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John Nowak
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1017 Posts |
 Posted - 09/30/2005 : 9:39:50 PM
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I want to hurt France.
I spent two years there, and never expressed any particular animosity before. I was not treated badly there. I had strangers walking up to me and helping me with my map, in English. How could you hate a city like that?
However, they made a movie. And for this, there must be a reckoning.
Kaena: The Prophecy
It starts, inauspiciously enough, with:
Xilam Films Presents
Ever heard of "Xilam Films?" Neither did IMDB. I found their website; I had never heard of anything they had posted there, although I admit the proposed TV series about a friendship between a New York Mayor's son and a girl who had been raised by wild animals in Central Park sounds promising. So, "Xilam" probably means "Not a powerhouse." Even the games they have in their "Shipping Now" pages haven't been released yet.
Wait; Xilam Films, in concert with Studio Root Canal. Sorry, I mean "Studio Canal." Opening credits haven't even opened yet and I'm already retreating into more pleasant memories.
We open on a view of a blue globe from space; but our hopes that this is a Universal release and so might be Frankenstein are cruelly dashed when the globe refuses to turn into Earth. Instead, we zip along in low orbit, enjoying the ... clouds.
Yes, clouds in space. As I was girding my loins to doubt this, I realized that the clouds were actually nebulae, reminding me of the Crab Nebula scenes in Passport to the Universe. Oh, why can't I go to the Hayden Planetarium instead? That's two better films I could be watching now.
Then, for a moment, we see that there is a second blue planet next to the first. I mean, right next to the first. If these planets are Earth-sized, they're literally about three hundred miles apart. Curiously, they remain spherical. You immediately get the sense that the filmmakers think gravity stops with the atmosphere. Halo this is not.
We then zoom through the nebula, and a reddish-brown metal cylinder zooms by us. Just as you have the time to wonder if that was a spaceship, a whole cloud of rusty debris zips by. I'm making this sound a heck of a lot more coherent than it looks. The screen fills with a dirty reddish-brown spaceship, and on a second viewing it's clear that the ship is falling apart, but the first time through I didn't know if I was seeing a spaceship being blown to bits by a swarm of fighters or if it was disintegrating without any outside help.
We then zoom into the ship, past swarms of aliens screaming horribly as stuff blows up. At this point, I was thinking Evil Dead and I was wondering if a malevolent force was rushing through the ship and killing everything in sight. Midway through, our view lingers on a big blue glowing egg, so we know it is Important. We then go through the ship entirely, and in the film's first bit of unintentional humor we see it is propelled by an enormous electrical egg beater.
Then the ship blows up real good, and a space suit helmet with a head inside drifts by.
Okay, so ... what the hell? Was the ship attacked, or was it penetrated by Deadites, or did it just up and go boom? Was the head the thing that destroyed the ship, or was it part of the crew? We didn't get a good look at anyone aboard, so we don't know for sure if it's even the same species as the people on the ship.
We then cut to a mass of twisted metal on, I guess, the surface of a planet, sitting in water which looks almost as good as the fountains in Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance on the PS2. Some Scared Looking Alien Dudes (SLADs) are wading through the water, towards that Big Blue Egg Which is Important. So, apparently, part of the ship we just saw go supernova landed on one of the planets softly enough to save the crew. It would have been nice to, you know, see it happen; because right now it looks like the Blue Egg is being examined by aliens who have never seen it before. A couple of SLADs get et when the water suddenly turns into a monster and pounces on them, introducing the second of three factions: the Sap Monsters.
Seriously, we're four minutes into the film (counting credits) and already it's confusing as hell. Are the SLADs the original crew of the starship? Or is this a city? Or are these evacuees in an abandoned city? Did the water monsters blow up the ship?
Now, what actually happened is the ship crashed, some survivors made it to a planet, and were eaten. Spend five minutes thinking of how you would tell that visually, and rest assured that whatever you imagined would make more sense than the last four minutes of film. The directors of this film either lacked the basic story-telling skill to get that across, or they thought it would be artistic to screw up the montage. This is like spending a day speaking only Pig Latin -- everyone would understand you, but they'd be annoyed.
A lot of films, like Zardoz, pretend to Deep and Serious meaning through the simple tactic of telling a simple story in a convoluted manner; I don't know if they were going for the same thing here, or if they just couldn't think of a coherent storyboard.
The last surviving SLAD stands worshipfully in front of the Blue Egg for about half a minute. A cage around the Blue Egg closes. Yes, that makes sense -- you wouldn't want to raise the shields around your Important Blue Egg until after the spaceship it was on exploded and crashed onto a planet. Assuming you're an idiot.
Then the water behind the last surviving SLAD forms into a vaguely humanoid shape, and the last surviving SLAD abruptly isn't any more. Then we get the credit for the music. Don't ask me why.
Outside the crashed ship, the image slowly morphs into a mass of brownish vines. Seriously. We don't see the vines "grow" -- everything sort of gets blurry and they come into focus. It's like someone used sophisticated image processing computers to reproduce a lap-dissolve from a 1940s Lon Chaney Jr. Wolfman movie. At the end, I was not sure if I was seeing a tree bridge the gap between two tidal-locked worlds, or a visual representation of the mighty forest of hate I have for this picture.
Opening titles.
We are now five minutes and forty five seconds into the film.
Title: Six Hundred Years Later.
There's a slow pan across HR Giger's flooded basement. We get close to the Blue Egg, then zip up the inside of a long cylinder, and close on the eyes of Dr. Aki Ross as she awakens in her spaceship. Heck, I'd rather be watching that film, even. No, actually it's Kaena, and we are given to understand that she has just had a Prophetic Dream.
Character designs are, I think a major aspect of animation. Imagine telling a story visually and being able to design, from scratch, the appearance of the actors: biology, accidents of casting, practical limits on makeup can all be ignored; everything (except technical limits on the graphics systems) can be subsumed to the goal of making a character look perfect for the part. It's an exciting prospect and explains why most well-known digitally generated characters have enormous fake breasts.
Kaena is brown. I start off with this observation because almost everything in the movie from here on will be brown. By the end of the film, I will be thinking nostalgically of the blue planets we have seen, because they are not brown. Avalon (where almost every shot is either sepia or desaturated) is a more colorful film than this one. I have seen more color in silent black and white films than we will see here. Everything looks like it has been struck by a mud beam. You would think that a tree would have leaves and stuff to do the photosynthesis thing that most of us read about in school, but no.
Kaena's eyes are brown and they are too large for her face. I am a fan of Japanese animation, and her eyes are too big for me. I can't explain this rationally so we will proceed. She has brown freckles (in a desperate rip from Final Fantasy's Aki Ross), two brown tattoos on her forehead which help make her look like some sort of insect, brown hair pulled back from her face, and impressive fake breasts which neither jiggle nor move at all. They don't hit the Lara Croft level, but then again, whose do? She's pretty close to being naked, not that I'm complaining, but she does at least wear a pretty reasonable pair of tied-down hip holsters, one for a notebook and one for a knife. You'd think that someone who lives in a tree would carry a rope and climbing gloves, but I guess not. She spends a good part of the film sliding along rough surfaces without sustaining nasty abrasions, so we must assume she has been dipped in Teflon. Par for the course, I guess.
