Art Show: Science!

Journey to the Center of the Earth drill



By Peter Montgomery. [Brass Goggles]

Hulk



By Amanda Conner. [Listen to Jimmy. Link is NSFW.]

Rogue



By Caanan Grall.

Alpha Flight



By Phil Jimenez. [Comic Book Resources by way of Alpha Flight Collector]

Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008: Greg Evigan)

This is the second time I've opened a Netflix package and discovered that I'd ordered an Asylum film. I need to be more observant, obviously.

Not that I'll never watch another Asylum movie, but this is also the second time I've been kind of excited to watch something, seen the Asylum logo, and gone, "Ohhh. Crap." I just need to have my expectations adjusted to the appropriate level before I open those envelopes.

Continuing our journey through the cinematic Journeys to the Center of the Earth (the previous ones are here and here), we get to this attempt to cash in on last year's big-screen Brendan Fraser version. The Asylum wasn't the only one doing that, but they're certainly the worst. (We'll talk about the other, much better copy-cat soon.)

The Asylum's version borrows heavily enough from At the Earth's Core that it could just as easily have taken that name had it not been hoping to cash in on the popularity of a Brendan Fraser flick. Greg Evigan plays a scientist named Joseph Harnet who's developed a way of transporting military troops through the center of the earth to locations on the other side of the planet. Handy, right? Unfortunately, one of his squads - an all-girl squad, I might add - gets trapped in the center of the earth and needs rescuing.

The first borrow from At the Earth's Core is the design of the center of the earth. Instead of a series of massive caves it's a wide open expanse that we're told has a rock ceiling somewhere above the clouds. I've got no problem with that - in fact, I like it a lot more than dark, dull caves - but I imagine the choice has less to do with style and more to do with the cost of filming in certain locations.

At any rate, we're never really told what went wrong with the transporter, because the movie doesn't care. All we need to know is that there are hot girls in danger and Evigan's got to save them. Enter his ex-wife (the hero always has to work with his ex-wife in Asylum movies), another scientist who's invented an experimental drilling machine (the other nod to At the Earth's Core), and whose sister Kristen just so happens to command the Hot Chick Unit.

The movie's then divided into two simple storylines. Kristen has to keep her team of supermodel soldiers alive while being chased by (horribly fake, but this is Asylum so we're used to that) giant spiders and a T-Rex. Meanwhile Evigan and Wife bore (pun intended) through the earth's crust to try to rescue the girls. This involves their sitting in a cockpit and arguing for most of their story, but things do get dangerous the closer they get to the core.

I almost hate to rag on the acting and writing. Like with the effects, you just really shouldn't expect much from an Asylum movie, so it's no good pretending to be disappointed. But really, if you're going to make your crack military unit consist entirely of beautiful women (and I'm in full support of that), at least go to the effort to make them seem like a military unit and less like contestants from America's Next Top Model. The women on the team are so shallow and bickering that you never for a second take them seriously. And their leader Kristen's response to it all is to ignore it, so when Harnet tells someone that she's a "natural leader" it's a horrible - though unintentional - lie. If we're to pretend that the writers actually knew what they were doing, Harnet's a lousy judge of leadership potential. But what's sad is that I'm pretty sure the writers thought they were writing a competent leader.

All that said, the T-Rex and giant spiders (crappy as they were) were kind of cool.

Two out of five sexy co-ed soldiers.

Journey to the Center of the Earth (1989)

I could write for the next hundred years and not be able to adequately convey how stinky this pile of poop is. Don't let the cool-looking creatures on the box fool you. They're barely in the movie and even then only in a dream sequence.

The story's about a young, English girl named Crystina who's wanted her entire life to be a nanny. It's all she's ever dreamed of. Unfortunately, she's not very good at it and is just about ready to call it quits when she gets an offer to watch some rich person's kid in Hawaii. So, desperate for any assignment she can get, off to Hawaii she goes, but it's not really a kid she's supposed to watch... it's a dog. I forget why the punk rock star who owns the dog needs a dog-sitter, but he does and for some reason he called all the way to England to get one. Those crazy rock stars.

Meanwhile in the same Hawaiian hotel, three rich kids named Richard, Bryan (played by the kid from Weird Science who isn't Anthony Michael Hall), and Sara are visiting the island with their neglectful parents. Apparently, they come here every year and have a tradition of going off up into the mountains to hang out in one particular cave. In a "comedy" of errors though, Crystina - with a boy's haircut that would've irritated me even in the '80s (and I had a mullet for crying out loud) - is in front of the hotel as the rich kids are driving off and an inattentive valet puts her doggie in the back of the kids' jeep.

