RADNESS VS. YOUR SANITY!
A Paul W.S. Anderson Retrospective
If the world existed in a galaxy weaved from the chocolate covered wishes of fairies, we would all live lives as fulfilling as Paul W.S. Anderson's. But the galaxy is not spun from fairie magic. In fact, the only fairies that even exist in our unfulfilling lives have their own TV show where they yell at you until your apartment to matches your underwear. No, the savage hell we live in is one where Orson Welles gets black-balled from Hollywood for the duration of his life after making what is now hailed as the greatest film of all time. It's one where creative geniuses like Alan Moore have to sit back while some of his most recognized work is torn to shreds by Sean Connory and his heartless team of special effects demons.
But Paul Anderson is blessed by the hand of God. Not only is he a filmmaker, something that any number of us would kill to be and probably never will be, but he has had almost complete creative control over some of the shittiest movies to ever grace a bargain bin. What this man has done to gain a divine gift that hardly any of the industry's top names have tasted is unknown to me. But I do know that the universe has a sense of humor that puts mine in the hospital with fifty broken ribs and a torn asshole.
MORTAL KOMBAT
Paul Anderson's first American movie was something that should have been his last American movie: a video game adaptation. This genre has maintained a steady rate of 100% doom for everyone involved in all previous efforts for one very good reason: you don't need a good plot to pick up a controller and beat the shit out of your friend or shoot a zombie. This is not so for the limited interactivity of film. But despite those daunting odds and the added handicap of Christopher Lambert, Paul Anderson did the unthinkable. His video game movie was totally rad. Setting the pace almost immediately, the film didn't waste time trying to sell you on a paper-thin plot when it was repeatedly selling your face on some of the best fight scenes America had ever seen at that point. A seventeen year old me was reported seeing it in theaters at least four times.
The cast of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation tries not to laugh while posing as their stupid video game counterparts.
EVENT HORIZON
Scene: Producer's office
Paul Anderson: Hey, I just read this script and I think I want to shoot it.
Producer: Oh yeah? What's it about?
PA: It's a haunted house movie.
Producer: Cool.
PA: Wait, I'm not finished. It's in space.
Producer: What? The house is in space?
PA: Yeah. I mean no! The house is a spaceship. But it's haunted because it was in Hell for awhile.
Producer: Hm. Well, here's a blank check. Have fun, kiddo.
UnnecessaryZ: Fucking SWEET, dude!
Event Horizon's Space Corpse #1 is pretty sure the limb loss is in violation of his Screen Actors Guild contract.
SOLDIER
I'm pretty sure that most of you didn't see this movie because I'm almost certain the people involved in making it treated it like a drunken one night stand. Which basically means that upon seeing it in the morning, they did their best to forget about it and make sure none of their friends found out what they had done. To sum it up, it's a film about a rejected super-soldier getting dumped on a garbage planet while at the same time stripping Kurt Russel of his John Wayne like appeal. I think it's also worth metioning that fellow Paul Anderson, the maker of Boogynights started using his initials so that people wouldn't mistake him for the Paul Anderson that made Soldier.
Kurt Russel has more pressing matters to contend with before he escapes from Trashacron. Like that spaceship exploding from his face.
RESIDENT EVIL
Never in my life have I seen a zombie movie that I didn't want to finish. And you're looking at a guy who is still trying to figure out who stole his copy of Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town. It was almost as if Paul Anderson was standing on top of a mountain, daring the gods to strike him down when he agreed to write and direct another video game movie. Too bad the gods answered his suicidal plee, because this movie sucked hard. Don't get me wrong, a girl beating a pack of zombie dogs with nothing but karate kicks fucking ass, but for some reason I expected more from Paul. If anyone else had done it, it might have been cool, but I think he should have tried to at least top his previous fight scene between a Hollywood movie star and a fire-breathing ninja with a skull face.
Hoards of fans swarm over Mila Jojavich in Resident Evil II: Gimme My Money Back, Whore
ALIENS VS PREDATOR
And here we have it. After nearly ten years of studios blindly sinking money into the enigma known as Paul W.S. Anderson, we are made to realize that they have no intention of ever stopping. It's refreshing to see he hasn't lost his touch for completely retarded set-ups. The whole Predators-hunting-aliens-molded-our-ancestrial-heritage is almost as bad as the new Predator video game in which the intergalactic hunter fights 1920s bootleggers. That coupled with the fact that the hour and a half movie features roughly fifteen minutes of hot Alien on Predator action was enough to make me wish I had a family to beat. I was confused at first because I thought I accidentally walked into a movie called Empowered Black Girl Rises Above II: You Go Girl.
The film's former tag-line "Whoever wins, we lose", although unintentionally accurate, was changed to the less subtextual "Whoever wins, you still paid to see our shitty movie."
WHERE IS PAUL NOW?
The rumor mill has placed Paul behind the wheel of a possible remake to one of my favorite movies of all time: Death Race 2000. I am completely confident that he'll find some way to change the plot so that our modern society was shaped by ancient machine-gun mounted race cars.