The rendering, I have to say, is first rate -- but to my eye, her face is put together wrong, as though a vertical slice had been removed from her head. She looks vaguely weird, "ick" weird instead of "nonhuman and exotic" weird.
Anyway, we pull back, and her hands are raised above her head, as though she is surrendering to the audience. Remember, it's a French film.
Pulling further back, we rotate, and find out that ... she has had a prophetic dream while hanging upside down from a tree limb by her knees.
There are moments in films where you just have to hit pause, sit back and say, "What the hell were they thinking?" or "were they thinking at all?" in a peevish voice. Did anyone involved in the production of this film say, "I don't think it's physically possible to hook your legs over a horizontal bar and still be there after you wake up." If anything else in this film showed writing talent, I would think this was a subtle suggestion that she's not human -- or that she wasn't actually asleep.
We then pull back and see that Kaena lives in an enormous mass of thick vines which will be called a "tree" through the entire film. By "enormous" I mean vines that are several meters thick in a tight cylindrical mass several hundred miles in diameter.
Now, I've been to Paris, and they do have trees there, and they have trunks just like trees everywhere else. Maybe it's an attempt to look like a baobob. Anyway, that's nitpicking.
Kaena drops to a branch and starts running upwards.
We then cut to a bunch of men being lowered on harnesses. They wear large buckets on their backs, and dialog establishes that they are tapping the tree for sap. By a strange twist of fate, I actually spent a few weeks working on a maple sugar farm; the process is nothing like what we see happening here. The guys behind this film didn't understand how sap works, but still made sap collecting a major plot element.
In real life, you put a tap into the tree and a bucket under the tap, and then you come back a day later to find about a gallon of sap in the bucket. It comes out in drops, a thin watery liquid that just barely tastes of maple. The sap moves slowly through the tree, sort of like blood, carrying nutrients from the soil to the leaves and back down to the roots. In this film, the sap collects in nodules which are pierced and then flow into the buckets. It's more like lancing a boil than tapping a tree. Popping zits -- another activity more fun than watching Kaena.
Here I have to sort of sit back and look at what I've written. Am I really so pedantic that I'm moved to fury over a bad tree tapping scene? Probably. But I've found good things to say about films with much sillier moments. Still, the scene does advance the plot a bit -- it establishes that sap is getting harder to find. It seems the tree is dying.
Kaena, being a jerk, yells out to one of the workers to ask if he's working hard. Enode replies that Kaena knows nothing about working -- all she does is play all day. Kaena then explains that she doesn't play -- she explores, which I suppose makes it okay to mock the people who (presumably) help feed you.
Enode then says that exploring is a waste of time -- that their only duty is to serve the gods who protect them. He then takes the work party off with the sap they have collected, which are apparently an offering.
"Protect us?" Kaena mutters. "They're not doing such a great job."
This immediately puts Kaena firmly in the subgenre of SF/Fantasy films where the tribal religion is a delusion or lie challenged by the plucky hero, from Teenage Caveman on up. Now, it's a powerful trope, and it's hardly an indefensible position for a film to take, but original it is not. Already, the Plot-o-Matic on my DVD player is printing out a prediction that the priest will be an aging hypocrite, who opposes Kaena through the story, and that Kaena's explorations will discover startling truths that will save the lives of everyone but the priests and a few sacrificial friends.
Anyone want to bet? No?
Worse, this scene also puts Kaena in the camp of films where people behave the way they do in films, and not the way they do in real life. To watch this scene is to realize that the screenwriters never sat down and asked themselves, "If I were Kaena, what would I do here?"
Sap is harder to find. This sort of contradicts the notion that exploring is a waste of time, doesn't it? If you were Kaena, wouldn't you be helping the village out by telling them about any sap nodules you stumble across as you explore the tree? Or tell them where the sap nodules aren't? If you were Enode, wouldn't you think to ask her? This film has four credited writers and not one thought of this.
This is what happens when a writer forgets his characters are people trying to solve their own problems, and not toys pushed around in service of the plot.
We then return to HR Giger's flooded basement. A form emerges from the water, glowers at the Blue Egg, and announces that the Blue Egg is a monster which steals the sap, leaves her people thirsty, and makes her world a wasteland. A second form emerges, addresses the first as "my queen," argues that "these attacks are destroying our people", and that the queen must take steps to assure the continued existence of her race.
Okay, now let's pause and think this scene over.
The Blue Egg, which we saw earlier creating the tree, is also stealing sap... but trees create sap, so the Blue Egg must be stealing sap from the tree that it created, which is usually considered "harvesting", not "stealing." People don't normally accuse people of stealing the things they created in the first place, unless they're socialists, which doesn't really fit the notion of being a "queen."
So, this particular tree ... doesn't create sap. It's really a huge fungus. That explains why it doesn't have any leaves, but you gotta wonder where the sap came from in the first place.
After that important and useful scene, Kaena stares downwards into the tangled vines of the tree, closes her eyes, and jumps. She plummets a great distance and the viewers are filled with the hope that she might be killed. Unfortunately, she lands on a ramp and does a sort of skateboard-less grind to a stop. It makes you wonder how she plans on making her way back up.
Kaena comes to a stop and starts sketching what she sees -- some flying whale-like critters. She uses a notebook and draws with a bug, like in the Flintstones. This sparks the interest of an unobserved observer. This guy is shown playing peek-a-boo for the next few scenes.
Then, an enormous flying predator with a lamprey-like mouth at least ten feet across shoots out a prehensile tongue, and Kaena somehow parries the tongue with her knife. Then, for five seconds of screen time, Kaena ... struggles to keep control of her knife, while a sixty-foot long animal tries to pull it out of her hands.
Now, let's pretend we're watching Jaws. Say Chief Brody is out fishing, and Bruce grabs the bait. How many milliseconds would it take him to drop the rod and run to Kansas? If, for some reason, he fought to hold onto his rig, how long until Bruce jerks it away? Now make Bruce at least twice as long, and Chief Brody a lightly-built but athletic girl in her late teens. Kaena is putting up a fight in a tug-of-war with something the size of a five-story building. She can probably open pickle jars, too.
The scene has a demented quality to it, like a bit in a game where someone risks serious injury to keep a knife because any hit points she loses will be back the next day, while the four silvers she spent on the knife are gone for good.
Whatever. To Kaena's amazement, the fifty-foot long sky shark finally jerks her off her perch. Will everyone join me in a "Duh, Kaena!?"
She falls for four seconds (250 feet, assuming one gravity), grabs a branch and stops. Not bad -- Kaena really can open pickle jars! Sky Bruce swoops down on her, she closes her eyes, prays "Axis, protect me!" and the branch she is holding shatters and she plummets to ... a soft landing. "Axis" is the name of the tree. Wow! I guess prayer does work, if you direct it to trees instead of gods.
