’ve got in the chamber. Not the point. A Quiet Place does indeed work as a thrill delivery system, if not totally as an airtight narrative, and sometimes that’s all we need in this stupid, shit-sucking world.
Remember that part where the lady steps on a nail? Holy balls. That’s one of the most upsetting things I’ve EVER experienced in a movie, and I’ve seen Italian productions where they butcher live animals just for production value. Not saying THAT was great either, but there’s something about a nail in the foot that’s so fucking visceral and REAL that it turns my guts into gravy.
If they’ve manged to replicate that feeling in the sequel… just that one moment of true gut-liquidation… then I am truly bummed the movie has been delayed. I am always up for seeing some shit that stops me in my fucking tracks.
Mulan
Original release date: March 2020
New release date: Unspecified
The whole live-action version of Disney properties… it’s just such a capitalist back-alley mugging. Pay for the same movie, but the animals look not-quite-right, and the songs don’t sound how you remembered them, and also we’ve gotten the entertainers whose work you’ve enjoyed for its passionate integrity to PROVE they can be bought and sold just like everyone else. This is America, I get it. It is objectively a drag, but I GET IT.
Having said that, Mulan is actually not a bad candidate for the “what happens when cartoons stop getting animated, and start getting real” treatment. It mostly concerns actual humans, for one thing, and it’s not… how can I say this without getting strangled through my own Wi-Fi… the MOST beloved of Disney movies? I know it has its fans; but also, it’s not the one people really go to the fucking mattresses for; a Lion King or a Beauty & the Beast. And since those have ALREADY been desecrated, it’s time to move on to the junior varsity lineup.
It sounds like I’m being shitty to Mulan. I don’t mean to be. To tell you the absolute gospel, I’ve never actually seen it. It came out in 1998, which was well beyond my animation appreciation years; 18 year old Cdog was much more about Faces of Death bootlegs and anything showing on USA’s Up All Night. I’ve heard generally good things about Mulan, and… gotta say… the trailer for the new iteration looks pretty rad. Epic in a way most kid’s movies are not, and seemingly walking right up to the line of being too-adult for some (the main bad guys look actually pretty scary).
SO… I’m going to tentatively say it’s a loss for our collective populous that Mulan 2020 has been delayed. It would do the world some good right now to have positive Asian representations in the mainstream, and girls can always use new role models that teach the positive aspects of being a genuine ass-kicker.
Avatar 2-5
Original release date: December 2021, 2023, 2025, 2027
New release date: May not change
Ok, so maybe these won’t get affected that much. Production on said films HAS shut down, though, and I feel that’s allowance enough for me to talk shit about them in a public forum. Because… and I cannot stress this enough, and I hope I’m speaking loud enough so everyone can hear me… FUCK THE AVATAR SEQUELS. With a goddamn unauthorized blue Na’vi dildo (which is a thing you CAN buy, but SHOULD NOT Google).
James Cameron was such an excellent filmmaker. The original Terminator remains a cinematic bridge between the grindhouse-y, drive-in movie world and the land of blockbuster entertainment. Gory and weird and incredibly violent, but SO propulsive in its entertainment-giving; it holds up, ridiculously so. Terminator 2 was the PINNACLE in Big Movie Events (at least until Jurassic Park came along), Aliens was a blueprint for how-to-make-a-sequel, The Abyss was a funky little (but also very big) underwater adventure, and True Lies made us fall in love with Tom Arnold all over again. Cameron truly went into the stratosphere with Titanic, of course; snobby, Criterion-humping film aficionados like to diarrhea on Titanic mostly because it made ALL the money… ALL OF IT… but I’m here to tell you: Titanic is a good movie. Cameron’s eye for spectacle and seemingly supernatural ability to entertain the masses were fully on display in Titanic, and even at 3+ hours, it feels like journey worth taking every couple of years, just to see a top craftsman at the top of his craft, crafting topply (I haven’t had my full allotment of coffee yet).
And so… WITH ALL THOSE WONDERFUL MOVIES TUCKED INTO HIS JEANS… Cameron was, in my estimation, allowed a stupid vanity project. And if it has to be about dumbass aqua rain forest critters and the mean military men that want to steal their (checks IMDB)… UNOBTANIUM, sweet nude christ, he actually called it that… then, whatever, so be it. Plus Cameron got to jerk himself off with fancy new 3D cameras and… lenses… and… a dope microphone… Look, I don’t understand the technology. I think few people do. Point is, Cameron got to drape a shiny, sloppy CGI mess over the wooden skeleton of Dances with Wolves, and he called it Avatar, and FINE. It was FINE. Neat to see in the theaters, YES, the 3D experience was cool beans, but that’s IT. We’re DONE. Nothing needs to be said about Avatar ever again.
But… fuck… like so many men before him… Cameron got greedy. Cameron wanted MORE. More, to the tune of FOUR MORE AVATAR MOVIES. I understand that he has made a lot of money for Hollywood over the years, but my god. My actual fucking unholy stinky thickly armored god. How far up one’s own butthole must a man travel before FOUR MORE AVATAR MOVIES sounds like a worthy investment of millions and millions and millions of dollars??? The depths of said butthole must TRULY be The Abyss, amiright… James Cameron career joke, nailed it.
No one is excited for these movies. No one wants this. Sure… people will go see them out of morbid curiosity or boredom or because of very specific sexual predilections… but not enough people are THAT curious, bored, and/or horny. These movies are going to be a financial DISASTER. An artistic NADIR for a man who’s basically had no valleys. It’s the worst idea! IT’S THE WORST IDEA!!! James Cameron, buddy, turn back!!! Take the delay as a sign!!! Pivot to a True Lies sequel, stat!!! TOM ARNOLD NEEDS YOU.