And, In Conclusion -- Delgo
Pete Holland Jr.
other post about it. ;-)
Art is a risk. Always will be. Any time someone does art for public
consumption of any kind, they are basically saying, "I am confident I
can engage an audience and get the reaction I want." And this is
borne of some sense that the artist knows what the audience wants to
see, hear, or experience.
Where movies tend to fly off the rails is when this notion gets
misguided. Typically, these are movies borne purely of ego, where the
person thinks that THEY are what the audience wants to see, and
everything else that makes a movie a movie becomes an afterthought.
Tom Green was so convinced he knew funny he made Freddy Got Fingered,
my personal Challenger Deep for Worst Movie I Have Ever Seen. William
Shatner was so convinced of his appeal as Kirk that he made Star Trek
5, which I personally regard as a fanfic writ large. These are
projects conceived of and executed as a celebration of how wonderful
the central figure in the production is, and expected an adoring
public to join in the lovefest. And it didn't work out that way.
This does not apply to all bad movies, mind you. The other side of
the Bad Movie Derailed is when people making movies genuinely love
movies. They aren't going along thinking they are the reason movies
are great. They know the art form. They understand the art form.
And they engineer a movie that features everything they understand
makes a movie great. They put in all the elements they think are
classic, all the plot elements they think will work the audience, all
into one movie.
And it bombs.
At the risk of disappointing those who think I genuinely have a handle
on movies, one of my favorites is Plan 9 From Outer Space. It's one
of those movies that I just cannot view harshly or with the same eyes
I view regular movies with. Plan 9 was clumsily executed, sure. But
it was made by someone genuinely trying to make a good movie, not out
of ego, but out of enjoyment and understanding of what B flicks were.
I maintain that, had Plan 9 spent a little more time working on the
script and done more that just one take ("Will you quit scratching
your nose with the barrel of your gun?!?"), a decent -- not great, but
decent -- scifi B movie could have emerged. So I watch the movie with
something akin to sympathy, as if I was making a B movie and trying to
do the best I could with what I had.
This is where reviewing movies becomes a drag. For example, Paris
Hilton is always fun to kick around. I only watched House Of Wax up
until she got whacked, then left the theater, having gotten what I
paid to see. The Hottie And The Nottie was so beyond terrible, I not
only had no qualms about being vicious about it, I relished being
vicious about it. But movies like Plan 9, I feel guilty bringing any
snark to bear on it. Maybe it's not fair to the filmmakers. Or maybe
I'm sympathetic to them.
Which brings us to Delgo, a movie that I had to rush out and see after
the weekend reports came in. I remember seeing the trailer before
Igor and feeling distinctly underwhelmed. In fact, I thought it was a
teaser for something coming out next summer, as the visuals didn't
look as refined as I usually expect from a blockbuster CGI movie. It
came out over the weekend, and I didn't even know it until Monday,
when it entered the record books for worst opening in wide release
ever with barely a half mil. I was unsure of the fate of the movie,
having seen Surf Ninjas and Postal vanish after a weekend, not even
making it through the week. A quick check revealed that no theater
within about two hours of me would have the movie as of Friday. The
movie's production made me wonder if I would even see it at the second
runs or on video. Before it possibly vanished into the ether, I had
to see it, if for no other reason than to prove to myself the movie
existed.
The movie was independently made by Fathom Studios based out of
Atlanta, Georgia. This has been ten years in the making at a cost of
$40 mil (and with a voice cast that probably had more star power back
when it was selected than it does now. Val Kilmer? Freddie Prinze
Jr.? Kelly Ripa?). It was borne of a dream to make an animated movie
without Dreamworks or Disney attached. I shudder to think what kind
of cut Freestyle Releasing got. $511 920. That was the opening
weekend haul. The only other movies I know of that pulled less than a
mil on opening weekend are Cool As Ice and the Shaquille O'Neal
wipeout Steel. And if you adjust for inflation, that means more
people paid to watch a poser rapper or a guy who can't rap, act, or
play basketball than this movie. I may as well say I had a private
screening, as no one was in the theater with me. The attendants, I
think, were amazed I sat through the whole thing.
Like Eragon and Halo, Delgo cribs a bunch of elements from other cool
franchises and tries to stitch them together into its own world.
There are two sentient races living in this fantasy world, the
lizardish Lockni and the fae-like Nohrin. Sedessa, the sister of the
Nohrin king, wants power, and gets busted trying to murder her
brother's family. Flash forward (quite literally) fifteen years.