There's a lot of neglectfulness and inattentiveness required to keep the plot moving in this thing. Crystina hires a cab to follow the jeep, but once they all reach the mountains, she gets out without telling the cab not to drive away and strand her in the middle of nowhere. Because you know you have to tell cab drivers these things. So, oopsie, now she's stuck on whatever adventure the kids get into, which entails going just inside the cave to sit around and do nothing. Except the dog runs off and little Sara chases after him and the older kids all have to go after Sara and the dog...

Only Sara ends up sort of safe while Crystina, Richard, and Bryan (and maybe the dog; I forget what happens to it) get trapped by a cave-in and have to keep walking deeper towards the center of the Earth where they worry about what creatures they might find there (see above). I say Sara is "sort of" safe because we never really see her again. Having got the "important" characters trapped into the plot, the movie quickly tosses her aside and forgets all about her.

Eventually, the gang discovers the lost civilization of Atlantis. But not a cool lost civilization of Atlantis. Oh no. This is a civilization made up of people who weren't quite good enough for Road Warrior, Escape from New York, or Poison videos. And they're led by the least intimidating evil general you've ever seen: a woman with no facial expression, an even worse haircut than Crystina's, and an eyepatch. Eyepatches can be cool, but this one's working way too hard to make up for the failure of everything else about the character.

At this point, the movie becomes about Atlantis' plan to take over the surface world and the kids have to stop it. I couldn't have been more bored. There's a brief moment of almost-fun as Emo Phillips plays a mad scientist, but they don't give him any good lines and it's a wasted cameo.

And speaking of cameos, the most recognizable name in the credits was Kathy Ireland, but if she had any speaking lines in the movie, I was sleeping through them. She plays a woman who came to Atlantis from the surface a while back and somehow (I never quite figured this out, but again, I was zoning out a lot in the last half-hour) instigated the non-intimidating general's plans to attack our world. So, she gets talked about a lot and we see pictures of her, but I couldn't swear that she's actually in the movie.

I learned later that this movie was a sequel to the movie Alien from L.A. in which Kathy Ireland apparently does star as a young woman who goes to the center of the world, finds Atlantis, and meets the same lame-o general. I find that a little weird, especially because Ireland's character is named Wanda Saknussemm. And according to IMDB, she goes to Atlantis looking for her father, an archaeologist named Arnold Saknussemm.

Now, I still haven't read Jules Verne's book, but there's an Arni Saknussemm in the 1959 version of Journey to the Center of the Earth, so obviously the filmmakers were thinking of Verne as they made Alien from L.A. I wonder if they had the sequel in mind as they made it or if they just used Saknussemm's name as an homage and that suggested the sequel later on. I don't really care, but I wonder.

At any rate, now I kind of want to see Alien from L.A. and see if it's at least enjoyable schlock. Because its sequel certainly wasn't.

One out of five non-existent cave monsters.

The Awesome List: Hercules, Wild West King Arthur, pirates, Picoult's Wonder Woman, more Bourne, Hulk toys, and more

Hercules and King Arthur of the Wild West



There's a new comics publisher in town called Radical Publishing. Their first two books are a dark, 300-esque vision of Hercules and a Western retelling of the King Arthur legend called Caliber. The art for both looks great and they're offering the first issue of each for only a buck. Definitely gonna have to try these out.

Pieces of Eight

Komikwerks has a new webcomic about pirates.

Journey to the Center of the Earth

Technophobiac Sci-Fi has a review of Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D starring Brendan Fraser.

Fast Ships, Black Sails

Night Shade books has a pirate anthology coming out later this year. Contributors include Michael Moorcock and Elizabeth Bear.

Defending Jodi Picoult



I don't know if it's the desire to give a best-selling novelist the benefit of the doubt or what, but it's in vogue lately in blogland to excuse Jodi Picoult for writing a lousy run on Wonder Woman. I'm honestly not trying to pick on Picoult here, because for all I know she's a very talented writer. She just wasn't the right one for Wonder Woman. And it's not because DC editorial tied her hands.

And I'm not trying to pick on Heidi Meeley either. She's the one who got me thinking about this again, but she's also just the latest to excuse Picoult's not understanding the character and put the blame on Amazons Attack. But a good couple of issues before she started having to work in the Amazons Attack story, Picoult was portraying Wonder Woman as a self-doubting, fish-out-of-water character. Yes, forcing a lame crossover idea on Picoult only made it worse, but let's not pretend that she would've been great for the series if only she'd been left to her own devices.

Fourth Bourne

Universal's contemplating another Bourne sequel.

Marvel Adventures: Super-Heroes

Marvel's Marvel Adventures line for kids are some of my favorite comics right now. They're not so stuck in trying to be all "epic" and "relevant," but are focusing more on just being big, fun, and adventurous. So, news of a new MA title showcasing "characters that don’t have their own book, or team-ups of characters that do" is welcome news indeed.

Hulk toys

Remember that Comics Reporter post I liked so much? Here are some other, just-as-questionable, Hulk toys coming out at the same time.