Getting up, she turns and faces Sky Bruce again. Thanks, Axis! Kaena Buys a Clue and runs into the thick, protecting vines of Axis. She notes that a Predator has left his knife blade embedded into a vine. Sky Bruce catches her leg with his tongue. She grabs the knife, and is pulled out horizontally, providing Fan Service, assuming she has a fan. The knife comes free, and Kaena cuts the tongue. Sky Bruce flies off, ending what will be the best-directed action sequence in the film. Maybe it was the crotch shot. Kaena regards the knife, impressed, and we immediately guess that she's never seen metal before.
Then, the film gets weird. We hear a cracked, wavering voice saying "Ilpo no move, or Marauder will get you!" while a bug scuttles around a table and a carving of a monster. Someone smashes the bug with the carving.
And in this way, we are introduced to Ilpo, a seriously battered old man who smashes bugs with statues. Kaena shows up, and through dialog we discover that he is an old explorer too, and that Kaena has chosen to follow his lead. Well, okay, I could actually buy that, so I won't mock the film too much. Ilpo warns her that she wanders too close to the Great Oblivion, and Kaena argues that since fifty-foot long Sky Bruces aren't afraid of the Great Oblivion, she shouldn't be either. If she had wings, this might be a persuasive argument. Or maybe the myth is that the Great Oblivion destroys everything that goes into it, or something. Whatever.
Which, of course, raises the question: if the Great Oblivion is supposed to be the place where Axis ends and reality stops, how can Kaena possibly walk into it unless she jumps, which seems foolhardy anyway?
Kaena gets annoyed with Ilpo, and asks him why he never told her what he saw on his own explorations. Ilpo notices her new knife, and babbles for a while. Apparently, he saw Marauder, fell out of Axis, was caught by a worm, taken to a place where "that stuff (metal) all around", and saw a "man, not man, bad!" And then he mentions seeing a blue light. The thing following Kaena is shown hearing all this, and you've got to wonder why nobody else notices him. I have to emphasize how badly this was done. Instead of being stalked by some mysterious alien, it's more like she's being followed by a Teletubby.
Kaena freaks out a bit about the blue light, asking about a "blue sun below the clouds." Hey, if you lived in a world of hazy, soft-focus brown, you'd be excited about "blue light" too. Ilpo then starts going on about "above or below, below or above" at which point Kaena starts shaking him. A trumpet then sounds -- it's time for the offering.
We get some clearer views of the thing following Kaena around. He is not human -- he resembles a bug in armor, with force-field wings. To give the film credit, you do immediately get the sense that this creature is wearing an advanced exploration suit -- sort of like a Starship Trooper without armor, but with the mobility. Still, he doesn't seem particularly stealthy and you can't help but wonder why he hasn't been spotted a dozen times by now.
We get some shots of sap flowing into a big pool, and villagers gathering for the offering, and an obvious authority figure (old, bearded... they're not even trying to be original here). Then, we see them screw up another bit of montage.
You see, the bug that's been following Kaena is actually a worm. His limbs are part of the armor, not his own. He's crawled out of the armor to follow Kaena through a tunnel. Naturally, we are not shown this, so we can't be sure that this worm we see suddenly crawling around is the same critter we saw earlier. Even when they come up with a clever idea, they muck it up.
Furthermore, the worm is of the same species that Kaena's people keep for meat. We were not shown any of these worms before, so we don't know this yet.
Then, a kid who I swear looks just like The Little Drummer Boy puts a rope around the worm's neck. The worm, naturally, yells at him. Little Drummer Boy is amazed that the worm can talk, and starts dragging it to the pen where the other worms are kept. The worm, however, clams up.
In a shot which shows Kaena's butt cleavage, she is surrounded by a gang of children who want to see any pictures she drew. The butt cleavage sort of grabbed my attention because butt covering is pretty much the first piece of clothing cultures invent. To find out why, go to a forest, take off your pants, and sit down. Kaena, however, is perfectly comfortable parking her hinder on rough bark. Whatever.
Apart from that, this is a pretty well-done scene; it's easy to imagine how fascinating villagers in general and kids in particular would find Kaena and her explorations. She tells them she'll show them her pictures if they promise to keep it a secret from the grown-ups. You're on thin ice when your protagonist suddenly reminds you of the villain in a "How to Avoid Pederasts" PSA.
Kaena then tells the kids about "another world, with a blue sun and so much sap you can swim in it" which sounds a little sticky. She's talking, of course, about HR Giger's flooded basement. She admits she hasn't seen it yet, but that she's dreamed about it (while hanging upside-down from her knees). So, Kaena is looking for the HR Giger's basement, which is where the Queen lives. Do you sort of get the feeling this isn't a very good idea?
The High Priest then gives a speech where he reminds the people that the sap is running out, that the sap is vital for their survival (if it's the only thing they can drink, yeah) and that he feels their pain, and that they have to remember to be grateful to the gods. A thought: if Kaena's people drink the sap, it's probably because they don't have any other source of water. You can't wash with sap because it's sticky, leaves a film, and attracts bugs. Can you imagine what they must smell like? Yuck. It is not for nothing that Nefertum, God of Pleasant Fragrance, was third among the gods in ancient Memphis.
Oh, I forgot. Movie. The worm then breaks out of the pen and undulates back to find his wings, because The Master will want a full report. I am personally surprised that ThE MasTer ApProVes oF suCh deVIceS.
Meanwhile, the Little Drummer Boy is being taunted by the kids because he's seen a worm that talks. Kaena tells them not to tease him, and then Little Drummer Boy asks if Kaena likes his brother. She says she does, but that he's a bit dull, while a guy about her age overhears and smiles a bit.
This wading-pool sized container of sap is then hauled up as an offering to the gods. I'd make some sort of comment here about why they're handing hundreds of gallons of sap which "is vital for their survival" off to the gods, but then I thought of potlatch and the film Rapa Nui and remembered this sort of weirdness isn't entirely unprecedented. Still, I can't watch them pulling up tons of sap in an open container without wondering if there aren't a dozen ways to do this better. Once the sap gets high enough, it starts to flow upwards for some reason.
Now, I'm going to cheat here because otherwise this won't make any sense. Later, it is revealed that this is another application of the Law of Selective Gravitation, not seen since the 1950s in bad SF films. This Law, simply put, is that as a spacecraft enters free fall, the only things which become weightless are things that can easily be lifted on wires for "humorous" effect. Here, however, the sap not only becomes weightless, but actually flows out of the container ... which somehow retains its own weight. So, gravity pulls the sap up, but the container down. Whatever.
While this is going on, a treequake breaks out. Stuff starts falling. The villagers freak out, until the priest tells them to stand still and accept their fate. Then something almost falls on him, and he ducks aside.
Now, I actually like this bit. If you must have a hypocritical swine of a religious leader, this is a wonderful way to establish it. Unfortunately, it's undercut by the fact that "hypocritical religious leader" is a cliché so overused in films like this it seems hardly worthwhile to do it well.
In another nice bit, we're told that the temple was destroyed in the treequake. Please note that the script has to tell us this because the director wasn't skilled enough to show it happening. As I said before in the crashing spaceship scene, is it really that hard to tell this visually?