A Paul W.S. Anderson Retrospective
If the world existed in a galaxy weaved from the chocolate covered wishes of fairies, we would all live lives as fulfilling as Paul W.S. Anderson's. But the galaxy is not spun from fairie magic. In fact, the only fairies that even exist in our unfulfilling lives have their own TV show where they yell at you until your apartment to matches your underwear. No, the savage hell we live in is one where Orson Welles gets black-balled from Hollywood for the duration of his life after making what is now hailed as the greatest film of all time. It's one where creative geniuses like Alan Moore have to sit back while some of his most recognized work is torn to shreds by Sean Connory and his heartless team of special effects demons.
But Paul Anderson is blessed by the hand of God. Not only is he a filmmaker, something that any number of us would kill to be and probably never will be, but he has had almost complete creative control over some of the shittiest movies to ever grace a bargain bin. What this man has done to gain a divine gift that hardly any of the industry's top names have tasted is unknown to me. But I do know that the universe has a sense of humor that puts mine in the hospital with fifty broken ribs and a torn asshole.
MORTAL KOMBAT
Paul Anderson's first American movie was something that should have been his last American movie: a video game adaptation. This genre has maintained a steady rate of 100% doom for everyone involved in all previous efforts for one very good reason: you don't need a good plot to pick up a controller and beat the shit out of your friend or shoot a zombie. This is not so for the limited interactivity of film. But despite those daunting odds and the added handicap of Christopher Lambert, Paul Anderson did the unthinkable. His video game movie was totally rad. Setting the pace almost immediately, the film didn't waste time trying to sell you on a paper-thin plot when it was repeatedly selling your face on some of the best fight scenes America had ever seen at that point. A seventeen year old me was reported seeing it in theaters at least four times.
The cast of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation tries not to laugh while posing as their stupid video game counterparts.
EVENT HORIZON
Scene: Producer's office
Paul Anderson: Hey, I just read this script and I think I want to shoot it.
Producer: Oh yeah? What's it about?
PA: It's a haunted house movie.
Producer: Cool.
PA: Wait, I'm not finished. It's in space.
Producer: What? The house is in space?
PA: Yeah. I mean no! The house is a spaceship. But it's haunted because it was in Hell for awhile.
Producer: Hm. Well, here's a blank check. Have fun, kiddo.
UnnecessaryZ: Fucking SWEET, dude!
Event Horizon's Space Corpse #1 is pretty sure the limb loss is in violation of his Screen Actors Guild contract.
SOLDIER
I'm pretty sure that most of you didn't see this movie because I'm almost certain the people involved in making it treated it like a drunken one night stand. Which basically means that upon seeing it in the morning, they did their best to forget about it and make sure none of their friends found out what they had done. To sum it up, it's a film about a rejected super-soldier getting dumped on a garbage planet while at the same time stripping Kurt Russel of his John Wayne like appeal. I think it's also worth metioning that fellow Paul Anderson, the maker of Boogynights started using his initials so that people wouldn't mistake him for the Paul Anderson that made Soldier.
Kurt Russel has more pressing matters to contend with before he escapes from Trashacron. Like that spaceship exploding from his face.
RESIDENT EVIL
Never in my life have I seen a zombie movie that I didn't want to finish. And you're looking at a guy who is still trying to figure out who stole his copy of Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town. It was almost as if Paul Anderson was standing on top of a mountain, daring the gods to strike him down when he agreed to write and direct another video game movie. Too bad the gods answered his suicidal plee, because this movie sucked hard. Don't get me wrong, a girl beating a pack of zombie dogs with nothing but karate kicks fucking ass, but for some reason I expected more from Paul. If anyone else had done it, it might have been cool, but I think he should have tried to at least top his previous fight scene between a Hollywood movie star and a fire-breathing ninja with a skull face.
Hoards of fans swarm over Mila Jojavich in Resident Evil II: Gimme My Money Back, Whore
ALIENS VS PREDATOR
And here we have it. After nearly ten years of studios blindly sinking money into the enigma known as Paul W.S. Anderson, we are made to realize that they have no intention of ever stopping. It's refreshing to see he hasn't lost his touch for completely retarded set-ups. The whole Predators-hunting-aliens-molded-our-ancestrial-heritage is almost as bad as the new Predator video game in which the intergalactic hunter fights 1920s bootleggers. That coupled with the fact that the hour and a half movie features roughly fifteen minutes of hot Alien on Predator action was enough to make me wish I had a family to beat. I was confused at first because I thought I accidentally walked into a movie called Empowered Black Girl Rises Above II: You Go Girl.
The film's former tag-line "Whoever wins, we lose", although unintentionally accurate, was changed to the less subtextual "Whoever wins, you still paid to see our shitty movie."
WHERE IS PAUL NOW?
The rumor mill has placed Paul behind the wheel of a possible remake to one of my favorite movies of all time: Death Race 2000. I am completely confident that he'll find some way to change the plot so that our modern society was shaped by ancient machine-gun mounted race cars.
VIEW 25 of 56 COMMENTS
al:
You can pry that book from my cold, dead, cryptographically 1337 fingers.
pinhead66:
Dude...I just need to come to the East Coast so we can fuck some shit up! That entry was enlightening and filled with all sorts of hilarity.