Sedessa has recruited one of the king's highest guards to help
overthrow him. Her plan is to start the Lockni and Nohrin fighting a
war, and have her crew clean up while everyone is distracted. To
touch this off, she arranges to have the king's daughter Kyla
kidnapped, and frames Delgo and his buddy Filo for it. Along with a
disgraced Nohrin general, they uncover the plot and seek to save Kyla
and avert the war.
I had two immediate impressions of the movie. The first was that the
directing really lacked the scope and vision needed to make this
work. The camerawork is more suited to a DTV flick than a theatrical
release, and it really doesn't help sell what you are seeing on the
screen. The second was that, while the film was trying to tell a
serious story, it fills it with that horrendous bad movie cliche, the
Odious Comic Relief. Filo can't shoot a slingshot, alerts troops to
Delgo's presence, knocks himself out when the king needs to be
rescued...he's Jar Jar Binks 2.0. Sedessa has two assistants, one
that exists for the now-requisite burp and fart jokes, and another
(completely wasting Eric Idle's talent) whose "humor" comes from
malapropisms, including his appearance in the stinger at the end of
the credits.
The movie itself mixes a bunch of really obvious moral lessons
regarding racism, violence, war, maturity, and so on. But it handles
the balance really badly. One scene, where Kyla and Delgo are in a
cave bonding, immediately flips to him berating the Nohrin in a way
that had me wondering where that came from. Delgo thinks the
mysticism of his people is a bunch of unnecessary bunk until he finds
a use for it, then he respects it. Kyla figures out the traitor in
her father's court in a cliched way. SPOILER ALERT: during the
climax, Sedessa is rescued by Delgo, showing what a great guy he is.
But she isn't killed by Delgo or Kyla, but when the floor gives out
under her, giving her her just desserts of death for her crimes while
the heroic central figures remain pure because they may have wanted to
kill her, but they didn't (see also the climax for Disney's Lion
King).
These cliches, I can see why they are in there, as the reason they are
cliches is that audiences groove to them. But with so many of them,
you become aware that everything is there basically based on
popularity. It pulls you out of the movie, because you are aware of
the manipulation involved instead of following the protagonist. Not
that that would work, either. As we are talking cliches, the
characters really aren't that involving. It doesn't help that the
movie sets up its world with a very fast introduction featuring a
narrator, but when the plan to find and rescue Kyla starts with the
march to war as the backdrop, suddenly, the speed drops. It's like
the B story was intentionally pacing itself so that Delgo and crew in
the A story could do what they needed to do and still dovetail with
them for the climax.
The music? It's also cliched. There are several parts that sound
like they would fit into a Highlander movie. But there's nothing
really distinct here. Same goes for the animation. The scenary looks
nice. It doesn't "pop", but it does look nice. But the character
models seem off. They are different, but not particularly
imaginitive, and they don't emote very well. The movements are stiff
and look like stop motion dolls instead of 3D models. Even the voice
acting gets only an "adequate." Final Fantasy 7 was finished long
before this, and was (and still is) leaps and bounds ahead of this
movie.
Delgo is simply not a good movie, but I can't bring myself to make my
statements any stronger than that. I don't want to dump on the
filmmakers and their earnestness, but I really can't recommend this
film to anyone. With a little more effort in the script, it could
have really been something. Good writing saves things from their
limitations all the time, as Hoodwinked and Clerks demonstrate. But
in order for it to be good, it takes more than just what people react
positively to, it takes skill. Don't forget, I can go to the art
supply store and buy bristol and high quality pencils, but I will
never be Frank Cho. I understand how people can look at CGI animation
and think anyone can do it and make money. It just doesn't work out
that way all the time, and Delgo got nailed for it.
Derek Janssen
> The movements are stiff
> and look like stop motion dolls instead of 3D models. Even the voice
> acting gets only an "adequate." Final Fantasy 7 was finished long
> before this, and was (and still is) leaps and bounds ahead of this
> movie.
Do you mean "FF:Spirits Within", or the Playstation 1 game?
(Since the scenery and animation *did* have that distinct Final Fantasy
X/X-2 look to it, which was the main complaint...)
Derek Janssen
eja...@verizon.net
Pete Holland Jr.
No, I meant the PS1 game, although Spirits Within also runs rings
around Delgo.