I'm reminded of an old Star Trek anecdote. For the Salt Vampire episode, they needed to show a salt shaker. A prop guy bought some cool-looking futuristic salt shakers. In fact, they were so cool looking that people couldn't tell they were salt shakers. So, they used the salt shakers as part of Dr. McCoy's medical kit and swiped some condiments from Desilu's cafeteria.
The futuristic salt shakers looked cool. However, as props, they failed because they were not obviously salt shakers. Since the people making Star Trek were telling stories and communicating ideas instead of displaying a series of pretty pictures, they realized that the cool-looking salt shakers were not as good as the simple glass ones from the cafeteria.
The makers of Kaena don't get it.
Kaena goes off to confront the high priest. You can practically write this scene yourself.
Kaena's parents were apparently "impure" because they moved during an earlier treequake. The High Priest points out that the blue sun Kaena keeps talking about is just a dream, and that she's raving like Ilpo -- which, you have to admit, is pretty much true. Hilariously, Kaena claims that Ilpo is not crazy. She has a point -- I don't know how much time I've spent naming bugs "John" and mashing them with my Gold Digger Brit Diggers action figure. Okay, I guess she doesn't have a point.
Realizing that she sounds like an idiot, Kaena finally pulls out her metal knife as evidence that there are things out there the villagers know nothing about. The knife, she explains, is "harder than the hardest sap, so whoever made it was certainly not afraid of your gods."
Since "hard sap" is also known as "maple sugar candy", this isn't quite as impressive as she thinks it is, and somehow, she implies the gods might not even exist, because she found a metal knife.
Maybe this was badly translated from the original French and they meant "hardest amber," but amber is fossilized resin (not "sap") and takes several million years to form, and forms underground. Since Axis is only six hundred years old, they can't possibly have any amber. Amber, incidentally, is not particularly hard -- but living in a tree as they do, they wouldn't have contact with rocks or other hard things, so they'd think of amber as the hardest thing known.
But why couldn't she say "Harder than the hardest wood?"
And as for the bit about the makers "certainly not being afraid of your gods" ... well, that's pure non sequitur. We've seen nothing that implies that the gods dislike hard things, but apparently they do, or the rest of this scene makes no sense. The High Priest and Kaena struggle for the knife, and apparently an old man is a bit less tough than a 50-foot sky shark, because Kaena wins this time.
The High Priest claims Kaena tried to kill him. She denies it, he starts yelling, and she runs. She bolts through the crowd, holding her knife in her hand, crashing into people, and generally behaving like she's in a "Don't Run With Scissors" PSA. She bounces off of Enode, and keeps running.
Enode sees Kaena running in a panic from the High Priest's while waving a knife around, and reasonably enough starts chasing her. It's necessary to say "reasonably enough" here because these little moments where the characters in Kaena actually behave like people are sort of few and far between.
Kaena eludes Enode by going through the tunnel she used before, and the High Priest issues a warrant for her arrest.
Kaena is found by the Little Drummer Boy's brother, Zehos. Whatever flaws the film has, they do indeed give names to characters early on. Zehos mentions that he hasn't been "here" -- outside the village gates -- since they were kids together.
Zehos says he can try to explain to the High Priest, but Kaena decides she doesn't want to go back to the village, which would make more sense if she had been chased by an angry mob, I suppose. She spends some more time babbling about the different world she's looking for, because she saw it in her dreams. There's a weird and rare misfire in the animation here, with Zehos' arm looking like Cowboy Woody's, but other than that, the animation in this scene is quite nice; she's agitated without freaking out, but she knows she's in a very bad spot.
Enode reports to the High Priest that Kaena could not be found. Oddly, Enode is wearing his sap bucket in this scene. Would you wear a five gallon bucket on your hips any more than you had to? Even empty?
Enode leaves, and the sap in the well starts to take form -- turning into the amorphous guy we saw before in HR Giger's flooded basement. The High Priest goes into "We are not worthy" mode, and amorphous guy does the whole Fake God thing we've seen a dozen times before: your offerings are not sufficient, one heretic can pollute the minds of many, the penis is evil. Okay, maybe not that one. Unfortunately, the whole scene makes us wonder why the gods don't just appear before potential heretics. Remember, Kaena said she wasn't sure the gods existed and here they've apparently been appearing in front of the High Priest, and the High Priest didn't even mention this to Kaena. Stupid movie.
Back to Kaena and Zehos. First Kaena explains that Axis is alive; duh, it's a tree. Amazingly, Zehos disagrees. Uh... it's a tree. He must have noticed new growth and all. Kaena then shoots down her own credibility by saying Axis talks to her. The only reason we know Kaena isn't crazier than a rat in a tin can is that we've seen films like this before.
Kaena scores experience points in her "Jerk" subclass by getting snippy when Zehos refuses to leave his dependent brother and go into exile with her. Okay, maybe that's a little harsh; I'm sure that a good writer could have made this scene work, maybe by emphasizing how afraid she is of never having anyone to talk to again without having this come across as her grousing about how bourgeois it is to work to support your little brother. None of the four people credited here are good writers.
Still, we once again get sucked into the "What Would I Do Here?" vortex. Your friend has been exiled from your village. You have a little brother who depends on you. So you ... arrange a spot to meet once a month. No, that's what actual people would do, and we're in a world of badly-written characters who couldn't work their way around a plot problem if their lives depended on it, which they do.
The villagers make another offering of sap which is wafted up and down the Axis to the flooded basement. Maybe there's an air current or something.
The Queen declares she needs more sap. Perhaps she could start with the director. She gets into an argument with Amorphous Guy. She wants to destroy the Blue Egg which is draining their sap; he observes that they have been trying to destroy it for hundreds of years, and wants to start the next generation (wakka-ching-wow!). Hey, he's a guy.
She, not unreasonably, points out that there's no reason to start another generation if they're just going to die of sap-depravation. Unfortunately, her plan amounts to "Kill" and "Destroy." Even IDAK had a third tactic, "Crush."
Back to Kaena and Zehos. Kaena tells Zehos that she knows he needs to take care of his brother, so we'll just ascribe her earlier hissy fit to shock and grief. In some very nicely animated sequences, she drops down and away. No rendezvous is set up, because they are both idiots.
Kaena drinks from a canteen and Amorphous Guy imperiously commands, "Find her!" in his best James Earl Jones voice. Kaena sees a force smashing towards her, assumes it's Marauder, runs, falls, and knocks herself unconscious on landing.
The worm in battle armor (who, remember, watched her chased by Air Bruce without lifting a ... worms don't have fingers, but without doing anything to help) now decides he has to help her.
Unfortunately, Marauder sees the worm giving aid, and the image is sent to Amorphous Guy, who intuits that there must be "a survivor," because villagers couldn't have built the worm's armor. Because he has read ahead in the script, he doesn't say "survivors."
We then see Kaena in a form-fitting unitard on a medical table There are now two worms in armor, Assad and Gommi. And operating the controls of the medical table is Opaz, a SLAD voiced by Richard Harris in his final role. Harris died before the English language film was released.
Kaena is having a session under the Mark J Surgeon in The New You with Farrah Fawcett. Crud, even Logan's Run is a more pleasing memory than this one.
Opaz and the worms are wonderful character designs. They're expressive, and feel somehow much more real than Kaena's people. I wonder if CGI is just more suited to depicting characters who aren't quite human. Harris does an excellent job throughout. Remarkably, considering the hambone performances he put in through his film career, his voice for Opaz is dead on for a tired old man -- restrained, calm, slightly bemused when the script calls for it. His voice invests Opaz with remarkable dignity and more weight than the script really justifies.
Assad is convinced that there's something odd about Kaena, because he's seen her close her eyes and jump "as though something were guiding her." To the film's credit, Opaz observes this isn't very scientific.
Gommi and Assad get into an argument over whether Kaena's dream about a blue sun at the bottom of Axis is significant. Opaz speculates that Vecanoï survived the crash, so we have a name for the Glowing Blue Egg at last. At this point, we're not sure what Vecanoï is, and the film doesn't really enlighten us yet -- but I won't criticize it for that. It's probably better to string the audience along for a bit than have these characters explain things the other characters know. Exposition, especially in SF, is tricky.
Gommi argues that Vecanoï cannot possibly have survived: the ship was scattered into small pieces by the crash, and then in a moment of bad exposition, explains that most of the parts went into building "this place." The audience is now clued in: the ship crashed, the floating head was really a baby in a survival capsule, and they have spent the last six hundred years building the place they live.
Well, okay -- but I'd love to know how Opaz survived to adulthood on an alien planet and learned how to build a starship from scratch. For that matter, Kaena's knife is hard to explain: it doesn't look like a piece of scrap metal. It's got a long, sharp edge, and breaking metal might form a sharp point, but probably not an edge. Ceramics might break like that, but not metal. Which means, I guess, that it really is a knife, which just happened to get stuck in a tree where someone would find it six centuries later after losing their own knife. Plot contrivances don't get much lamer than this.
Nor is Gommi's argument remotely persuasive: there were survivors in the crash, including Opaz himself. It's not unreasonable that Vecanoï survived as well. An actual person in Gommi's position would probably raise a different issue entirely.
Assad is arguing, or apparently arguing, that Vecanoï (which is obviously a machine) survived the crash, and then ... broadcast dreams about itself to someone who could not recognize it. Why should it do that? So she'd look for it? Kind of a dirty trick, since it's sitting in HR Giger's flooded basement surrounded by sap monsters.
Opaz is disturbed, nonetheless, wondering how Kaena could have imagined Vecanoï. He's right, of course ... but there's no way he could possibly draw that conclusion.
Now, just to reiterate, she's seen Vecanoï in her dreams. She describes it as a "Blue sun." That's not a bad description, but it certainly isn't distinctive enough to be compelling.
Let me show you what I mean. There's a trick in writing SF: just recast a dialog scene into the present day and see if it makes any sense.
Kaena: I had a dream about a black box.
John: Why, I wonder if that might be a laptop computer ... but where could you have seen a laptop?
See? Doesn't really work.
Now, suppose instead she had dreams about "A blue sun trapped in a spider's web," or something like that.
Kaena: I had a dream about a black box.
John: A black box? What did it look like?
Kaena: It was hinged on top like my notebook, but instead of paper inside it had a glowing screen.
John: Why, I wonder if that might be a laptop computer ... but where could you have seen a laptop?
See? The scene ends in exactly the same place, but this time I don't sound like I skipped ahead in the script. It is remarkably frustrating to watch a film this big and expensive and carefully made, yet so incapable of getting simple stuff like that to sound right.
Gommi tries to point out that Kaena's dream isn't a good description of Vecanoï, but for some reason he suggests she dreamed about a "glowing blue egg," which ... is a better description of Vecanoï than "blue sun." Huh? Isn't he trying to argue in the opposite direction?
Kaena wakes up, and reasonably enough, freaks out, throwing things at the worms and calling them "Monsters of the Great Oblivion." They advance towards her, because when someone thinks you're a hostile monster you should crowd them and try to cut off their escape route, as this calms them down and convinces them you are not a threat.
Unsurprisingly, she runs like hell. First, she accidentally opens a powered door (let's say it has a proximity sensor and opens automatically), which opens onto that part of the Death Star where Luke and Leia swung across the trench. Just to make sure they drive her completely hysterical, they split up and come at her from two sides. So, she jumps across the trench and catches the track used by an elevator. She starts climbing down.
Now, here I started laughing like a maniac. They're trying to keep Kaena from killing herself accidentally, so when she starts shimmying down an elevator track, they get in the elevator above her and press the down button. Jesus, it's like they're trying to kill her and make it look like an accident.
Despite their rescue attempts, Kaena survives to get outside the building, jumps off the platform, and skids along branches until she stops, finally, at the very tip of Axis, dangling helplessly over the second planet, while she clutches the branches like a small, terrified monkey and stares down in horror. A damn nice moment. Please note that this is one of the rare sequences in the film where Kaena acts like a person instead of a character in a film, and it only works because all the other people in the scene behave like total idiots.
We then get a shot of Vecanoï to try to cover for the fact they've ... written themselves into a corner and hoping we don't notice.
So, back to the film. Kaena is now in a bed. Opaz had her rescued, and since it happened in a cutaway scene, they don't need to explain how they convinced her that they were not deliberately chasing her to her death. Not even "Take my hand. At least it's a chance." Or better, "Don't you want to know what I am? If you let go, you never will."
Gommi takes her to see Opaz, and in a nice bit, the other worms of the crew are a bit jumpy around her because her people eat their species. Gommi explains as patronizingly as possible (it's a French film, remember) that they're on a starship and they're getting ready for liftoff. To put it another way ... Opaz has spent six hundred years building a spaceship in a tree, but he hasn't sent an exploration party to the roots. Uh-huh. Naturally enough, Kaena has no idea what he's talking about, but the audience does.
Kaena is taken to Opaz, who returns her notebook to her. "And my knife?" she asks.
"Later," he responds, reasonably enough. The last couple of minutes have been written well enough that I'm momentarily fooled into thinking I'm watching an actual film.
We get some decent exposition. The worms are the same species as Kaena's domestic food animals, but evolved. They built the ship with Opaz, and Opaz intends to go home soon.
The thing is ... the audience knew that since the last scene, but Kaena didn't, so we have another scene to let her know. What was the point of the scene with Gommi? Sloppy, sloppy script.
Meanwhile, in HR Giger's flooded basement, the queen attacks Vecanoï again, unsuccessfully. Amorphous Guy shakes his head slowly, because alien creatures made of sap will not only adopt humanoid forms, but human gestures as well (okay, that's too harsh -- you need humanoid features and body language or the audience won't get it). Amorphous Guy argues that they must stop attacking Vecanoï and reminds her that if something happens to her or him --
The queen then says, "I know you are the last male, and that you crave fusioning with me," which I guess being I guy I can sympathize with, although the correct word is fusing. The queen then says that there is no future for their race while the Vecanoï survives, because ... well, because Axis is a tree that drinks sap instead of creating it. Amorphous Guy says he suspects that there is a surviving alien who can just take Vecanoï away with him.
Now, please note that Amorphous Guy has seen a worm with an exoskeleton. From this, he not only suspects that there was a survivor of the original crash (which is logical enough), but somehow leaps to the conclusion that the survivor (singular) is leaving shortly. This is the second time in ten minutes that characters have come to correct conclusions which they cannot possibly have reached. It takes a special kind of magic to write a script like this.
Then, we have a nice bit of exposition where Opaz explains what happened in the opening credits. Hey, it's only been forty minutes, right?
There is a double-planet, two life-bearing worlds literally a few hundred miles apart. I am reasonably certain that Hal Clement could write a fascinating story about such an odd situation, but I'm not Hal Clement, and neither are these guys. A Vecarian ship carrying thousands of people exploded. Opaz was the only survivor (well, except for the SLADs eaten in HR Giger's flooded basement, but Opaz has no way of knowing about them). Then, Axis started to grow. His cradle landed in the branches of Axis. Kaena realizes that more exposition will be given later in the film, so she doesn't ask how the hell he managed to survive to adulthood all alone.
Opaz's ship is near the top of Axis, which is in the gravity of the second planet, so things tend to fall towards the "top" of Axis. "You mean all the time I thought I was heading down to the roots, I was climbing up to the top?" Kaena asks.
"How did you know Axis has roots?" Opaz asks. "You've never seen a tree's roots before."
Well, no, that's what Opaz would ask if he were actually a person. Since he's a character written by hacks, Kaena's intuitive understanding of trees passes without notice. And, no -- up to this point, Kaena never mentioned she was trying to find the roots of Axis. Why do you ask?
So Opaz's ship is near the top of Axis, while Kaena's people live in the middle, "where the gravity of the planets cancel out." While there would indeed be a point where the gravity of the two planets cancelled out, this would mean that Kaena's weight should have been increasing steadily as she gets closer to the top of Axis, and that the gravity in her home village should be virtually non-existent. These people have no more right to write science-fiction than I have to perform open-heart surgery. I did that once; I regret it now.
Hey, here's another plot hole: Amorphous Dude, remember, has psychic control over a monster called Marauder. It nearly killed Ilpo and Kaena. Why is Marauder patrolling around the top of Axis, when it should be kept between the potentially-troublesome slaves and the Flooded Basement? It wasn't moved up in pursuit of Kaena, because Ilpo also ran into it, and there's nothing that implies Ilpo was hunted by Amorphous Dude. Nor does there seem to be any reason for the Sap Monsters to keep the slaves from finding the top of Axis -- remember, they don't know Opaz is there.
Kaena indicates the blue sun is at the roots of Axis. "Blue sun?" Opaz says, amazed, as though this is the first he's heard of it. And then she explains she's dreamed about it, and shows him a sketch she had made. Opaz recognizes it as Vecanoï.
So ... the writers must have realized (along with the audience), that the first scene where Opaz learns Vecanoï might have survived was lousy, so they wrote a second which works, and ... they left them both in. My head hurts. How did something this obvious make it through four writers? The best thing about a good collaboration is that crud like that usually gets spotted.
Kaena asks what Vecanoï is. She is told that it contains the race memory of all Vecarians -- the sum total of everything they know, and that it contains the data which is written into their minds when they are children. Hey, that means Vecanoï's ability to send Kaena dreams actually makes sense; if you can teach someone through telepathy, you should be able to send them dreams as well. This is a nice touch, because in a lot of bad SF films, you get a Swiss Army McGuffin -- a McGuffin that turns out to be a can opener which can also fold space, and you're left wondering why the heck someone would build a can opener that warps space and time.
Okay, so score two for the film. Opaz was able to build the spaceship because he literally left the cradle with the knowledge of how to do so. That's actually a fascinating idea. Let's leave aside the question of whether it's possible and celebrate the fact they handled this plot point cleverly.
In the next scene, worms and Opaz are working on the ship. Opaz observes that Vecanoï didn't have time to pass everything on to him, which establishes how important Vecanoï is. Gommi says the ship will be ready to launch in a few days, and that they should concentrate on that. Then Assad suggests they go to the roots of Axis just to make sure, and Opaz agrees that perhaps they should.
The scene is therefore written backwards, with Gommi arguing against an expedition to the roots of Axis before Assad suggests it. The writing in the script is like the film editing in Firewalker -- it's so badly executed that it serves as a wonderful textbook on how not to put a script together.
Back in the Village of the Little Drummer Boy People, the kid and Kaena's boyfriend have a scene to remind us they exist. The Little Drummer Boy asks if Zehos misses her, and when she's coming back. Zehos replies that he hopes it will be soon.
Then there's a pointless moment with Kaena and a mirror, and the Sap Queen absorbs some of her people and launches another attack on Vecanoï. This is the first time we've been shown that "these attacks" are actually fuelled with her own people, which might make for a powerful metaphor about warfare if the film had enough wit to make us suspect the writers had metaphors in mind, or minds at all.
The Little Drummer Boy ironically suggests that they should have gone with Kaena, and Zehos agrees that maybe his brother is right; that he should have run off with her and left The Little Drummer Boy to starve.
Kaena tells Opaz that she has had a nightmare where Vecanoï was attacked by an evil force, causing a treequake. Then they are hit by a treequake. Animals -- they always know.
When Vecanoï is attacked, Axis shakes. Having decided that Kaena's dreams are a reliable source of information, Opaz tells her that they will go together -- first to her village, and then to Vecanoï. Of course, what he intends to do in her village is left unspoken.
Kaena's village is destroyed, although most of the people seem to be in pretty good shape. The High Priest returns to the temple (which ... we were told was destroyed. Uhm.) and begs for a sign from the Gods, breaking down when nothing arrives. Because, you know, the gods were so helpful earlier.
Enode comes in and the High Priest announces that the gods have just told him it is time to abandon the village and go to the gods. What the High Priest doesn't know is that (bum bum!) Zehos has been eavesdropping all along. That puts Zehos into a really nice pickle, but I really don't get what the High Priest is trying to accomplish here. He knows damned well the gods haven't prepared a place for his people.
Back at the top of Axis, Opaz is being outfitted with an exoskeleton, and the worms are constructing one for Kaena. They are fascinated by her new metal panties. No, really.
Kaena gets her knife back, and an expedition consisting of Assad, Gommi, Opaz, Kaena, and Zumo (which means "Red Shirt" in SLAD-ese) goes off. The worms have flight capable exoskeletons. No idea why Kaena and Opaz don't. I mean, it's not like they're risking a fall, right?
So two carry Kaena and Opaz, while Zumo hauls the supplies.
Zumo is soon eaten by a Sky Bruce, causing them to lose their supplies. After a dash for safety, Gommi repeats that this expedition is too dangerous, but Opaz states that the mission is more important than any of their lives, because "time is running out." Now, we know that the Sap Monsters are trying to destroy Vecanoï, but our heroes don't. Nobody asks about the time limit which has suddenly appeared from nowhere, because they are in a movie and they know that there has to be a time limit on general principles, even if it isn't established in any way.
They continue on. Now, since they don't turn back for supplies, we have to assume they're no more than a few days' travel from Kaena's village and Vecanoï. Oh, and they don't radio back for extra supplies and reinforcements, either.
The villagers all head off to find the gods. Zehos grabs the Little Drummer Boy, tells him there are no gods, and that they need to find Kaena. The High Priest sees them, stops them, Zehos spills his guts about not seeing the gods, and gets captured while the Little Drummer Boy runs away. Apparently, the villagers are dragging Zehos to Paradise against his will. Whatever.
The Expedition is stalked by Marauder. And they actually use the "It's too quiet" line. Violence ensues. Apparently, Marauder can't see things unless they move, which, for some reason, Ilpo knew (another character who knows something for no reason). Which I guess is very useful if it lives in a tree and has to jump from one branch to another. Amorphous Guy sees Opaz, orders Marauder to capture him so he can be forced to remove or destroy Vecanoï, but then decides it would be more fun to kill Kaena, so Marauder chases her until it falls though some branches and plummets off Axis. Way to keep your eye on the ball, Amorphous Dude.
Oh, apart from Kaena's knife, the party has no weapons. And they knew all along there were dangerous animals around. This is what happens when you make Timothy Treadwell your "bear expert." I'm beginning to think that the reason Opaz survived the crash was that since he was still in his cradle, he wasn't able to leap out a breach in the hull or position his head where closing emergency doors could crush it, the way all the adults did. I mean, I can understand why he wants to rescue his species' culture and all, but I gotta wonder if it's worth it.
Kaena's people climb to the roots. Apparently, Newton was completely wrong with all that stuff about adding opposing forces. No, when you're walking between two planets, you just clamber away at your full weight until you cross a branch, and bam, you're in free fall. The High Priest tells them how the gods are making them fly, and I guess we're supposed to understand that he's gone completely off the deep end and actually believes the gods really invited them to come.
That night, while Kaena sleeps, Opaz confides with Gommi that he's thinking of telling her what he has to do. If Vecanoï and Axis are linked, and he removes Vecanoï, what will happen to Axis? Which makes sense -- I remember that when I moved my computer away from under the window, the plants in the window boxes died. But hell, let's just keep going with it. Vecanoï, the data repository and teaching machine, also makes plants grow. Right.
Gommi points out that the world's dying, but strangely this doesn't make Opaz feel terribly good about endangering it. I almost like the way he's handled here. If you buy into the notion that removing Vecanoï would endanger Axis, then he's got a tough decision -- sort of like a historian discovering he can save an intact Library of Alexandria, but that doing so might involve destroying a village of people.
Where it falls short is that here, it's obviously not an either/or situation. Maybe the villagers could be evacuated. Maybe the data can be taken without harming Axis. Hell, at least give it some thought. But problem solving doesn't seem to be a tradition of the SLAD people.
Opaz looks at her and sadly, says, "If only I could persuade her to leave with us," which is a good line ruined by the fact she's writhing in a nightmare and her breasts keep jutting into view, which gives the moment a rather nasty undertone.
The Expedition reaches Kaena's village. Kaena's in front, followed by Opaz, Gommi, and Assad. The Little Drummer Boy drops a noose around Gommi's neck, letting the worm go when he notices Kaena ... who just walked past him, in front of Gommi. Whatever. I've been saying that a lot in this review. We find out that he's been staying with Ilpo.
In the next scene, we get a better look at Opaz; they gave him arms that drop slightly below his knees, which is very effective at giving him a "not quite right" stance. The Little Drummer Boy pokes curiously at Opaz, who playfully pokes back, a very nice bit of "normal" behavior in a film which has pretty much lacked it up to now.
Kaena knows "something terrible" awaits the villagers, because she dreamt it. Uhm, if Vecanoï is sending her these dreams, how did Vecanoï know the villagers were coming down? She decides to go after the villagers, Opaz and Gommi go with her, leaving Assad with Ilpo and the kid. Of course, this means they can't fly any more, because Opaz and Kaena's exoskeletons can't fly, and Gommi can't carry them both. Again, this would be a real good time to call for reinforcements. Interstellar travel, machines able to download data remotely into a living being, but no radio. Go figure.
The three walk past that zero gravity branch and zoom off, with Gommi providing control. The gravity starts to increase, and they start falling; Gommi naturally grabs Opaz who yells to Kaena to look out, which seems a strange thing to say to someone falling helplessly. Kaena sees a human form covered in sap, screams, gets caught by Opaz. Gommi can't keep the three of them up, and they splash down, hard, in HR Giger's flooded basement.
September 26, 2005
Bought a ticket to a showing of Bride of Frankenstein on October 22, with Spooky Stage Show! Whee!
Now back to this crap.
Amorphous Guy talks to some Sap Monster women. These Sap Monster Chicks are a nice bit of CGI design, with a sort of hooded cobra design in their head that's quite menacing without being over the top. Of course, I have no idea why sterile amorphous sap creatures have racks, but there you are.
Amorphous Guy has given up on the Queen, saying that the Queen fears the Ultimate Fusion (bomp-chikka-wikka-wagga-bomp!) because she knows that giving birth to the next generation will kill her. This speech might be more effective if he weren't staring directly at the breasts of one of the Sap Monster women and extending psuedopods into her. It's a very strange moment; if you watch it without sound, you would guess they were flirting, and I suppose there must be something seriously wrong with me, because the way this hooded-cobra-looking-sap-monster shyly turns her head is darned cute.
Here, Opaz decides it would be a good idea to tell Kaena that he intends to kill Axis and all her village. He explains that Vecanoï created Axis, and that Vecanoï is Axis. Horrified, Kaena asks how he can justify killing so many people. He explains that he didn't realize the villagers were able to feel and think until he met Kaena.
"Wait a minute," Kaena says. "You didn't know Vecanoï survived until I told you, yet you know that removing it will destroy Axis? How did you think Axis survived before you knew Vecanoï survived? And why are you talking as though you've planned to remove Vecanoï before you met me?"
Sorry, she doesn't notice that Opaz's scene here makes no sense.
Opaz offers to take her with them, but she refuses unless her entire village can be taken as well. Gommi says that's impossible. Kaena curses the day she met Opaz, throws her knife at his feet, and says she's going to help her people. Not that she got the knife from Opaz, so I'm not sure why she feels obliged to return it to him.
Now, Opaz's dilemma is fascinating, and I think a good film could have been written around that. But it's as though Kaena and Opaz can only communicate in clichés swiped from other movies, and the dialog never quite matches what we've seen on screen.
Kaena runs off to have a good cry, and we cut to the villagers. Apparently, in another potentially interesting scene which happened off screen, the villagers figured out that the gods are only sap monsters and the High Priest's approval rating has dropped dramatically. To be honest, I'm at a loss here. How did the villagers realize the sap monsters aren't gods? We're not talking about looking inside a giant stone head and seeing a guy flying it, or seeing a "god" bleed like a mortal.
"Hey!" says a villager. "Those fluid entities completely unlike anything we've ever seen in our lives before are mortal!" Nope; not buying it. Maybe if they had killed one or two in a fight.
Anyway, they rough up the High Priest a bit, and Zehos talks them into leaving the priest alone so they can look for an exit.
Kaena gets nailed by a Sap Monster, who carries her to Amorphous Guy. In a very bad bit of animation, Kaena is able to move her head expressively while a Sap Monster holds her off the ground by her scalp. Hmm.
So, Kaena is all I know you're not gods, and Amorphous Guy is all you're hotter than the queen, and for a moment I'm wondering if it's going to turn into the first CGI tentacle porn scene, but it doesn't. She's then taken off to cool her heels with the rest of her village.
She and Zehos embrace. "Zehos!" she says. "You made it!" Yeah. Great.
Gommi cuts up through the floor and lets the villagers out. Opaz has gone for Vecanoï. Kaena says the Sap Monsters are waiting for him. The villagers escape, leaving the High Priest praying ironically to his gods. Well, it's a good moment.
Kaena tells Zehos to follow Gommi back out the Flooded Cellar. Gommi wants to come with her, but she explains she's the title character and Gommi's absence will make her inevitable victory all the more awesome. You know, for a film that started off as a game, this movie forces Kaena to do some pretty stupid things. Gamers don't often make mistakes this stupid.
Opaz finds Vecanoï, says hi, and asks him to "open for me." I'm not sure how he intends to get Vecanoï back up to his ship, but maybe Vecanoï will sprout legs like a Transformer or something. Vecanoï refuses, and the Queen jumps Opaz from behind.
Here, the Queen explains that Vecanoï has is stealing her sap and starving her people, and that Opaz will kill it or die. Opaz then explains that he is trying to take Vecanoï away so the Queen's people will live in plenty. Oh, sorry -- he doesn't. I was channeling characters with brains again. Actually, Opaz tells her that he can't control Vecanoï. So the Queen slams him around like a rag doll, and we see that Opaz doesn't gag or blow bubbles when his head is immersed in sap. Cool.
Then Amorphous Guy shows up and rapes the Queen as a bunch of female Sap Monsters run interference for him. This isn't subtext -- it's text. It's a really nasty moment in a film that's otherwise an innocent, if lame, adventure story.
Kaena sees Vecanoï, and then sees Opaz lying in the sap. He's dying, of course, but notices that Vecanoï is opening for Kaena, because she's like Vecanoï's Chosen One and crap. Gee, I haven't seen that plot point used in an SF film for days.
The pregnant Queen emerges from the sap, and Kaena has her final boss fight, stabbing her in the head. I guess stabbing a fluid in the head kills it. Well, no. The Queen smashes Kaena away, and then gets sucked into her egg sack and consumed by her children, just like all mothers everywhere.
Kaena, in the meantime, is sucked into the Monolith orbiting Jupiter, I mean, into Vecanoï, and anyone who didn't see that coming just hasn't watched enough pretentious SF films. She heard Opaz's voice tell her that he was the last of his people. The others were all killed on the ship, except for Vecanoï, which created a "reservoir of life," Axis, so that humans could exist. Too bad for the sap monsters, but I guess they don't count.
This makes perfect sense, of course: it's like how a laptop in a car accident will kill any trees nearby and make any cats within a mile pregnant. Vecanoï is, unfortunately, an Alien Swiss Army MacGuffin.
Vecanoï then bestows all the knowledge of his people onto Kaena, and drops her. Fortunately, Zehos catches her. Then Vecanoï ... makes Axis put out new growth which starts to rip the place apart. Yes, that makes sense -- having bestowed Kaena with all the wisdom of an ancient race, Vecanoï then drops a building on her.
By the way, the "Axis Grows" sequence was designed by someone who didn't have any idea how plants actually grow, so it looks like Axis is exploding into a mass of tentacles. They made a film about a tree that spans two worlds, but they didn't bother reading a book about trees, sap, or amber.
Okay. Then there's a long sequence with an alien beaver running around, and I guess that Axis has bridged the gap to the other planet.
At this point, I swear you could write the rest of the film yourself. Gommi flies Kaena and Zehos back to the other villagers. They're sad because Kaena seems to be dead, and "who will be our guide now?" not that she was their guide before or anything. But she's okay, and those dumb forehead tattoos are gone. She refuses to lead her people, but agrees to help them all she can with what she's learned, and Kaena's people walk down to a new life on their new planet.
Then a song is sung over the closing credits. I bought the soundtrack album in France; interestingly enough, the closing song was originally in English. And the singer pronounces "Kaena" differently from anyone in the film.
And with that entirely gratuitous bit of stupidity, the film ends.
There are two credited directors and four credited writers; Chris Delaporte has a triple Story / Writer / Director credit. Of those five people, Kenneth Opel wrote the novel Silverwing adapted for Canadian TV and has a project titled Airborn which is in pre-production. He is the only member of the combined director/writing staff to have any TV or film credits in IMDB since the release of Kaena in 2003.
Of the remaining four, Pascal Pinon was one of the directors on the Canadian TV series Animal Crackers (1997), while Tarik Hamdine has worked on two video games which have not yet been released. Chris Delaporte and Patrick Daher have no credits before or after this film.
It's very sad to have, as your sole credit, a film this lackluster and poorly written.
I've got to have some sympathy. Occasionally, I flirt with fantasies about writing, and I am confident that if I were to direct a film, it would suck. Maybe it would even suck more than Kaena.
However, I'd like to think that it would have some moments where it did more than flirt with mediocrity.
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We've always been united in stupidity. That's why there is no hope. But, then again, when has that ever stopped us?
-- hbrennan |
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Greenhornet
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1791 Posts |
Posted - 10/03/2005 : 6:09:29 PM
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Somewhere long ago, I had heard of a story about a tree that bridged two worlds. So this is it, huh?
You know, I don't think this movie seemed "hurtful", more like annoying and puzzling. |
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John Nowak
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1017 Posts |
Posted - 10/03/2005 : 9:15:14 PM
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I'd call it hurtful in the sense that if it had been written with the plotting skill of the average fanfic, it would have improved. I just wanted to slap this movie.
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We've always been united in stupidity. That's why there is no hope. But, then again, when has that ever stopped us?
-- hbrennan |
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twitterpate
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Canada
1026 Posts |
Posted - 10/07/2005 : 7:39:09 PM
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| You know, I don't think it's all France's fault - look at all the Canadians involved in creating it. Canadians have a particular skill in creating Anti-Entertainment. |
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John Nowak
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1017 Posts |
Posted - 10/08/2005 : 08:18:20 AM
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And curiously, the Canadians are the ones who are still working, at least according to IMDB.
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We've always been united in stupidity. That's why there is no hope. But, then again, when has that ever stopped us?
-- hbrennan |
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Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Canada
1026 Posts |
Posted - 10/10/2005 : 11:02:40 AM
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| Of coure - unwatchable entertainment is a Canadian government policy! For evidence, take a look at the CBC. |
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John Nowak
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1017 Posts |
Posted - 10/12/2005 : 07:48:53 AM
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On the other hand, there were some good animated shorts drifting South back in the day.
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We've always been united in stupidity. That's why there is no hope. But, then again, when has that ever stopped us?
-- hbrennan |
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Kaena the Prophesy
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